Extended Practice: Sound

I'd admittedly been putting off producing sound for my animation and instead have been favouring producing as much animation as possible. It's not that I was never going to add sound. It's just that I wanted to produce as much footage as possible first before adding sound after. However I had been given regular feedback from Annabeth, my musician, and other animators that I should be currently considering sound. Markus my musician had informed me on our last meeting that the more sound I have the easier it'll be to score.

In preparation for a presentation in which we watched all of our animations together where sound was going to be an important part. I spent the day compiling sounds. I began by producing a list of all the sounds I would need for my animation.

From looking at this list it was evident that compiling sound was going to take a lot longer than I'd previously anticipated. 

I cast fellow second year animator Daniel goodman to play the cop. I felt like he would be the perfect choice because even though he has got quite a masculine voice, he is also quite softly spoken of which is exactly what I am going for with this animation. Recording his sounds was quite a successful experience as he was very natural at it considering I had not given him the easiest job. I had not given him the easiest job because there is obviously no talking at all in my animation so it's not like he could just read lines off a script. I had to verbally describe sounds and grunts his character would make.

The complicatedness of the task did not stop there however. When it came to editing the sounds he had made into the animation that was a difficult task as well. In most animation, the sound is recorded first so the sound can be animated. However here I had done it the other way round. I do not regret working this way as I really needed to watch the movement of the animation to judge what sounds should go over it. I don't think I would have been fully able to realise what sounds I would need, simply with a guide being my animatic. On the other hand, my Live Action Video does do a significantly better job at showing mw what sound effects I need where so perhaps I could have used this as a guide. This is probably what I'll do from now on. Considering the time I have left to complete all of the animation and all of the sound, I feel it would be irresponsible to leave sound to the very end as I now realise it is not a day long job, it is in fact at least a week long job.

Furthermore, when compiling audio clips for my animation it was evident that my fellow animators were compiling clips that were to serve the purpose of being 'demo' clips. For example, Oscar had informed me that much of the sound he had spent time editing into his animation he was wanting to replace further down the production process. While I understood this way of working as it shows you exactly where sounds will go and sort of what they will sound like in the final product. I felt like working this way for me personally was a waste of time. Because I was inexperienced at sound editing I felt like compiling sounds was taking long enough, why would I want to spend any time finding a sound clip and editing it into my animation if I did not have the full intention of using it. Therefore instead I decided to work in a way where all the sound I found I wanted to be a high enough quality for me to keep as my final sound, if I do decide I don't like the sounds I've used I will happily replace them but due to my timekeeping skills I did not want to waste anytime with this process. 

Had I the chance to do this project again I would definitely try to recruit someone else to do the sound for my animation. It was short sighted of my to assume it would not take long considering this is something people do as a degree I'm trying to do to a professional standard in such a short space of time. However I am nor regretful of taking on the task in this project. Even though from the start I have been advised that distributing the work amongst other fellow animators would be more efficient, having taken on to some extent all areas of the film's production has allowed me the chance to learn in areas before I did not know to much about.

My (very belated) second meet-up with Markus the Musician

It had taken me forever to get around to it, but I finally arranged a second meet-up with Markus the musician a good four months after we had first met. Annabeth had urged me about the importance of getting my sound design sorted and while I acknowledged this was an important task, I was simply putting it off with developing visuals because the visuals were right in front of me. I think what really pushed me to the idea of getting it sorted was the fact that I needed to give Markus enough time to develop the soundtrack so he doesn't have to rush it.

He agreed instantly to a meet-up on two days notice. In preparation I decided to create a demo soundtrack for my animation that did not feature the songs I wanted to definitely use, but what I felt like the songs would accomplish would be to give Markus a sense of what tone of music should go where.

My demo soundtrack was awful. Admittedly I had thrown it together fairly last minute in a dash preparation for my meeting but had I had a lot longer to work on it, I doubt I'd have been able to improve the quality that significantly.

The songs I picked were fairly poppy and very well known. But the real problem with them was that they were all so different and while they could work separately in a feature film soundtrack, in the soundtrack for an animation that's less than three minutes long, these songs would just be too jarring. I don't think this demo soundtrack was very helpful for Markus. However I felt that did not matter because the more we spoke, the more I felt like we were on the same page. Furthermore, I feel in that meeting along he was able to expand upon and give me knew ideas that I hadn't considered. For example, he said that it might be a good idea to just make one long track for the whole animation, one with a similar tune, but a tune that fluctuates slightly in tone. I very much agreed with this and felt like it would add a great sense of consistency to the project.

Obviously the fact that we are both third years on separate courses at separate universities is concerning to me slightly because it means we can't keep each other updated as much as we like. However communication between Markus has always been very easy and efficient, he get's back to me instantly and I feel like I can rely on him slightly.

Extended Practice: Belated Weekly Blogpost

Production is moving faster than before and I feel that the process is beginning to snowball. Above is the animatic document in which I am placing all of my final clips. The highlighted clips are what I've animated in the last week and to my astonishment, it's almost half of my final clips. I would immediately think that's down to this week being very intense on the workflow and the rest of the time I've simply taken it easy, but that just isn't the case. I did know that in this week I would complete a lot of clips due to many of the clips being rather simple and containing minimal movement. However, not all the clips were simple.

