I went for the cats and dogs brief, as I thought it would be really fun animating for a museum that i used to go with my family when i was younger and I remember going into the areas and learning about all the interesting subjects that the Horniman Museum would have on.
When talking about what brief we would go with me, Eve and Ollie all really loved the idea of the cats and dog brief. We all live together and have a cat called Squeak, who is a black cat. So when hearing of this brief, we all wanted to embody our pet into our animation. This is where we created our first character.
first thoughts on the brief of cats and dogs
first designs of the witch and her cat, we really liked the design of the witch but wasnt too sure on the cat so we made him more fluffier and chunky
we all really liked the more blob like for for the cat, and loved the massive pupils that olli gave the cat in her designs as it looked like he had no thoughts in his head
I went for the Horniman Museum brief (cats and dogs), as I thought it would be really fun animating for a museum that I used to go with my family when I was younger. I remember going into the areas and learning about all the interesting subjects that the Horniman Museum would have on.
When talking about what brief we would go with me, Eve McMorrough and Ollie Bannerman. All really loved the idea of the Horniman Museum brief. We all live together and have a black cat called Squeak. So when hearing of this brief, we all wanted to embody our pet into our animation.
When visiting the Horniman Museum in October for our brief assignment, we got to see the previous year’s animations on their rainforest display. It was really fun watching all the different styles and story lines that showed deforestation in the rainforest.
We all had our own separate ideas. We went through them and wrote each one down on a mind map. Most of our ideas involved cats and not dogs, and as we only had 40-50 seconds to animate, we thought we would focus on one so we could give the story line more time instead of splitting it between the two animals.
One idea that came up the most favourable of the group was witches and their familiars. Going off this, we thought to include more information on cats to make it education and entertaining or ‘edutaining’ for the kids and their families.
During the brief assignment, our clients mentioned three themes that the display would have: 1) In their skins, 2) In their heads and 3) In our society. After thinking over the ideas we had, and thinking about the storyline we wanted, we all loved the idea of a witch and her familiar going through the history of cats, which related to the third theme of ‘In our society’, relating this back to the entire display the Horniman will produce, will help impress our clients but also inform the audience on what the display will be like.
The one problem with this idea was trying to make it original and memorable as witches and their black cats are a very well done story line
As we had decided to go with the witch and her familiar story line, the next stage was story development. We decided to have them go through a brief version of the history of cats; we researched through books, websites and YouTube videos what would be the best years to present in our animation. Our best source of information was a YouTube video on TED-Ed channels called ‘The history of the world according to cats – Eva-Maria Geigl.
Based on this idea, we chose 5 different time periods where cats were present:
- Ancient Egypt
- Mediaeval
- Sailors in 1940 AC
- Farming cats in 4500 BC
- Modern day wild big cats (Panthers)
With a time line sorted next stage was deciding how we were going to show this change during the animation. While thinking about how this was going to happen, we were reminded that when cats want attention, they will push objects off tables/shelfs. with this thought we came up with the main plot, we would have the witch making a potion with the cats help, and while she is away from the cauldron, the cat would push a bottle into the potion they were making, this would lead to an explosion witch would transport them into history.
As a group, we all really love stop-motion animation and really wanted to include it in someway, we had an idea that when the cat pushed the potion into the cauldron that after the explosion, it would turn from 2D animation to stop-motion, implying to the audience that something has gone wrong due to the media change. Our first idea was to have the history slowly change behind them while the witch and the cat, walk in the middle of the frame, experiencing the different years through cats history. We later came up with complication on how we would shoot the back ground with the characters, we thought about a scrolling background that was always on the move. But this made it very complicated for us to shoot, so we changed our idea to the two characters, walking across the screen and each time they walked off the screen, the next scene they would walk on and it would be a new historic era.
When naming the cat, we wanted something that would suit the witch’s name “Beatrix”. We had decided on Bonk as it was alliteration with Beatrix’s name and a memorable name for a cat. He is based on our own pet cat called Squeak, we practised drawing cats by looking at squeak in different positions. We all really loved the design of bonk. We imagined him to be a black blob of trouble. Ollie came up with the idea to draw Bonks iris’ to be circular scribbles instead of solid black iris.
Eve first came up with the first design on the witch. She had the idea of a young witch, which was simple to animated but also appealing to kids and the families that visited the Horniman Museum. we named her Beatrix as when we were all younger we had all read Beatrix potters books.
We came up with the colour pallet based on our collection of needle felt, as we wanted to create a doll of Beatrix for the stop-motion part. We decided on a mostly purple pallet, as we felt like purple is a mysterious colour, and when paired with Bonks green eyes it really stands out and makes everything more magical.
This is the first rendition of the storyboard, and the timeline. We originally had 5 science of going back in time, but after the first interim were told that the pace might be too fast for the kids. After this, we removed the farm scene, as it was similar to the mediaeval and sailor scene. During a storyboard online lesson with Jess Mountfield, we were asked to show our storyboards so she could critique and help us on improving.
