The Audience Project
Version 2
-Feet-
The Final Film
Thumbnails > Storyboard #1
One night when I was coming back from uni, sometime around 11pm I was listening to "Tiger Feet" by Mud and then it hit me. Why don't we do a film about feet? They're definitely in the category of those lightly gross things that make children laugh, so why not?
I had a feeling it wouldn't go down easily and if I was to pitch this to my group, I needed strong visual aid. After all, it doesn't sound like the most exciting thing in the world - a topic led film about different types of feet.
I did a little mind map showing the types of feet we could show, how we could possibly make them funny and I showed my teams other examples of films that use that same kind of narrative. That included "The string", "Princess needs to poop", "Animal Alphabet" etc.
I had a feeling it wouldn't go down easily and if I was to pitch this to my group, I needed strong visual aid. After all, it doesn't sound like the most exciting thing in the world - a topic led film about different types of feet.
I did a little mind map showing the types of feet we could show, how we could possibly make them funny and I showed my teams other examples of films that use that same kind of narrative. That included "The string", "Princess needs to poop", "Animal Alphabet" etc.
My original idea was a listing of all the different types of feet, with several puns on things such as big foot, the film "happy feet" and "tiger feet" like in the song, however that was mainly a placeholder in hope of hooking the team onto the idea and coming up with something even better later on.
The Thumbnails/Storyboard below is a very early draft of the film, that we held on to for quite a while.I came up with the idea on a 11pm bus home on a Sunday, Monday noon I pitched it to my group, they accepted it. Wednesday noon we were pitching it to Jay Clarke. So throughout the rest of the evening, I’ve been working on the concept and was writing the song for the film. The night before the pitch I pulled together this storyboard below, and hoped for the best. |
Concept art/first designs
Mr Ando of the Woods meets Thomas the Tank Engine
When the idea was still in the making and we were settled on nothing, the concept for the two main characters was mainly inspired by Mr Ando of the Woods and Thomas the tank engine. I thought this way, we could have a nice separation and contrast between the world of the caterpillars and the projected feet. The cute ugly aesthetic really speaks to me and every time I pitched it got good feedbacks.
My main idea that would make this work, was also making it a hybrid animation. With the two world divided not only by styles, but also by mediums it was really on to a good track. Later on I decided to redesign a caterpillar, as the project shifted so much from it's original form, that keeping that ugliness no longer had a point. Below is the pinterest board I used as inspiration for the caracters |
Aesthetics research
When looking for inspiration for the general look of the film, I slipped into pinterest once again. I mentioned this before in the racoon on the spoon section, but I think it's worth mentioning again. For the first few weeks of the project and going until now actually, I would sit and watch Cbeebies to gain some understanding of how children's' shows work, what's are the general rules and do's and don'ts. I've actually kept this habit and I still do it everytime I have breakfast. Except now, at some point form the lack of time I stopped eating breakfasts :P
Here are my two favourite screen shots, that are spot on what I wanted from our film. I do realize it's a different type of animation, but especially looking at the backgrounds, the colours and the general tone of the program, it's precisely what I was hoping this would turn into.
Here are my two favourite screen shots, that are spot on what I wanted from our film. I do realize it's a different type of animation, but especially looking at the backgrounds, the colours and the general tone of the program, it's precisely what I was hoping this would turn into.
Storyboard v.2
I made this storyboard and animatic whilst doing work experience at the Sun and Moon studio. I utilized my breaks on pulling it together, as we were being chased by the deadlines and we simply needed it to be done. I had very little time and not much imagination left, so I decided to experiment a bit with collaging, as advised on one of the tutorials. It was actually really effective and fairly quick, so I stuck to it.
The never finished animatic for story version 1
Lipsync testing
Here, I drew some mouths on paper covered with tissue paper, to match the rest of the puppets and without an actual realized design, had a go at lipsyncing in After Effects.
This was just to get a hang of it and see if it's actually doable.
I cut the mouths up and stuck them to green card, scanned them in, did some chromakey magic and arranged them in photoshop.
I had a look into several tutorials and discovered, that my fresh new After Effects update doesn't do what the previous versions from the tutorials did, so I had to improvise a little.
Instead of using null objects and expressions and coding I did time remapping and whatever the hell it's called. I don't know, it worked and did the thing that it was supposed to do.
This was just to get a hang of it and see if it's actually doable.
I cut the mouths up and stuck them to green card, scanned them in, did some chromakey magic and arranged them in photoshop.
I had a look into several tutorials and discovered, that my fresh new After Effects update doesn't do what the previous versions from the tutorials did, so I had to improvise a little.
Instead of using null objects and expressions and coding I did time remapping and whatever the hell it's called. I don't know, it worked and did the thing that it was supposed to do.
