The finished reel – The Block of Love
animatic of the Block of Love
Timelapes of me animating
Personal Project
Key dates
Tuesday 15th February: Exploratory Practice Unit and Personal Project Briefing
Wednesday 2nd March: Statement of Intent formative submission by 3pm via Moodle
Wednesday 9th March: Interim 1 presentation – Proof of Concept
Wednesday 27th April: Interim 2 presentation – Animatic and Proof of Concept
Tuesday 31st May: Final Presentation
Thursday 9th June: Summative submission by 3pm BST (15:00) via Moodle
Aims / Context
This unit enables you to pursue a personal project and investigate an area of interest in time-based media, resulting in an individually authored work (or series of works). There is no constraint on form other than being required to justify its relationship to the discipline of animation and you will be encouraged to take risks, experimenting with techniques and exploring formats beyond the traditional. This is your opportunity to promote
yourself as an auteur, defining your own personal style and outlining directions in your work.
Your choice of subject and specialisation will be self-negotiated and guided by your unit tutor. You can work solo whilst gaining support from students/ collaborators in minor roles or work in small groups.
Brief
Create a 1–2-minute animated film that promotes you as an auteur, defining your individual style whilst experimenting with techniques and
formats that help you develop directions in your work. You should explore themes that have personal value to you. You will consider the
relationship between sound and moving image.
You can choose to focus on one specific aspect of your research or combine different aspects together but be careful not to overcomplicate things – simple stories with a clear message will work best.
Approach
You will develop a project that demonstrates your ability to engage with the creative production process to complete an animation project
showing significant conceptual and technical skill that has considered context and its relationship to its audience. After an intensive experimental testing, research and development phase, you must propose a sophisticated conceptual and visual language for your production. Your idea must be pitched as a treatment that outlines your concept, intended audience and viewing context. Key aesthetic elements such as visual language, pace, character, genre, environment and tone or ambience should be highlighted. An indication of how you intend to produce the project should be considered with technical needs and new learning being addressed. An indication of production planning should be outlined, informed by the project schedule.
Developing your personal project with reference to contemporary and historical issues, themes, design, artwork and theories is an important part
of the research that will give your project context and authenticity.
You should continuously evidence in your blog, a reflective and critical engagement in the development of visuals for storyboarding,
environments, turnarounds, tests etc. The brief is open and there are no constraints on form, content or platform. However, there are basic
production constraints:
• Duration needs to be carefully considered and the works should aim to be around 1 to 2 minutes in length.
• Duration needs to be carefully considered for pieces that are of an alternative format e.g. interactive / animated graphic novel; installation;
performance piece.
• Sound should be considered as part of the project development, pre-production, production and post- production process.
Delivery
It’s important that you stick to the 1–2-minute length. A couple of seconds more or less are ok, but you should create 1–2-minute glorious
minutes with high production values rather than a longer duration with inconsistency. You will deliver an h264 file at 40mbps, HD (1920×1080) at
25fps with sound.
Logline
A trip around a block of apartments, discovering the different types of love.
Synopsis
Zooming around a block of apartments, we discover the different types of love. Whether it be between friends or family or even pets, we all have someone to love. These apartments show us how love is presented and how other express their emotions towards the one they love.
Interim 1 comments
more camera movements, less repetitive
add conflict – no love without pain
during spring holidays i started making the puppets and the sets
making outfits for the puppets
designed appartment block and room in sims 4 so i could get the bassics and the layout
interim 2
created new storyboard/animatic
i made 3 animatics all with different sounds one with only background music, one with only foliage noise and then one with both. i chose the one with both as it gave the animation weight
designed floor plans on where furniture and the positions of appartments are next to each other
with this floor lay out i planned the camera movements and transitions to next rooms
IDEAS
When we were first introduced to this project, it was suggested to choose a topic that relates to us on a personal level. My first thought was to focus my animation about my family as I’m very close to my whole family, but I struggled to come up with any ideas or a storyline. I widened my subject matter and decided that one thing my family had in common was “Love”. Love is a subject that could offer me a wide range of storylines and could cover both good love and bad love. I chose this subject as I wanted to create a film with no conflict or unpleasant subjects’ bad subjects, as we are currently surrounded by so many horrible things like the war in Ukraine, covid-19 and the shootings in America, the list could go on. I thought by creating a film about love, I could show how love brings light and joy into our lives and offer the viewer a respite from the darker world. There are bad things happening and we could give the viewer a momentary break so they could lighten their world for a short time. I began by writing down the types of love and researching how people showed their emotions, this helped me gather my thoughts and ideas began to form. After narrowing my ideas down, I decided on 2 ideas. The first was, based on a couple meeting, this I thought would be best started in monotone, as they started falling in love. I would then move to colour, this would then show how their mood moved from sadness to happiness. My other idea was to focus on one block of flats, where the viewer ‘moved’ around, I could then offer the viewer different types of love in different windows. Before starting my research, I knew I wanted to create my project in with stop-motion, it’s my favourite style of animation as I love creating sets and puppets. I thought about the pros and cons of creating each idea. I decided to choose my second idea, as it showed more types of love, and really wanted to challenge myself, with this I created my logline and synopsis.
