Final Major Project Production Diary Starting March 2014 Till December 2014
Final Major Project Production Diary Starting March 2014 Till December 2014
Production diary
Starting March 2014 till December 2014
March-2014
When I was made aware of the choices I could pick for my final year of animation at university I was
happy to see there was a unit dedicated to the process of pre-production.
Being close to the then third years I was able to learn a lot about it from their version called preproduction methodology taught by Tony Garth.
I was starting to think about characters and stories that I would like to use. Up till that time we had
been using the techniques in cartoon animation (CT5CART) to do retrospective animation, learning
the physiology of the existing characters in animation, and creating there construction sheets after
this we got to make our own.
In retrospect I believe that the notion of being able to animate my own ideas gave me the idea I
could make a u-catastrophe (turn everything boring to great! But I think it became a catastrophe
instead.
I came up with the perfect character, it had no flaws, was fantastic and would do any feat possible;
well in its world perhaps. I think the problem was I flooded the character with all my hopes and
idiosyncrasies of the movie world characters I loved like
Yoda
The Dr
Harry potter
And soon ended up in a mess! But the story I thought leant well for something that would work well
in a final major and that at this stage I could maybe have an original character and then iron out the
creases later in the summer.
The character bellow was the character I used for this animation.
The idea for this character was: a forest guardian who has mystic powers
The idea was going to become a lot bigger, Incubus the futuristic forest guardian was going to be in
charge of the locals bellow.
These characters would be akin to ewoks and would work as locals on the world of echo-world
that mimics a forest.
Earth was to be polluted and so this was the worlds way of providing a artificial atmosphere, in a
self-made globe that would work as a greenhouse, but then would come into trouble from the rot
this again was a play on Marxism vs industry something I find myself steeped in as an animator.
Industrialization was the cause of death for individualism, and the rise of cloning, clinical rooms,
quick procedure, the same jobs that machines could do!, and wearable technology and the
destruction of the forests
Marxism if you are a cobbler be a cobbler the notion that there is an idea and job for everyone
with a skill, artist, gardener, teacher. And that these people are defined by their individuality and
uniqueness.
This was a notion that would have stuck with my world and characters for the future!
June-July 2014
When university had ended, and I had the chance to play with the script and idea for Incubus more I
found I wanted to change the idea again using more imagination, more ideas, and more depth. In
the summer I had enough time to digest more animation, more movie and found resonant material
all around.
To me this was going to be the last animation I would produce in a team of students and staff I loved
and I didnt want to just nock something off for a half decent mark and then abandon all the work
and effort I could have used from the skills I learnt.
The idea became very different from where I started I wanted to make my character more relatable
which incubus wasnt because of his hood and lack of interaction with other characters.
The character may have appealed more as a contemporary, a younger character for a younger
audience.
So Incubus took on a new incarnation.
I was on a holiday with friends and my friend Martyn has a huge Harley Davidson and I was on the
back and thought what a great idea this would make, a space Harley, something that the character
could go about on, so this became a very sci-fi genre idea. A rebellious teen who goes from one
location to another on his Harley, and then gets into situations.
But then where? When? And why.
So again the idea of a clear divide like Marxism and technology took play the new idea ended up like
this the log-line overleaf.
Teachers
The idea was taking shape, but there was a feeling it wasnt what I wanted! And I could work out
why, it was hard to think what it was I wanted to do.
In truth I was scared that if I did do what I wanted then I wouldnt be a good enough animator to pull
it off, it would have been too ambitious for me.
JRR Tolkien once was described as instead of making changes, he would start again, then when
something happened or he ran into trouble he would start again almost like the recurring rise and
fall of the waves on a beach this quote never more seemed like it made sense than now! I felt like
my idea was slipping away so I stopped working for a while and just watched movies, watched
animation and studied what worked demographically and what form cinema was taking in my area
of sci-fi fantasy.
August.2014
So now I had a wealth of research and styles I liked to throw into the melting pot
(Link to Team wizard)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WofpLjcUVzw
This was the start of an impetus for my now evolving FMP story and one I would stylistically be able
to amerce myself in, it had no speech which I liked because finding voice actors to suet a role in such
a short time is hard and can often hurt an outcome than aid it.