We were informed by Jess that having our characters moving through scenes to the left showed that they were going back through time when, in fact, they were going forward through time. Because of this, we moved the motion of our characters.
We made a second story board, which had more detailed scenes and our changes that Jess and other lectures suggested. the next time when we need to make a storyboard, we will also take these suggestions into mind. It will help us make a better understanding story board.
As we decided to do to part of our animation stop-motion, we had to design our set for the history changes. We decided as it was to be shown in a museum for family and kids that the background would look cute if we painted the backgrounds like kids’ paintings. We included 3D parts by cutting and painting cardboard for certain details in the backgrounds.
One problem we came across when shooting the stop-motion parts was that the paint we used was really shiny when dry and put under the lights. We weren’t sure why this happened, but to combat this, we changed the angle of the lights, so the shine would be less direct.
As we had decided to do half of our animation in 2D and the other half in stop-motion, we had to choose which scenes to do in 2D and stop-motion. We decide to start with 2D, and to do the stop-motion half in the middle for the historic parts. As a group, we split up the 2D animation parts equally (as shown in image beside), as Ollie was creating Beatrix and Bonk stop-motion models, we gave her less 2D animation to do so it would be fair. For my parts, I was in charge of the intro, the explosion and the scenes after the historic moments. I created these parts on Toom Boom Harmony 21 Premium; I had never used this program to animate before, but I learned how to use it during Su-Lynn Tan lectures on it. These lessons on how to use Harmony 21 Premium, were very helpful towards this project and too many other projects in the future. While it was hard to learn, as it’s much different from other animating programs I have used before, I really enjoyed learning and using this program, while I attended all the lectures onsite, having the recording of lessons online really helped me during the Christmas holidays.
One part of animation that gave a lot of trouble was the intro, we had decided to have a zoom in on the hut, with leaves moving in front of it, to give the impression of moving through trees. While I thought this was going to be the easiest part to animate, it turned out to be the hardest. My first attempt, I put all the leaves on the same layer, but realised that I could not individually move the leaves to look like they were blowing in the wind. So correcting my mistake, I put the leaves on different layers, but this lead me to not being able to zoom in properly, as they were going at different speeds. The 3rd attempt I got it right, I drew some leaves on one layer, but no leaves touched each other, I then drew more leaves on another layer (not touching each other), this allowed me to slide the leave side to side, so they looked like they were blowing in the wind. For the zoom, I used the ‘Transform’ tool to size the background the right size on the first frame, then on the last frame I used the ‘Transform’ tool again to re-size the background as bigger, then clicking on another frame before I used the ‘Set Motion Keyframe’ tool, this caused a line through all the frames from the first to the last one. Which created a zoom in on the background. I then used this technique to zoom in on the leaves, but I changed the amount of zoom on different layers, so it looked more natural. I am very glad that I learnt this technique now rather than later than its very useful and improved the quality of the animation, I aim to use this technique in future animation.
Ollie was in charge of making all the stop-motion models. We all had a little of experience making armatured wired model due to the Stop-motion Tool-kit with Chris Eal. Using what he had taught us, Ollie formed Beatrixs’ wires and sculpted shoes on her with Milliput, with bolts built in side. She then formed foam clay around the head, so she could needle felt the hair on to head. Ollie also sewed felt around the arms, body and legs to make her body thick and not look like a skeleton. She also sewed Beatri’s dress, needle-felted her hat, and knitted her scarf. To finish the doll, she painted the shoes a purple with nail varnish. Ollie was going to make felt expressions, but with all of Beatrix’s expression portrayed on the storyboard we thought it would be quicker and look better if we 2D animated her faces on afterwards.
As a group, we all really love stop-motion animation and really wanted to include it in someway, we had an idea that when the cat pushed the potion into the cauldron that after the explosion, it would turn from 2D animation to stop-motion, implying to the audience that something has gone wrong due to the media change. Our first idea was to have the history slowly change behind them while Beatrix and Bonk, walk in the middle of the frame, experiencing the different years through cats history. We later came up with complication on how we would shoot the background with the characters, we thought about a scrolling background that was always on the move. But this made it very complicated for us to shoot, so we changed our idea to the two characters, walking across the screen and each time they walked off the screen, the next scene they would walk on and it would be a new historic era.
We managed to complete all the stop-motion parts in 3 filming days, the first day we mostly sorted out the lighting and adjusting the camera to get the right angles for the different shots. The next days we were much quicker at setting up, as we knew what we had to do now. While we filing the stop-motion, I decided to record us shooting in timelaps, so we would have proof of us making our animation, I uploaded these to my YouTube channel. We ran into a couple of problems, one was that the backgrounds were shiny when the lights were on them. I explained how we dealt with this on the ‘Stop-motion set Design’ page. The other problem we ran in to was how we secured Beatrix to the grate, we had to cover the ground with black tape, so the silver grate didn’t show in our shots. The problem was with the tape covering the holes, as we needed the hole to move Beatrix, sticky residue kept getting stuck on Beatrixs’ bolts, which made moving her really hard and slowed us down a lot, there wasn’t a lot we could do to fix this, but we stabbed holes into the tape to make it easier for us.
