Deeper Focus - FINAL compilation

Here it is! The final compilation of all of the works in the Deeper Focus series.

Final Experimental Composition from Thalia McWatt on Vimeo.

The final component of my piece was the sound design. I used audio files from Freesound.org to (hopefully) create a sense of time passing very slowly. I'm fairly happy with the end result and although I am doubtful that this project will become a major part of my Grad Film I enjoy it as a standalone piece of my work.

Deeper Focus - Oil Pastel Landscape

The final part of the experimental process was to get the landscape moving in the oil pastel medium.

In order to accomplish this I reserved a room for myself and set up a projector that connected to my laptop. I advanced my reference animation frame by frame and aimed the projector at a particular portion of the wall. I then set up a camera directly above the projector so that it was facing the same piece of wall. I set up lights on either side of the wall at (roughly) 45 degree angles. A layer or orange paper was taped down with a large acetate sheet taped over that.

The paper taped to the wall with oil pastel being applied.

The projection over the oil pastel layer.

I was originally using animation that was very light in colour but I found that I needed to re-render my reference animation so that all the blades of grass were high contast from each other. Leaving them yellow or green simply didn't work on the projector regardless of how much fiddling I did with the projector contrast levels.

Panorama of the workspace - 2 computers, 1 projector, 1 camera, etc.

The animation process itself was smooth but I will recommend that anyone trying a project-against-a-wall system should think carefully about how high they place their paper in relation to their height. I found that the paper was set up a bit too low for standing comfortably. 

Unfortunately I only managed to get 10 frames finished due to time constraints. Each frame took between 20 and 30 minutes to colour so the work was fairly tedious. I wish I had more time so that I could have finished the loop but at least this gives me an impression of how well this concept can be executed.

Pastel Grass from Thalia McWatt on Vimeo.







Deeper Focus - Board Revisions and Light Animation

So I decided that I wanted to take my work in a different direction for this piece. I've made a series of new boards and shot a new piece of animation to work with.

Storyboard Revisions from Youtube

The new boards aren't similar to what I had originally planned but I think the best thing about creative work is that your ideas can shift and change as you become inspired by particular parts of a project. I originally intended to represent both my grandfather and grandmother as characters but I limited my focus to just one character. There are also two strong themes emerging in my mind as being central to this piece - time and religion.

In the process of doing research for the Grad Film that I'm working on I've come across a few interesting cultural artifacts. One of the most interesting pieces was a gold icon/cross that my mother took with her when she left our religious extended family. I've been talking about animating with light for some time now so I thought that this would be a good opportunity.

Animating with the light was very difficult, and I think that's quickly evident by the way the light seems to 'pop' at the end of the cycle. I tried putting pieces of tape down on the floor to ensure the light was moving at an even pace around the object but I was unable to control for that factor on the far side of my setup. If I did this again I would either find a way to navigate around the object entirely, or composite two halves together after breaking up the initial shoot into 2 portions.

Cross from Thalia McWatt on Vimeo.







Deeper Focus - Oil Pastel Character Animation (Part 2)

Oil pastel character animation round 2!

I finally had a chance to animate an entire walk cycle using my character. My setup was similar to the first time that I tried but with a few key differences:

1. I expanded the size of the reference animation so that it would be easier to animate the details on the face.
     (helpful tip: don't print directly off of photoshop because it takes forever to load on the school printers)

2. Acquired a key for the shooting room. Locked doors means greater security for your work mid-shoot.

The animation process went well this time. The setup was mostly the same, with a glass pane separating the reference animation underneath and holding the acetate with the oil pastel layer on top. The most difficult part of the whole process was keeping the lighting consistent from frame to frame.

BABA Walks from Thalia McWatt on Vimeo.

Deeper Focus - Oil Pastel Character Animation

After much difficulty figuring out the logistics of animating with my oil pastels I finally had an opportunity to go ahead and animate a character. I decided to print out the frames of animation that I had previously completed on TVPaint so I could adhere them to the underside of the glass. I ensured the registration was correct by hole punching them and taping a peg bar to the underside of the glass as well.