I loved this style, and the genre, they made the myth of David and goliath and then turned it into a
very animated (contemporary) animation, I love the use of traditional map paintings, A 3D robot and
2D traditional animated characters, im a great believer in mixing styles to make something more
unique; it was fitting that the robot was made in Maya in a mechanical style and rigged like a
machine and that the organic characters has more organic feeling to them with the flow of 2D,
I am reliant in one really big way on an audience as most animations are but I also want my FMP to
play to my strength as a traditional cartoon animation.
Over the summer I also saw a lot of other not so contemporary animations and use of style which I
liked and wanted to integrate into my style to make something different.
Final fantasy the spirits within, with some great scenes in there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g3H2KsgqPU
2D clone wars cartoon network which had style that played to realism with the added amount of
stretch and squash which I thought worked so well to my style.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTnpqjJae-g
I also loved the contemporariness of these characters and the stories they tell with a lot of action
driven by sound effects good design and compelling visuals, this is helped by the music. When I hear
a track of music I always picture an animation to it after the first term in season 1 when we animated
to music, the music that caught my imagination for a very battle ready contemporary animation was
this something that could fit a contemporary character like a young boy, and something maybe like
this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkIWmsP3c_s
(Fall out boy, light em up) which is a phrase I always had in mind for my animation. I thought Id be
cool to hear that be said, then the music kick in and then start.
I also see a lot of inspirational animated VFX scenes in movies which inspire me for story arch etc.,
you can see below the stories I looked at over the summer
With a love of anything CGI or animated it wasnt hard for me to find (fight) animations which I loved
being a very battle orientated animator. Some of the movies I watched were.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5SkNrWSk5M
Yoda vs the emperor (revenge of the sith)
This shot has a lot of impact in terms of the emotional arches of the characters we were invested in,
both palpatine the dark lord of the sith, and yoda the grand high Jedi master fight in the midst of the
senate, its not only the climax of a 30 year old bestselling saga that began sci-fi in its way, but its
something we all want to see a real crowd pleaser when we finally see the two clash!, its full of
amazing flips and magic and talent, amazing cinematography which track and follows from angles
high and low and definitely one of my ultimate favourite movie scenes!
I knew from day one of animating that my ambition was always to animate a battle that had the
gravitas to this, and wanted to ambitiously take note of details so one day fans could see my keen
eye and attention to detail the same way they would be bothered if yoda was 2 shades darker,
because of the love involved!.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpqIDQI3Gqw
Gandalf vs the necromancer (desolation of smaug)
Another real crowd pleaser where there camera focuses on the action with clear lines of action,
really tight almost claustrophobic angles and a love of detail, it really draws you in and invests you in
Gandalf and his struggle, we fear for him even though this pre dates the original trilogy where we
know he doesnt die. This is because the cinematography and character archs hit those huge beats
to make you invest and care.
The last of my favourite scenes, the reason again because the action doesnt fail to disappoint and
you really care and become invested, this has a lot of metaphors about how Machines could maybe
take over and the fight back against that rebellion. Again this use of camera lighting and effects
really drew me in and would be something I would love to be able to replicate when trying to make
my final major project.
September 2014
Now that I had all these ideas I wasnt happy with the newer idea I was working on, I wanted to
make my characters more science fiction and really amplify the notion of machine fighting men!
So I started by looking at the three characters I made and looking into other possibilities that might
work for more contemporary stories of sci-fi archetypes.
The characters had all the archetypes now a women, a man and an old man.
The notion of an older more wise character, a young warrior and the women to lead the way and be
level headed.
The problems started with design, although these where rough there were more ideas coming and
there were difficulties such as, the arm on the main charters was a canon and didnt really fit the
idea if they were fighting machines, the older man was ok to have some enhancements because he
was an echo of a world being taken over, and the women looked far to brazen for a heroin so they
went through some more design changes.
These designs were still in flux, but I was happier with the idea of these three, they gelled well and
flowed well in a group for gender, style, colour and sizes.
For full ideas and concepts please visit the blog where the whole process of design is documented.
http://dstyleranimation.blogspot.co.uk/p/ct6.html
Now that this was sorted and I had my leads I needed to make a new idea! I had to make a story that
didnt include a child, didnt include and school and followed a more battle heavy action style
animation like Clone wars which is a take and metaphor on mechanical uprising.
