EXTENDED PRODUCTION

On this module I will be paying particular attention to timing  in Animation . I will be exploring timing in relation to walk cycles  and posture and lipsync .

Below is the simulation of  my character dancing and character walking, I would to  point out out these  two that video clips  represent  the whole process of timing in  relation to this module

THE FINAL PIECES FOR THIS MODULE IN RELATION TO TIMING

THE GORILLA DANCE WITH AN ELEMENT OF A HOLOGRAM
On this below video , I shot the film in stop motion on a green screen and thenI took the footage in after  effects where I tweaked added  colour and  light to bring in that Hologram feel to it.
The process wasn't smooth  sailing but in the end I enjoyed it.

Below is the footage after the green screen was keyed out.This  process was  more or  less an experimental one  whereby  thought of  shooting my character on a rig  behind a green screen.

GORILLA WALK
This was also done in stop motion and the  overall look of the  film was done in adobe effects. I struggled with timing and as like always ,I also got to understand more and more about how one needs to do to get that smooth animation especially when shooting at 24 frames per second.

THE FINAL SHOWREEL
In terms of the production of the below showreel,the process can be broken  down into  a stop motion animation film,some of the scene shot on green screen. The editing comprised of motion blur effect done in adobe premier and the hologram effect was done done in after effects.

Below are some of the  film clips I did as I was grappling with timing. I did various exercises  like hand gestures and face formations and mouth movements.

Face forming and mouth moving
This was done with  as a stop motion animation  film  where  by i  rolled up small pieces  of  clay  and  took one  frame at a time.

The keyed out footage with green screen taken out.

Hand gesture
This was also done in stop motion animation. The hand was  made of  clay. In essence the whole idea  was to simulate  a hand gesture and at the same time  pay particular attention to time too.

Personal statement in regards to the production of my film.

REFERENCING
My main character is a gorilla who is main goal is to find  freedom  and in-order to narrate the story  I have looked at various gorilla movements to help me define how my character will walk.I have looked at the movement of apes in films like Planet of the Apes, King Kong and generally footage of  gorillas in zoos.The below video clips will help as reference as part of the character development and timing simulation.

Below is Planet of the Apes clip showing determination and anger that will mirror my character's behaviour when he gets out of his enclosure.

                                       

A gorilla walk footage by a gorilla walk  called Ambam who has suddenly started to walk on two.

An  exaggerated  walk by  myself acting up ,  proved valuable  as I was trying to  simulate my character's walk.Although the  walk is nowhere near perfect, this simulation did help me in defining the physiology, the arcs, poses, anticipation as well as the overlapping when it comes to movement.I took this footage analysed it in an app called pausehouse where  I was able to view frame by frame and see the anatomy of body movement and the correlation of movement among different body parts.

Below is the acted out script  I will be using  as a reference when it comes  to arcs,poses  and increments

By doing so it helped visualise the the pose to pose movements. 

soon afterwards I took the  below footage into Dragon frame and rotoscoped it. This helped me in smoothening up the walk  and the whole process made my  production easier.

In-order  for me to  help the audience fully understand the narrative  I have  come up with the below  script

TIMING REFRENCING
What is timing?
Good timing can make a difference between a funny shot and a very funny shot or  between the character or object moving mechanically or fluidly( Speciss,M.p167) During this production I will be learning  to use holds, pauses and arcs to push the  narrative forward.

Referenced videos  of timing
Recently I have been  looking at the work of Jan Svankmayer who has this surrealistic approach  to  his story telling.This surrealistic approach in his film  especially Alice did influence  my decision of  creating a mysterious setting where there will be a reverse shot of the set props  just before my main character gets metarmophosed and turned into a hologram

The film Alice by Jan Svankmajer

Also I  have looked at these 12 principles of Animation by Labudinera, which  explain the difference  between movement and  animation. The breakdown  in this video helped me see the difference between robotic movements  and real movements. Also  I had to  learn  to in-corporate anticipation  in character movement  poses , arcs and inertia,centre of balance and exaggeration

Below  are some of the line tests I carried out I  whilst trying  simulate the  character movement,

poses and arcs. This below line  test was  shot on 24  frames per  second. I  decided  to use the skeletal armature so that i  will be able to see the difference  between animating a character  with clothes  and  without. At the moment I did  not have any challenges in moving the body parts because they are easily accessible  and I'm able to  get a good grip of  one part to the other .


