Week 5 - The Escape C(l)an

This week I created a clay character sculpt of George based on his design which is shown below:

On Tuesday we had a Team review session with Kristen and Damien and they gave us further advise on our work. Here are the main points from today:

- There is a timing issue with the watch/phone time as 13:59 is lunch time so we need to make sure that the camera focuses on the 13 on the time to make the audience more aware that the number 13 is why the characters come 'Grinding to a halt.'

-We need to show that the characters are siblings in some way throughout the animation.

-We really need to test the timing by having a completed animatic.

Additionally on Tuesday I had a lighting induction, so I can now book out the professional lights to use in further Pipeline Tests.

On Wednesday I learnt about how to film a stop-motion 'Travelling Shot'. In the lesson we worked on creating a western scene, which is shown below:

After this session on Wednesday, Karla booked out an Led light and I had booked the Stop Motion Bay so we could complete further test shots thinking about lighting. We used the diorama scene created by Karla and then we completed further pipeline tests in which we completed an improved walk-cycle for how Cornelius and Luna will walk.  I then did some pipeline tests thinking about what the camera angles and characters will look like when they talk. All of the tests from today are shown below:

We really wanted the lighting to look like rays of sunshine coming through the kitchen windows, and I think that theses tests have worked very well in showing that.

New Walk-cycle by Harry and Karla:

Head Movement to show speech by Harry:

Another Test to show Speech by changing the Character Focus by Harry:

Finally this week Steve advised us that the pizza cutter pipeline test works really well and that if we re-do it with a real pizza cutter, then we could replace the drawing in the animatic with the real scene. This is called Pixilation (using real people in stop motion).

Furthermore in the group meeting today we booked out a sound recorder and recorded the foley/sounds and voices  for the animatic.

Finally on Friday I had a further lesson using Mud-box. I experimented adding textures and colour to the alien-pig character face which we were given to work on:

This week Tom sent the Group Report to the Tutors, here is what he sent:

Successes: The first animatic draft is completed and we have recorded the sound needed for it.

Also we now have colour animatic backgrounds and we are continuing work on our ‘Making Of’ videos and Pre-production Bible.

Problems: We have to finalise the Animatic and Pre-production Bible.

Ambitions: We have booked the animation bay on Tuesday 26th February and will have a finished Animatic and Pre-production Bible by Wednesday ready for the hand in on Friday.

Lastly this weekend I updated the Gantt Schedule shown below: