Artistic Style of Film developing.

While the rest of the team have been animating, I decided to make me and Sam in charge with the visual style of the film, we were working with a scroll type background and also using photo shop to create sky.

Here our the results, This was one of the exciting parts of the film as We were actually seeing progress and the artist and technical people were mixing up.

Sam was in charge of all the rendering and we had to work closely to achieve the desired look.

 

I really wanted to push the concept and did some research, I looked up the Chinese Olympic Animation and thought the colour tones were really effective, the neutral colours of the mountain with the warm sky gave it a kind of fantasy element.

I then began experimenting with different variation of sky's , Sam would then composite this into the 3.D render.The first two sets of sky were to intense and the heavily painted style clashed slightly with the simplistic style of the film. The third one was more of a washed out version, this is becasue I erased some of the sky so, that the paper style background still bled through.

The results were working nicely and the our film now had an authentic type of oriental style.

Sam had rendered in Ambient occlusion then integrated colour, he had placed the sky over the top and it looked very interesting and slightly fantasy. I painted the sky in photo shop.Sam now had a clear idea of how the film should look. He created many render tests and eventually we decided to select the above style. The reason being it was not to heavily textured and the style was still simple, we wanted the film to have a simplistic style as, we could have gone two ways, either very realistic or highly stylized and simple.

This image has been composed on photo shop in Layers, But Sam's actual render looked very like this one.

Texturing

Originally I was meant to UV map the characters , Howver I was caught up with many other aspects of the projetc and didn't have time, In the end Tara stepped in and UV mapped the characters.

I painted the textures on photosphop and originally I was trying to make the marmot appear realistic, but in the end went for a far more simple look. The simple style suited our film more. 

 I was using various brushed to try and recreate fur, the effects were looking strong, but the style did not fit in with our film.

 Tara had created the rough effect of fur on this, I then re worked it adding a contrast of light and dark adding slightly more depth to the marmot.

I then applied a filter on potoshop which gave an intersting effect and we ended up keeping this as the final texture.

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Here is the process of how I ended up making the final texture for the man, I wanted it to match my original Concept.

End result of man Texture.

I was pleased with the cartoony look, I would have liked slightly more detail, but the priority now was on the animation.

Test animation (Results)

Ok Guys and girs, thankyou for all offering to help out in our animated film Snatched. 

In order to see your animation we would like you to do a test piece, all the information should help you understand your job.

 Animatic  -------------------  http://vimeo.com/21998366

 Please animate from  0:28 to 0:29 good luck. 

A drive Account Details :  Here u can dowload all the maya scenes and models. 

username: DPankhurst87@gmail.com
password:                                                          A drive - http://www.adrive.com/

http://groupblogba.blogspot.com/2011/04/animation-shots.htm   here is a list of all the animated shots. 

Ps I will email you this evening to let you all know the exact scenes that you should download from the A Drive account so everything is crystal Clear.

ALL the best good luck , and I would like you to have a test complete by Monday, Tuesday next week. 

Email me if there are any problems, or if you are struggling to finish. 

Here is an online copy of this email  http://www.davidleggeba.blogspot.com/ 

Here are some animated films which I was inspired by

http://groupblogba.blogspot.com/p/animated-films.html

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Our film at this stage was behind schedule,  If there were any concerns It was always my responsibility as the Director to address the issues and find ways of resolving them, I would regular have meetings with Tara and both of us would discuss any problems with the film.

We had a lack of completed animation and all felt it would not be fair to hold the entire animation of the film on just Hayley alone. We therfore decided to recruit some more animators.

Rob Bowels, James Waters and Lilly Black were the three animators we got in contact through email, all of them were in their second year and all seemed eager to be a part of this film.

This is Rob's Text that he produced for us.

Lilly was very busy and failed to produce us a run cycle.

This is the result James produced for us,

I decided to go with Rob as our new animator, his run had the most potential, I think James's also had potential, but we had divided the scenes up all ready and only had space for one more animator. We really appreciated the work they had produced and said thank you to everyone who produced the test pieces.

Animation. 

Before the animation began we sat down as a group and composed a shot list.

Tara wrote it up and attached it to an email, as usual me and Tara would discuss, the shots and then from here devise a plan.

SAM

DEAN

DAVID

HAYLEY

TARA

ROB

Animation Shots - SNATCHED

1. Camera Zoom in eagle view, Mongolian walking to fire.

2. Marmot sniffing the smell

3. Marmot poke head up behind rock. Mongol is cooking by fire.

4. Marmot sneaks up behind man

5. Mongol looks around, Mongol and Marmot come face to face

6. Marmot steals the Chicken and runs away

7. Reaction Shot of Mongolian upset and Angry about food being taken.

8. Marmot runs away over hills in distance

9. Mongol runs towards camera

10. Mongol runs over hills after marmot.

11. Mongol chase marmot up a hill. Marmot Jumps on rock and goes to start sliding down the hill. Mongol Trips on rock and fly’s forward (in Slow motion)

12. Sliding down hill.

13. Camera shake towards log – Hands Shaking

14. Marmot and Mongol Sliding through log.

15. Both slide out of log, Marmot get grabbed in mid air

16. Free-Fall Fighting

17. Climb out of ditches both Mongol and marmot.

18. Marmot and Mongol run cycle over the hills

19. Mongol runs up hill, side view no legs showing

20. Marmot Jumps over Rocks

21. Mongol reaches top of hill slowly – out of breath, Marmot dancing

22. Mongol takes chicken from the marmot, Reaction shot from Marmot.

23. Zoom out- Eagle Wing shot and Fly over

24. Marmot points out the eagle behind him, jumping up and down and flapping his arms to try make him protect the food.

25. Mongol looks around at bird – Reaction shot as food gets swiped from his hand.

26. Bird snatches chicken close up.

27. Bird fly’s off with chicken

28. Reaction shot of both of them, Mongol gets his great idea

29. Marmot swinging from Spit

 Animation Begins. 

Shot 1 animation break down please click on image to see a clear full description.

Shot 14 break down please click on image to see a clear full description.

 Shot 15 break down please click on image to see a clear full description.

I had problems breaking down the last scene, as for some reason my keyboard wouldn't allow me to screen print. here is the video of all the animation that I did on this film.

Overall I was proud of the animation that I produced, It could have been polished off, but it did reflect which was shown in the animatic therefore the scenes fitted with the rest of the animation.