Moving Pictures Proposal

FINAL OUTCOMES - MOVING PICTURES

Woodland of Weir from Jay Stelling on Vimeo.

Woodland of Weir

It was night in the lonesome October 

      Of my most immemorial year; 

It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 

      In the misty mid region of Weir— 

It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 

      In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Woodland of Weir from Jay Stelling on Vimeo.

I think it's finished! Trying to tell myself that I don't need to add or change anything else even though I want to. It's not that I think it needs more, just that I would like to keep working on it, make it even better, keep playing around.
Despite all the technical horror of After Effects, I've had fun making this animation. I'm proud of it, my first born child.

I think it's successful in capturing the atmosphere of Poe's writing. It's dark and mysterious and matches my printed pictures outcome. It's moving and melancholy, which is what I intended. It's everything I wanted it to be and I'm taking a moment to sit back and appreciate that. Celebrate!

If I could do it again, I'd make the crow's movement better (different angle, wings moving up and down from the side of the body not just bending in the middle), more the detail on the wings, more trees in the background.
And, again, I can't help but imagine how chilling this scene could be if it was made physically. Tactile tree textures, real smoke/fog, DEPTH - not just layers but real depth in distance.
After Effects is annoying but really useful software that I'd like to work with again. I'd love to work with animators and musicians to create something awesome with people who really know what they're doing!

Feedback:
Beth says it has 'ominous vibes'

FINAL TWEAKS

Bronte says less vignette,
James says not to add flowers or other wildlife moving because it's supposed to be a winter/dead forest scene.
Josh shed a little tear! He found the piano music really emotional...
HD option? Make sure you're exporting correctly.
Fin said music is emotional, it's very spooky and he wants to go there.

Me: "So is it less boring now? You said the house book was boring. Is this boring too?"
Fin: "Hey - I only said it was boring because you said you'd put some severed heads and hands in there!"
Me: "Oh, so it's not boring?!"
Fin: "Nah. It's cool. But severed heads would be cooler."

Dream within a Dream

Dream within a Dream from Jay Stelling on Vimeo.

Added a few things mentioned in the feedback.

+ Vignetting - does this make it too dark? I love how stormy and intense it makes the atmosphere. Much more serious, without it could pass for a fairy tale forest.
+Increased the amount of rain, giving the scene greater depth (rainfall in layers, suggestion of depth of field)
+Warmer glow in the window, shines through the ink splodge type at the end. Mysterious and intriguing.

- Crow's still not moving its beak at the same time as the cawing
- More trees/background behind the background?

I've stuck to the initial intention in my proposal form and I have impressed myself by actually achieving this. Even after discovering roughing last year, I found it difficult to follow that initial plan as I would come up with better ideas later on... but I knew that this storyboard could work and that it was just up to me to make it happen.
I stayed with my storyboard and made something I am proud of, though I am sick of listening to that same soundtrack over and over again now.

Sting Progress

The Raven from Jay Stelling on Vimeo.

After a brief chat with Ben I decided to let the 'road/street' issue go, to leave my printed pictures and to throw some Jay magic into this animation. I shouldn't feel so bad for being organised and printing early. I was ready and managed my time so that I could focus on one brief at a time. Other people are still printing/making pictures, but that doesn't mean that their pictures are better than mine or that I haven't spent enough time on them, I just did it in a different order.

I've been fiddling about with the assets and layers for a long time. After effects takes so long and I've had millions of technical problems but I still really like the software. It's so much fun to see my pictures moving and to have the ability to add/remove/change things in the scene so easily (unlike stop motion).

I found out how to use the puppet pin tool and it's so helpful! It means I can move the wings as one layer but as though there are joints, and the movement ripples the rest of the asset (e.g. feathers waft too).

Discovered a rain effect in After Effects and applied this to enhance the melancholy, dark atmosphere. More rain sounds! Thunder? Lightening, too far? Don't want the weather to distract from the crow but I do want to make an immersive and moody scene.

