Animating to a script

Animating to a script

‘Character performance & believability’ module assessment

For our final tasks we were given a selection of six different scripts, and the objective was as a group to decide on a particular script, and then to animate a story based of it. As a group, we would be in control of     the characters, the set, and we also had control over the story, however we wouldn't be aloud to deviate to far from the script. I quite liked the opportunities given to us for this project, as their is a lot we could do to influence the outcome of the story as we were given a lot of freedom to do what we wished.

After reading the scripts we settled on a script that followed the life of a paranoid man, who was driving himself crazy through his suspicion as to what his next door neighbour was up to. The theme of the script seemed to be generally darker than the others, but as a group we decided to incorporate elements of comedy (dark comedy) into the animation, such as "Bruno".....who you'll find out more about later on.   

From the beginning thing I felt seemed fairly organised and structured, we were given individual tasks for the first week, and the plan was to continue this through out the "6 weeks given" 

Week 1-                  Project research for character and set design specifications
Week 2-                  Character design, final set design, storyboards and prop creation
Week 3-                  Character, set and prop creation, dopesheets and video references
Week 4-                  Animating
Week 5-                  Animating
Week 6-                  Editing and preparing presentations

The first week, me, alongside others of the group started to think of suitable story to fit the script, we decided that the paranoid man was in fact, fearful that his neighbour was an alien, and that when he went round to check what was going on in the house after hearing some strange noises, he would discover that this paranoid delusion of living next door to an alien was all in his head, and that instead, was a man even more paranoid, frightened of what HIS next-door neighbour was doing.....irony I guess. I was assigned the task planning the neighbour who was even more paranoid than the main character. I referenced a few films, one for instance " The Machinist" that was brought my attention by one of my tutors, "The Machinist" is a story about a machinist who has had chronic insomnia for a year, and who has lost so much weight that he has become severely emaciated.  I felt that this would be a good reference, for my paranoid man, ass he had to be so paranoid as to over shadow the main characters paranoia. I took specific parts from the character from the film, to add to my own character. We also decided that we wanted our work to be similar to that of the characters in the film "Corpse Bride" such as how thin and slender they are, also to give them similar features as well, our character is supposedly kind of ill, and well in the corpse bride....their dead, how much worse can you look! We wanted to research Tim Burtons animated films, as the theme of our story (paranoia) seemed to be a little to dark,  and like I said, we wanted to add elements of comedy, as both of these themes are present in films such as "Corpse Bride" and "The Nightmare before Christmas" After planning out the extremely paranoid man, I returned to uni only to find out that the idea had been scrapped, and that we were replacing the man, with a chair and a balloon, I do take into account that as a group, to overcome certain obstacles such as all members of the group not being present at the same time, that it was right to just make decisions, based on who is there at the time, however at this stage I had been in just as much as every other member, and I think a simple text would have been appreciated, anyway, nevertheless it was good to be able to design and research certain aspects to create my own character. 

For the second week I was given the task to design and create two props, a clock and a guitar, seeing one of my fellow group members work, I asked how he created what he had made, and he told me that he carved it out of balsa wood, thinking this was a good idea, I waited until the weekend, when I returned home to "Bristol" and went out with my father in order to buy some materials, in which to create the props. We had planned to bring in our props by the start of week two (Monday) however due to being ill, and throwing up :(! I was feeling quite tired and unable to accomplish all of these goals set, I did however complete what I thought would be the hardest prop for me to make, the guitar. On Monday I began sculpting out the basis of my clock, I later found out that the clock had been painted by another member of my group, I much appreciated this, however I was unsure whether this was because he wanted to do it, or because he felt that I couldn't be trusted to do the work :/ still going off the plan set by the group, I felt I could have had till the end of the remaining week I was given, to finish it off. We finished it off by printing out a picture off a clock face and then attaching some thin wire that I purchased for the guitar strings,  onto the clock face to act as clock hands, that were able to move. During this week we also took it upon ourselves to film a story board, we wanted to do this to get video references for each of our scenes, as we felt that secondary action, and timing would be important to create a realistic animation, however as we also wanted the animation to be exaggerate, we also got the chance to act out particular scenes very over the top, one in particular for me that springs to mind, is Mike Price's rendition, of a paranoid man getting spooked when looking through a window, and then to quickly drop to the floor in the hopes of not being scene :).

