Animation so far..

My animation is not complete;
Over the weekend on the MacBook Pro I managed to complete another 3 scenes, so about 15-20 seconds of footage, I spent some time making the scenes have some more dimension like this kitchen scene. I have about 1:30-35 of my animation footage, I still have minimal sound so lip syncing of the mouths will also need to be added.
Here is a list of things that need to be done;

-Finish last 30 seconds of scenes

-Record Voice/sounds

As my Animation is being made by using keyframes in After Effects i cannot say how many frames i have done.

ASSET SHEET

full storyboard

Introduction sequence

Introduction sequence for my animation, it includes the walk cycle for both main characters, along with some other motion of text and some illustrated clouds.
First shot is also finished.

FlowChart

Initial character designs

Current trends in animation

How my show fits into current trends like other current animation. My animation is weird and people like crazy things and random occurrences which are funny although what people don't notice is how weird these things actually are. I chose to fit my animation into the same category as these other popular shows as they are just made  up of random happens which most the time make no sense and yet people still watch them just as a laugh.

My Cartoon would air on channels such as cartoon network which specialise purely in cartoons and animation as these trends are already very popular on these channels, and anyone open to new shows will watch and like to watch shows just like mine.

Pitch Document

Pitchdocument from Casper Brazier

Introduction to Flash

representation and ethic

Target audience

Name: George 
Age: 15
Average day: Goes to School to do his GCSE's. comes home to watch cartoons while eating buttered crumpets, then goes out to play with his mates. 
Hobbies and interests: skateboarding, preme.
Spending power: £30 a week. unemployed. 
Typical media consumption per day: 2 hours of television per day, 3 hours on the internet. 
Why the animation will appeal to them (look, style of animation, themes, main character, humour): George likes the animation due to the obscureness of the animation and the how random the storyline is, you really don't need to pay attention to the cartoon to enjoy it, therefore it can be put on while he does work or when he is chilling with his mates, so he can stay sociable and have a laugh with his mates while still watching the animation.

Legal and ethical issue.

Legal _ethical from Casper Brazier

Animation Production Schedule + Costs.

Animation production schedule from Casper Brazier
My animation series consists of short 5 min episodes, and animation will be very basic 2d animation no special effects will need to be involved. Having these equalities my Animated Series will have low costs to be produced.

Key scene storyboard

Credit Sequence

My credit sequence will be short and snappy and will be able to used to introduce my cartoon quickly, as my episodes are going to be 5 mins long each so i want to fill my episodes with more storyline content than credits.

INITIAL PLANNING STORYLINE/STRUCTURE

'Cream cheese dreams' part 1
  Ed watches a advertisement in which hypnotises him to go buy cream cheese,
 pete completely unaware agrees to come shopping they pick up the cream cheese
 and go home, once Ed had eaten the cream cheese he then passes out and finds    himself drifting  through deep space. Ed ends up on a planet where he then gets
 abducted, he wakes up  in-captured within a spaceship.
 This episode will end in a cliffhanger.

TV series. 5 mins long episodes, 12 episodes in a series.

BBFC Research

British board of film classification
funded by the film industry
responsable or the national classification and censorship of films in the uk
classifies videos, dvds and a few video games
established in 1912 as the british board of film censors by members of the film industry who would rather manage
own censorship than have a national or local government do it for them.
its legal basis the cinematograph act 1909
cinematograph act-
in the 1890s-1900s films where viewed in temporary venues such as music halls, fairgrounds and converted shops(penny gaffs)
the film was made from highly flammable cluulose nitrate combined with limelight illumination this created a fire hazard
the act meant that the projector had to be enclosed in a fire resistant room in all commercial cinemas had to comply to
these regulations. To enforce this local authorities had to inspect the cinema.
They started censorship due to several cinemas getting prosecuted due to insulting material.
BBFC operated during World war 2 to hold an extensive but unofficial system of political censorship.

Certificates for media
Univeral- all ages admitted
parental guidance- all age admitted although may be unsuitable for young children should not disturb children aged 8 years
or over
12A- cinema only children below 12 must be accompanied by a adult.
15- for 15 year old and over
18- 18 years and above not to be supplied to anyone under that age.
the BBFC work to censor sex and violence in films

Legal backing-
Human right act 1988
the licensing act 2003
the obscene publications act 1959 and 1964
criminal justice and immigration act 2008
the protection of children act 1978
the public order act 1986
the cinematograph films animals act 1937
the animal welfare act 2006
the tobacco advertising and promotion act 2002
Coraline
examiners noted creepiness and spookinees running throughout the film it becomes manacing

Character Development.

Character- peter.
Summary: Peter Works a lot of his time away to make enough money to pay for the rent of the apartment, he is relaxed most the time, but when cash is tight he can get very angry.

keywords: chill, hard working, short temper.