RUSHERS
Below are some of the rushers I created  as  I grapple  with  timing
The below rushers shows  body postures and movement .

Also below I have rotoscoped the above  video with the help of this you tube tutorial from Omid. I did find the rigging easy  but I  did struggle with the whole idea of  getting a  smooth movement from my character. Below is the tutorial  videos and the  clips I  have filmed  with the help of it.

Below are some of the  creations I did in relation to mastering  timing.

I have been always fascinated with creations that  has some surreal element in them and for that reason I have  animated  few  clips ising stop motion , green screen and then  a  bit of editing in Adobe premier. Below are some of the  examples I have done.

Whilst I was working on timing I also  tried to simulate certain movements of liquids 

Below  is the  water simulation i carried out using gel. I  basically scooped jelly out and used  a  paint  brush to spread it across. The effect doesn't look great  but the intended out come does show.

Below is a simulation of a creature movement in a  water tank.

With this below video, I was interested in simulating  creature movements and to see if  Icould  drive a narrative using hand and rod puppets.This is one area  I will like to pay attention to especially the animatronics side of animation in the near future because I found this kind of animation fascinating and intriguing.

Below is a recording I have done  with leaves trying to simulate some mystery with  leaves flying away from a seemingly burning  environment.The reverse effect on the leaves were done in Adobe premier.

Part of the pre production process.

I will be carrying out line tests on walk cycles where i will simulate a big stride. So far I have  measured a big stride out and found out that it is 80mm in  length  and  since I will  be  shooting the walk in 20 frames per second and in order to determine the increment I have divided the 80mm stride  with 20 frames giving me 4mm  ,meaning I will be moving my character's leg at 4mm increments. .In all this, I will also in cooperate anticipation , helping me  to cue the audience  into the movement before the actual movement by moving  armature  in small  increment My  character  has focus aimed at , one   direction and his  head movement will always adjust itself to  the original point of focus regardless of the torso’s position

I will also pay attention to the  character’s center  point which is the waist line and  move the  body parts  in tandem with more or stationery waist line.

Good  timing helps  the audience interpret  the  narrative to  create a natural movement. Below  is a line  test I have done  using a ball of  clay. I have  used  acceleration, deceleration, overlapping and  follow through  to  tell an audience a story

CAMERA SETTING
 I have used a 200mm lens during the shooting to increase the quality  of the film and did set  t my Camera lens to 32, with an  exposure of  f22  for a  great  depth of field and  a shutter  speed ½ a second  to  avoid  capturing a lot of light  and minimise the jerky movement. What I sort of realised as well was that I always had light flickering in my finished shotss o had to set the camera  to manual setting. The shutter speed was between 1/4 and 1/10 with an ISO of 100  to 400 .

TECHNICALITIES  OF THE PROCESS
The whole process of   creating the  set for the film has been a bit tricky in the  sense that even drilling the holes where the character's  legs will be fixed.  I drilled  holes  at first that were too far apart from each other and  and then I later realised that  the  holes where too far  apart  so I had to  drill some holes in between.Also what I have realised  is that I should have used a table with a thin  top layer , why because that would  help in deciding the character's stride and the up and down movement of the torso.I had  to make the  depth  of the holes  where the tie downs will  go through  shallower.

I have also made sure that I didn't put lot of props along the way of my character so  that they did not interfere with my character's walk.Then another aspect I had to take into consideration was  where to place the camera angle .

Below is a rough set up of where and how I will shoot the film.