PLOT/STORYLINE
With my chosen idea, I started writing the types of love I wanted to include Platonic Romantic Family Pets Objects I wanted to incorporate as many types as I could to offer the viewer depth, I settled on 5 key themes, which would then work with the “block of flats background”, I decided to remove ‘objects’ as I or my family are not materialistic and it isn’t important to me as the others were. Now I had my core subjects I moved on to create with a rough timeline. I wanted my film to seem like it was an outsider spying on all these flats, to show this I will start from the outside with a wide-angle shot showing the whole of the block and then slowly zoom in to focus on one of the windows (rooms), I would the pan out and move to the next room.
CHARACTER DESIGN
I wanted to keep it simple and focus on the meanings of love so I could get my story across. This meant keeping the number of characters down so not to overcrowd the shots. I decided to have 11 characters in total, 9 adults, 1 child and 1 cat. Throughout the pre-production, I tried to think how I could make my project as eco-friendly and control the production budget. I created 4 adult puppets, 1 child puppet. The cat puppet is from another film I created. I then looked at creating a set of customised clothes and wigs, but kept the body shapes and skin tones the same. Using clip studio paint, and the sims 4, I created 9 adult character designs. Using the sims I could randomise their skins tones, face shapes, eye colour and hair colour. I had never used the sims with creating characters, and in next projects I will defiantly be using this gain. as not only did it save time, I could easily see how they would look in 3D and this helped me with creating my puppets an their clothes. I didn’t design the cat character as I was reusing a puppet I had previously used on another project (Beatrix and Bonk), I just added some embroidery silk and a bell to complete his look for this project.
BACKGROUND DESIGN
I wanted to keep the slightly menacing appearance, so I kept the outside dirty and rundown, which would additionally offer the viewer a feeling of looking like a dangerous place to live. I wanted a contrast between the outside where I wanted to show no love and the inside where love was present.I hope this brings across that no matter where you are in life, love can create a place where you feel safe.
I researched into other stop-motion films to see how others created props like furniture and decoration for the inside of the flats. The main company that I looked at was Laika Studios. They are well known for their amazing sets. While many of the materials they used were out of reach of a small budget film and, with the fact I wanted to be eco-friendly, I took away techniques that they used to create their furniture and used this to assist with my requirements. Keeping in mind that I would have to create all the furniture and decorations within the flats, I created floor plans for the four flats. Using this, I created a quick recreation in the Sims to assist with layout and perspective. I kept the designs of the flat and the props simple and neutral, so it wouldn’t be noticeable that I was reusing props.
STORYBOARD & ANIMATIC
Creating storyboards and animatics is my least favourite part of creating animations but attending some online lessons on “how to successfully create them” has helped me get a better understanding. I created the storyboard/animatic on storyboard pro. As my animation is going to be stop-motion, I went for a more simplistic look on my storyboards. The most important thing for me was getting my timing’s right, so filming would be easier for me. For the first interim, I created my first storyboard for the project. When I first created the storyboard, I only used one transition between flats which was a zoom in and out between windows, I was informed during the interim by classmates and lecturers, that this was quite sudden movement and very repetitive and could bore the viewer, moreover, could distract the viewer from the true meaning of my animation. I agreed with these comments and changed to different transitions, deciding to select a moving camera shot that slid to each flat through walls/floors. As I wanted to take the viewer on a journey, my animation was shot with just one camera movement. I believed this was the best way to show the progression of my story. I had to change the camera angles while moving the camera. This was more difficult in the production stage but, I believe that pushing myself to complete something I haven’t accomplished before could only strengthen me and would expand my skill set as I like to learn from my mistakes. Another important thing I needed to cover, was assisting my sound designer understand the mood of the scene, this then allowed for the right choice of sound effects and allow for better musicality, this would then give the viewer more substance and set in their minds what I wanted them to feel when they watched each of the scenes.
