My sweet chilli final outcome. I added some camera movements upon suggestion, and changed around some sounds.
Working on Sweet Chilli overall was an informative experience; I learned a lot about the strengths and weaknesses in my usual approach of working, and I’m able to look back and see where I succeeded and where I would’ve done things differently.
There were elements of my production process that I feel went well, and that I can carry forward into future projects. Firstly, I managed to stay within all of my deadlines without burning out; Usually while working on my projects in the past I didn’t schedule in many breaks and I’d consistently get little sleep in order to finish things on time. While this way of working is effective for a short time, ultimately it isn’t sustainable and it ends up effecting the quality of my work; Going into Sweet Chilli, I established a healthier schedule for myself early on so that I could work an appropriate amount without overdoing it and facing any burnout by adding things like breaks and days off into my weekly plans. I feel this was successful; I was able to finish my animation early and have enough time for revisions and hand in submissions without ever wearing myself out. Moving forward I think I’ll continue to work in ways that prioritise my overall health alongside meeting deadlines.
Secondly, I feel that my design process for this animation was successful. I knew that I wanted to experiment with mixed media and collage, and that I wanted to find a way to make vastly different textures and imagery look coherent and like they belong in the same world. Through early experimentation and ongoing changes after feedback sessions, I feel that I was able to create a coherent and unique visual identity for the project. I’d also call my character designs the strongest element of the film; I put a lot of thought and research into the characters so that even the smaller details on them had some meaning and relevance, while also considering things like readability, silhouettes, colour and how animatable they would be, and I feel I ended up with a strong set of designs for the peace. I’m personally also happy with my sound design; I received negative feedback for sound design on my last short film, and so I put a lot of time and thought into the soundscape of this animation, and I was able to create one that I feel is effective.
There were a lot of elements of my film that I felt showed up my weaknesses, and that I’d also like to work on moving forward. Firstly, I was nervous and hesitant in starting this animation as I had initially planned to take a year out for DPS, and didn’t feel ready to make my final film; I think this anxiety ended up effecting the piece overall. When I didn’t get any places for the DPS year, my confidence toward animation was affected, and as a result I avoided any especially challenging animated shots throughout the storyboarding and animation process, as I didn’t feel confident enough to tackle things I was bad at out of fear that I wouldn’t finish on time, or that the film would look bad as a result. This caused a lot of the shots in Sweet Chilli to have very bland or centric composition, which makes the film feel a bit slower and more tame narratively than I was aiming for visually. I also feel that there aren’t a lot of strong or stand out pieces of animation for me to include in show reels; I feel I could’ve used this opportunity to try and improve more as an animator and to showcase my strengths, but I fell behind a little bit. In my opinion, my 2nd year film features better animation than my 3rd year film, which is regrettable.
Pacing is also something I struggled with during the process of making this film. I consistently didn’t time out my animatics very well as I was very focused on starting to animate early on, and as a result the first draft of the film ended up being 6 minutes, which was a lot longer than intended and drew out the narrative a lot, causing people to disengage in the middle of the film. I consistently received the feedback to make the film shorter and more snappy, but due to both lowered confidence and time restraints, I found it hard to both shorten the film and try to complete the rest of my animated shots as redrafting the story could’ve meant needing new animated shots and not using a lot of the ones I had already made; as a result, the finished film is a little longer than I wanted it to be, and I’m fearful that the duration of the film will bore people and cause them to click off of it before they finish it.
Moving forward, I’ll place a lot more importance on the animatic stage of the production pipeline; If I had created another draft before animating, I could’ve addressed both the pacing issues and the lack of many diverse or interesting shots. I feel I was impatient during the production process of this film and wanted to finish it as quickly as possible, but moving forward I’ll start to take things slowly, and carefully consider each part of the process before I move on and start animating. Looking back I feel that working on a team would’ve also been helpful in regards to these shortcomings; having someone else to help with pacing and composition could’ve allowed me to focus more solely on animation, and I could’ve benefited from having someone with greater compositional sense on the team as it would’ve pushed me to try and animate things outside of what I was comfortable with.
Overall I’m happy with my film, although there are a lot of shortcomings. I may not have created something I’d regard as my best work this time around, but I was able to experiment with things I was interested in and I can use this as a starting point and a motivation to do better moving forward, so I’d still call this a positive experience. I also feel that overall the film will appeal to the audience I’m targeting, and I’m excited and curious to post it online and see the reactions to it. I’m happy that I’m able to identify my weaknesses looking back, and I look forward to seeing how I can improve looking forward.
I started to animate Sweet Chilli as my next course of action, as to not run out of time and have to crunch toward the deadline, as I wanted to avoid the unhealthy method of working I’ve previously leaned towards. within the animation industry. I started with my harder, 3 day long scenes, but while doing them I realised I could finish them more quickly than intended; for most scenes I completed them in a day, allowing me to be ahead of schedule.