I want to create a completely original character, and therefore im not going to be finding any references to work from as that will encourage me using unoriginal content for my characters. My character will be a trendy modern day late teen and i will base my character on recent trends.

I Want to use vector layers to make a good looking 2d animation so for my character design i will use vectors. Using many different vector layers i could slowly build up my characters. After making my basic vector shapes slight adjustment to the facial features such as rotation and scale would give my character different expressions and looks.

By adding layer styles such as Gradient and drop shadow you can make the 2d image look like it has a depth which means you can give body parts different depth such as the head from the neck and t-shirt to the trousers.

My main character each sides and back. i think i will still add textures and shading to the illustration to add depth and update the style of the animation.
Expressions;
The expressions were easy to achieve with separate layers for each facial feature so i could make the eye brows higher to look surprised and slight warps on eye brows and mouth could add a happy/angry expression to the face

Actions;

for actions i used warps to change the position of the legs and arms and also as each part of my characters arms were separate layers so it was easy to change the position of each arm.

Character profile.

Ed character profile from Casper Brazier

character analysis

Idea feedback

Ideafeedback from Casper Brazier
From the feedback from my peers i could really tell which idea was the most creative and was the most humorous although the feedback couldn't really tell me what to add as its my creativity and my story which im going to create so others ideas could only influence my own creativity, and i could also tell from what genders told me each feedback which gender would the animation appeal to.

idea deconstruction

Familyguyting from Casper Brazier

Animation Trends.

Animation Trends

 Regular show:
Genre : Comedy/adventure
Animation: illustrated
Target audience : 16-21
Content: Follows Adventures of the main characters, often bizarre and
out of this world storylines of these characters.

The amazing world of gumball:
Genre: comedy
Animation: Real life filming + illustrated.
target audience: 12-16
Content: follows the life of a cat(Gumball) in the real world
with his adopted goldfish brother.

Ben 10:
Genre: Action, science fiction
Animation: ilustrated
Target audience 10-14
content: The main character Ben uses a watch like device to change
into alien like creatures and they fight off bad characters and monsters.

 Each top rated cartoon on the Cartoon Network Television channel each follow
what a character or a group of character does Eg. Go on missions, face everyday
life challenges of other crazy occurrences and they all encounter problems which
they will need to solve. Each always has a happy ending due to solving problems.
All feature illustrated animation and don't use Computer generated images or
rotoscoped animation, this could be as regular illustration can be a lot
cheaper than CGI which would be used in animated feature and rotoscoping is not
always needed to make human like movement as often characters are anthromorphic.



2013's most successful animated features

Frozen:
Genre: adventure/comedy
Animation: computer generated image(CGI)
Target audience: 8-16
Content: The storyline follows a big journey with very cold snowy conditions
in a race to find the main characters sister whose powers have been trapped the
kingdom in a everlasting winter.

Despicable Me 2:
Genre: adventure/comedy
Animation Computer generated image(CGI)
Target audience: 8-16
Content: former super villain Gru is recruited to Help deal with a super
criminal by the anti-villain league.

Monster university:
Genre: Adventure/comedy
Animation: Computer Generated Image(CGI)
Target Audience 8-16
Content: Follows the two main characters from Monster Inc. while they're still
at university learning to scare for their job in Monsters Inc. They were not
always the best of friends and encounter their troubles between eachother

 Each Successful animated features all use computer generated image and do not
include rotoscoping or illustrated animation as again they don't always include
humans as the main characters so do not need to worry about human like motion
and with a big budget on the animated features they can afford to use the best
looking CGI as Television cartoon series are not shown on a big scale like in
a cinema and will not turnover as much money as a movie long feature The target
audience for these features is very wide and i only say more child/teen as the
animated features are suited for children within those ages although any age
could watch and enjoy a animated feature.The storylines always follow a character
or a group of characters in doing adventures and tackling missions which occur.

Youtubes most watched animation:

"It's a Kinder Magic - Kinder Egg Stop Motion Animation":
Genre: stop motion
Animation: stop motion
target audience: 14-25
Content: follows the process of unwrapping, eating, assembling a kinder egg and
free toy which comes with a miny egg.

"Take Back the Night" - A Minecraft Original Music Video
Genre: Music video
animation: computer generated image(CGI)
Target audience: Minecraft fans
Content: a kingdom is slaugtered by monsters, villagers come and find a child
they then grow this child up as there own to one day face what destroyed his
people when he was only young so they train him to fight.