LOG LINE,SYNOPSIS,TREATMENT AND CRITICAL EVALUATION

TITLE :GORILATOPUS

LOG LINE

Don a  muscle gorilla from Coventry escapes out of his enclosure to confront his keeper Briggy Only to find BRIGGY dead and buried .Angry and disturbed he  reaches his hand to pay his respects  and suddenly gets  struck by a lighting bolt metarmophing him into a hologram  .Don gets catapulted  through a black  hole into an an alien galaxy where he joins Briggy  as  they adjust  to their new planet. 

SYNOPSIS

Gorilatopus is a story that has thematic spine of captivity, freedom, after life and mystery. This story will be told in a three act linear narrative structure in a traditional style narrative with added visual effects. This is a story of a gorilla called Don who finds himself right in the middle of a human world kept in an enclosure by an old man named Briggy.A chain of events will proceed where Don will find his keeper Briggy dead and buried. With added mystery Both Don and Briggy gets turned into a holograms. This is a story set in the modern real world and will transcend into the futuristic surreal alien like planet where Don and Briggy will continue their lives as holograms. The story will have limited dialogue and will be made into a stop motion film of roughly three minutes. This choice is entirely based on the fact I found stop motion animation quicker to deliver a convincing film form as in comparison to computer graphics.

TREATMENT

Don as a character represents what captivity, isolation, anger and death is all about. The demeanor he exudes in the Marquette and drawings of him evidences this. Don displays anger and aggression in various poses, his teeth bearing and a puffed chest does prove none the less. The broken chain Don holds displays the newly found freedom, and contradictory the tag that is still stuck around his neck shows his continued subordination to Briggy. This makes Don a complex character that will likely draw in empathy from the audience. The scene setting in Don's world depicts mountain backdrops with distant glint of lights to shows how isolated Don is from the human world.

 These backdrops also symbolises the distant frosty like relationship humans have with animals. Don does not represent the archetypal gorilla like the one in king Kong or an ape like one in the Planet of the apes. His looks borders between a human, a horse and a dog. All this is in line with the fact that I wanted to create a mysterious creature with different attributes, strength and powers; hence I came up with the whole idea of creating a morphed creature called Gorilatopus. This story will be a fast paced one and to achieve that I will use a panning shot to introduce Don into the scene and then quickly resolve to a mid shot of him looking menacingly towards Briggy’s house. Also a Dutch angle shot will be used on Don as he approaches Brigg’s newly erected tomb. The reason being that it will tell the audience of something mysterious which is about to happen.

This film will use diegetic and non-diegetic sound. In Gorilatopus I will employ cricket sound scores to introduces the beginning of the scene setting thereby bringing in an element of a normality to the world the story is set in. The gorilla chest pounding sound score will be used to signify desperation and anger. These sound scores will be seamlessly edited in Adobe premier software to help in pushing the narrative forward. I have used mise -en - scene in my set design in the form trees, general litter, fallen leaves, a flowing river to help the audience visualise the mood of the scene.

Symbolically, the flowing river juxtaposed to a derelict house, a grave and a broken down car will throw in a message of an uncaring harsh world Don finds himself in. This message will be relayed more with the scene I plan to shoot where Don will hesitate to cross the river. The river crossing in itself signifies the midpoint of the narrative and the source of a new beginning in Don's life. I will employ different scene lighting to set the scene up. At the start of the scene I will use some warm colour tones. As Don display his anger and aggression, I will change the scene setting to bluish harsh tones to signify an element of uncertainty and frustration. At the point when Don reaches Briggy’s tomb I will use dark reddish, aggressive tones to show that Don has reached a point of no return. This will be made possible with the use of LED lighting.

 There will be a close shot of Don touching the grave and getting struck by lightning and morphed into a hologram. This is all done to aid logic in the story's character change. This change in scene setting from the real world to some alien like planet made me thought of bringing the idea of trying out holograms and animatronics. This sudden jump in Don's appearance to a hologram was in line with creating some story logic in line with the scene setting. Aesthetically this film seeks to ask a simple question: where do all the creatures go when they die. And is there another world out there? I will create the holograms practically using a projector, a steamer and light. This is all down to my personal choice and having tried the computer graphic holograms. I found out that the effects of the sells better in the practical ones. This film will be a seamless one edited in photo shop and after effects because I have found these two programs handy when it comes to colour grading and adding visual effects.

