The finished piece!

I've finally done it after DAYS of trying different compression techniques. It has been SO tedious to enable to file size to retain quality but shrink it enough to place onto youtube but I did it and I'm fairly happy with the result. One thing to note is the change of ending for the story. Initially I had it written that after he stops taking anti-depressants he will fall into a worse state of depression but instead I opted for a happier ending in which he could appreciate being unhappy more than he could bear to feel nothing at all on his medication. I think the happier ending is a lot easier to swallow and makes it a little more uplifting.

A further update...

The four images below are of the sound editing stage of my animation. I was able to use the library that I have from the music recording software Mixcraft as well as the vast online library from freesfx.co.uk which offers royalty free music and sound effects. I sometimes had to edit sounds that I'd downloaded in Mixcraft to make them a little shorter in order to fit my animation. This is possible in Flash but it's nowhere near as simple. I also had to figure out how to apply a layer mask over the entire animation in order to block out the additional items that bleed over the Flash stage which took quite some time.

The following four images are photos of the final few segments of storyboard along with a rough initial character design for the Doctor. Some of the scenes I was able to cut while (hopefully) retaining the basic plot.

A Biiiig Update

I've been putting off showing any of my animation because I want it to be seen finished... HOWEVER for the sake of next weeks crit I'm going to have to upload the whole unfinished thing sooner or later. With that in mind I thought I'd show my latest sketchbook pages, a screenshot of my workspace in Flash and a gif of one of the scenes I'm using.

When it's time to show the animation it will no doubt be noticed that I've strategically never shown my little blue mans feet to avoid annoying walk cycles!

Sound effects...

I've made around 15 seconds of hand drawn animation (also using a couple of 'tweens' on slow moving objects such as clouds) and so I thought I'd stop for a second to think about applying sound effects.

As far as I can tell, if I wish a sound to overlap into multiple scenes then the scenes in question will have to sit on the same time line rather than on individual scene tabs. That is certainly something to consider when applying ambient sound effects to scenes.

I'm very fortunate to have access to a large sound library that comes as part of a package with some music recording software that I've used for many years so for the most part I shouldn't have to record my own sounds but if I do then Mixcraft will make that easy.

I found a video on youtube that shows how to add audio files to flash files so this will be helpful to keep on the blog to refer back to as and when necessary.

It's pretty basic but that's what I need at this level.

I think once it comes to more complicated sounds that have to be synced with movements then I'll need some additional help but for now this tutorial will help me with my title scene and again once I have to apply an entire audio track.

Title scene

I'll try not to post every single scene that I do on here as a GIF but I'm pretty pleased that I'm getting a fairly decent grasp of flash now.
This will be my opening titles. I'll be adding sounds of birds and stuff to it when it's finalised and perhaps a fade in but then I want the scene to just jump straight into the house to see our character lying in bed.
I really hope this all works out!

A couple more rough tests

So this is your standard, extremely fast walk cycle, it would have a lot more frames in it normally but because  I wanted it to look smooth I made it super fast.

Underneath is just a little splodge test of sorts that I did because I probably won't use the walk cycle for my monster. I wanted to show a weird way of moving around so this was just a little test. Stupid, but fun!

Eureka!

Ok so the other day I was sketching out some really crappy character ideas based on the fact that most of my animation is gonna be hand drawn into flash so it had to be simple. As you can see below, none of them were really going anywhere.

So I did this for awhile and after my learning agreement consultation I decided that the animation had to have more appeal. I told David that most animations have appeal by incorporating comedy into the mix. So I thought about that for a little while and started roughing out my first scene (after the title scene) which you can see below in the form of a never ending GIF of doom.

This took me a LONG time, but I am essentially learning as I'm going so I didn't mind. Also I'm ahead of schedule so any animation I do this week and next is extra bonus points (that I've assigned myself because I can do that).