Re-designing the caterpillar
Here are the sketches I vomited out when redesigning the caterpillar. I decided I needed to kill my thick browed darling and go with something more child friendly and well, coherent with the rest of the designs. At the beginning the ugly-cute aesthetic made more sense, but the project went through so many changes and drifted so much from the original draft of it, that I decided to let it go.
On my way home from uni aka on the bus, I whipped out my sketchbook and tried to come up with an overall face design. It was really pushing me out of my rough/natural history style and understanding of things, I wasn't sure where to begin and recalled what I learned at sun and moon. I also had a look at shows like gumball and sponge bob, looking for inspiration and a general feel of shapes and lines. I was looking for a formula for a cartoonized character. I think I did find it in the end and I'm quite happy with the outcomes.
On my way home from uni aka on the bus, I whipped out my sketchbook and tried to come up with an overall face design. It was really pushing me out of my rough/natural history style and understanding of things, I wasn't sure where to begin and recalled what I learned at sun and moon. I also had a look at shows like gumball and sponge bob, looking for inspiration and a general feel of shapes and lines. I was looking for a formula for a cartoonized character. I think I did find it in the end and I'm quite happy with the outcomes.
Designing the mouths for lipsync
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Here are some sketches I did when designing the mouths.
I was exploring different shapes and amounts of teeth. It wasn't very challenging, mainly tedious. And surprisingly enough, I enjoyed the design process much less than the actual lipsyncing and arranging the face. |
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I found it super exciting rearranging the face parts, it felt a little bit like playing with those cut out dolls that you stick clothes on as a kid. And it's so much easier to come up with an interesting design too. For the most of it, I was struggling with designing things straight out of my head, but once I put it into photoshop and changed scales and all that, it was a breeze.
Lipsync tests with the new design and the scratch voice
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Here are the tests I've done with the new caterpillar design and the original Amy scratch tape. I did several of them, however since my computer had several fits about the lack of memory, I got rid of them thinking I backed them up on the cloud. Which I didn't. The ones above are what I recovered from the chat, when I've sent them to the girls to get some feedback.
These tests included several different blink types, motion tweening on mouth shapes such as U/W, O and M. I also did thests on cheek movements as the caterpillar spoke and inbetweening of the mouth shapes. Cheek movement turned out to be too time taking and slightly too confusing, so I didn't go for it in the final lipsync.
These tests included several different blink types, motion tweening on mouth shapes such as U/W, O and M. I also did thests on cheek movements as the caterpillar spoke and inbetweening of the mouth shapes. Cheek movement turned out to be too time taking and slightly too confusing, so I didn't go for it in the final lipsync.
Guitar playing scanner tests
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At some point during the production, I was unable to come in to uni for personal reasons, but I didn't let that stop me from doing work. I knew I had to start testing how the caterpillar would play the guitar and that's what I did. I didn't have a fully realized body design back then yet, so I only focused on making the guitar and the hands as what they were supposed to be.
I didn't want to do this fully in After Effects and decided to mess around with what I could do analogically to maintain that stop motion zing. I had this crazy idea to use my scanner to animate the strumming hand, but before I dove straight into it, I pre animated the motion in Flash. Then I just re-positioned the hand, scanned it, re-positioned again and scanned it again. What it was, was just the hand stuck to a green piece of paper with a guitar stuck to it as well. I Chrome keyd it later and looped in After effects. |
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After showing Mary this test, she wanted me to try and do it under camera. I did give it a shot, however with the process and the pipeline I had already developed for the caterpillar that was fully composited and operated through after effects, this was an unnecessary step that actually made it much more confusing and not coherent with the rest of the animation. Another factor when making this decision, was that I still didn't have a final design of the body of the caterpillar and needed freedom to move things around. Above are the pictures to prove that I've actually tried :P
Rough cut - by Beth
this is a rough cut we used instead of an animatic, when we've sent the idea off to our voice actor. Later on, we had to give up on his dreamy voice and record something else, fast. Instead, Amy sand along with the video above and boom, here's our final vocal. I think it turned out brilliant, the voice actor got to us a day later, but it was a day too late. I was considering going back and redoing the lipsync with the new voice, however it had this weird, over trained quality to it. It was nice, yes. Clear and all. But it was lacking character and contrast between the lines of the lyrics. It sounded both boring and over acted. I was quite disappointed with it and upon consulting it with my group, I kept rolling with our original soundtrack. And it was lovely. It had so much character and liveliness, even though it wasn't the perfect opera voice or whatever. It just fits with the tone and style of our film and it was so fun to lipsync!
Here is what the film looked like before we composited in the caterpillar!
Fighting for a title card and credits
After seeing the exported video, onto which I was supposed to lay the caterpillar After Effects composition, I realized one thing: we didn't have a title card/sequence. After I got home at around 11pm I sat down and informed my group I'm making one, unless they're willing to make a quick one that would be coherent with the credits. I didn't get a reply from the person who made the credits, so I jumped into it and later on showed them what I've done and asked if they liked it. And we stuck to it.
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^ the original credits made by Beth