I also took note of some of the feedback I received upon my last presentation; I was told to include an hourglass or clock to give a sense of time, and to include a points screen of sorts for more video game influence. I also needed to make my film shorter; I didn’t yet know how I’d achieve this, as the timings of my scenes and some shots in the animatic weren’t matching up causing the film to be longer, and so I decided to present it as it was and listen to feedback on how to make it shorter.
I compiled my animated shots into my animatic and presented them again in the 3rd interim. My criticisms this time were;
Too long- some shots could be cut
the animation felt stiff and there was too much line boiling
the addition of the hourglass and points screens made it feel too long
Anti aliasing of the pngs looked unpleasant
After this feedback, my main concern was the animation looking stiff, so I decided to go back into it and re animate some shots; some would be completely reanimated while others would be edited to include more movement and overshooting. This was the animatic with the edited shots;
I was also worried about the animation feeling too long and becoming boring, so I removed features such as the hourglass along with a few shots ahead of my next presentation, while continuing to animate new shots and being mindful of not making them too stiff. This lead to my interim 5 presentation;
Although I had managed to cut roughly a minute from this version, the addition of my title card brought it back up to 6 minutes and it still felt too long; some shots were held for longer than they should’ve been, and some shots weren’t necessary. I evaluated my film to decide which shots were unnecessary and made some cuts, bringing it down to 4 and a half minutes. I was told that my film should end sooner than I had initially intended, so I cut the ending short. I presented the shorter version at the final interim evaluation;
I added some black outlines to the pngs in this version, which solved the anti aliasing issue and made everything look more coherent. Even with the cuts, my tutors felt that the film was still too long. I was told that the section where the girls make the curry is too long, and that the overall tone of the film is softer and politer than it should be; maybe I should experiment with having the girls be a bit more aggressive with each other, and try to cut the film down to 3 minutes. I was also told that the narrative was unclear and that some of the character’s place in the story wasn’t clear. I was advised to try out more camera movements to keep the energy up, and to try and make the film feel even shorter and snappier. There were also some minor animation errors pointed out to me, like the reviewer clipping over the characters in the scene where she waves goodbye. I was also told that the title of my film was unclear, but I’m not sure how to make it any clearer than putting it in the title card.
At this current point, I’ve run out of ideas on how to shorten the film; I don’t know how to make it any shorter without cutting more things and I feel that the narrative will become even more unclear if I cut anymore shots, and I don’t see where else I can shorten any shots. With our deadline approaching, I feel that I don’t have the time to re draft any parts of the story, as realistically I wouldn’t finish animating anything new on time. I feel it would’ve been useful to make one more animatic before starting where I figure out the pacing issues, but I’m already running out of time as it is after prioritising finishing the animation and I doubt I would’ve been able to meet the deadline if I had done that. I’m going to book a personal tutorial and seek some advice before I create the final version.
With the art direction decided, I wanted to start working on the story for sweet chilli. I started off by asking myself questions about the story overall; why didn’t the two head chefs get along? what did they need to learn? how could they learn it? These questions helped me to figure out the main beats of the story;
Two chefs who hate each other would be instructed to make a curry together for a reviewer.
While making the curry, the girls would disagree on how to do things. Things would take a turn when they refused to let each other add their own respective secret ingredients to the pot.
The girls would fight, not noticing that the reviewer has arrived.
The girls would eventually knock each other unconcious, prompting their boss to visit them in the kitchen. He would add both their ingredients to the pot, rushing to get it to the reviewer.
The girls would be too late to explain what had happened; the reviewer tastes the curry. She likes it, and leaves happily.
After presenting my beats to some of my tutors, they felt that the characters needed a bit more of an incentive to act in the ways that they would; it was proposed to me to raise the stakes of the story by making the review more important. I eventually decided that the review would be to determine whether or not the restaurant is worthy of a ‘golden spoon award’; a Michelin star equivalent that all restaurant owners want. This would give everyone more of an incentive to push for what they think is best; in the end, they all just really want the spoon. It also adds more importance to shallot.
(pictures)
With the main beats figured out, I created a very rough storyboard using post it notes and quick sketches. In this version of the story, the girls are sisters, with a long standing sibling rivalry. They’re eventually instructed by their panic-stricken boss to make a curry for the visiting golden spoon award committee member, determining whether they get the reward or not. After fantasizing about how good they’d look individually after receiving the award, the girls are each determined to do things their own way; they eventually fight while Gobi tries to catch a mouse he spotted in the kitchen, and the story progresses as bullet pointed. I also decided during this time that visually, I’d take inspiration from a mix of video games, computer softwares and comic books for the aesthetic and transitions, adding to the collage feeling of the piece.
I created these pieces of concept art of the girls through the ages for the flashback scene that portrayed them as sisters.
Around this time, I also began to consider the sound design for the piece. I knew that I wanted to characters to have an unusual way of speaking, like characters from ‘animal crossing’ video games; something very digital and nonsensical. I initially tried downloading the vocal synthesizer ‘Utau’ to create their voices, but I had trouble navigating it as it’s only available in Japanese; instead, I played around with different settings on a keyboard to gather voices for the characters. As can be heard below; Scoville’s voice is loud and brassy, Saccharose’s voice is like distorted opera singing and Aloo’s voice is based on string instruments. I originally had a voice for Gobi, but I chose to leave him silent.