For the sound design, we enlisted the help of our roommate who is on the Sound Arts course. He and Eve went through our completed animation and added in extra sounds, like cats purring, bottles scrapping on tables and a cauldron bubbling. They gathered the sounds from Free sounds and his own personal library of sounds. They adjusted the sound levels on each sound so others were more prominent than other like in real life and then found some music that fitted well with our animation, which turned on during the historic parts to show the change.
Eve was in charge of editing our animation, she has had previous experience in editing videos, she uses Adobe Premiere Pro. As we were all animating on different laptops, we had exported all the scenes separately, she used premiere pro to put all the parts together. She included different transitions, like fading between the intro scene and the second scene to make it less sudden and it gave the scene a more peaceful look instead of a sudden scene change. Other transitions she did were the 2D explosions to the stop-motion scenes, she layered the transparent explosion over the potion falling scene and the first stop-motion scene. This gave another smooth transition, but it also shows the audience that it was the explosion that transports them into the historic eras.
During this project, I have really enjoyed animating in 2D and stop-motion; I have seen improvement with my skills to animate to both 2D and stop-motion. I have also gained confidence in using Harmony premium 21; I had a bit of trouble with it in the beginning as my licence would not work, so I could not use the program. But I emailed the support line, and with their help I figured out how to sort it, and after a couple of weeks of trying different options, I finally managed to use the program on my laptop. While the weeks had passed, Su-Lynn Tan had shown us how to animate with Harmony, as I could only use the program at uni, I had lost some practice time with Harmony before we got our briefs, but due to Su-Lynn Tan uploading the lecture online I was able to recap, and write notes after uni, which helped me increase my skills. I also attend Chris Eales Stop-motion tool kit, these sessions on a Friday afternoon, really helped me gain skills that I wouldn’t have know about without going to these sessions, this really helped me and my group when shooting our stop-motion parts. If we had never done these tool kits, I believe the shooting would have taken twice as longer as we would have known nothing. I really enjoy the stop-motion tool kit and plan to carry on with it until the end of the year.
I have never work with an actual client on a project before, so having the chance to work with the Horniman Museum was really exciting, having the brief assignment and talking to the clients about what they wanted, was really useful practice for the future when I have another client project in uni, or even working with clients during my DPS year and even after uni. I hope to have more client based projects for the future.
Some other problems that came up during the project that I haven’t previously talked about through this PDF, was that the material that Ollie brought for Beatrix’s clothes didn’t turn up in time, while this didn’t put us behind on our animating, it brought up the problem on how we were going to create her outfits. Luckily enough, we had some felt which was originally a bit too thick for her outfits and was a shade lighter for what we had planned her dress to be. But as we had no choice, Ollie made her outfit with the thicker felt and then watered down some acrylic paint and tried to dye her dress. We were lucky that this worked, and it came out really well. To fight this problem in the future, if I need to order things for a project with a deadline, I will try to order as early as I can and if this doesn not work, to always have a back-up plan and materials just in case.
One thing I would improve upon in the project is to make sure I use the same brush size when 2D animating. While I thought I had used the same size brush for the standing scene and the hugging scene, when exported it was clear that I had not used the same size brushes as the outline of Beatrix and Bonk in the standing scene looked much thicker than the lines used on the scene after. The next time I animate, I will double check the line thickness in the program but also do test shots to see if they look the same thickness when exported.
I also feel that during this project I have improved my team work skills, while I was always good at working in teams. Working with people that I have never worked with before and whom have different skills, really showed me what makes a good team and how to combat problems together. With great communication, we managed to solve all the problems that came up during the project and helped each other when others were stuck. With my group, we managed to create an animation that we are all proud of and had lots of fun creating. While I would love to work with this team again, I believe the next time we have a group project in uni I will choose people of who I have never worked with before. As I now feel more confident in my teamwork skills and knowing how I fit into a group with my weakness and strengths, which I believe would lead me towards another successful project.
refection
Throughout this project, I have really enjoyed working for our client, The Horniman Museum, and working within my group. I have never animated for a big company, so working with them and hearing their advice, critique and praises really helped me through this animation process. By having my group’s animation displayed inside a museum for everyone that visits to see is a real honour and really exciting. Throughout the process we had a few bumps, like the paint on the stop-motion background being shiny, Toom Boom Harmony 21 not installing on my laptop for few weeks and material ordered for Beatrix’s outfits turning up late, but together we combated these problems when they came up and used the resources we had to complete our animation to our very best.
This was my first proper stop-motion animation project. While learning the basics in the Stop-motion tool kit, I learned a lot while doing this project and solved many problems while the shooting was happening. This has made me and my group more efficient at filming stop-motion and can easily solve problems that come up during shooting faster now. I am so pleased and proud of how it turned out and I can’t wait to see it in the museum and to see the audience’s reactions to Beatrix and Bonk.