PUPPET CREATION
This was the part of the project I was most excited about – creating everything I had designed. I made all the puppets first, taking the skills that I had learnt in Chris’ stop-motion tool kit. As I was looking being eco-friendly and sustainable, I only made 5 puppets with armature wire and epoxy clay (which I could reuse), which then would be customised to fit the different characters, keeping only the body shape and skin tone the same.
I originally measured the puppets at 13cm for the 2 smaller puppets and 14 cm for the 2 taller puppets, which allowed enough head room so I could animate within the L shape of the outside building. This was my first mistake, as I forgot that once the armature had the additions of foam and cork shoes as well as its foam head and wig, they were going to be much bigger than 13cm and 14cm. With this mistake made, I had to scrap the whole idea of working within the L shape of the cardboard block.
My second mistake was with making the puppets using the wrong hot glue and not adding enough foam to the wire. As I was needle felting my puppets, making them out of foam was crucial as it’s a material that can easily be needle felted, but the hot glue I used to stick the foam to the armature dried hard which meant I couldn’t needle felted into it. To combat this, I instead needle felted the puppets skin into strips and then hot glued them onto the puppet’s arms, this wasn’t the best choice and, in the future, will correct my mistakes by using craft hot glue instead of the DIY version, I will additionally add more foam to the puppets so I can easily felt them.
For the puppets’ heads I used ‘crafting foam clay’, this is a clay that can be moulded while wet but once it dries it turnings into foam, this can easily then be needle felted. I had previously used this foam in a group project, so knew how it worked and how well needle felt could stick to the foam.
After creating the puppet’s body and head, the next task was to create their wigs. To do this, I researched on YouTube how to create doll wigs and from the videos I watched from a doll customiser “Dollightful”, I learnt how to do this. while also using material that I found at my home: – Embroidery thread – String – Wool – Torn apart bag straps.
I created enough wefts to cover the puppet’s head, utilising different materials for different hair, this allowed me to create the different textures of hair, which gave the characters more variety. The last thing to create was the shoes. For these I wanted a light material that wouldn’t weigh the puppets down but could be removed, to allow for clothing changes. I was thinking between clay and cork, in the end I decided to create the shoes with cork as it’s very lightweight but can be carved by sanding into the desired shape. Once I had the correct shape and size I painted the cork to make white, blue and red shoes.
PUPPET CLOTHES
After creating the puppets, I started making their clothes. I have been sewing clothes since I was 12, so this part I thought was relatively easy. Wanting to keep my eco-friendly, I was using off cuts that my Nan had given me. Before I started sewing, I sorted through my old barbie clothes to see if there were any outfits that I could use on my puppets. As the barbies I had when I was younger were tall and skinny, there were limited items I could re-use and that would fit my puppets. The only clothes I could use were a yellow swimsuit, which I turned into a tank top, and a pair of jeans. Following the designs I had made within the Sims 4 game, I measured and cut out the clothes and then stitched them together, using a blanket stitch and/or the back stitch. I used these for the smaller clothes, and they offered a sturdier seam. I hemmed all the edges to make the fabric sturdier; and this also gives the clothes a more finished look. Acting like a tailor, I fitted the puppets one by one, reviewing and modifying as I went. During this, I found that some of the materials weren’t holding the stitching, which then meant I needed to start again with different materials. I tested combinations and to keep the manufacturing time down, I had decided to utilise the clothes across a few of the puppets by mixing and matching. After filming a few scenes I reused and slightly altered some of the outfits , this helped me reduce my overall timeline, and allowed me to move into the animating stages earlier.