When I eventually started to storyboard properly on storyboard pro, it became clear to me that I wasn’t going to be able to include all of my intended plot points in a 2-5 minute film; I decided to cut the backstory element and leave the girl’s rivalry unexplained, and to cut the mouse character and his subplot completely. This lead to my first storyboard;
Upon presenting this storyboard, I received a number of criticisms from different tutors
My interim feedback was that the film overall was too long, and that the characters didn’t act very differently to each other. I needed to be more clever with shot composition and pacing to make the film feel less dragged out; the opening was also criticised for being too predictable, as things like establishing shots and zoom ins are used often to start films, despite not always being needed. It was also recommended that I create a floor plan for the restaurant, to understand how the characters moved around in this type of a space. The mix of aesthetics was also a bit incoherent; I should decide on either comic book visuals or video game visuals, not both
My feedback from my storyboarding class was about the overall composition; I hadn’t used a lot of film language to determine what my shots would look like. I needed to re compose some shots to make them more effective, and this could also make animation easier.
My feedback from FMP support was more or less the same as the other two, but with more focus on art direction. My tutor felt that the mixed media elements had been included a bit too roughly, and that there needed to be more coherency between the real and drawn textures. The line boiling was also a bit too rough, and the lines were too thick.
I got similar feedback from a personal tutorial; the fore and backgrounds of the establishing shot could’ve been established more effectively.
The first form of feedback I chose to work on was the backgrounds; I changed the lines on the floor to be less thick than the restaurant, and I changed the buildings in the background to be sketchier and dimmer in colour, establishing them more as buildings behind the restaurant. I re named the restaurant and put a picture of Aloo on the front, so that it was clear he was the boss/owner.
Around this time, I also created my first animation test for the piece; the girls arguing in the kitchen. I cleaned up the background concept I had created, with cleaner lines and colours.I created some floor plans for my restaurant too, to understand the space more. I wanted a lot of empty space, to give the girls room to fight.
I created a second animatic with some changes;
Some plot points removed; no backstory
the girls only fight once instead of twice
overall timing is choppier
A bit less interaction between shallot and aloo
More video game inspired
The criticisms this time where;
The film now felt too fast and the narrative was unclear
The composition still wasn’t great and some shots were hard to read
Some criticism on the artwork; the boiling on the background still felt like too much, the kitchens didn’t look too pleasant and the thick lines weren’t working well for them
Some shots looked a bit complex and hard to animate, such as the long overhead swoosh into the vs screen
Taking full advantage of my video game aesthetic could save me some animation time and move the story along faster
After receiving this criticism, I once again worked to change things that weren’t working;
I decided on this wobblier aesthetic for the backgrounds, with rough colours inspired by cartoons like ed eddy n eddy. I also removed some real life textures and collage elements to make it feel more coherent, and did away with the boiling line for the floor. I softened the colours a little too, so that they clashed less with the characters.
I went with thinner lines for the background, and boiled less elements than before. I also re did the boiling so that it was more stable.
I re designed the cooperative kitchen, softening the colours and changing the wall to teal so that it was more distinct.
I created this third animatic with some recomposed shots and animation tests, which received more or less the same feedback; it was too fast paced and the characters didn’t act very differently to each other. Some shots could also be tighter or more zoomed in for ease of animation.
After this feedback I re did my animatic; I made it longer again to combat the criticism of it being too short and snappy, and I tried including more video game elements to move it on a bit faster than the first time. I recomposed more shots to add effectiveness. My criticisms this time were that the story felt too long again, although the narrative and shots were quicker. In one tutorial, I was told to consider adding something like a timer or hourglass, to communicate how time was passing and running out for the girls.
I decided to start considering animating during this time, as I felt that I’d run out of time if I kept on making animatics and didn’t start soon. I noted the feedback I received with intentions to re work some parts ahead of starting to animate, and began to think about scheduling.Similarly to with my last film, I divided my shot list into hardest shots, easier shots and the easiest shots without much movement. As I had 3 months to animate, I divided everything between these months; the hardest scenes would be completed in February and I’d give myself 3 days to do them, the easier scenes would be completed in march with 2 days to do them and the easiest ones in April, 1 shot a day. To avoid working on an unhealthy schedule as I did when creating the life of a tealight, where I would wake up at 8am and work to around 3am, I decided that I wouldn’t have a strict daily schedule, would take weekends off and would include breaks for things like working out, cooking proper meals and relaxing. Generally I’d work between the hours of 10 to 2, take a break and then work again from around 4-9.
With my plan in motion, I was ready to start animating more or less.
