Category: Visual Narrative – Lip Sync – Year 1

Link to Padlet: https://padlet.com/artslondon/lipsync-o52uj1pj7fa8z0vy

Feedback on Rough Keys:

Following feedback I received the previous Friday, I made alterations to my work which I brought to class on Monday 9th March and I then received further feedback from another tutor (outlined below):

Link to version 5 – Titled ‘Initial rough keys (Friday 6th March)’: https://padlet.com/artslondon/lipsync-o52uj1pj7fa8z0vy

My cleaned Keys can be found titled on Padlet: https://padlet.com/artslondon/lipsync-o52uj1pj7fa8z0vy

ToonBoom – Imbetweening

Notes:

• Try using settles to make movements look more natural  ​
• Remember to consider easing – use timing charts to help
• Consider arcs ​- especially for turns/wing movements
• Could consider using smears
• Order of work: cleanup keys, then do imbetweens cleaning up as you go ​along, then add mouth shapes
• Remember that the brush needs to be same type and size – consistency ​
• Rotate canvas to make lines smoother during cleanup ​
• Scaling up and down – in closer shots the brush size will be larger – in wider shots the lineart will be thinner ​
• Ensure you are drawing on the lineart layer ​

Considering the above notes I started doing my imbetweens. Since I knew I had limited time to do these I decided to prioritise the second scene where most of the dialogue happened (I plan to come back and do the imbetweens for the first scene and for the third and fourth).

Some of my imbetweens can be found titled ‘Imbetweens – process version’ on my padlets: https://padlet.com/artslondon/lipsync-o52uj1pj7fa8z0vy

Process of Animation & Feedback:

On Friday 20th March – the last class of our Lip Sync Project: https://padlet.com/artslondon/lipsync-o52uj1pj7fa8z0vy

The version Titled ‘Work In Progress – Friday 20th March’ on my padlet – is how far I got for the final day of the project – I did complete cleanup for the second main scene (imbetweened and mouth shapes), however I didn’t have time to imbetween the first scene or add mouth shapes to scene 3 & 4.

Feedback I received on Friday 20th March:

• My peers liked the design of my first main background
• My peers said my imbetweens were very smooth
• They liked the bending of my birds’ legs when they were moving
• They liked the character design of my birds and thought they looked different alongside one another – which was good contrast

Some suggestions for further improvement:

• They thought it would be nice if my background was given longer screen time
• I could have considered follow through – for example making the curl of hair on my pigeon character move differently to the body moving
• I could try to add more imbetweens when my male character drops down
• I could try to add more easing at the end of when she turns to look at him (with the raised eyebrow)

Continuation of Animation:

With my remaining time after my second elective I started to continue working on my bird animation:

I began adding mouth shapes to my third scene, however ran into some difficulty as the audio was unclear in parts and fast – to tackle this I tried to incorporate some frames on 1s as they were too slow on 2s and didn’t match my audio very well.

When playing back my animation I realised a few issues that I wanted to address:

• the beak of my crow character in the second scene was inconsistent – sometimes changing shape and size slightly
• the body of my crow character in scene 2 also was quite inconsistent – making the volume feel off
• the tail of my crow character in scene 2 was curved and then flat at different times – so I wanted to make this more consistent
• some of my character settles could have been softer

Final Film:

My lineart animation can be found on my padlet titled ‘Lineart (Fully Imbetweened)’: https://padlet.com/artslondon/lipsync-o52uj1pj7fa8z0vy

My coloured animation can also be found titled ‘Final Colour’: https://padlet.com/artslondon/lipsync-o52uj1pj7fa8z0vy

My final film composited in After Effects: https://youtu.be/qk0FMKlW_EA

Link to Padlet: https://padlet.com/artslondon/lipsync-o52uj1pj7fa8z0vy

Mouth Shapes:

Initial rough mouth shapes:

I sketched the above during class on Friday 27th March, my tutor suggested how I could tweak some of the mouth shapes to make them look more accurate which I applied to the final outcomes below. I also decided to draw my characters with teeth as this made it easier to distinguish their mouth sounds.

Female Pigeon character:

As well as the essential mouth shapes that we were tasked to complete, I decided to make an R and Uh mouth shape as my dialogue used these sounds a lot.

Male Crow Character:

X sheets:

Key:

Black: x sheet first draft

Red: side dialogue by Male Character (VA Harry)

Green: side dialogue by Female Character (VA Marianne)

Blue: edited x sheet sounds (after completing my mouth shape sheets and re-reading my x sheet I came to the realisation I would need to change some parts as often there was the same mouth shapes next to one another which wouldn’t contrast to show a new word being said).

Character Acting:

Task 1:

Through this task I realised the importance of character acting (to communicate and exaggerate emotions and dialogue); making characters feel lifelike and believable.

Notes:

• Before doing imbetweens it would be useful to create timing charts between my keys (to help consider what spacing to do for my drawings)
• when doing character acting an key poses try to think of think of live action and how an expression/emotion is acted, also consider what behaviours/actions match with your character and their personality ​
• Think of the physics of action ​when doing key animation
• Think of acting, are they immediately experiencing an emotional response e.g. do they immediately get angry or do they get angry slowly?
• Work on 2s (24 FPS – but a frame holds for 2)
• Use 1/3 sparingly for timing charts – it is easier to stick to halves

ToonBoom – Rough Keys

During the week commencing 2nd March I started doing my first draft of my rough keys (I brought this to class on Friday to continue working on before I received feedback on how to improve it (outlined in the slide below)).