SET CREATION
For most of my set design I used cardboard, that mum gained from her job in a garden centre, and wooden kebab sticks that have been in my kitchen for years. Using these materials not only was a reusing them, but in the end they would be recyclable. To give the illusion that this was a whole building, I cut out 30cmx25cm of cardboard and put them in a L shape, After careful consideration, painting each brick line would have taken forever and the quality of the lines might not be the same as each other, so I use my old lino kit and cut out brick lines, which I then rolled on paint and places on the brick red. I thought about how to connect the lino print lines, so when cutting the lino, I made sure each side lined up with its opposite. After building the block I made the building look rundown and in a poor condition, by creating old posters out of masking tape and painted graffiti on one side. I thought about doing some random words, but while walking home, I saw a street artist painting the word love on a wall near my house. I was inspired by this and included it in the building.
As I explained before about my puppets being bigger than I expected, I cut out separate pieces of cardboard to make each of the flats. These had to be plain to allow for the changes between each of the flats, so that I didn’t need to make individual ones per flat. To keep everything from looking mismatched, I painted the windows, door and shelves all the same dark wood colour. The problem with it being quite dark is that the light would easily shine off it. I encountered this problem from my last project and learned from my mistakes; I dusted some talcum powder over all the objects, and this removed most of the shine. To create the floor, I bought some balsa wood from the Uni’s art shop, here I stuck it down to the piece of cardboard that I had measured before. Once it was dry, I carved in wood grain to offer the look of real floorboards using a blunt object. As I had some left over, I used it to create a skirting board and the two walls that would be seen mostly by the camera.
PROP CREATION
When designing the floor layout, I noted down how much furniture I would need and other decorations like plants, video game consoles and basic decorations. With my list I set to making them, like everything else, I aimed to reuse old objects lying around my house, most of the items consist of bottle tops, twine, cardboard and kebab sticks. Creating these objects with the material was relatively easy and quick. I will definitely be using these material to create more prop of other films. At the end of the project I will not be throwing away most of the props, as I will aim to use them in future projects, while I may customise them to suit other films, keeping these will save me a lot of time and work for future.
STOP-MOTION PROCESS
When starting the animation I didn’t think I would come in to many problemas as I had animated many times before, but what gave me the most trouble was the camera and moving it. So the first week is started filming I had not animated in a while and looking back the animation looks terrible, its jumpy and not smooth. With the added problem of the camera movement and having to create different angles while shooting, the first week went terrible. So I went away and worked on something else over the weekend and came back the following tuesday to smash it out. Thinking over what had gone wrong the week before, I thought of solutions. To combat the changing camera angles, I used a lightbox, with a spinning circle centre. This let me turn my set easily and to keep the set from moving I taped it to the acrylic centre, so the walls kept in the correct place I taped them together and carefully moved them along with the floor.
My next issue were the facial expressions, in the beginning I had wanted to use paper for the eyes and mouth, but as I was already a week behind on my schedule, I thought it would be better to 2D animate the facial expressions, this way I could concentrate of the puppets movements and the camera movements. Another thing that reduced the quality of my animation was the camera movements and zooms. I tried to create all the movements and zooms manually, this was a bad idea. I have now learnt that I can achieve a much soother look while doing it on editing software. Another way I can create smooth camera movements is a camera dolly, this will vastly increase the quality of my animation and would be a very good investment. The one of the things that im really pleased about is the lighting on the set. I wanted it to have an orange hue to show the warmth within the characters flats. Using coloured gells, I was able to achieve this warmth with either orange and red gells. For the outside I wanted a more cold and dark lighting, for this I lowered the light brightness and places a balck and dark blue gells over the light The animation while it came out the way I envisioned it, but the walls and props jump around a lot, while I did always try to keep everything the same and did mostly taped everything down. Human error does get in the way.
If I was to re-shoot now with the knowledge of everything I learnt from this project, I would try and make sure I secured everything down with glue instead of tape. This would allow me to animate without accidentally bumping into the props. One comment I received during the last interim, was that in the shots in the flat, it looks like an earthquake, and was to told that I could own my mistakes and make this another part of the story. I really loved this idea, as it shows that the love held within the flats was so stong that it created an earthquake. As well, while at first I though it looked messy I really like the shaking and the unsteadiness of the set, as it give the film a little quirk and makes it stand out from other films. So with this added idea, I would probably change my logline/synopsis, to include something about the earthquake.
Something I would do differently is to see wether I can obtain a big turntable, I asked the technicians if they had any but they only had 7inch turntables. I did attempt to use this but as my set was much bigger I was unable to complete any animation with it. I believe getting a bigger turn table, would have been able to complete my animation faster but also at a better quality. While shooting the stop-motion parts, I filmed myself over the 4 days with a timelapse. The video is embedded within MyBlog.
