Final Animation Environment Design

In preparation for the final animation, I sat with Theo, one of our environment artists who has taken lead for the jungle sequences and we composed some of the jungle environment scenes. I acted as a creative director, working to design something that would suit both the theme of our animation and work well in complimenting the main characters, Annie and Piggy. 

We first looked at the vine sequence which consists of Annie and Piggy swinging from camera left to camera right on a vine. As the characters do not touch the floor in this scene we realised we could add more foliage at the bottom of the screen to create a dense and thick with life jungle feel. I had a say on the colours chosen- particularly the flowers on the tree vines, the flowers at the top of the frame and the colour of the sky. In terms of the sky, we had trouble deciding on a colour that would create a childish dream- like look and yet still seem somewhat natural. We eventually decided on an aqua blue.

Next, I directed in the creation of the scene below, where the two main characters swing from the vines and land in the ocean below. I helped Theo with understanding the perspective of the scene and he used a sketch of mine to work from. I suggested the water trickling down the rocks from the cliff to suggest a river that runs into the ocean- giving the scene more visual interest. We also could not decide on the background surrounding the cliff, to which I suggested far away parts of the island, whose rivers also ran into the ocean.

Lastly, I helped work on this scene. First of all, the scene was quite bare and we were thinking of ideas that could add more visual appeal without overcrowding as we still wanted to keep the feel of deep water, and too many assets would make the water seem shallow. I suggested seeing the bottom of the cliff in the deep water (left) and Theo created the underwater foliage. At first, the foliage was the wrong size; they were too large resulting in a shallow look so we agreed to downsize the foliage which helped to achieve the deep feel we were originally looking for.

Final Animation Source Material

We began looking for inspiration that would help us to create our final animation. I found and suggested this video; a scene from Dreamworks' 'Despicable Me 2' in which the youngest sister of three throws a birthday party at her house, similarly to the first and last scene of our own storyline.

We took into account the camera shots used as well as the ambience and atmosphere of the scene and how the director exhibited the theme of youth and childhood.

I also found and suggested this video; a scene from 'Disney's' 'Tarzan' where the lead character is part of a jungle montage, showing all the elements of his environment. Again, we found this useful as it was similar to our own idea of a jungle montage.

We took note of the how the animators showed speed in the fast paced environment and how each jump cut within the sequence was timed and thought out.

Animatic #2

Animatic #2

Sidenote: (Blogspot.com would not allow me to post the video properly on to my blog, so instead I have linked it above.)

Here is our second animatic which depicts the basic outline for the first two thirds of the final animation- The ending sequence is missing due to lack of time and prioritising workflow.

Second Animatic Development

In our second animatic, I took responsibility of the montage sequence within the jungle scenes. I was asked by the director to keep it minimalist and in greyscale, and he suggested that I design Annie a 'jungle outfit' to correspond with her imaginary world.

Here is the sequence that I created using the Annie puppets in 'Painttool Sai':

Revised Storyline

Our first port of call was to amend the storyline. We changed the beginning sequence to a birthday party, creating the reason for the pig's existence- He is a present from Annie's mum. We also made the transitions in and out of Annie's animation more obvious as well as an ending that was more heart-warming and included the character of the mother.

Here are the notes we made as a group for our revised storyline:


It begins with an establishing shot of annie's back garden, with party decorations on a large table in the middle of the garden. 
The camera continuously zooms in to the party table full of presents in the middle of the garden
it zooms in under the table revealing annie finishing of a piece of cake.
Mid shot of mum putting a present on the table
Annie hearing the noise of the present hitting the table comes out from under the table.
Over the shoulder shot of Annie's mums pov of Annie coming from under the table.
Annie grabs the present from the table and runs off
She runs to the back of the garden where in front her lies a big "bush cave"
she crawls into this "bush cave"
begin montage:

- mud throwing

- annie playing fetch

- swinging on vines

-dropping from the vines in the water (soundtrack gets mulled)

-bubbles float covering the screen and the pig with a fan blows the bubbles away while fanning annie

-the fan gets blown away by a gush of wind
to annie and the pig twirling

she mistakenly lets go of the pig, the pig goes flying out of the cave bush
she goes out of the cave to retrieve the pig
pov of view of annie picking up the pig
as she looks up she's sees all the party guests looking at her
she has a guilty expression on her face
cut to her mum to her mum changing from a shocked expression to an accepting expression
they console each other
the camera zooms up into the sky.

Animatic #1

This is the feedback we received from our tutor.

Tutor Audio Feedback

The main points we took away from this were that our storyline was underdeveloped and the character had no motive or driving force that drove the narrative. We also needed to introduce the character of the pig in a bigger way so that the character had reason to exist. The music did not blend and we need to create a real soundtrack, and the film needs to have a consistent art style.

We were aware of a majority of these points as due to other priorities and lack of time, we did not create the animatic together; we created it individually in four sections with our own art styles and soundtracks that we were aware would not work when spliced together. However, we know that in the creation of the final piece, all of this will be resolved.

Animatic Development

We began working on our animatic to show our tutor and get feedback on. This would then help us iron out any issues and resolve them in time for the submitting of the final piece.

I began working on my scene which followed on from the end of the jungle montage sequence. In my scene, A stick has just been thrown and lands in some nearby foliage, it hits a monster that was lurking in the forest and it awakens before roaring and chasing Annie and the pig through the jungle and into a dark cave.

I used my puppets of Annie to create a variety of poses and emotions that were needed for my scene. I decided create the sequence with only a few frames just to get across the idea. When the piece is to be animated properly for submission, the scene would be much more detailed.

Here are the shots I created for my scene:

I also created a colour script for the scene:

I was also asked by the director to find a soundtrack which suited the mood and tempo of my scene. I selected this score from the Disney feature film, 'Tarzan'; the scene is very high tension and evokes feelings of adrenaline and fear. Due to the nature of my scene I felt that this reflected the emotion well.