Starting the Year

September 2013 has introduced me to 3rd year Computer Arts at Abertay University. With a new year comes new subjects and this blog will document my progress through the Advanced Character Animation module (a module that only lasts for the first semester).

Our focus for the month of October is the 11 Second Club Challenge:

http://www.11secondclub.com/

This is an animation competition in which entrants are given a piece of audio to work from and create a suitable piece of work that lasts 11 seconds. The animation can be produced in either 2D or 3D, as long as it utilises the audio excerpt to full use. 

The audio plays as follows:

Link to audio file 

Voice 1 (female) - Oh, no, everything's fine.
Voice 2 (male) - But the animal is inside out.
*Horrific squelchy explosion*
Voice 2 (male) - And it exploded.
Voice 1 (female) - Hold please.

I myself plan to do a 2D animation as I find myself more comfortable in that role and would seek to improve my skills in that field. 

We were given the following questions to get us thinking about our animations:

What sort of style/tone do we want to create?
Who are the characters?
Where are they?
What is their relationship?
What is the 'animal'?
How do we explain the 'animal' being inside out? Is this important or could we cause humour by avoiding it's explanation?

With these questions in mind and listening to the audio clip multiple times, I did some brainstorming and have come up with the following ideas:


All scenarios I have come up with will invoke a humorous/gory tone.


Scenario 1:
2 scientists are performing an autopsy on a deceased animal that has somehow been horrifically turned inside out. They are seeking the cause of this mutation. The female scientist finds nothing of particular interest within the animal and says, "Oh, no, everything's fine." She removes here gloves as the male scientist protests, "But the animal is inside out . . ." The animal then explodes gorily, covering the scientists. The male scientist stands shocked and says, ". . . and it exploded." The female scientist wipes her eyes and hands her gloves to the male scientist saying, "hold please."

Notes: 

• The female scientist should clearly be in charge.
• The female scientist should look harassed as if having worked for hours.
• The male scientist should almost be anonymous, wearing big goggles.
• The scene should take place in a surgery theatre that looks as if it's been lived in for a few days.  

Scenario 2:
A harassed female veterinarian is on the phone to a client to whom the upcoming animal belongs. She tries to reassure the client by telling them, "Oh, no, everything's fine." The female veterinarian's male assistant pipes up from the background, "But the animal is inside out. . ." To which the female veterinarian cringes as the animal explodes in a gory fashion behind her. She turns to see the male assistant cover from head to toe in gore as he says, ". . . and it exploded." He then drops to the floor, leaving a perfect silhouette if himself on the wall behind him, free of blood. The female veterinarian manages to tell the client on the phone, "hold please."

Notes:

• The scene should be set in a veterinarian surgery, there should be signs something is wrong.
• The main shot should be the female veterinarian with her back to the scene behind her, not allowing the audience a view of the goings on.
• The female veterinarian should look distressed at the situation, trying to compose herself.
• The male assistant should look terrified (and rightly so!). He should also look new to the job. 

Scenario 3:
A mad female scientist (evil?) is engaged in a meeting with a person in much higher authority over a large screen video call. They seem unamused by her efforts, but she tries to diswage the situation by saying, "Oh, no, everything's fine." The female scientist's gormless assistant however points out the scene she is attempting to hide by saying, "But the animal is inside out . . ." The female scientist looks exhasperated at the screen and winces as the animal behind here explodes in a messy fashion. ". . . and it exploded!" exclaims the assistant. Gore runs down the screen as the female scientist looks up pleadingly and says, "hold please."

Notes:

• The scene should be set in some sort of lab and suggest the idea of trying to create super animals.
• The camera should cut between viewing from the back of the scientist, showing the imposing scale of the higher authority figure on the screen, to looking from the authority figure's view. 
• The assistant should very clearly be unintelligent and involve little animation.
• The female scientist should look like she is trying to act confident and convince the authority figure that her experiments are going well, though she should be sweating and look scruffy.

I have decided to go ahead with Scenario 2 for this project, as I feel that I'd rather focus on a more realistic set up that I can induce humour into, than something which is already surreal. Based on my initial ideas for the scenario, I produced the first storyboard:

From this, I found a number of new questions and points to ask myself:

• How cartoony/stylised should the animation be?
• What is the best way to imply that the scene is set in a vet's surgery?
• How would the gory explosion be animated?
• Given that the shot would be a torso-head one, the emotion of the characters should be conveyed through their face and arms/hands.

With these thoughts in mind, I have started the designing of the characters for the animation, starting, rather strangely, with the male assistant.

I'm really quite pleased with the last design I came up with, having taken another design and evolving it. I feel it is cartoony enough to allow for additional over-the-top humour, whilst it should also be able to evoke the emotions of the character effectively through eyebrow and mouth (well, moustache) movement. From this design I can go on to concept the character's body before moving onto the female character.

At this point, I feel like my character design's style is quite familiar and so I have done some research into older cartoons from my childhood. I found that the style of the original Power Puff Girls cartoon, in particular the villains and the professor, fits my character design perfectly and so I will utilise this source and take inspiration from it whilst designing the rest of my 2 characters.

Him

Sedusa

Mojo Jojo

Professor

 

Male Assistant Body Designs

I found the Power Puff Girl inspiration very useful whilst I was designing the male assistant's body, as it helped me to realise what parts of my character would be important and therefor how much detail to put into them/how simple to make them. Thus, the character's legs are very simple as they will play little to no part in the animation, given that it is planned to be torso-up shots. His body has more detail as it will most likely remain a single piece that will not require to be drawn multiple times and so can afford to be more complex. I have also made his arms as 'noodles' (See Adventure Time) so that they have more flexibility and can be over exaggerated if need be. I wish to keep his hands simple also, as I find that if the hand is complex, quick movements would not be easily read and could be mistaken.  Here is the final Male Assistant as he stands:

With the male assistant character more or less finished, I have moved onto the female vet character, again using the style of the Power Puff Girls as inspiration and taking note from the assistant's design.

I am thus far pleased with the design of the female vet's head, as I feel that it follows the design of the male assistant, whilst adding a feminine touch by the hair being more curved. The next step is to develop the vet's body and I feel that I will use the Power Puff Girls villain, Sedusa (pictured further up) as my main source of inspiration.

 

 

The trick here was to make sure that I didn't just use Sedusa's body as the entire basis for the female vet character. I feel I have managed to pull that off, whilst maintaining a similar style.

With both characters at the same stage, I feel it is time to move onto concepting the environment. I will make a room plan so as to gain a better idea as to where everything is set out, even if there are only a couple of different camera angles in the animation.

With the environment maintained to be fairly simple, I then made a plan of it so as to document exactly where objects in the room are. From this, I have gone on to use the plan to set up where the characters/camera will be placed in the scene and how they will move about/react to situations.

With the scene set, I will now go on to draw out and render the background for the animation.

The next step is to work on the characters.