I'm much happier with the way it's looking. The bird seems less comical/childish (though it still does appear to be smiling/smirking?), the bird lands much more realistically and gracefully.
I finally worked out how to make a light turn on in the house but it's not as warm a light as I want. I'm also not sure how many lights to have turn on - all of them? Just one?

PEER REVIEW
Impromptu feedback

Bronte: The motion happens at a nice pace, not too slow or too fast. And the music is brilliant, really sets a somber. The way you've made the wings move is ace.

James (Graphic Designer/boyfriend): mood much moodier now, the soundtrack is dreamy and haunting. Careful to match the cawing to the bird's beak opening and closing. Make the light at the end brighter. Can you add shadows? Vignette? Fog? It suits the tone of the author and works well with the printed pictures book. A snippet of Poe's world.

13 Days Left

We have 13 days until submission for OUIL504.
I've finished my printed pictures. I'd finished before Christmas so that I could focus on Moving Pictures, but knowing that I still have time left makes me want to quickly redo things/reprint/add things, but there is a time to stop and move forward with everything else. There's no point messing around with it when it's finished and I spent money on getting it printed. I just want to take some professional photos of it now.

I am well on the way with my moving pictures. I could submit what I have so far but I know it can be better, so I am going to spend the rest of the time left on improving the animation.

Things to get done:

• Improve the crow (above is a screenshot of this improved version so far- much more detail, more layers that can move separately)
• Add some more scenic assets - plants, rocks etc.
• Something needs to happen with the house at the end - having Poe in the window might be too much and too complex, so perhaps just a light turning on?
• Professional photos of my printed pictures

We had a peer tutorial today but several things went wonky. I was feeling anxious, the group got sidetracked and two of us didn't get time to show our work. I'll need to arrange an impromptu group tutorial to get feedback this week.

Scenes and Settings - Moving Pictures

The translation from printed pictures into moving pictures. How am I going to make these still images move?
My printed pictures will form the scene, since I have been focusing on Edgar Allan Poe's world and gothic settings.

Looking for examples of similarly spooky settings/atmospheres, thinking about how I can animate it to make it even more creepy-crawly.

ONCE UPON A MIDNIGHT DREARY

Crow Flying from Jay Stelling on Vimeo.

I spent all day working on this, just trying to get the basic elements in place and moving the way I want them to. Even working with my storyboard so I knew where each asset should be in each frame, it took a very long time and I'm not even finished.
So glad I did make a storyboard because I dread to think how long it would have taken without this kind of planning.
Youtube tutorials are so nerdy but brilliant, thank you for solving my many idiotJaymoments.
Majorly happy with the soundtrack, it's just like a film and I think it's appropriate for the tone of my author.
Not sure how well the printed textures transfer to on-screen. They just look a bit messy and random since they're all different directions, overwhelming with them moving too! Feel a bit motion sick.

The crow looks so rough and basically like a flying fish. He needs sorting out but at least it's a placeholder for now so I know where it will be and how it will move.

I'm proud because this is the first proper animation I've made but I just feel that it could be 1000x more immersive, unique and spooky with a 3-Dimensional set and puppets. (forever pining for puppets)

Panning Trees

Trees Sample from Jay Stelling on Vimeo.

Doesn't feel real yet. Not immersive, alive or deep. Needs more layers and movement. The crow will add a lot of this when it flies through the trees, but it's still just a flat image at the moment. It needs to be a world, not a picture.



Trees Sample Depth from Jay Stelling on Vimeo.

Having some issues with stretching! In order to export to H.264 format (Vimeo required format) using After Effects 2016 I had to export using Media Encoder, which keeps stretching and adding a black border to the video.

STORYBOARD FOR ANIMATION

http://www.parkablogs.com/sites/default/files/corpse-bride-13.jpg

These are storyboards in action, used by Selick, Burton and their team in the production of The Corpse Bride. I found it quite surprising to see how closely the animators followed the storyboard. 