"kiwi!"
Genre: short animation/comedy
Animation: Computer generated Image (CGI)
target audience: 12-21
Content: a Computer generated kiwi bird has climbed to the top of a massive
cliff by using trees to climb up. when the kiwi gets to the top it decides to
jump and falls trying to fly although failing to its death

 On youtube there was a lot more diversity in the animation as there is a lot
wider audience on the widely used website, and many people are good at their
own different type of animation so they upload their work to youtube for
people who are into that type of animation on youtube. A lot use computer
generated images although its not soo high end software like in animated
features, big graphic engines used in features are very expensive to buy
so using software such as cinema 4d you can easily make 3d graphics using your
own skills. On Youtube the target audiences are more who are into that type of
thing because people search for what they like, if they like that type of
animation then they'll view that type of animation. The content is very diverse
as well as most the time its only one minds creativity which created the story
lines of the animations but there are thousands of people all writing new
story lines and creating animation meaning that there is such a diversity.

What can we tell about animation trends? A conclusion.
 There are different trends on different formats of animation like features and short animated films on the web, and in each formats there are a big diversity of animation. On the web there is the widest range of types of animation as everyone is good at their own thing and style. In Animated feature's 3D Computer generated images are used all the time as that seems to be the most popular. On Television channels such as cartoon network it's mainly 2d illustrated cartoons often more comedy as they all try and make the audience laugh and thats what the viewers seem to be into so that trend of illustration and comedy is most popular on television. On all formats cartoons are comedy as you don't find a serious cartoon it's normally silly happening which happen in the storyline and its problems the characters need to face and that is how the storyline is built.

Character shapes

Exampleshapes from Casper Brazier

shapes

Shapes from Casper Brazier

Character Design

Character design is the combination of physical traits and narrative.
The look of the character has to be informed by personality and context. (Genre, location, setting)
The face is the primary channel to express emotion of a person (colman) hence the many big headed cartoon characters.
A lot can be said in the posture and body language of the character.
Solarski-
"hands are an effective in expressing personality. How a character carries their weight also informs about personality - particularly which body part they lead with.
Chest - confidence, strength, heroic.
Pelvis - lazy, laid back.
Head - intelligence.
Knees - cowardice.

Power and dominance revolve around expanding.
Power: take space up + expand.
Weakness: Making small, taking less space up.

Daffy duck always has his chest out.

Bart is Care free. laid back. slight slouch












Lisa walks with her head. she's very bright.

Shaggy out of Scooby doo is always scared at everything. he is a coward.

animation comparison

Animation comparison from Casper Brazier

Animated Bear AE

My Bear .GIF The easiest bit was the arms and the body, as we parented all limbs to the body making motion with the body for all limbs. The Hardest bit of the animation was to create a working walk cycle to make it look like the bear was walking, and the motion of the legs to make it look legit without rotoscoping. I didn't perfect my walk cycle although it did work and looked like its walking.

Pixar research

In the 1970s Alexander Schare was looking for someone to create a animated film from a sound recording of tubby tuba. He found Ed Catmull a computer scientist with a PH.D from the university of Utah.

Catmull and a team of several others set up house of Schare's expenses at NYIT long island campus to work on Computer graphics. Tubby the tuba was never made although the team was successful at creating video artwork. 

In 1979 George Lucas of LucasArts soon to be producing the Star Wars trilogy asked Catmull's team to move to the west coast as a part of Lucas Arts, they agreed.

The Team assembled graphic programs and equipment for LucasFilms called pixar.  Pixar could construct high resolution, three dimensional coloured  image of anything. In 1985 the first Pixar graphic generating computer was on sale for $105,000.

In 1986 jobs approached Lucas and paid $10 million for san-raphael based pixar and created a independent company which they focuses on their dreams of making animation and not creating technical graphics to sell.
In 2006 Disney copped Pixar for $7.6 billion.
Disney produced many movies using PIXAR a few being;

Directed by John lasseter, Toy story 1 was the first feature length computer generated film and the first film produced as before Pixar would make short animated films to promote their computers which would produce the CGI animations for other companies.

Monsters, INC. directed by Pete doctor, was produced by PIXAR and released by disney. Originally started work on in 1996 by doctor and written by Pete doctor, Jill Culton, Jeff Pidgeon and Ralph Eggleston.
Monsters, INC. produced over $562 Million worldwide.

Cars, 2006. Like Toy story 1 was directed and co-written John lesseter and written by joe ranft, john lesseter and jorgen klubien. Cars won the global globe best animated feature. Cars also broke disneys records for merchandise sales for a disney film. Merchandise included scale models of the cars.





In 1996 John lesseter received a special achievement oscar from the academy of motion picture arts for his work and Ed cat mull, Alvy ray smith, thomas porter and tom drift received the sciences scientific and engineering academy awards for their inventions in digital image compositing.