So I had roughly 14 seconds of pretty boring animation but I was still racking my brain for this extra comedic appeal factor. And that's where it hit me. Why does it need to be a depressed MAN? Why can't it be an animal? Hell, why can't it be a monster or an alien?! This instantly invigorated me and I had to text my girlfriend Kayleigh straight away to ask if this was a good decision. She asked me some questions and I quickly justified them all in a similar way to this: Working with monsters will free me up from complicated human animation that will need to look a certain way, it will allow me to create an abstract sort of world which will make it more interesting to watch, it will generally appear more comical AND FINALLY it will actually help add subtlety to the theme of the animation. A man being depressed is all well and good but a monster being depressed can carry the exact same message but in a much more visually appealing way.

Well, that's what I think. So now I'm working on simplistic monster ideas. I want them to be sort of malleable because I want them to have strange fluid, morphing-like characteristics. I have an especially disturbing idea in mind for the visiting the DR scene that just wouldn't work if you weren't a squishy sort of monster thing. Anyway, below are my first sketches.

Flash...

I was messing around with the idea of doing hand drawn frame by frame animation today and so I ended up in Flash, hopelessly trying to figure out how that would work. I think it might take faaarrr too long to try and do it this way for my story but it was fun to do anyway.

Initial script in relation to Todorov's theory

Glass half empty: Script.

Equilibrium

The man is lying in bed with his eyes open. The curtains are letting light shine through. He is waiting for his alarm to go off. There are pleasant sounds of birds (and perhaps the occasional vehicle driving by). There is an empty bottle of vodka next to his bed.

The alarm goes off a few times while he stares at the ceiling, almost motionless. He slowly reaches over to turn it off and then depressing music starts to play over the top of the animation from this point on.

He showers in silence, head hanging as the water hits him. He dries himself off in the bedroom and takes a brief moment to look into a mirror. He stares blankly at himself and then his head lowers.

His toast pops up from the toaster and he begins to butter it (with Vitalite, bitches). He is dressed by now. He eats it while sat at a table on his own.

He applies toothpaste to his brush and brushes his teeth, looking despondently at his reflection.

He puts on his coat and begins walking to the bus stop. He catches the bus and finds a place to sit on his own where he stares out of the window until he arrives at the destination. His heart races at every stop, dreading that he’ll have somebody sit next to him, while at the same time wondering why nobody does sit there, is something wrong with him?

Eventually he gets off at his stop and people seem to be walking right at him, he always feels that he has to move for them, like he is invisible.

He arrives at his office block and spends the day typing away in silence, never talking to anybody. He wonders whether people are making fun of him behind his back.

Fast forward to going home and he catches the bus and goes through the same fear cycle that he had on his way there. Eventually he arrives at home and makes chips and beans for dinner. He then slumps in front of the television with some alcohol. He also has his laptop open and is forever looking at the notification bit. He gets a notification but it’s something mundane like a facebook update or something along those lines. This drives him to drink heavier.

He stumbles to the bathroom where he clumsily brushes his teeth with his head down. He looks in the mirror and becomes frustrated with himself. Perhaps he even punches the mirror and recoils in pain. He then decides that tomorrow morning he is going to call the Drs. He collapses in bed and we fade out on that image.

The next day he calls the doctors before going to work and writes down an appointment time. The rest of his day goes as usual but we speed through it slightly faster with slight variations to the original day we see. For instance, the weather may change and he is wearing a different tie.

Disruption

This is the Doctor day. The man is lying in bed with his eyes open. The curtains are letting light shine through. He is waiting for his alarm to go off. There are pleasant sounds of birds (and perhaps the occasional vehicle driving by).

The alarm goes off a few times while he stares at the ceiling, almost motionless. He slowly reaches over to turn it off and then depressing music starts to play over the top of the animation from this point on.

He showers in silence, head hanging as the water hits him. He dries himself off in the bedroom and takes a brief moment to look into a mirror. He stares blankly at himself and then his head lowers.

His toast pops up from the toaster and he begins to butter it (with Vitalite, bitches). He is dressed by now. He eats it while sat at a table on his own. As he eats, he looks down at a piece of paper that he has. It says Dr Barnette (or some other name to be later confirmed) and a time, 10.35.

He applies toothpaste to his toothbrush and begins to brush his teeth. After he has finished he notices that he has gotten some on his top. He responds with a sigh or another lowering of the head (or eyebrows to depict his unhappiness).