I thought I knew how and why storyboards are used in the industry and I expected it to be more of a plan, how a script dictates the lines but the actors will add their own accents and pronunciation... but this example shows just how strictly the animators have followed the storyboard, including composition, framing and expressions.

Story boarding is much stricter in stop-motion animation than other forms of moving pictures because unlike computer generated animations, assets can't be moved or edited much afterwards. The movement is all done painstakingly by hand. Once a shot is taken and the crew move on, the frame can't easily be done-over so it needs to be done right the first time.

http://www.parkablogs.com/sites/default/files/corpse-bride-06.jpg

Storyboards would be especially important on such a big scale, large budget production because there are so many hands on board and so much at stake. It takes a really long time to make a stop-motion film like this, so there's no time to be wasted. Storyboards are used to keep to schedule, working from each frame and paying attention to each individual detail.

 All of the animators need to know where each puppet should be for each frame. Rigs need to be set up in position and moved whenever a puppet moves.

The quality and finesse of The Corpse Bride could not have been achieved without such a story boarding system in place. Alongside all the talent that goes into a film like this, there's also logistics in thinking about WHAT, WHERE, HOW and WHEN each asset moves.

The storyboard is the backbone of the movie and a vital part of the stop-motion process.

Soundtrack Storyboard Task

The balance between magical and spooky. It has to be fast enough for the pace of a bird to fly, but a lot of the minor key gothic soundtracks are too slow. Anything at the right pace is too happy/upbeat!

A struggle to find that mid-ground. After listening to Danny Elfman soundtracks all week I'm also expecting a full orchestral piece and ambient choir and sifting through thousands of same-y electrical-sounding clips on FMA searching for the RIGHT one.

How can I use sound effects to create atmosphere? Think about MUSIC as well as just sound effects... an instrumental/ambient track?

http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kai_Engel/Chapter_One__Cold/

https://www.freesound.org/people/Gutek/sounds/201897/

Ended up mixing a few different tracks together and overlaying forest sound effects. Needs more bird effects, e.g. flapping of wings and cawing. Curating a soundscape from the sounds I'm collecting.

My soundtrack will work to add another sense to my storyboard. The soundtrack will be the audio of the scene I have built and will pan right through the 30 seconds. The two will work together to form Poe's world in sound and vision.

Not my proposed idea, but practising moving the images with a consideration to the sound and music tracks.

Above is my final storyboard proposal fitted with the soundtracks I've found.

Study Task 6

Sound deconstruction task:

1.  Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride
Tim Burton's soundtracks are always eerie and atmospheric. This film has a similar gothic subject and dark, romantic tone of voice to my intended moving pictures animation.

The Corpse Bride is an animated musical, but even when there are no songs being sung by the characters in action, there is still music behind the visuals. The music builds a sense of atmosphere, one that can not only be seen through the cool colours, windswept hair and dark shadows, but an atmosphere that the audience can also hear. This makes the scene more believable and rich, the consumer being immersed in the world of the story through their senses.
carries the tone of the production.

The films uses voice acting. Famous actors read the lines that would be dubbed over the animation. I have access to voice recording equipment but I do worry that without hiring professional voice actors and without having authentic American accents (being set in Baltimore), this might make my sting less authentic. I also intend on constructing a very lonely, desolate feeling in the scene so I don't want to use dialogue.

Crow sound effects - Not just the crow cawing, but also the flap of its wings and scratching of its feet. With the animation form being stop-motion 3-dimensional figures, this 3-dimensional, realistic soundscape is effective. On a more simple animation (2D drawings), such great attention to little details might be overwhelming and out of place.
In 3D animation, does it border on sensory overload, bombarding the audience with all of this auditory information? This could be a deliberate attempt to make an uncanny and hyper-detailed world (i.e. wonderland/otherworldly).