After completing the developmental workshops, I was ready to start thinking about what my FMP should be about. I decided not to go with any of the 3 ideas from my pecha kucka, as I didn’t feel particularly passionate about any of them, and I wanted to make something I’d have fun with. I knew by now that I wanted to create a story where nobody was particularly a hero or a villain; I wanted a story about characters who disagreed with each other based on their own ways of life and beliefs, and in the end would realise that there’s more than one way to do things and that we shouldn’t be too stuck in our own heads. I’ve been struggling with issues related to this concept in real life as I get older and find my own way to do things, so I felt passionate about communicating the message through film.
At first, I considered creating a parent-child themed animation, and I had two ideas; one about a creative child and a strict parent who wants them to focus on other, more traditional and academic things, and one about a magical father and son who disagree on what the best way of making magical flowers is ahead of a magical flower competition, with the former having a more traditional approach and his son being more abstract. I decided not to go with either of these ideas, as I already created an animation with parental themes last year, and I didn’t want to do the same thing twice.
I eventually remembered an idea I had thought of prior to the project for an animation that I intended to make in my free time; a fight between two princesses who are very opposite, with magic powers. I thought that with some tweaking and narrative added, this idea could be a fun one to make and watch; something comedic, but with a meaning present.
After some thinking, I came up with the idea for my fmp; ‘sweet chilli’. It would follow two young chef girls who disagree on what the secret ingredient to their curry should be, ahead of a visit from a restaurant reviewer, combining elements of the ideas I mentioned prior. In the end, they’d add both ingredients, and realise that combining their ideas results in something new and more unique. I chose curry as the dish they’d make as it’s something that can be prepared in a lot of different ways throughout a lot of different cultures, so it would make sense for the girls to have opposite ways of preparing it.
Visually, I wanted something a little more abstract and ‘kitsch’; Something that could be seen as a bit tacky or odd looking to some, but was created with intention and appeals to more lowbrow and unorthodox tastes. I’ve recently been experimenting a lot with mixed media, sketchy lines and different styles of animation, as a way to make my work more unique and identifiable. I knew that I wanted this film to follow the fundamentals of my recent artworks; Real life imagery and cartoon drawings would be combined, and the animation could become choppy/distorted if I felt it communicated my ideas better than a more traditional approach would. As with my other films, it would have a young target audience.
I started off by brainstorming about what I wanted my characters to be like; in the princess fight animation I imagined, I intended to have one character be very delicate and prissy and the other be more of a rowdy tomboy, and I carried this dynamic into this film as I felt it was a fun one to work with, and would clearly set my characters apart from each other. Following in the theme of food, I would make the softer character a chef who usually works with sweet ingredients, and the rowdy one a chef who favours spice.
I started my character design process with a moodboard for the spicy chef. I knew she’d be a girl, but I wanted her to have a rougher and more androgynous appearance over a particularly feminine one. I took a lot of inspiration from China, and in particular the province of Sichuan, known for spicy dishes. Her face would be inspired by traditional Chinese theatre masks; bright colours and strong expressions would be present. Shape wise I wanted her to have rough edges and spikes; I took inspiration from the ‘Shamate’ Chinese punk fashion style in this regard, and knew she’d probably have sharp and unnaturally coloured hair. I also wanted to incorporate ox horns into her design, as a reference to the bull demon king in the story ‘journey to the west’; a villain in a Chinese fairy tale who is capable of creating flames that nobody can put out. I wanted to incorporate as many traditional Chinese features into her design as possible; I’d try to incorporate symbols, and things like Buddhist mala prayer beads, which are pictured above. Her colours would be inspired by fires and chillis; shades of yellow, red, green and orange.Following in the method from my workshops, I broke the character design process into heads and then bodies. I experimented with combining chilli peppers into her design through her hat and hair; I preferred her having a chilli shaped beanie to chilli pepper hair, so I tried hats in most of her designs. I decided to do away with her horns, as I thought that both horns and spiky hair were a bit excessive. To give her a more mask like facial appearance, I gave her facial markings and permanently closed eyes. I included a tag with the pinyin symbol for ‘ox’ on it, to keep some ox influence in her design. The tag on her hat is also a reference to ‘Jiangshi’, or Chinese vampires, which typically would have a hat with a magical seal on it to keep them dead.Next, I tired out costumes for the character. I thought she’d be the type to wear something loose and easy to move around in, so I went with a skater style for her outfit concepts, which I feel works well with her face. I considered a tail for her, but did away with it as I felt it would complicate animation. In the end I decided on a simple T shirt and shorts for her, and a stubby, boxy build, with mala beads around her wrist.Finally, I tried some colour concepts for the character, mostly using vibrant shades of red contrasted with some darker colours. I liked the bottom left the most, as it felt unique and fitting for the character, and I was able to use a lot of red without making it excessive. I named the character ‘Scoville’, after the Scoville scale which is used to measure spice, and created a character sheet for her finished design. I was happy with this design, as I felt her influences were incorporated well without feeling out of place. I came up with a little back story for her; she’s the daughter of the ox king, although she’s always been mistaken for a boy (a reference to the fact that he has a son in the original story). She’s capable of breathing flames, and is determined to achieve world domination along with her parents; in the mean time, though, she enjoys working at curry and co as a head chef.After Scoville, it was time to create the sweet chef, who would have an adversely feminine and soft appearance in comparison to the former. I considered the names ‘pink lady’ and ‘lady sucrose’ for her, before settling on ‘Lady Saccharose’, saccharose meaning sucrose (or table sugar) in French. Her influences were a mix of girly characters in media I liked the designs of, such as princess peach and lalaloopsy dolls, along with traditional French aristocratic ladies from the past. In particular I wanted to draw inspiration from Marie Antoinette, the last French queen, who famously told her subjects to ‘let them eat cake’ upon being informed that the people of France were starving and had no bread; I thought that the cake reference worked well for a character who loved sweets. In contrast to Scoville, I wanted lady saccharose to be made up mostly of round shapes. I experimented with a few things in terms of the design for her head; I tried a cupcake hat to match with Scoville’s hat, before switching it out for a crown or a bow. I wanted her to have big puffy hair, in reference to Marie Antoinette. I also decided to give her, and the rest of the characters, closed eyes; I thought it would be a fun challenge to have all of my character’s eyes closed and rely on their bodily movement for communication and acting. After settling on a bow and puffy dress for saccharose, I moved on to her outfit. I didn’t spend long here because by now, I knew I wanted her to wear a puffy princess dress. She’s a little chubbier in build than Scoville, her body made up mostly of circles.I tried a few colour palettes for Saccharose, mostly utilizing the colours pink, purple and white, as they were present in her moodboard. I also went with the bottom right design in this case, opting for a soft pink and peach palette. Her backstory is that she’s a princess from a far away land made completely of curry; seeking some excitement outside of her mundane castle life, she has found a job as a head chef at curry and co, and usually keeps her status a secret.And with that, I had the designs for my main characters. Next, I moved on to designs for minor characters, starting with the girls’ boss who would give them the command to work together.As curry is a dish originating in India, I chose Indian influence for the boss’ design. I hadn’t yet figured out if they would be male or female, but I settled on male to balance out the genders of the characters in the film. I looked at traditional Indian dresswear for his influence, as well as some traditional symbols like lotus flowers and tigers. I also wanted to incorporate ‘the star of India’, a giant sapphire with a distinctive white star inside of it, into his design, as I found it cool. I settled on the name ‘Aloo Gobi’ for him, a traditional Indian cauliflower dish with a distinctive yellow colour, and decided that this would be his main colour moving forward.Next, I tried some concepts for Aloo’s head. I liked the idea of a small tiger being present on his head; I decided to name the tiger Gobi, so their names together became Aloo & Gobi. I tried a few things for his design, but eventually decided on giving him a turban, a long beard, the star of India on the front of his turban and an eyeball on his forehead.I gave aloo a wide and boxy build to contrast him against the girls, and tried out a loose fitting jacket with a lotus flower on it for his outfit. I then tried some different colours for Aloo and Gobi. Staying true to the dish, aloo has yellow skin; I decided on the 2nd idea from the bottom left, as I liked the contrast between the purple and yellow.With that, the boss of the restaurant was created. Aloo’s backstory is that he was once a poor and sickly man, living in a poor neighbourhood. No matter how hard things were for him, he’d work his fingers to the bone so that he could afford to buy ingredients to cook curries; once cooked, he’d share them with his people, barely keeping any food for himself. One day, Aloo had finished handing out his curries, and had a small bowl left for himself; he saw a cat starving on the side of the road, however, and decided to give him the curry instead. The cat was then revealed to be a tiny tiger god, who granted aloo with magical powers as a reward for his selflessness; the two became best friends and eventually achieved success with aloo’s cooking skills, rebuilding their neighbourhood and moving away to start a curry restaurant of their own. Aloo’s passion for cooking and sharing gives him the patience to put up with his bickering head chefs.Next, I designed the restaurant reviewer. I knew that I wanted them to be small and mean looking, as I felt it would be funny to have them be someone terrifying despite their tiny build. I liked the idea of them having a small figure and big eyes, like a tarsier.
I moved on to concepts for the reviewer’s head. I liked the idea of the character being female, not for any particular reason, so I went with feminine head designs. Initially I wanted her to look young and cute, but while experimenting I came to like the idea of her being a small old woman, as they’re usually depicted as sweet and kind, so she diverted expectations a bit. I gave her big glasses, and big hair; I came to like the onion shaped hairstyle that I had come up with, and decided I’d use it moving forward.
For the body, I decided to also give shallot a wider and boxier build. I gave her a suit and tie, to visually communicate that she was someone with status and power.For colours, I knew I wanted her to be green and white, like a spring onion. I settled on the last on the bottom row of these palettes, as I felt it was the most coherent.With that, the character who I named ‘Shallot charlotte’, eventually shortening it to just shallot, was created. She’s an alien from a planet of food reviewers, named onion X, who visit earth to check out restaurants that are gaining traction and try them out.After some discussion with my teacher, I thought it would be a fun sub plot to have Gobi chase a mouse around the restaurant, their relationship mirroring that of the girls. I created this mouse character, Mont blanc, to fulfil that role; a small city mouse who often takes up residency in local restaurants, unfortunately taking refuge in one that contains a cat.