He puts on his coat and closes the door behind him. He starts walking to the bus stop and it starts to rain. It gets heavy and he gets splashed by a car driving through a puddle.

When the bus arrives the rain begins to stop. After he has paid he tries to find a place to sit but almost everybody has put a bag next to them on the bus. He sits reluctantly towards the back of the bus where a couple of kids are sat. They whisper to each other and make him nervous. He occasionally glances and tries to forget them but he can’t. He stares out of the window and gets all hot and sweaty.

He arrives in town and heads to the doctors. On the way people seem to be walking at him and he is forever moving out of their way.

When he arrives at the doctors he is sat in the waiting room. He glances to the clock which shows the time to be later than his appointment (which will be reinforced by looking back at his small piece of paper). Eventually, ten minutes late, he is called in.

He sits slumped in the Dr’s office. The Dr appears uninterested and irritated at the mention of a patient who is permanently unhappy. He offers the man a prescription and the man leaves feeling worse than ever.

He stands in his bathroom looking at himself and takes two of the pills. His evening then follows the same routine except he doesn’t drink.

One week later?

He struggles to awaken for once and his expression has changed from unhappy to emotionless and tired. He takes his pills with his breakfast. He does everything that he does in the equilibrium but at a much slower pace with less panic but with a real sense of overwhelming apathy and takes his pills in the evening with dinner too.

Recognition

He begins to realise that this hasn’t helped him; it’s only put him in groggy state where he feels absolutely nothing. That morning before he takes his pills he looks at them and decides to leave them alone. He wants to go back to the original equilibrium because feeling anything is better than feeling nothing at all.

New equilibrium

His routine has returned to normal except now he drinks either a bigger bottle or drinks two bottles. This could be interchangeable with cans but it’s more likely that he will have chosen a beverage of choice and stuck with that.

Additional notes

·         -In order to make the drinking more poignant, it’s possible that he won’t be drinking at all at in the initial equilibrium and that the antidepressants and lack of help have actually pushed him into an even greater state of depression.

·       -  I’m currently undecided on whether the final equilibrium should be a state of suicide.

·         If suicide DOES occur, then it’s important that we don’t see it and that we only see preparations for it. For example, tying a rope or researching methods of suicide on the internet.

·      -  Remember to incorporate idiosyncrasies to the character’s actions depending on what he is doing – for example, when he is looking at his social media website, he might type something out to talk to somebody but then deletes it for fear of seeming stupid or being ignored.

·     -   It’s very important to show that the Dr’s attitude is a massive contributing factor in this extended depression. I want it to seem like the Dr was in a rush to get him out of his hair and the easiest method would have been writing him a prescription rather than all the additional help that could occur.

Inspiration...

Just happened across this through Illustration Friday's website.

Inspiration

I just found a great little animation about depression. It really starts to work about a third of the way through.

Depression

Ok, this may be the alcohol talking, but it's often said that you should write about what you know. I've already expressed before that I wanted to do a story about a depressed man but now I've decided to stick with it. For definite.
I have so much personal experience and quite a deep understanding of depression on the whole and every time I think of ways to communicate it visually I find it so appealing. I want to apply narrative theory to it however I want the monotony and the never ending cycle to be apparent so I'm not sure how that will convey itself. I'm thinking of ending it on a suicide - the new equilibrium.
This being said, I've decided that I may need to keep a diary of day to day events that occur with me, making notes of my feelings and mannerisms for ideas and inspiration. I'm going to take half an hour every evening to reflect on the events of the day. I won't be publishing that online obviously but I will probably have to hand it in with the rest of the prep work. Once I've got a fair amount of reference (perhaps two weeks of analysis?) then I'll examine the diary for little gems to incorporate into my animation.

So here's to being a miserable fucker and inflicting that misery on the rest of the world!
Seriously though, I've thought about the intent of this animation and I don't think it has to show hope or that there's a way out or anything like that. I think the most important thing is for people to be able to see it and relate to it and know that they aren't alone. I've heard it said that it takes seeing your own flaws in other people to begin to change yourself for the better (or something along those lines). I think that if people recognise a mopy bastard who is endlessly unhappy and only sees the downside to everything then they might think "Fuck! Am I really like that?!" and try to change themselves.