The keys can be found on Padlet here (titled ‘Initial Rough Keys’) : https://padlet.com/artslondon/lipsync-o52uj1pj7fa8z0vy

Link to Padlet: https://padlet.com/artslondon/lipsync-o52uj1pj7fa8z0vy

Character Turnarounds:

Backgrounds – idea generation & development:

Background Style Inspiration:

Final Backgrounds:

Background 1:

Below is my finished background, I tried to consider three things in terms of style which I think I managed to execute well. These were:

• not having proper lineart
• using textures
• using geometric shapes

I wanted to try these as they were key features I was drawn to from the artists I looked at for inspiration.

I tried to consider how the lighting would work at sunset time and how this would reflect off the windows too as bounce light. I hope this makes the mood clear for my audience.

I would say while I am happy with the composition (I think it works well considering the background is an establishing shot), I think the next time I work on a project I would like to try drawing from a different camera angle (rather than just a straight shot) as it would challenge me even more.

In the above I will need to draw my characters standing on the bench before the camera zooms in. I may draw them as silhouetted figures as the detail would be lost from the distance they are at, however since they are in the light this may not work.

Here is the final version of my first background. I decided to not draw my characters silhouetted. They are very small in this scene, however I don’t think this is a major issue as I don’t plan to animate them here – the dialogue only happens in the second scene (from a close up angle).

Background 2:

Background 3:

Background 4:

I based these backgrounds on my animatic close ups. They are supposed to be the bench from different zoomed in camera angles. 

Storyboarding/Animatic:

‘Initial rough animatic – Bin characters’ can be found on my Padlet: https://padlet.com/artslondon/lipsync-o52uj1pj7fa8z0vy

Updated Animatic can be found titled ‘updated rough animatic – bird characters’ on Padlet: https://padlet.com/artslondon/lipsync-o52uj1pj7fa8z0vy

Responding to general feedback for pre-production (before 27th Feb):

During my group crit on Friday 27th about our moodboards, animatics and character designs I received some positive feedback as well as some suggestions on how I could improve my work. This included the below:

Positive feedback: My peers liked my colour palette analysis, mood boarding and thought my animatic had a funny concept. They also liked my background that I had started.

Improvement feedback: My peers did suggest altering my character designs again as they thought my male and female characters still looked too similar. They suggested either changing the shape language of my characters, changing one of the species of my characters (to a different bird like a pigeon/magpie etc.) or exaggerating the proportions further or a combination of all three.

I decided to alter my female character as shown and described below:

Overall I think through the process of changing and tweaking my character designs multiple times, I have been able to refine the design, so I am much more satisfied with this result above.

I feel I have already stepped out my comfort zone for this project as I usually don’t draw animals and typically I don’t draw in such a cartoony and simple style (I am more drawn to detailed and overly rendered character designs).

Final Character Designs:

Lineart Turnarounds:

After further observation I noticed that the height of the top of the wings was inconsistent in my turnarounds above. If I have time, I would like to fix this if possible.

Coloured Turnarounds:

Colour: Above are my coloured characters. I did consider using bright and bold colours so they would contrast with the background however considering my backgrounds after the first scene are just close ups of the bench I thought keeping them a similar colour palette to the establishing shot would create consistency throughout the film (their muted tones would also contrast with the warm hue of the bench). I tested this out below:

Updated New Character Sheets:

Link to Padlet: https://padlet.com/artslondon/lipsync-o52uj1pj7fa8z0vy

Initial Ideas:

Audio:

Audio : I decided to interview my flatmates for this project as I thought they would have interesting perspectives on the topic of London, it was also more convenient to carry out (rather than doing public interviews around London).

I first interviewed my flatmate Golf and then interviewed my other flatmate Marianne and her boyfriend Harry. I was grateful to have the two options as they ended up being very different; one was an individual interview with more definitive responses and the other one was more conversational and allowed for longer responses that deviated slightly from my questions (this led to unexpected and interesting answers).

I ended up recording over half an hour of audio which was useful as I had more options to pick from.

Moodboards:

Further Idea Development:

Initial rough storyboard/animatic on my bin characters can be found here : https://padlet.com/artslondon/lipsync-o52uj1pj7fa8z0vy

Character Design:

For these sketches above I tried to consider the line of action and how I could make positions of the birds in a more interesting way. I also approached sketching with shapes rather than thinking of definitive outlines. I found this process useful as it allowed me to consider how I could actually manoeuvre a character by trying different poses. For some of these poses I took inspiration from my previous bin animatic and my written beat sheet. I also found this task useful to consider how the wings of a bird could be used to express emotion (initially I found it difficult to know where the wing placement would be for some poses, however by the end I felt it became easier to figure out).  ​

I used the below as a reminder of the main features of a crow are.

Following on from my pose sketches I tried to go back to thinking of character design and actively consider the points I had noted down previously about stylisation:

As shown above I tried to base the parts of my character around different shapes. I also tried to exaggerate features (longer legs and a larger beak) to make my character look more stylised. 

My character turnarounds: