Annie Final Concept and Lineup

After finalising Annie's design and colour scheme I began making character rotations. I created a front and back view of the character- we decided to never have Annie viewed from the direct side so this was unnecessary. Below, I have Annie's front and back view, followed by a concept version, and lastly a front, three quarter and back view lineup.

I created the three rotation views as puppets in 'Painttool Sai'. By this, I mean that I designed all of the body parts in layers, including the facial features. This allows for the features to be swapped such as the mouth and eyes, and the arms and legs can be easily rotated to create different poses. I saved the 'Painttool Sai' files as .png so that they could easily be transferred into After Effects and manipulated.

Secondary Character Development

I came back to my group with Annie's design which was received well and everyone agreed that they wanted to keep this design for the animation. However when we considered the environments she would be placed in within our short, we decided that her yellow dress almost makes her blend within the surroundings and would not stand out against our jungle environment which would mostly be comprised of greens, yellows and oranges. 

As a team, we agreed that a change from yellow to red would be the most succeful and visually appealing as it is complementary of the greens within the jungle and gives her more of a general charming and appealing look.

Annie Initial Concept

Here is my first finished concept drawing of Annie.

Initial Character Development

As a group, we sat down and began to doodle ideas for Annie's design. This was my first design idea which the team gave approval to and we decided to go forward with. I was planning on doing other possible ideas for her design, but the team was happy with this one as they felt it encapsulated Annie's personality well so we stuck with it.

I then took the pencil doodle home and began re-producing the design digitally, in 'Painttool Sai'. I used the pre-set acrylic brush which gave the design a slight rough edge and I made sure to create the character without the use of black lines, this gave Annie a clean, minimalistic and bold look. It also made the design look as if it was composed of shapes that have been cut out and pasted into layers- reminiscent of the common childhood activity. Here is my character creation development:

Using my sister Kiwi as reference, I gave Annie messy hair to symbolise cheekiness and a tomboy-ish nature. My sister's excitable and energetic personality means that her hairstyle always falls out and becomes messy so I reflected this small part of Kiwi's personality in Annie's design. I gave Annie a cute and covered up outfit to suit her age. The clothing consists of a white under shirt and a dress with a pocket; I made the dress yellow to suit the vivid jungle theme as well as her sunny disposition. Furthermore, I gave her black shorts to make the dress more modest as she is only a young girl. In terms of facial design, I gave her big eyebrows and freckles to make her seem more innocent looking as well as to give her her own unique quirk. 

Character Research

After we decided on our storyline I began to look for sources of inspiration for the main character, Annie. To keep Annie true to the heart-warming and child-like storyline we created, I looked for examples of characters of a similar age to understand the proportion, characteristics and behaviour that is portrayed. 

I had a primary and a secondary source that I used for the research and development of my character. Firstly, I looked at the three orphan sisters Agnes, Edith and Margo from the 'Dreamworks' feature film Despicable Me as my secondary source. The sisters are very valuable for research in this topic as they are all unique, and yet still carry all the traits of typical young girls. As Annie's age is 5, I decided to use the middle sister Edith (Wearing pink) as a sizing and proportion reference; the eldest sister Margo seemed too mature and the youngest sister Agnes seemed too baby-like compared to our plan for Annie.

I found this 'Dreamworks' featurette on the sisters useful whilst researching:

For my primary research, I used my own sister Kiwi as reference who is 5 years old; the same age as Annie. Kiwi is cute, energetic and loves to play. In our story, Annie goes into her imagination or 'her world' with her new toy, like my own sister probably imagines she does when she plays with her dolls and cuddly toys. I analysed her behaviour to get an idea of how to design and animate Annie which was extremely helpful. I included some pictures that helped me design a more believable Annie as well as representing Kiwi's personality.

These elements of research combined gave me a good base structure to start designing Annie with.

Finalised Storyline

As a group, we arranged another meeting where we created a finalised 'script' that plotted out our storyline and exhibited simply who would take on which parts of the story. We decided ourselves who would take lead of each scene for their 30 seconds of animation.

SCENE 1: Opening Sequence (Kirstie)

- The film opens with a young girl running through a dense green jungle. Daytime setting, colours are warm, consisting of bright oranges, pinks and reds. Happy atmosphere.
- She continues to run through the jungle, stopping suddenly when she hears rustling from a nearby bush. She moves loser, creating a partition in the leaves and pulling them back to reveal a small chubby pig, wallowing in mud and eating a mango.
- She runs up to the pig excitedly, picks him up and squeezes him hard. She then looks at the pig smiling. He looks back expressionless. They look back and forth. Montage begins.

SCENE 2: Montage Sequence (Theo)
- The music begins at the end of the previous sequence, reaching it's peak as it transitions into the montage sequence.
i. The two are attempting to play fetch in the sand. The girl throws a stick and the pig watches, unmoving and uncooperative.
ii. Swinging on vines. Girl is swinging confidently in the centre of the vine, the pig is clasped on to the end of the vine, holding on by his mouth.
iii. The two are sitting in the treetops, admiring the view.
iii. The two are sunbathing, drining out of coconuts with straws and umbreallas. Pig is tanning with sunglasses and a tanning reflector.
- The two are playing with something that gets thrown into the nearby trees.

SCENE 3: Monster Sequence (Kyomi)

- The girl takes a step forward to retrieve the item. As her foot makes contact with the floor she notices the earth rumbling and small rocks and debris on the floor begin to shake.
- Camera changes to be through the monsters eyes looking down on Annie and the pig. She looks miniscule, showing the scale of the monster. The monster roars and the two run away in fear.
- They run through the jungle until they make it to a cave. They hide inside and breathe heavily, frightened.

SCENE 4: Reality Sequence (Reke)

- Annie hears echoes of her mother'svoice coming from the depths of the cave. She follows the sound until she sees a beam of light, shining up from the cave floor.
- She reaches into the light and lifts a panel on the floor, in reality lifting a box off of her head to reveal the light. She changes from her imaginary world to reality.
-The location changes to Annie's back garden and her mother is calling to come inside the house. She drops her *piggybank* and runs inside. The camera pans out into space, revealing the entirety of 'Annie's World'.

THE END

Group Meeting

We conducted our first group meeting, using the brain storm sheet to expand on and develop our ideas. We decided on the themes of the story and came up with a basic storyline to work from:

Themes:

- Children creating 'worlds' with their imagination.
- Heartwarming story.
- Child & Animal.
- Travelling montage- Going on a journey, adventure.

Story Summary:

Child girl in imaginary world *environment* going on an adventure with her sidekick *animal*. Story and tension builds. Climax to a perilous end. Climax becomes anti-climax as child's mother calls her inside. Scene changes and she is in her back garden with a toy animal. Discards animal and runs inside.

Here are our notes from the meeting:

"Yesterday night we were able to conclude on the overall structure of the narrative, the characters,
animation style and environment. So with that in mind everyone can begin to do their individual research on their specific area on the project in perpetration for our pitch/ presentation.

Things to consider as part of your research :

Kirstie:

– Animals that you find appealing that works with the visual aesthetic we discussed tonight.

“A uncooperative sidekick that loves to eat” it doesn't have to be limited to just a pig as in

the real world she is playing with a stuffed animal/toy.

– Character developments which you already did tonight, but you could also do some on

other animals that you found and / or do some other refined variations of your final idea.

– Maybe a mood board and some colour schemes.

– Think of how the character would move and be animated in animatic form to move the story

forward.

Kyomi:

– Character research on the female lead character.

– Think about colour schemes and clothing.

– You mentioned you could use your sister as a source of primary research. Think about what

a little girl at around the age of 6 would love and how they would react and interact with a

uncooperative sidekick who only has food on his mind.

– A final design of the character.

Theo:

– look at a diverse range of jungle environments paying attention to the vegetation and nature's natural

colour schemes.

– look at stylised examples of jungle inspired terrains.

– begin to think about how you will model and recreate these environments in a 2D style while

balancing performance with quality.

– Think about how the back garden would look and incorporate the themes from the jungle.

giving the illusion of an exaggeration based on reality from a child's imagination.

Reke:

– working on storyboards generation, scripts and story development.

– Working with the team to finalise the overall render style and visual aesthetic based on

everyone artistic approach to their allocated 30secs of animation.

– Working with the team to create character and environment templates.

Note: this does not include all the work everyone as individuals is going to have a part in the

overall project, this only outlines the tasks at this current stage of the project and will be constantly

amended as time progresses.

This project is not set in stone and will and is always subject to changes. If you feel something

doesn't feel right and isn't working everyone has the right to speak out and we will make sure that

the issue is addressed and resolved as a group. The more open we are as a group the better the

quality of our work will be.

Source Material and Inspiration

As a group, Me, Reke, Kirstie and Theo searched for content that we could draw inspiration from for our own piece; we felt that it was important to first define the art style that we would use to create our short. We used websites such as 'YouTube', 'Vimeo' and 'Short of the Week' to gather material for research. These were some of our favourite shorts:

'When I Grow Up- The Walt Disney Company'

'Clouds- Sam Miller'

'Un Tour de Manège- Gobelins'

We found ourselves being drawn to shorts that were targeted towards a younger audience and featured children as the protagonist of the story. We liked the idea of a childish, heart-warming tale showing some form of journey or adventure. We also liked the pieces with strong visual appeal that combined bold colours, simple shapes and interesting textures. We decided that we wanted to create our short in 2D, intending to use programs such as 'Paintool Sai', 'Adobe Illustrator', 'Adobe Photoshop', 'Premiere Pro' and 'After Effects' to achieve our desired look. We also wanted to place a lot of emphasis on our stylised look through appealing environment and character design.

We decided to record our response to these videos in the form of a basic brain storm sheet outlining the main themes and features that we wanted to achieve with our project piece:

The Importance of Sound in Animation

After looking at some modern examples of time-based narrative pieces, we considered it beneficial to look at some of the first examples of animation combined with synchronised sound. When dialogue was uncommon and rarely scene in animated films, the addition of soundtracks was ground-breaking and changed how animators would look at the principle of timing and spacing.

'Steamboat Willie- Walt Disney Animation Studios'

'Steamboat Willie' (1982) was the first cartoon to feature a fully post-produced soundtrack. The short is extremely character driven and delivers a surprisingly believable interaction between the characters through the use of music, even with the lack of dialogue. Walt Disney became apprehensive during the production of the short, concerned that the blend of music and animation would not be received well by an audience. After the first private audience viewing, Walt's response was "The effect on our little audience was nothing less than electric. They responded almost instinctively to this union of sound and motion." The studio's first attempt to synchronise the movement and music was a failure, and after raising extra funding, the studio used a recording of a bouncing ball as reference for a continuous beat and tempo which aided them to successfully synch the piece.


'Silly Symphony- Walt Disney Animation Studios'

The soundtrack to this later piece from 'Walt Disney Animation Studios' is an orchestral piece with simple vocals. The short is perfectly timed and extremely detailed- there are multiple characters within the shots whose movements are synced completely with the beats of the track. This short is part of the studio's 'Silly Symphonies' series which they used to trial new techniques and technologies to use in their upcoming full-length feature films. Their are key aspects of this short which you can see have been reproduced in later 'Disney' works, such as the classic feature and music-driven 'Fantasia'.

From these, I learnt to appreciate the effect that animation to music synchronisation has on a animated short. This technique improves the piece as a whole as it makes the animator consider every movement that the character makes so as to visually represent their idea successfully. This results in better animation and a better flow to the film.

Narrative Source Material

We first began to look at narrative source material within the industry that put emphasis on the use of sound in relation to animation. We used this opportunity to find inspiration for our own projects and to look at the pieces of work through the eyes of both a director and an audience member.

'LOVE SPORT- STUDIO AKA'

We looked at this short from 'STUDIO AKA'. The design is simplistic and very stylised- Both the characters and the environment are created from blocks of colour which makes the visual of the piece extremely easy to consume as an audience member. Combined with the fact that the sound used in the piece is silent apart from minimal sound effects such as the clicking of the dominoes falling and the crowds cheering, the film has no specific audience. A person of any age, language or culture could watch this film and it would still make sense due to the easy to follow theme and storyline, the basic animation and simple visuals.

'Back to The Start- Johnny Kelly'

We next watched this advertisement for 'Chipolte'. The piece was beneficial to watch as it was clear that the soundtrack is the driving force of the animation, and it determines the pace and emotion of the short. In the beginning sequence the mellow soundtrack reflects the simplicity of rural farm life, and the track slowly builds up as the farmer builds his farm. There is a moment a minute and a half into the short where the soundtrack is stripped down to just the vocals, depicting a moment of reflection. The determination and passion of the farmer is then apparent as the song builds to a climatic crescendo exhibiting the emotion of the piece.

'The Rolling Stones: Doom and Gloom- Rok Predin'

Lastly, we looked at this lyric video created by Rok Predin. We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to speak to him in person about this piece as he delivered a talk to our class as a guest lecturer. He told us about the importance of timing when animating to a soundtrack, and suggested that like this brief he was given from his client, it is in our best interest to first create a soundtrack and then use it a a basis to our animation. This will allow our animation to look more professional and flow nicely as a whole.

What I took away from this research is that the soundtrack can be used as a driving force to animation and aids you in the timing and spacing for the movement within a short. I also learnt that simplicity is key and that it is beneficial to create a minimal and bold design that both is visually appealing to the audience and easily understandable to a wide range of viewers. Combined, these features allow the film-maker to deliver a narrative quicker, more efficiently and effectively.

Briefing and Assessment Criteria

Our first session of the unit began with our tutor giving us an introduction to the 'Time-Based Narrative' project. We were given a brief that contained these key points of assessment criteria:

• We are to form groups within the class and create a short film with a soundtrack, contributing to all parts of the production as well as individually creating approximately 30 seconds worth of animation. 

• We are to give evidence through our blogs and the presentation of both our animatic and final piece of our personal generation and exploration towards narrative ideas.

• We are to create a final short film that meets the formats and conventions of storytelling and narrative e.g. It contains an understandable and appealing narrative that contains a beginning, middle and end.

• We are to generate thumbnails and storyboards that effectively visualise our story and influence our animatic and final piece. We are to effectively demonstrate our knowledge of filmic language and cinematic storytelling as well as our technical knowledge of composition, colour and timing within our storyboard.

• We are to give evidence of animation within our 30 second section of the final piece through the ability to create movement through the recording of static images. Furthermore, we are to engage in and give evidence of the 12 Principles of Animation within our individual section.

• We are to effectively articulate our idea and narrative clearly through our project work. e.g. The audience need to be able to understand the piece and it should relate to the soundtrack.

We used our first class to form our groups for this project. Here are my team members and their roles within the production team: (Click the team member's names to go to their respective blogs).

Reke Onamusi - Director/ Compositor.

Kyomi Richards (Me) - Producer/ Character Designer/ Storyboard Artist.

Kirstie Wood - Character Designer/ Sound Designer.

Theo West Agboola - Environment Designer/ Storyboard Artist.

Once we decided on our group, we drew up a contract for the whole group to sign and obide by:

Group Project Contract

1. Define your skills.

2. Agree to be contactable and keep regular touch. Attend all group meetings.

3. Agree to carry out specified tasks at any time.

4. Communicate any other commitments that might affect the production.

5. Any communication to be answered in two hours.

6. Maintain a standard of work expected from the group production.

i. All work has to be ready as of the 28th Feburary 2013

ii. Animatic to be ready of the 9th Feburary 2013

iii. All members to be set tasks and goals for each week to make sure work is making progress.

iiii. Notify the group for any unseen/mitigating circumstances within a day

As our group is focusing on a styllised piece, the standard of work will be in context with members skills. Members should voice ideas and thoughts if they feel something needs to be changed or updated. All members are excepted to carry out their tasks given out by director of group, Reke Onamusi. If any problems arise, contact Reke or Kyomi to come to a solution as quickly as possible.

There are a maximum of three penalties given to any member for e.g. reducing the standard of work, absense without reason or uncooperative within the team. 

If a member goes pass three penalties, that member will be liable to be removed from the group.

Director, Reke Onamusi

Producer, Kyomi Richards