2D ANIMATION
Once I had finished all the stop-motion parts, I had to animate the characters facial expressions, during the stop-motion process I placed pins into the puppets face, this way when animating on top, the eyes and mouth would stay in the same place. In the beginning I tried out multiple styles of the eyes, but decided to choose ones that I felt like they fit the characters more and with these style of eyes they were quick to draw but I could easily show the characters emotions and the viewers could easily pick up on them. While this was very repetitive, I’m really happy how they turned out, it was also fast. I dint have many issues with harmony, except when working at uni, harmony stopped working as there was something wrong with licence. While this only set me back a few days, I had to work extra late so I would be able to finish.
EDITING
I edited all my clips together with premier pro and after effects. To remove the armature wire I used two techniques. One was more successful than the other, the first was I attempted to use the colour key and mask out the blue card over the armature. I had never done this before but my class mate Eve and Mario Radev showed me how. This was easier said than done. As I did the camera movements manually and not digitally I had to move the background picture to make sure it matched, while the placement was correct, because the set moved around while I was animating, it never fit up. Another problem to this was that even tho the background and the animation was taken on the same day and the lighting never changed, there was a massive difference with the hues of the images. This made it very obvious and didn’t look clean. These reason made it very hard for me to make it look the way I wanted, you can see within the cat scene. This technique also took me 3 days just to attempt one scene, in the future I will either practise/learn how to use this tool properly or employ someone to do it for me. The other techniche I used in the couple scene, here I took the cells that included the armature wire, and brought them into my drawing software. On a separate layer, I covered the armature wire with colours that matched the wall, door frame and painting, and clipped parts of the floor and covered the bottom of the armature. This work very well, and was much quicker that the other technique. I think for the time being I will continue to use this technique as its much less noticeable and looks much cleaner than using premiere pro.
COLLABORATION & SOUND DESIGN
For my sound design, I employed the help of someone from the sound arts course at uni. Harry Charlton messaged me that he was interested and showed me some of his work. I really enjoyed his work as it reflected what I imagined the background music for my film would be. I wanted a chill background music with foley sound, after showing him my animatic with sound, he knew exactly what I wanted. And after a few revisions, it was perfect. Watching back my animation with sound gives it a whole new perspective and finally makes it feel complete. While I could have created the sound design myself, I really wanted to make more connections outside of my course, and collaborating with a sound designer is perfect as sound and animation always goes well with each other. As he created my sound design for me, I offered him my animating services for any future work he does.
Other collaboration work I completed was for my class mate Eve McMorrough, they asked me to complete some backgrounds for them. I really enjoy creating backgrounds and working within someones else’s style was a real challenge, but it was a great learning moment.
I also helped my other class mate Ollie Bannerman, with some colouring on parts of her animation. This was a last-minute collaboration, but it was really fun working with her style as well, and it was really nice helping her out.
CRITICAL APPRAISAL
I have learnt many things through this project and all of it I will take on and use this knowledge to improve myself and my skills. While many things went wrong within this project, like the camera movement, and editing out the armature wire, learning how to overcome these obstacles in the moment has really helped my thinking and has strengthened me as an animator. I think the best part for me was creating the puppets, sets and props, thinking about what material would look best and then building the props, has showed me my ability in this area, and has opened up other career options. Looking into what it takes to build sets and the props that go with animated films, I would love to work at a studio and make the props.
While making these props, I sustained multiple injuries, one which will probably leave a scar, and also having one of my glue guns explode and shorted out my house’s electricity. It has been a fun project and I hope to create more animated films on my own, whether this be through uni or at my own volition, I hope I can take what I learnt over this project and use it to improve my skills through the years.
Half way through this project, I thought to myself that maybe I made a mistake in choosing the wrong idea, as I really loved my other idea and would love to explore it further in the future. I’m glad I brought The Block of Love idea to life, as it tested my knowledge and my patience, and made me quite stressed at certain times, I can now look back at all the obstacles and be proud of myself that I made it through.
I love the finished product of this project, finally editing all the clips together and then adding the music really brought the whole animation together. I would say that the animation is probably 98% finished, as I still have to complete some small edits on certain scenes, but as I was running out of time. I decided to skip these small edits, as they were only minor changes. During the summer, I will return and complete everything before I add it to my portfolio.