The film score is orchestral and classical, which suits the context of the story (e.g. since Poe wrote in the 19th century, modern-sounding instruments and music would not be appropriate).
There's an ambient vocal choir singing the 'oohs' and 'aahs', a dreamlike and angelic sound.
The inclusion of bells and chimes add to this magical sensation.

Danny Elfman is the genius responsible for the composing of the film score for Corpse Bride, as well as many other fantastical films from Tim Burton. I've included the Official Soundtrack for Edward Scissorhands which, although not an animated film, features a really atmospheric and sensory soundtrack.

I wish I knew more about music and instruments so I could deconstruct this properly. I don't know my celestas from my harps. I know that Elfman's tone is exactly what I want to recreate. He has a voice in all of these soundtracks, a distinct and supernatural air, which can range from nightmarish to heavenly.

2. Mona the Vampire (Spirit of the Woods)
Mona has a similar target audience to that which I am aiming for, so I am investigating how they use auditory elements to compliment the visual animation.

1.05 - 1.10 minutes: Sound effects of animals, trees and the wind are built up to create the noise of the woods, alongside the animated pictures of characters moving through the scene.
Sounds overlap to communicate how the assets interact with each other, e.g. the sound of a bus engine begins at 1.10 minutes and gets louder in volume as it moves into the frame and scares off the animals that were there before.

Music is used in Mona the Vampire to convey a change of tone - when the scene should be funny it's in a major key, which makes the scene seem bright and cheerful, or when the scene becomes tense it drops to a minor, more serious and dark.
Upbeat music with excitement of the children. A piano sets the pace of the story, with the tempo rising as the characters run or with the tempo slowing as the characters move slowly.

When there's a joke they use a conventional kids' comic trumpet, setting it firmly within the kid's entertainment genre.

JUST AS FRED WAS SAYING ABOUT WALKING CYCLES, when the characters walk, a mid-shot is used instead and the head bobs up and down across the scene - rather than animating the legs walking for a whole cycle which is tricky - but the noise of footsteps is also added which makes it even more obvious that the character is walking.

As Mona's world skips from reality to her imagination, a 'cl-cl-cl-cl' whirling noise suggests that the audience are taken through this vortex. We are not only visually transported through the psychedelic distortion of the image, but the audio dictates that something unusual is happening with this unnatural, whirling sound.

3. Think about the inclusion of sound or sound production in your sting

I've used the Free Music Archive before for projects such as my Dark Crystal short film (Vis Com). Soundtracks can be used to set the scene. Sounds can give vital information about atmosphere, weather and mood. Since I am not a musician myself, I think I'll leave that to the experts... there's so much stuff on the free music archive that I can use without breaching copyright, but also a lot of stuff to sift through that wouldn't be appropriate for my tone of voice/subject.
The music I choose could completely alter the tone of my moving image so I need to make sure that I keep true to Poe on this one.

I'm using a low-key palette so I think a low-key soundtrack would complement this nicely. A low pitch, quite slow, minor key.

Sound Effects: I'd like to create a moody and tense atmosphere. Rain and wind or thunder are conventional features of Poe's fiction and of the Gothic genre.
Crow cawing.
Cat screech.
Windows rattling.

 http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Harsanyi_Laszlo/Witchcraft

^ This is the perfect album! Spooky instrumental music using classical instruments and sound effects, but also has the potential to be layered underneath other sound effects I can find.

Storyboards

I found storyboarding a useful tool for devising, planning and scripting moving image.
It is used in the animation industry so is something that I want to get familiar with.
I tried to use a variety of Points of View and camera angles, which made the (often quite dull) sequences more dynamic and interesting.
I'll use storyboarding to structure my moving pictures sting before I take it to After Effects because this will save me a lot of time and effort on the screen.

Fred's storyboarding session today built on these techniques. He demonstrated with Kyle's storyboards that you can create an illusion of depth on a flat screen by layering assets (e.g. background/foreground).
We were challenged to think beyond the frame and consider how things move INTO/OFF the frame.
We also discussed pace and tension.