This was the first pass
The Chaos chasers
Log-line
A group of rag-tag guardians have come together to stop the creation of industrial domination, the
machine controller and its army of drones are threatening the entire existence of humans. The
guardians known as the chaos chasers must intervene or submit.
I was now happy enough to go looking at areas of interest in the genre like patterns in sci fi, colours,
rules ect. And then define a style in which I would animate.
Now I had all my research done on the genre and had a clearer idea I started to do look into timing
and pacing by doing retrospective animatic, and storyboards instructed by Collin. A method that was
great because It didnt take up much time in terms on schedule and it was very effective on working
out shots and pacing.
]
For full animatic and boards on this please see the blog.
I did some very quick designs for the drones and the commander just so I could start to storyboard.
Now I did some more research into the cycle of the story in three acts to make sure I was holding my
audience anticipation in the right places and at the right time.
Now I had an idea to start visualising with I drew some assets, and some concepts see overleaf.
For full designs see blog.
Concepts.
Key areas of the animation had to be conceptualised to make sure that they would work as
effectively as I wanted, such as a battle of space ships which would be very very hard to plan! And
some battle choreography.
Assets.
Everything was planned out even the idea of how the cannon would work!.
But the idea I started t storyboard roughly wasnt working out as well as I wanted so I just scrapped
it and made a alteration to the script for the second pass.
Script pass 2
A shot that looks out of the door, small ships in the background explosions, and fire. Huge bulk
cruiser ships bellow blasting the others to pieces.
Shockwave looks at bastille and smiles and then over his shoulder at tom
Shockwave: well we need to get onto that ship and take down that controller, without him the
drones will die and this world will be free, so tom.. Time to go
The tree jump from the hanger and fall down to the ship bellow
Worm eye view from the head of the ship and cannon firing up at them
Shockwave lands and as he hits the deck a large explosion comes from his armour and the drones go
flying off the edge of the ship.
Bastille lands and hits one stray drone with her staff, and stabs it with the end
Tom lands next to her and seems out of breath a drone about to strike tom lurches forward, and tom
raises his hand and a mystic force throws it backwards.
The drone commander leans forward from his chair hes wires into.
Shockwave looks at him , the controller stands and as shockwave and bastille run towards him he
stand silent and still then raises his hand and blue shocks fire from the gauntlet and restrain them.
Shockwave is attempting to resist the forces of the controller, he lets out an echo tin laughter whilst
looking at shockwave.
Shockwave is knelt down, smoke rising from his armour, and bastille laid on her front watches
helpless in pain, the shadow of the controller climbs over the beaten team and the sound of a blade
echoes faintly.
The controller lifts his arm and shockwave closes his eyes.
Did you forget me tom is looking at the controller.
The controller fires a blast from his gauntlet at tom, tom catches it with his own magic and throws it
back, and the controller hits a wall at the back of the ship
The controller hits a button to summon more drones, they land on the back of the ship and tom
bastille and shockwave are surrounded, the controller jumps from the ship and down to another
craft tom follows him and the two begin to fight.
The controller fights with his gauntlet and sword and tom with his magic and his blade, the old man
surprisingly nimble and flexible is getting the better of the controller.
Back on the ship shockwave and bastille are kicking the shit out of the drones, shockwave is hitting
them and tearing there limbs off and firing bombs from him arm cannon, bastille is hitting them with
her staff
We cut back to tom who is fighting the controller along one of the drag fins of the ship and knocks
his sword from his hand, the controller cuts his chest and kicks him down where he is hanging over
the ship.
Cut back to shockwave, hes being jumped on by drones, bastille jumps to a huge cannon on the
front of the ship and starts to fire it at the deck, shockwave gets up, his armour hanging from one
side of his arm
Tom is still hanging from the ship and the grabs the controllers leg pulling him off, he falls in the
process, and falls after the controller, they crash onto another ship, which is burning, tom looks at
the controller, and forces him backwards into the inferno, he sparks up and burst, the drones
deactivate and die.
Shock wave and bastille look relieved, and look down at tom who looks at his wrist intercom
Boss, missions done. Where to next
BATTLE CHASERS.
This script seemed in retrospect to be a little bit to long for an animation length of 2-3 mins, so I
needed to cut it down a lot more and so I edited it a lot more and did my final pass.
I re evaluated what I was doing to make sure it wasnt getting away from me and I noted this down.