 The pixar studios;
The workplace for the Pixar workers is a great place, chosen by CEO Steve jobs to make each employee constantly be talking together and share ideas to create even better ones, and they keep the employees happy. To produce a movie they have to go through several steps, first they story board, for this they use their Story room which they put all these cards of each frame and they decide whether each frame works well and if they don't they go back to the drawing board to change that frame, After choosing that the sequence is perfected they then will record the sound of each character before starting any Animation and when they get the Sound recording they can use that as almost like a template for the computer generated animation.

Animation Product research

Film:
Lego movie-
Year of Release: 2014
Company of production: Warner brothers. Based in Hollywood Califonia. one of the biggest companies  making films in this current day and age, Also makers of many other movies, Harry potter being a big one.
Directed by Chris miller and Phil lord.
The lego movie uses CGI and Stop motion, as they can use both as the characters are made from the toy although some of the scenes are not able to be made through stop motion and need to be computer generated.
Target audience is mainly children-teenagers, although i think anyone can go and appreciate this film.
purpose of the animation is to create a good looking lively look to the lego toys.
I've always been a lego fan since i was younger and personally have a big collection of the toys, so just making a movie out of the toys was a good idea, although i feel they didn't really have a story to it, as normally for lego its build the toys they give you instructions for or you build what you want and its more of your creativity than a story line to it.

Short Animation:
Logorama.
https://vimeo.com/10149605
Year of release: 2009
Company of production: H5 a french animation collective.
directes by francois Alaux, Herve de Crecy, loduvic houplain.
This was all made by some rotoscoping and some normal illustrated animation.
A very wide target audience.
The purpose of this animation was purely entertainment.
I really liked this as the animation was done so well they managed to get every single object into a logo, its a very creative animation

TV series.
Bobs burgers.
First aired in 2009.
Loren Bouchard for the Fox Broadcasting Company
Illustrated Animation.
Target audience;
Although its a cartoon i would say its more teenagers-adults than children. 
Purpose to entertain and humour people.
I like the simplicity of the animation. 

Web series:
Happy tree friends
First episode: September 25, 2006
written by Kenn Navarro, Rhode Montijo
illustrated animation
target audience;
This cartoon is very violent although they use animation as it should be for children this show is definitely not for children the humour is way too dark therefore this has a target audience of 16-30

Music:
Joey Bada$$
Unorthodox 
Directed by acclaimed directors Coodie & Chike
rotoscoped.
target audience;
The music isn't that explicit a person of any age can like the music. 

Advert;
John lewis 2013 christmas advert
directed by Elliot Dear
2d animation done with cut outs.
target audience;
All ages from early to elder.

After effects animation.

Here is my After Effects animation to create the arms, body and legs i had to make them using the shape tool with a mix of vectors and solid layers, I had to illustrate the eyes in Photoshop just like the mouth as when putting a vector into AE it filled in object. then to Animate i would parent all layers to the body so when the body rotated each leg and arms would stay to the body.To animate i used keyframes to add movement, of each layer. To create the mouth and the mouths motion i created enough layers to form each movement of the mouth when it moved to produce each sound, i illustrated each frame of the mouth. Then after putting sound in to what i wanted my character to say i would time re-map to get each frame in the right place to the sound using RAM preview to listen to the placement of each sound.

Extended .GIF task.

1) What are the strengths and weaknesses of the animated GIF format?

The strengths were that you could now make moving images that would continue to work and would have more meaning than just a still image, they're repetitive and the human brain likes that, you can look at it for longer and figure out what is actually happening within the image and you can make more sense of it than a normal image. The weaknesses in my opinion are that the quality once uploaded is not always the best, and the best quality .GIF files are massive.

2) Find an example of an video/visual artist working with GIFs. Link to the work, take screenshots, briefly describe the work and fine 3 things about the work that you like and explain why?

Dain fagerholm makes incredible GIFs although you can tell they could be rushed and are very simple although look amazing, this is nice as it shows not all masterpieces are taken time with and normally with good artwork it would've taken days if not weeks to complete. link to work: http://dainfagerholm.blogspot.co.uk 

Example of work. 

I like this as there is few frames, although by adding different colours to each frame it brings more life to it than just the few bits of motion added by slightly tilting each image. 

3) Do you think that the .GIF format is a valid form of expression or just a quick LOL?

GIFs are artwork, although I think that people who have just taken a bit of a music video/movie isn't really artwork, its just copying someone else's work. If the GIF has been made through drawing upon something or drawing a image to start off with then its someones creativity being shown within this moving image. 

Rotoscoping

Although it could be cleaner I'm very happy with the final outcome of my first rotoscoping animation, i know that next time i would definitely know how to improve and i would spend more time adding more details and fuller colours to the piece.