THE SCRIPT

CRITICAL  EVALUATION

LEARNING OUTCOMES-Production

If I could start right from the beginning of the whole film idea. I could say, I wanted to create something that shows an element of versatility. As a joint honours student most of the screen writing I tend to do is all about coming up with ideas, stories and turn them into a screen plays, so coming up with the idea of a gorilla morphing into a hologram was something that interested me very much. With this excerpt from our Tutor I found myself immersed into this idea of creating a morphed creature.

I have adopted a realist   narrative approach and fused it with some visual effects to add some mystery to create some surrealistic film. I wanted to tell a   story that has a beginning at the end of the narrative. In don’s quest, I wanted to make Don the embodiment of   all primates and pets who find themselves abused and used by humans.  The whole idea of the   story is to ask the simple question.  Where   do all the creatures go when they die? By doing so, my intention is to somehow question the   logic of life, death, heaven and religion.

 I could have gone for a simple realistic story where Don finds out that his owner is dead and he has to fend for himself and finds his feet but I wanted to explore more about holograms, animatronics and visual effects.The whole production will be a stop motion animation,some visual aided affects a practical hologram with a bit of animatronic. The reason I chose to make this film mainly in stop motion was because I want to interact with the armature,stylise it  and see the armature creations come to life instead of using the trial and error , hypothetical  simulation in computer graphics. 

Lighting

This is one area I have never paid attention to, maybe the reason being that I never got a chance to get my hands on it own due to the fact that the few projects we been working on I was mainly assigned to the theory part of staff. Lighting plays a very key part in the story telling. In relation to my story, I want to set a night scene to bring in a dramatic element to the   story. It was easy to manipulate light by switching on and off different lights during nighttime shooting as in comparison to daytime. Also as I was working on the setting, I started experimenting with LED lights and to my surprise I manage to come up with different colour tones that aided the narrative.During the production part of the film I will pay attention to the  below aspects.

Editing

This is an area I seem to enjoy working on, Having worked with Photoshop and after effects and having seen how good these software’s are good at colour grading and bringing in good cinematic effects.It sort of pushed me to come up with an idea of a stop motion film with a bit of animatronics and visual effects. The editing will be done in after effects. I will bring in act one and two’s footage and marry it with the third act. Certain scenes like the one Don descends through a black hole were decided on the basis that a lot of editing was going to be done in postproduction.

Sound

Sound does play a crucial part in this film’s   narrative. This   story will rely heavily on sound effects to push narrative. The film will be fast and the narrative will be centred mainly on Don the main character who is angry aggressive and wants a quick solution to his problem. I intend to use sound scores of a gorilla wailing and chest thumping. Also to add mystery to the narrative I will use alien like, weird sounds as the story moves into the third act.

Story Narrative.

The theme behind  this story is one of captivity,and  redemption.In nutshell the whole process will start from when Don appears on the scene free from his enclosure, walks to his owner's house.Don will touches his owner's tomb, gets struck by a lightning bolt, and descends into an alien like planet . In the end he will hovers around as an octopus like creature in the company of owner (BRIGGY).

 This story will have a three-act narrative where act one and act two will happen in a normal setting and then act three will happen in an alien like setting. During the first and second act, Don will get out of his enclosure and heads out to his keeper(BRIGGY)'s house waving a broken chain. The scene will then move the one whereby Don realises that his keeper is dead and buried.From then onwards Don,gets struck by a lightning bolt and descends into a black hole to another planet.

The filming
Act one and two  will be done in stop motion and act three will be created using the method I have explained below.

b) I will be recording this and take the   recording on to a projector

c) I will position the camera on 45-degree angle focusing on the projected image on the projector.

d) Will have a blue led light striking the playing image on a 45-degree angle

e] A steamer’s hose will be positioned right below the playing footage turned on at the same time

This will be all recorded in time and in sync, the below is the setting of the hologram creation.