Shooting setup with elevated glass pane to adhere work to

After lining up the camera and putting a layer of acetate down on top of the glass I was ready to animate my character! Except I spent the next hour trying to figure out why this error message was appearing when I tried to use Dragonframe... After checking every wire and looking at every internet manual and resource I could get my hands on I finally figured out that my issue had to do with the settings on the camera itself. Sometimes it's the little things that hold you back.

Error message on Dragonframe

Test shots before beginning animation.

The animation actually went quite poorly for this shoot. I'd printed out my reference animation fairly small compared to a full sheet of A4 paper and it made the pastels really difficult to work with for details such as the eyes and nose. The technique of scratching pastel away and then shifting the shapes worked really well to create a nice boil but it was messy and tedious work.

The idea would be to key out the edges of the character so the background doesn't flash.

Unfortunately I learned a valuable lesson while doing this animation. Don't leave your animation overnight at the shooting station during finals week - desperate animators will move your work mid-shoot and you'll have to begin again.

See the next post for the finished animation!

Deeper Focus - Rough Character Animation

During the messy series I experimented with character animation using oil pastels and I found it really rewarding. I decided to take a character design and animate a walk cycle to test how the boil of the oil pastels will loop. The pastels tend to get faded out as work progresses so I wanted to come up with a system that would keep the boil from jumping or clicking as the cycle refreshed and began anew.

The first step was to establish a very simple design to work with. My previous grandmother and grandfather designs were much too complicated and involved a lot of line work for each character. I decided to design basic shapes that fit together, and animate a fairly basic cycle.

I completed the linework for the animation in TV Paint this time. It was a much better experience than using Flash in my opinion. The timeline has definitely been developed considering the needs of animators and the brushes can produce a really lovely hand-drawn aesthetic.

Deeper Focus - Rough Environment Animation

I decided to continue preparations to animate an entire environmental scene using the oil pastels. I used flash to do a first pass on the animation. I split the scene into 2 components that needed to be animated. The first component was the grass for the prairie field. I animated a row of grass that I could then duplicate in Adobe After Effects, and offset the timing to create a rolling effect.

Rough Grass and Sky from Thalia McWatt on Vimeo.

This was a horrible experience. The Adobe Flash program I was working on was glitchy the entire time I worked on this animation. I was working on a cintiq and I found that the pen was not responding well at all. Every time I tried to make a line on my screen a menu would open or a severe lag would diminish my ability to make curved lines. I decided to do my rough animation in Flash in order to decrease production time, but I think ultimately it would have been faster and smoother to simply animate the sequences on paper.



Grass Animation from Youtube

Sky Animation from Youtube



The animation process for the sky was similarly frustrating but I am pleasantly surprised with the quality of the loop I managed to achieve. It moves far too quickly compared to my original vision for the movement in the sky, but I know that with a proper amount of inbetweening I can slow the movement down while simultaneously making it smoother.

The colour scheme is also not what I envision for the final project. The scene will hopefully be dirty pink and orange pastel colors with a slightly surreal sense of movement. I wish to make this look like a landscape in a dream and this was a good first step towards that goal.


Deeper Focus - Quick Test

I started my animation process by exploring the concept image that I found the most striking. When I think about the imagery in my Grad Film I'm really attracted to the scene of prairie grasses slowly swaying in the wind. I started by studying the way that prairie grasses move when they get caught in the wind.

Example screenshot of youtube videos that were referenced.

I tried quickly animating a clump of grass in Adobe Photoshop, hoping to begin the process of compositing the grass together using Adobe After Effects. Photoshop doesn't really have the greatest timeline for animating so I would definitely look to eliminate my reliance on that program for any future animation tests. I also found that offsetting the timing of one clump of grass and overlapping/distorting the angle of the layers made for the most convincing grass animation.

Deeper Focus - Plan

My plan for Experimental Animation is to continue working on the oil pastel scenes for my Grad Film, Schism. I'm very attached to the texture of the oil pastels and I have created a series of sketches for possible scenes to experiment with:

The sketches were completed fairly quickly but they represent environments that I wish to explore in my film. Each pastel drawing holds the possibility for movement, and I'd like to experiment with boiling the textures inside of an entire frame. 