Virginia Blinks

Virginia Clemm from Jay Stelling on Vimeo.

Using Toggle Keyframe - this holds the transformation between keyframes so that it jumps to the repeat. Works like stop-motion.

PAPER BIRD TEST

Paper Bird Test from Jay Stelling on Vimeo.

MOVING PICTURES Study Task 4

THIS IS THE BRIEF I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR
I'm so interested in Animation at the moment. My work is often created with the intention of MOVING at some point (articulated dolls/puppets, scenes), so it is really exciting to finally get the chance to MAKE IT MOVE. I want my illustrations to have LIFE and now here is a brief in which I get to create that life and motion.

Moving characters

Do I have to make it all in After Effects? I'm impressed with the things that can be done using After Effects and enjoyed making crazy pans and applying properties to the objects, but can I make the characters/puppets/scenes SEPARATELY and use After Effects simply to bring it all together in layers?

Can I use stop motion and PHYSICAL puppets?

Extend your Printed Pictures aesthetic into moving pictures!

A short sting/advert for a documentary about your author
Could I do it as an advertisement for the Poe House in Baltimore? I've been learning about and making work about Poe's location, his house in Baltimore, which is now a museum. I think it would be appropriate for my sting to reference the house as the animated short is likely to be conceptualised around the work I have done about THE HOUSE and SPOOKY SCENES.

I intend to recreate Poe's mysterious MOOD AND IMPACT in my moving pictures.

Carson Ellis

The Wildwood Chronicles Book Trailer - Carson Ellis. This was one of the examples shown in the briefing and I found it utterly enchanting.
Colin Meloy's fantastical folklore storytelling is illustrated by Carson Ellis's intricate paper worlds. A marriage of nature and whimsy creating a 2 dimensional land of wonder.

Ellis's rich scenes are translated to moving image through the use of After Effects, using layers to build up the depth of a dense forest with foreground through to background. Each of the assets are separate layers, able to move independently from the background.
Panning is used to move the audience through the woods - we are moved through the trees as the frame scans further left. We move deeper into the woods through zooming closer. The under layers become foreground as we zoom towards them.

There is so much going on in this animation, which could easily make it overwhelming, but since the movements are all subtle and natural, it means that the overall motion is immersive and inviting.
The viewer is transported into Wildwood and left with a taste for the stories, just as a teaser should. Not giving everything away, but flirting with a promise of what is to come.

Directed by Aaron Sorenson.

Although this credits sequence doesn't have the depth and physicality to it that I love about The Boxtrolls films, it does use digital animation very cleverly to illustrate the ideas of the film.
Rotation and position communicates falling down - action packed and adventure.

Type overlays the animation, using the dark spaces and forms in the images as to add to the scene rather than take over.

Definitely not all After Effects but such a spooky tone and mood!
Similar in atmosphere/tone to my intentions

Made to LOOK OLD - grain, camera wobble, flickering light, black and white filter. Jittery camera, distortion.

Elsewhere, The Survivors from Ali Aschman on Vimeo.

Paper puppets - disturbing. Separate parts for limbs and joints - I could make my characters in parts and then put them back together on-screen.

Dontshare from gianluca maruotti on Vimeo.

Uses layers to create depth. Lots of houses on different layers moving at different speeds.

Bird movement - I am considering using a raven/crow in mine so I need to study how this artist has made the bird come to life. It moves very quickly and the wings move in a 'V' formation - up and down.

Still scenes with only a few things moving, creates a sombre and melancholy tone. E.g. curtains moving in the wind.
Same beginning and end - circular, narrative, emotional.

Giangrande - Paper Plane (Official Video) from gianluca maruotti on Vimeo.

The artist makes paper puppets - uses blu tac to stick paper down, stay in place.

USED AFTER EFFECTS IN THE WOODS SCENE - the same scene of trees, but panning across seamlessly, as though the woods are never-ending

wheels spinning on anchor points

Sea coming up, same texture repeated and layered