With my characters finished, I designed the curry and co restaurant, and the world around it. Following my intention to create something ‘Kitsch’, I went with a roughly drawn style for the backgrounds, with boiled lines and clashing, rough colours. I liked the idea of the restaurant being shaped like a bowl of curry itself; I decided to use a png of a real bowl and draw on top of it for the restaurant’s exterior. I combined different textures, real and hand drawn, into the background, something I wanted to experiment with throughout the film. I lastly came up for some concepts for the kitchen that the girls would work in; I thought it would be a cool idea to have them initially work in a split kitchen, and then for the kitchen to magically transform into a cooperative one when they had to work together. I carried the mixed media style through here too.
With that, development for sweet chilli had started, Next, I needed to figure out the story, and make any changes recommended upon presentation.
For this workshop, the goal was to explore sound, it’s effects and how I can use it to aid my work. I chose this workshop because I got feedback on the sound design in my last piece of work, which I didn’t expect; Sound design has never been something I take much into consideration while creating my pieces, and I always made it the last thing I focus on as I never felt like I needed to be particularly good at it as an animator. However, as I’ve learned through this workshop, sound design can work together with visuals to strengthen a piece and being it up to it’s full potential.
The first task I had was simple; to draw a picture representing the sounds I could hear around me. At first, I was a little confused on how to approach this task, as we weren’t given many directions; I decided on drawing myself at the centre, and positioning the sounds based on how far away they were and what direction they were coming from. I couldn’t identify a couple sounds, which was interesting to me; I had never really considered how many sounds at once work together to create everyday ambience. From planes outside to distant speaking in the hallway, a lot of silent sounds work together in everyday situations to break silence, and incorporating these little sounds into my work could be a small amount of attention to detail that make it feel more realistic and believable. I had thought of ambience as just a silent buzzing as to not make the piece feel too silent before, but through this workshop I learned to think of it as a network of small sounds layered to give us information about where we are, and I’ll take this knowledge into my work to strengthen it.
The next thing we had to do was to create three random sounds, which we would then use to create a character or a scenario in the next session. I chose the sound of a zipper going up and down, the sound of a pencil case being shaken and the sound of a pencil case being scratched as my sounds, and layered they sounded like this;
I perceived this sound as two possible things; more literally a record being scratched by a DJ, and in a more abstract sense some kind of a voice or laugh from a non human creature. I found the latter Idea more interesting, and knew I’d probably go through with creating an animation for it, so I completed a few sketches of it (as well as some rough ones for the record scratching);
I settled on having the animation be of some sort of a cute ghost creature laughing; the high pitch reminded me of my cat’s meowing, and so I went with a ghost cat. Since the laugh didn’t sound particularly spooky, I didn’t want him to look too scary or malicious, just a little menacing at first. Over the weekend, I created this animation;
For the background I decided to play with the mixed media style I’ve been practicing. I made some ambient sound for this animation by adding things you’d typically hear in a spooky house setting; church bells, crow sounds and distant ghostly murmuring. I feel I was successful in creating a piece based on a somewhat abstract sound, and applying my new knowledge to create ambience for it.
For the 2nd session, we learned to use recording kits. I don’t really have any physical outcomes from this session as of now, but it was useful and fun; I learned that a lot of odd sounds live in the world amongst us, and searching for them can be a useful practice in getting sounds for my film. Sounds can also be appropriated and used for things outside of their origin, which I’ll keep in mind.
For the ‘points of entelechy’ workshop, we’re encouraged to engage in spontaneous and experimental animation, allowing ourselves to be loose and fast in our processes and caring more about the journey than the end result. I felt that this would be a good workshop for me, as I tend to focus a lot on the end results of my projects and somewhat neglect the importance of a varied and polished process behind creating what I do; for example, I went straight on to my animation for my 2nd year final project instead of refining the storyboard more, valuing the end result more than the equally important processing and planning stages. I felt that an ability to work loosely would serve to make me less rigid in my process, and more willing to explore ideas to their fullest potential.
Unfortunately a timetable clash meant that I missed the first session, so I’ll be writing about my experience on the 2nd one. The task this time was to create an infinite loop animation; we would keep it at 12 frames and work straight ahead, making random shapes turn into other random ones to create the illusion of a never ending loop.