With all of that in mind, I've developed the title for my animation:

Glass Half Empty.

Here's a video of the sort of music that I'll probably have over it. I'm still adamant that there will be no vocals in this animation, except perhaps for inaudible crowd sound effects.

After effects tutorials part 2

I've done all of the basic tutorials that I mentioned in the previous post now so I have a fairly decent grasp of the most basic elements. I started making a silly puppet out of my tomato too just to see how hard it is to animate limbs and it wasn't too tricky. While this is all very interesting I shouldn't aim to produce something too far out of my depth for this unit. For instance here is a video overview of some tutorials that a great animator has put together. It looks like A LOT of work.

Here is a little screenshot of my angry tomato too.

The more I think about it the more I want to keep this animation as simple as possible. As with David Firth's videos, the content makes up for the simplicity. That's what I need to aim for. With that in mind I think I'll spend the rest of this week focusing on my story and making that as good as possible.

After effects...

I'm currently the only student in during the easter holidays. I spent some time browsing Lynda.com to find some decent tutorials but I'm finding a series of youtube videos much easier to follow at the minute. This is the very first one I watched that is helping me come to grips with after effects.

I'm just gonna whack through a lot of these today and make notes. Hopefully by the end of the week I might have some additional skills. I've done 10 tutorial videos today over 3 hours and here's a screenshot of what I was working with.

I know what I'm doing!

I think I've figured out what my animation is going to be about. The character that I was exploring is going to have several experiences in his day to day life that lead him to veganism. This came to me as a series of images in my head. The catalyst for his transformation will be seeing a "livestock lorry" transporting cows to an early grave while he's driving along. He will make eye contact with one of the terrified individuals and it will hit him. Throughout that day he will continue as normal but it will be on his mind constantly. Eventually this will lead to removing meat from his diet and eventually he will remove all animal products from his life and become an active vegan... I think. I took a quick snap on my phone of the first image that came to mind.

 Below are two horrible lorries that actually contain live animals. These images make me sick but this is what my character is going to see so I thought it would be worth keeping a couple of references for when I get to animating.

I don't want there to be any dialogue coming from the man. I want his internal thoughts to be represented by his actions and subtle body language. I'm not sure if he will be a depressed man any more either. I think he might be lethargic and I may even put that down to his diet just to add a little more veganism into the animation. He will notice a great improvement in his health and life in general once he settles into the diet.
Finally, I think that the point I'm trying to make is that ANYBODY can change and that, to quote Justin Timberlake dressed up as a large block of tofu, it's never too late to do the right thing.

The weirdest thing...

I put my character into photoshop this morning and coloured him in. I made his arms slightly longer so that they extended behind the torso so that I could make a quick gif of his arms flapping. In the heat of the moment I also moved his legs which makes it look absolutely diabolical but quite funny, almost like he's clicking his heels. Anyway this was a very strange little test but I don't think it's going to help me when it comes to after effects. The manipulation of body parts works entirely differently in that program after all, but I just wanted to see what he'd look like moving.

Sad man character designs

As you can see, I've been developing my sad man. I'm starting to think more along the lines of him working in animal testing or in some kind of job that allows him to change his perception towards the way we exploit animals but I still need to develop that idea. Clark also gave me the idea of him eventually finding happiness but having it taken from him or ruined in some way. These are all just initial thoughts at this point but it's all going to be useful in developing the story.

I think this lanky, pointy footed, angular faced man is more the style I'm going for.

I know I said I'd steer clear of David Firth stuff but one of my all time favourite cartoons of his is good inspiration for how I want my animation to look... sort of. 

Useful tutorials...

http://www.eis4u.com/2011/10/03/design-and-animate-a-cartoon-character-after-effects-part-1/#!prettyPhoto

This is a link to a really good tutorial for getting a simple character design into illustrator and then into after effects. I'm going to have to give it a go on the Macs at uni soon.