FMP idea:
This idea will be a realistic animation based on the sci-fi cartoon network style, simple punchy action
packed animations focused on the fantasy battle aspects.
The demographic this animation should appeal to are young males from the age of 13-21 it will be
an animation for YouTube and more of a weekly episode.
Metaphorical inputs
Marxism vs Industrialization: this comes across when the drone Chasers chase a mechanical race
called the drones, the drones are representative of industry and technology in a way that they are
all one in the same model, this metaphor comes from the continuing lack of individualism jobs, with
the injection of computer and a more technological world.
The chasers are more metaphorical and a incarnation of maxism the race of people who are
unique and fight against the DE unification of the race and want everyone to remain unique!.
This is an idea of ideology that is cast through nearly every single sci-fi animation today such as.
1) Avatar. The machines come to take away the navi on their way of life
2) Star wars the droid army starts to battle the Jedi who are unique characters
3) Dr who, the DR a freedom fighter whos unique fights the daleks a race of 1 design
4) Destiny the 3 main leads fight an army of machines
From this we see the antagonist is always a more machine based character in a post apolcyptic
fashion fighting against the more humanoid characters of natural humans
The notion of the Power of Three:
There is usually the power of three in nearly every way, three acts in a narrative, three lines in the
rule of thirds, three is the lowest number in a third of a fraction!, and three is a good point of main
characters in a trilogy.
The rule for sci-fi has been male, male, female
Princess leia, Luke skywalker, han solo (star wars)
The dr captain jack and rose (dr who)
Jake sully, norm Spellman and grace Augustine (avatar)
2 men and women in team wizard
Gandalf the grey, Elrond and Galadriel (the hobbit)
This is a strength of character, we expect a male to be more strong than a women (patriarchal
overtones) seen as sci-fi was grounded by a man then lead to show his dominance of a male gaze
and scopohilia on the character, but however it seems to be a idea thats lasted and worked so im
going to follow that archetypal idea.
Logline: a planet under siege! In the future there is only war. The universe has become enslaved by a
race of super hybrid machines called drones. The Drones are cutting their way through civilization
turning them more mechanical! There are a small band ready to stop them called the Drone
chasers, in an attempt to stop the spread of this mechanical menace.
Conceptual idea.
The idea will follow the chasers to a dominated planet that is in the grasp of siege from the drones,
and from there the audience follow the action packed landing to the ground/enemy craft and the
skills and fight of the humanoid character (chasers) that defeat the drones, and then end with the
older character of gil fighting the drone.
Insert an alternative prologue, (note, Eva didnt understand the idea. This could represent a larger
audience so I think I need to explain it a little more)
The idea I of the genocide needs to come across more.
(Fade in) Show a planet, and the enemy ships appearing, then I want to show the drones capturing
some of the locals. And the (fade out) and insert more text.
Establishing shot:
Within the ship a red light flashes in the hanger, and all three characters stand ready for
Deployment,
Establishing shot:
A ship comes through the orbit and then into the atmosphere of a planet, surrounded by rubble and
debris of the broken ships in battle, this will indicate the arrival of the battle
The ship comes through the atmosphere and finds a large battle in toe, the pilot of the ship starts to
manoeuvre his fighter, explosions from the other ships.
Shot inside the hanger shock wave is holding onto a strap as the ship has turbulence in the
explosions
Pilot: captain, the flank is too heavy!
Shockwave looks up at the monitor: fly the ship to safety, were find another way
He moves to the door and pulls down a lever and the hatch at the back of the ship opens.
Tom: thats a long way down!
A shot that looks out of the door, small ships in the background explosions, and fire. Huge bulk
cruiser ships bellow blasting the others to pieces.
Shockwave looks at bastille and smiles and then over his shoulder at tom
Shockwave: well we need to get onto that ship and take down that controller, without him the
drones will die and this world will be free, so tom.. Time to go
The tree jump from the hanger and fall down to the ship bellow
Worm eye view from the head of the ship and cannon firing up at them
Shockwave lands and as he hits the deck a large explosion comes from his armour and the drones go
flying off the edge of the ship.
The three are now greeted by an enormous door that seems sealed, the rust on the door is visible
and there only seems to be one way in, the three stand and look at the smaller older companion
with them.
Gil stands in front of the door and raises his hand and turns it as his head comes down in
concentration.
The door opens with a dust cloud leaking from the undisturbed wall.