How would Don descend into the alien planet?

a) I will video reverse some of leaves falling footage I have recorded earlier to bring in mystery before the sudden chain of events.

b) Will create a lightning bolt in after effects.

a) Have already created cylinder cardboard tubing, painted it with glitter and acrylics

b) Will connect a rig like pulley system and stop motion animate Don sliding through the tubing descending into the black hole.

In the final act of the story I will be using front screen projection whereby I will pre- record the alien planet I have created, bring in the footage of the hologram and fuse the two together to create one seamless footage.

AESTHETICS-Influences, Theme, Logic, Background and character research

The idea of Gorillatopus came about after revisiting some of the old films I watched growing up which are Dawn of the Apes, King Kong, American werewolf in London, king Kong, and Planet of the apes and SharkTopus.These films  gave me an insight into how people and animals can metamorphose into powerful creatures that threatens to destroy other living species and the world  they live in.

Referring to Dawn of the Apes and King Kong film. I wanted to create a character that deviates from the archetypal gorilla or ape like creature as in these two films .A brief look onto my character designs shows Don as a creature with physical features that that mirrors that of a gorilla, horse and a dog. This was all in done to create to mystery. Moving on, when I looked at the film Shark opus, it sort of gave me another dimension to my story. I thought of turning Don into a hologram that will have tentacles like that of octopuses. Also as an immortal creature like jellyfish. This is also in line with the alien like planet where the story's third act will take place. 

 As I was deciding on the story setting, I have referred to pictures of the rain forest in Congo, farmyards, deserts volcanic eruption sites in Italy and Congo. I also researched on the black holes, galaxy like planets. This led me to a Disney Junior's Children program called Miles from Tomorrow land where characters gets bolted into space. Also the Star Wars film proved valuable when it came to the broad visual effects employed in it.

Some of the artists’ work that gave me the impetus of creating this kind of film are Eric Leaser and Anna Maria Nicholson and their work can be found on these links you tube links https://youtu.be/4wdQZlh4tVY https://youtu.be/Z5xGYOK5wgUb respectively.Another source of reference when it comes to how holograms are used is the Jam and the Holograms [1885) cartoon, where we see Jem being transformed from an ordinary girl into a computer named synergy as can be accessed on this link https://youtube/BWrmVEK43NQ  .It is this visual trickery that influenced me in trying some I have never done before using the physics of light and sound.

 Also the colour theory exercises I did in my second year did help me in understanding the meaning of colour to the audience. Technically I feel I have  developed in terms of  being able to use different animation and editing softwares.However ,when it came  to presenting my blog I got let down by the blogger  website in the sense some of my video clips  don't show up or appeared haphazardly and text in some of the blog pages resolved either  smaller or bigger. 

PERSONAL STATEMENT AND THE FUTURE

I do see myself as an abstract, surrealist film/animator and  do intent to dig into my cultural background, my screen writing knowledge and infuse in some visual effects such as pepper’s ghost effect, Schuftan effects holograms and try to create interesting content.Another option will be working as either as a colourist or set designer. From now onwards I would like to make a short trailer of this film that will probably act as a calling card at film festivals such as the Czech’s Anima Fest Zagreb or to garner funding from Creative England.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Holocenter on http://holocenter.org/projects/portraits-in-laser-light.

Portraits in Laser light https://youtu.be/Z5xGYOK5wgU.

Jem and the Hologram(1985) animation film accessed on https://youtu.be/BWrmVEK43NQ.

Introduction to Holography article by Thomas G Smith published 1972.

Planet of the Apes film on https://youtu.be/JDbwEQG2cqI.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes film on  https://youtu.be/3sHMCRaS3ao.

King Kong film  on https://youtu.be/ZYZsJYZVt5g.

Colour Theory at https://sites.google.com/site/anim2003sm/week-6