There wasn’t much of a planning process for this animation, which intimidated me at first; there were no rules as to how it should’ve looked, and we didn’t get the chance to draw any keyframes or rough planning; it was truly a spontaneous piece. Although I felt unsure of myself at first, I decided to let loose and just have fun with my film; I kept it abstract, not worrying too much about any character designs, narrative or composition, and focusing on creating something unique and spontaneous in the moment. I gradually kept on adding to my film until the space was all filled up;
Overall, I feel that this was a very helpful and informative session for me. I was able to leave my comfort zone a bit; my film doesn’t feature the clean and simplistic line art of my usual pieces, or the polished character designs, but in a way I feel this served as an advantage. I was able to escape my usual creative process and state of mind, allowing me to think outside of the box and be more loose; rather than considering how well the piece would come together, I focused on keeping it constant and spontaneous. I feel that if I apply a more loose thinking and animation style to my pieces, I can avoid becoming too rigid and one track minded about my creations; I can prevent them from all feeling and looking the same by allowing myself to be loose and rough in my process. I think I’ve learned through this workshop that not everything I create has to be super pretty and finished; some things can be rough, experimental and even unsightly, as a means to my end. Being less sure of what I’m doing can sometimes work in my favour, as it allows me to experiment and push my work visually to it’s full potential without any predetermined idea of what it should look like. I’ll definitely apply my learnings to my future work, and I look forward to trying out more unconventional ways of creating an animation in the future.
Update: Workshop 1
As workshop 1 ran for a 2nd time, I attended to catch up on what I had missed. The first thing we did was watch some animation films that made heavy use of loops; Although the motions were looped, the animations remained engaging and never felt too repetitive. This made me think about the fact that sometimes, less can be more; sometimes, using methods that save time can be just as effective as doing something that takes a long time, and effective planning can make the production process run smoother. I think I’ll definitely constantly try to refine my ideas and make them simplistic without making them too basic, to save myself some time when making my film.
The task for this session was a chill one; to free handily make marks on paper based on music that was played to us, without thinking too much about what the end result would look like.
My first drawing came out like this. Although there was no planning or meaning, I think it looks interesting; I feel like it could be developed into an interesting animation effect, using a similar straight ahead technique to the one I used in the 2nd session. I think drawing freely without worrying about what it looks like is useful, and could be a good way of coming up with unique structures and effects for an animation.
This was my drawing for the 2nd part of the practice, where we had to do the same thing, but develop any shapes that we felt we could recognise into fuller figures.
For our summer project, we had to create a ‘Pecha kuccha’ presentation; a short and fast 5 minute presentation consisting of 3 images for 3 different ideas each, relating to themes we’d like to explore in our final major projects over the year. I’ll speak about my ideas here.
The battle school! – ‘Join Miel and her equally awesome super powered classmates as they learn what is takes to fight the forces of evil at the battle school!… In time for maths class, of course.’ A cartoon series I’d like to develop for the future, following 4 young girls in a world where every living thing has super powers. Episodes would usually consist of a normal childhood experience with a superpowered twist, offering both relatability and excitement to young viewers. Collaborators needed would be background artists, animators and voice actors.
The day I lost my face- A young girl awakens one day to find that she has lost her face. Searching for solutions online, she comes across a strange link; clicking it transports her to a strange world full of discarded faces, and she must find hers and re attach it in order to leave. While going through the faces, the girl slowly begins to learn that the one she thinks best represents her might not be accurate, and her true self may be uglier or more beautiful than she had known previously, depending on your point of view. Collaborators needed would mostly be animators, and people who can use a range of materials.
Finger runner- A young man has lost his spark due to his daily 9-5 grind, seeing the world with a dull and boring hue. One day on a long car ride to a business trip, the boy begins to use his fingers to pretend they’re running on things outside of the window; slowly getting lost in his imagination, he goes on an adventure in his mind. Collaborators needed would be minor voice roles, possibly musicians and animators.
As of now, I like the third idea the most, but I’ll keep an open mind.
On this third year, we get the chance to select 5 classes that we think will assist us in our final major project; Based on my feedback last year I chose Sound design, Frankenstein lives (experimental character animation), Creative practice (Story writing), Points of entelechy (some abstract art and animation) And storyboarding. I recently attended my first workshop; creative practice.
I chose this workshop as I felt that my story was a little unclear to people last year up until the end; I wanted to take the chance to strengthen my storytelling skills. Based on the Pecha Kucha summer project, I have a rough three ideas I’d like to work on; a cartoon pilot, something about identity and something about imagination. I’m leaning mostly towards my animation idea, and wanted to find a way to make it stand out from other escapism based animation films, which are quite common.
The class was loose and mostly consisted of a whole class conversation, but I learned a few interesting things that I think I can apply to my work. Hearing everyone speak about their ideas, I realised that a lot of my classmates draw from their personal experiences and thoughts when making work. I also do this to an extent, but usually, I’m more focused on trying to elicit a reaction of some kind from my audience than creating something heartfelt to me; I usually focus more on the character acting and the linear storyline than any messages and meanings. I’ve learned that I can strengthen the former by incorporating the latter through this class; A good piece of advice I received from my teacher was to push my own views and thoughts through my films, as it adds a layer of reality to films and could make my characters more believable and interesting.