The three enter, its dark, very dark, a cracking from beneath their feet makes shockwave lift up his
small glowing ball that extrudes a light for them, the corridors are very narrow, and metallic.
On the wall of inscriptions of a human becoming a robot, the life cycle of a drone warrior!
Shockwave looks at the depiction and is stunned, he turns to the side and looks at the corridors
which are now seeming more and more daunting
They reach the end of a corridor and inside there is a large light illuminating from the room,
shockwave turns his head around the corner and looks inside, there are mechanics extracting brains
from corpses and making and clear laboratory in operation, he signals for the others to move
forward.
They advance again down a corridor and hear footsteps above them, they look up and see just over
the top of the ridge line, a large room which seems to be a factory house that houses one enormous
drone titan! Its wired in and a pilot is seen climbing inside the top hatch
(Colour pallet, the room will be dark green/blue hues of grey, very clinical metallic)
Shockwave looks at his crew and then readies his weapon. As he turns round he noticed that Gil was
gone!
Show the audience Gil walking down a narrow corridor and at the end he sees two drones who he
lifts to the side of the walls and smashes.
The door opens and then bellow him is a circle dome of a room, inside a huge crystal which is wired
into a box that is flashing planet destruction in 5 minutes
Behind is a half human half cyborg creature whos sat cross legged on the floor. Gil Approaches.
The creature opens his eyes and then as Gil raises his weapon to strike hes thrown back against the
door.
Cut back to show shockwave and bastille in the room of drones, then shoot extension cables from
their belts and jump up to the top level with their guns in hand and start to fire on the drones, the
pilot of the titan is stood on the brink of the titans head, shockwave shoots it down, and then starts
to fight the army again.
Bastille and shockwave work together to fight the drones.
Cut back to the room where Gil is fighting the commander, exchanging blasts with each other and
blasts of energy from their hands the two fight.
The room is a wreck, the dark sorcerer throws Gil back once again, and then a close up on the
countdown which has now gone down drastically.
The drones are now all defeated and bastille and shockwave embraces for a moment before they
hear and see the Titan is active! It pulls itself free and then starts to smash the room to pieces as the
two jump from broken bits of metal to it body to avoid its rage.
Close up the titans hand that fills the frame
Gil and the sorcerer are fighting again and throwing object at each other, Gil draws his sword and
strikes at the sorcerer; the two battle with their swords, and the countdown is still going.
The titan is still ripping apart the room and bastille and shockwave are jumping on it, shockwave gets
inside the titans head and plants a bomb, jumping out he runs for the back of the hangar bastille
with him as they jump to the lower sections large amounts of shrapnel come flying to the ground,
they leave the room.
Gil is being held off by the sorcerer, he uses his magic to battle him one last time throwing him into
the crystal which ruptures and electrocutes its way around him!, gil runs from the room and catches
up with the other two, as they reach the air lock the iron hawk is below them, they jump back into
the ship, as they do the enemies ship explodes and all the drones bellow deactivate, and the people
rejoice. (Fade out)
I was very happy with this idea and so I went on to do some more concepts for the titan drone, do
turnarounds and the also to do some storyboards.
And turnarounds
The board where taking too long to draw out one by one in tonal grades so I started to do it quicker
because it was now November and the hand in was December.
These were the concepts I did based on the harry vs Voldemort in harry potter, they set a high bar
for magical battles.
Other assets I made were the room in which they were to fight.
There were final changes made to the storyboards, for instance certain passes and scenes were
made longer for more dramatic effect such as the scene where gil fights the controller, but others
were shorted quite a lot because of their dynamics such as the scene were bastille runs up the wall
and flips backwards. I think im happy with the final pass and changes and im finally happy with my
final characters.
Now my final animatic was finished I added temp sound and timed it out to make sure it would
work, it was difficult to source good sound effects because there are so many good ones in movies,
and there were great ways and ideas on Pinterest about how to animate those sounds in visuals
but I didnt want my sword fight or magic to sound too familiar to an audiences.
Thank you for reading my production diary, I have tried to reference and list all of my references to
the best of my ability, most where shown to us by Collin west and he gave us a great starting point
to go off and find our very own references
I would like to thank Collin who has helped me over the last 12 weeks to do the best of my ability
and I hope you have all enjoyed reading the making of my final major project.