For example the above shot was my second shot to feature both characters on screen at the same time. This shot was complicated because it featured a walk cycle, and not just a simple walk cycle and both characters needed to react to each other in that they needed to track each other's movements. The first time I animated a shot that featured both characters on screen it took a week to complete. This time it took two days and if I really wanted to, I could have just about finished the shot in one day. This is evidence to me that my workflow is picking up and as I get to better grips with the software Animate CC I am also figuring out shortcuts I can take to save myself time.

Extended Practice: Belated Weekly Blogpost

I realise that I am a couple weeks late for this blogpost, but a chunk of this time was used on work experience.

Managing my Time

I am now heavily into my animation production and feel like even though I am behind on schedule, now I have fully learnt the animation software, understand the character designs I'm working with, understand the background aesthetics I'm working with, the process is now beginning to snowball. Furthermore, the third shot I animated took a week to animate due to the fact it featured both characters on screen, interacting with the background designs, and approaching the camera. All these aspects make for a complicated shot and made this by far the most complicated shot I have animated yet and one of the most complicated shots I will probably animate in this project. I did not give myself enough time for this shot.

Okay, so looking at my schedule (dark green highlights the tasks I've completed) I am a few weeks behind. But if there's one thing that's encouraging from looking at this schedule is that if I complete all of Week Two's shots then the next weeks shots in comparison look pretty easy to me to get finished.

Most of the above shots that need to be animated contain limited to no movement whatsoever which means I maybe able to complete a week's task in only a few days which will mean I can begin to catch up with my gantt chart.

Reflecting on the shots I have been animating

With the understanding of the amount (or increasingly lack thereof) of time I have to complete all my shots, I have begun to gradually alter my work ethic. Up till recently I was animating everything completely chronologically and while I am admittedly still  doing this, how I've gone about it has changed. Before hand I would take a scene from my storyboard, animate the roughs, then animate the neats, then colour the neats, then draw and colour the background before compiling that one scene together and placing it in the animatic.

Although this is a way I like to work so I can stay completely organised and not lose track. Admittedly it was proving to not be time efficient. I have begun now almost subconsciously to do multiples of a similar task. For example, just the other day I finished the roughs for one scene but instead of scanning those frames and working on neats I decided to get the roughs for the next couple of frames out the way so I could scan them altogether, saving time. Furthermore, instead of just working on one background today, I worked on five.

It's interesting animating shots once you've animated quite a few in a scene. I'm finding that the more shots I complete for Scene 3 in which is set in the cop's living room, the more rules I need to follow. There are multiple different angles of shots in the scene and I found today that I broke the 180 degree rule. 

So I wouldn't break it again I drew the above diagram of where exactly I can point the camera, and I also needed to flip horizontally one set of roughs so the daughter is looking a different direction.

Extended Practice: Presentation Screening of Work so Far

Feedback of my Extended Practice animation progress thus far I think went rather well. At this stage in the project, there wasn't a whole lot we could feedback to each other other than 'just do it'. For me I received pretty much the same. Admittedly, in the case of my progression, I am behind on schedule. But in a worst case scenario it was reassuring to know that worst comes to worst, I just need to have completed the shots that are essential to the narrative.

I was advised by Oscar that I should holt my progression and focus on not animating the more complicated shots first, but instead concentrate on animating the most relevant shots. For example, shots with key action in them that carry the story. Furthermore, he advised me to animate the shots that are not so successful at communicating the narrative, not that these shots let down the story, but how I've visually communicated them in the storyboard/animatic is perhaps week and could benefit from me animating them. If I do this with all shots in my animation that are like this then I would at least have been able to communicate my story. However I am still aiming to finish all the shots in my animation by the Extended Practice deadline.

Extended Practice: Creating a Gantt Chart

One of my main criticisms is that I am not particularly good at organisation or time management, particularly in an animation project. I find myself becoming so invested in the work that I rarely stop to think about how I'm managing my time. For example, I'll often get carried away working on one particular shot, never leaving it alone till I'm certain it's perfect, even if the shot is small and not an integral part of the narrative and then the rest of the animation will suffer.

During my time on the course I became infamous for having spent two years of my life on a twenty second animation, admittedly most of that time was spent on hand shading every single frame but definitely taught me some important life lessons. Extended Practice is the last project I'll be working on at uni so it's essentially my last chance to prove that I can mange my time effectively on a project so I was given advice to create a gantt chart.

Every task that I need to complete is laid out here. Now looking at the chart, the amount of shots I need to physically animate are large in quantity if I'm thinking about how many I need to produce a week. However the lengthiness and complexity of each shot differ significantly. Some shots are complex and feature a lot of movement, others however contain minimal if no movement at all. The idea of which order to animate which shots in was thought about. 

An idea that was given to me was to animate the most complicated shots first so I get them out the way and then the less complicated shots last. I thought about this but decided against it since I felt that by working that way I would find the animation process an incredibly laborious task for a significant amount of time. I wanted to work chronologically because I felt like it would hep me understand how the flow of my narrative was developing ad how my characters were developing based on what came before. Furthermore it would mean that almost as a reward for taking a lot of time over a complicated shot I might then only have to animate a static shot immediately after. Annabeth recommended to me however that if I didn't want to work in the way of getting the complicated shots out the way first I should still break up my shots list into categories of 'very complicated', 'moderate' and 'simple shots' just so I can get an idea of how many shots, in particular, complicated shots I still had left to do so I could manage my time better.