Also this is a clip to a Lynda.com animation tutorial that I found. Having access to that website is going to be so crucial throughout this unit. It's going to be a really tough journey.

Scribbler by David Firth - inspiration

I've been a big fan of Firth's animations for a long time. Scribbler is one of the earliest and is pretty similar in tone to how I'd imagine my unhappy character. I'm going to try to steer clear of Firth's work for the most part because I don't want to emulate him and I think I'm aware enough to avoid that. I guess the next step would be to draw up some character designs for my sad man, keeping in mind that the simpler he is then the easier he will be to animate. Here's Scribbler.

On a slightly different note, I think that my experience as a sufferer of depression and anxiety will be extremely helpful in creating an animation about a depressed, anxious individual. I can almost imagine it having the tone of a "day in the life of..." sort of thing, but I really need to think more about this before deciding upon it. I could also stick some anti consumerism propaganda in it. Ok, moving on. 

Another idea?

I was doodling the other night and came up with this unhappy character. He could truly make for a wonderful animation exploring his depression. I'd be able to incorporate a lot of narrative theory into it too. This is just in case I can't figure out how to make an animation to do with veganism. I actually prefer this idea at the minute though... I suppose I could make him a vegan of sorts and keep that a subtle detail. Perhaps he makes friends with animals that make him happy? I don't know. But I'm suddenly keen to explore him as a character.

Split-Second Persuasion: The Ancient Art & New Science of Changing Minds.

I wanted the above book on how to change peoples minds to inform my animation so that I can achieve my goals BUT the library won't have it available for another month! However, the basic lessons from it can be found anywhere on the internet and these are how they read:

SIMPLICITY: Keep your message short, sharp, and simple to convince people it's true.

PERCEIVED SELF-INTEREST: Con men agree it's the key to getting us to do something we didn't think we wanted to. (So be sure to focus on the benefits to the person whose mind you want to change, rather than emphasizing your own wants and wishes and emotional history. NOT: I'll be sad if you don't, BUT: You'll be happy if you do.)

INCONGRUITY: Surprise people -- tell them your cupcake is 400 cents rather than four dollars and they're far more likely to buy it.

CONFIDENCE: The more confident you are, the more we believe you're right -- even when we know your facts are wrong. (Think aggressive politicians and other salespeople.)

EMPATHY: Look people in the eye, nod when they nod, tell them you're from the same small town they are -- we trust people like ourselves. (We prefer to work with those who happen to come from a similar tribe, whether that means the same town or perceiving some other form of connection.)

I think I'l struggle with the "perceived self interest" aspect because most people will see veganism (my main goal) as giving something up rather than achieving something great. It seems that people are more concerned with their base pleasures than their moral obligations. I don't know how I'm going to find my way around this but I'll just have to keep looking.

Humour seems to be the way forward...

Here are some animal rights animations that I found. They all use humour to get their point across and the more I think about the more I think I've got to do that too.

Badgered by Sharon Colman - Inspiration

This is an animation that was recommended to me during the assessment of my last unit. I suspect that this was because I made a book about a badger but it's useful to see an animal animation for some early inspiration to the unit. I like the hand drawn appearance and it's got me wondering whether I can incorporate some humour into this serious subject.

Backwards hamburger - inspiration

Here's a little animation that runs as a sort of infographic. I love the little facts popping up and it's definitely something to take note of. During my assessment for the last unit we discussed how it is often better for a cause to show the ideal world that you would like to see. I do agree with this, however, I also think a more pressing and potentially inspirational approach would be to show how terrible things COULD be if change is consistently ignored. I also don't want to white wash over the horror that we have imposed on the animals we exploit on a day to day basis either so finding a direction for this animation is going to prove pretty difficult. Anyway, here's the animation I mentioned.

Initial research - Speciesism

Speciesism isn't a common word. In fact it's SO uncommon that there's a nice, red, squiggly line underneath it the two times I've already written it for this post. However, it is a word. This is probably going to be the starting point for my animation. So - just to clarify, here is the definition of Speciesism as providied by google:

The assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals.

Now here's the trailer for the movie Speciesism.