I've been exploring the possibility of animating my grandparents as characters in my film. Here are some character sketches and a GIF of a possible scene to complete this semester.

Messy Reflection

The Messy Series of animation experiments was an important undertaking while I started working on the development of my Senior Grad Project this year. I'm going to take this opportunity to reflect on the progress that was made and look forward to what the next round of experiments will bring.

I really felt that the Messy Series was successful. I developed the very specific goal to animate with oil pastels as I formulated the scope of the projects. I've always been drawn to the way that oil pastels can be used to capture light and form in static drawings and I wanted to bring that quality to my time-based work.

Throughout the Messy Series I tried my best to explore openly with the mediums while also making conscious decisions to eliminate variables in order to create a focus in the work. For instance, when I developed the method of back lighting the work, while using orange paper and beige felt to simultaneously warm the light and dull the piece, I knew that I had created a lighting style that was satisfactory. From that point forward I decided to leave that lighting process untouched and focus on the how the oil pastels responded to the acetate and glass.

Having difficulty applying the oil pastel to the glass was by far the biggest surprise in the process. I was so certain that by spending the time to prepare a glass surface for animation I would be furthering my progress with the oil pastels. I was dumbfounded when all my planning and preparation didn't work. Sometimes you learn the most about your work when you least expect to.

If I were to continue the Messy Series at this point I would definitely start to work with particular character styles and a different array of movements. My goals would be threefold: how to best represent the human figure with this technique, how the pastel reacts to different types of animation (fast movement versus slow movement), and a deeper focus on lighting and colour.

I know that I'm going to continue working with oil pastel as I develop my Senior Grad Project this semester but for the next series of experiments I'm going to step away from this work and try something new. My focus will be as follows:

To experiment with paper cutout animation.  I want to animate the physical pieces of paper with natural light but I also want to digitally composite the pieces in After Effects. Perhaps I can run a comparison of the two production methods and see what will work best for my future work.

To incorporate painted and photographed texture in the cutout animation.

To work on a title sequence for my Senior Grad Project, thus introducing narrative and sound to the experimentation process.

Messy 3

Grease Pencil

Experimental: Messy 3 Grease Pencil from Thalia McWatt on Vimeo.

Oil Pastel 

Experimental: Messy 3 Oil Pastel from Thalia McWatt on Vimeo.

This was my final week of oil pastel animation tests. I used the same materials and lighting setup as my previous tests so the experimentation was focused on how best to use the pastels to create the animation style I wanted.

In my work on Messy 2.5 I was having trouble getting the pastel to hold onto the hard, flexible plastic, so I thought, "well maybe it will stick better if I have something harder I can push into."

thus, glass!

This worked out terribly.

The oil pastel just wouldn't adhere to the glass at all.

After realising the initial test was doomed to failure I decided to just run a new animation test with a grease pencil to see how that looked. The movement wasn't very planned out so the animation doesn't have any gravity to it, but I can see how the grease pencil might come in handy for future work.

My next thought was to get some really soft plastic sheets to work with. If hard makes things worse then surely soft will make things better?

This was sound logic. 

I love how the final result looks and the oil pastel took to the plastic really easily. This whole time I've been looking for a way to achieve this aesthetic without the physical work being to much of a burden on my hands and this was the closest I've gotten to a quick, easy style. In this test I would scratch away at the edges of the pastel while working in a new layer of colour (mostly white) on top of the existing oil pastel. I'm very satisfied with the result, but I also recognise that I need to think about how I'm going to composit this type of work into larger scenes.

As for what comes next, I expect to start experimenting with paper puppets and compositing in After Effects this week.

Messy 2.5

Experimental: Messy 2.5 from Thalia McWatt on Vimeo.

I really wanted to test the oil pastels on some character animation. I had a feeling that the strength of oil pastels as a medium for animation lay in how they would respond to movement. My last test, where I scratched away at the pastels, was entirely missing that component and I knew it was not the direction I wanted to proceed with.

Materials:

Large sheet of acetate

Oil Pastels

Felt and coloured sheets of paper

I also played around with back lighting the piece this time. I have 2 test shots below. The first one is with the back lighting and the second is just top lit. The oil pastel colours pop a lot more without the light from beneath but I like the back lighting more because it creates depth.

Colour theory came in really handy for the lighting portion of this piece - I was working with blue lights so I neutralised them with an orange paper covering and it worked great! I also put a layer of felt really close to the surface of the animation and the textured background added a lot to the look of everything.

This experiment has me thinking about a lot of new animation ideas. Animating with light would be a fascinating endeavour at some point in the near future. I also need to stop working on acetate (it doesn't hold the colour very well) so I'm going to run another test with the oil pastels on glass. I also loved the texture of the felt so I'm going to play with fabric backgrounds in future tests.

Messy 2

Experimental: Messy 2 from Thalia McWatt on Vimeo.




This is my second animation messy experiment. I decided to pursue the oil pastels in a larger format to see how different methods of animating would affect the background. I tried animating a white figure, animating a black figure, lighting the piece from the top and from beneath. I also tried motion tests where I scratched away at the oil pastel with my finger to reveal colored paper placed beneath.

Materials:
large sheet of acetate
oil pastels
white and black paper

Things I Learned:

My hand smudged the piece as I was working (I need to be very careful about where I touch the image in general, and laying down paper to protect the non-animated parts is essential)

My animation doesn't fit the environment (I need to plan out the animation ahead of time to get a cleaner look in the finished piece)

Outcomes:

I wasn't happy with how this piece turned out. I think there was a potential in the work that I missed entirely with my tests. I think I need to work more with the background and integrate moving parts into the scenery and have characters actually negotiate the environment. I plan to attempt this method again but with narrative and sound informing the direction of the animation.

Messy 1

Link to Vimeo Version: https://vimeo.com/74817785

This week I decided to explore the materials that I'm interested in working with for the rest of the semester. As this is just a material exploration, there is no thematic relevance to my future works... unless I make a film about lipstick. In that case you may refer back to this post and tell me I was wrong.

Materials:

transparent cel sheet

oil pastels

plasticine

I taped down the cel at a shooting station and explored the materials under the camera while learning how to use many of the features on Dragonframe.

I also edited the sound effects together ahead of time so that I was using the sound to inform the direction of the animation. This led to a bit of thumbnail and x-sheet planning of course.

Messy 1 Outcomes:

I was particularly impressed with the way the oil pastels could be applied on the cel. I almost wish the cel had just a bit more texture to really catch the first coat of oil pastel and thus muddy the colours together more while the work progresses. I might try sanding the top layer of the cel in the next experiment to see how it holds the material.

The plasticine was so transformative and I found it to be most striking when I was collapsing forms entirely by pinching and pulling the material. I may move away from plasticine and focus more on the oil pastels from this point forward.

Here's my list of learned things that I wrote in my sketchbook during my experience:

clean your hands

tools are important

manipulate the non-moving parts

trust intuition

Experimental Itinerary

This illustration is meant to symbolize my tentative route through the Experimental Animation course at Emily Carr this semester. I had two considerations while I created this:
Ideas/Themes - nature, architecture, non-figurative
Methods/Techniques - texture, plasticine, paint, cut paper, ink

Now I'm not exactly happy with the outcome of this illustration. I don't think it is the greatest approximation of what I would like to do as an artist this semester, but creating this was a part of my process while I started thinking about the experimental course so it ultimately deserves a post. Documenting process is what this blog is all about so there's no better way to kick it off than with something that I would regard as a 'disappointing artistic stepping stone'. 
To get a better idea of what I would like to do with my animation this term here are a couple of artists that inspire me while creating:

http://www.tilbyforbis.com
An animation duo from Emily Carr, their short film Wild Life is an inspiration because of their painterly technique and focus on the Canadian Prairies.
http://birdboxstudio.com
This a studio run out of London, UK. The energy of their animation is just absolutely entertaining. I find myself watching their shorts over and over again and never getting bored.
http://www.mikeyplease.co.uk
A graduate of London's Royal College of Art, his short films are beautiful. The visual combination of paper cutting and well executed animated movement is inspiring.

Welcome

This is my Research Blog for my Experimental Animation course at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. I'll be posting all of my work over the course of the semester, inlcuding time based media, sketches, and material explorations. Enjoy!