My idea for my animation includes a man struggling through his boring daily life, and eventually losing himself in his own contrasting and colourful imagination. I wanted to go for a simple premise that a lot of people could relate to, as I feel that with storytelling sometimes less is more, and focus a lot on the animation of the imaginary world. I had been without knowing it, however, sort of neglecting the ‘real world’ portion of the animation; We all know that life is hard and can sometimes feel like it’s just dragging forward, but my character needs a little more depth than just someone who’s miserable so that the audience can relate to him better. I personally have had quite a hard year, and imagination has been keeping me going through hobbies such as animation, drawing, playing games and watching shows; whether it’s my own or someone else’s imagination, I’m able to escape the sometimes dull 24 hours that I have to go through into a limitless and fun world. I think empathizing with my character more and working hard to show the audience life and imagination through my own eyes and perception will stand to make my film more unique; it will add depth and individuality, as I’m the only one who experiences life through my eyes.
As an exercise, we had to jot down 3 things that intrigue us about the world. I only got to do 2; one being how fun activities are often looked down on in favour of more professional ones although we need to maintain balance to stay healthy (thinking about why needing some free time is looked down on when it’s necessary for us all), and ideas of freedom vs. conformity with religious subtext; I thought about who in the world is really ‘free’, and what freedom as a concept even is, as some would say being free to believe in a god and follow his rules is freedom, while others would describe it as conformity with true freedom being acting purely on your own desires. Both of these things are pretty unrelated to my animation, But I do feel that exploring these ideas could also strengthen my narrative; I do regard having fun as just as important as doing work, and I feel I can communicate this to my audience through my animation.
Finally, we discussed mediums we’d like to use to create our films. I already know that I want to further my 2d character animation skills so I’ll definitely carry on with that, and I also want to experiment with mixed media backgrounds and stop motion, as I’ve been playing around with these ideas over the summer. I’d also like to dabble in 3d, possibly through a collaborator; I’d like to really present the imaginary world as a vast and limitless place.
All in all, I’d say this was a useful class. I look forward to exploring storytelling more in the coming weeks.
I decided that I’d make these changes to my animation before starting it;
Longer overall- gives audience more time to get to know the characters; emotional response will be better if they feel a genuine connection.
add establishing shots showing the passing of time (decided in an editing workshop after a classmate expressed that it was difficult to comprehend the changes in time)
slight change in middle aged Wixly’s hue- more yellow
I had 33 scenes to animate, and 33 days to do it. I worked out a schedule that would allow me to complete my work with time at the end to make any final changes;
I also took note of the things I needed to keep consistent. I split the animation process into 3 parts; the scenes that would take longest/the hardest ones, scenes that were simple in execution but would take a while to complete, easier scenes that would take a short amount of time and the easiest scenes where I could complete multiple in one day. I planned to spend a day each on the hardest/longest scenes, and then aim to complete 3 easy scenes a day once I was done with them.
I categorized the harder scenes based on what skills I’d need for them; for example I wasn’t so sure on how to do tweening, So I included most tweening scenes in ‘hardest’ as I’d need to overcome the learning curve before completing the scene. As I worked with the tools needed for these scenes, I gradually came to understand them; I managed to pick up some new skills too, such as the capture tool which I used for smoke, as it allowed tweening with a less linear path of motion.
I managed to finish up everything by the 31st of may, in time for our final interim session. I received good responses upon presentation, with praise on my time management skills and effort to change things in accordance with my feedback. I still had to address some small errors, such as the flames clipping over the edges of the window sill, and create credits for my film.
I started working on the changes in my animation after receiving feedback. The first thing I tackled was the animation tests, as Harmony had started to work for me again;
These were the animation tests I created. I used the glow node on Harmony, learning about it’s qualities through you tube tutorials, and I liked how it looked so I decided i’d use it for the final animation. I preferred thicker outlines for the characters, and decided I’d go with thicker lines than the ones used on these tests, and I felt they looked a lot more flame like with the addition on the head flickers and embers.
I also started to think about collaboration at this point. I approached a classmate and offered to help her with character designs, as I felt our styles were similar and that I’d be good at the task;
I designed the monsters with the references and palettes provided to me and my classmate was happy with them, completing my end of the collaborative element of the project. I was later contacted by a different classmate who liked the look of my project and offered to draw the backgrounds; I provided her with the sketches I had previously completed, and she designed them accordingly.
With all of this completed, there was one thing left to revise; My storyboard. I started off by drafting the storyboard roughly on paper, adding and removing scenes that I felt was unnecessary; I also felt that there wasn’t as much interaction between the two flames as I would like there to be, and so I changed some scenes to have them react to each other’s actions more, such as changing out the scene where Cyrus admires another candle through the window for him excitedly cutting his hair and being annoyed about wixly’s reaction. Here was the storyboard;
After presenting it, I was told that the narrative was hard to follow and that the story couldn’t be comprehended. I was also told that some of the backgrounds looked a bit off in terms of perspective (I hadn’t yet implemented the ones that my classmate created, as I wanted to receive all of them before using them to prevent an odd change in quality in the animatic). After working on these things, I would be ready to start animating.