This is the final version of the story board, that was finished of and crated on the computer by Bea, a member of out group:

For my part I was filmed playing a song on the guitar, The X files theme, this required me to learn the song, however due to it not being very hard this didn't take long, we wanted to add this theme as we though it would be a clever idea to slip in references from different movies relating to our topic of paranoia and aliens, another example is the letters "23" scribbled on some post-it notes which would refer to the film "The Number23" starring Jim Carrey. We also used secondary action a lot, and a good example of this is is the ticking clock, as this does not just....move each second, it actually ticks, we did this by animating the second hand so that it did not just stop each second, but ever so slightly wobbled, this I found looked rather impressive.

We then discovered that instead of having the six weeks that we had previously though we had to complete the animation, that we only had five, this threw our plans out of order, and so we had to bring deadlines, such as model making forward. Another problem we faced was finding a space to work, because the need for the use of the dark room, groups were unsure of what to do, and after placing our work in a section of the dark room, we were a little annoyed to discover another group had moved our work to begin their own filming, leaving us with no were to  film. We however came up with the idea of creating our own workspace by carrying a computer into the dark room, and setting it up so that we could work, we first check with our tutors to make sure it was ok. After being given the thumbs up, we were shocked to find out that some one had made a health and safety complaint about us, this led to work being moved without our permission, and to the curtains in the dark room being taken down, leaving lighting used by other groups work as an issue due to it effecting out own work. There were even points where we had to hold up boards of wood to stop light from other peoples work from interfering. 

For the set, we decided that we would incorporate slots, to which we could place the wall of a room, we did this to enable us to easily remove different walls in order to film at different angles, and also to animate the characters easier. When one of my group members was designing this, I noticed that he was over thinking the slots process, and placing slots for where the garden would be, I explained that we did not need these slots as we would not be requiring a wall, I also explained that there was two sections that would not be required to make, as again he was over thinking and it would be much simpler and cost efficient, to do it with my minor changes.

Another thing we did to ensure that we didnt waste any unnecessary time, was to film a particular scene in a non sequential order, we did this as one room was meant to be messy, where as the other tidy, and by filming the the tidy scene first, we could then focus on ripping apart wallpaper and scribbling on the walls, instead of having to create an entirely different set which would have been very time consuming. We also filmed the scenes in which the armature didn't have to move as much first, we did this because the armature was supposedly very brittle, and the creator was unaware if it could last the entire animation. And so by filming these scenes first, we ensured that the bulk of the scenes were captured, luckily tho, the armature stayed together through out. The only other issued we faced with the armature was the eyes, due to the clay shrinking over night, we returned in the morning to discover that we were unable to move one of them. We thought about how we could solve this problem, and decided that instead of to cut into the armature, and try and fix it, (which wouldnt have been time efficient, and also could have potentially made the armature worse) we decided that we would have to turn the head of the armature to ensure that he was looking the correct way. 

I found that I was mainly in control of capturing, I would have liked to have been more involved in the animating part of the task, however having such a large group, this was in high demand, also the creator of the armature, who I must say did a brilliant job, seemed a little on edge with others touching it....and fiddling with it :), this was only fair I suppose as he had put in a lot! of effort and I for one didn't want to break it. However I did a lot of capturing, and despite what others say isnt just pressing space on the keyboard. I had to be able to notice subtle changes in lighting and camera focus which could have thrown off the animation,  also I had to be able to see if objects or characters had moved, making the animation seem jerky, also to ensure that the animation looked smooth, because of this i often had to call for frames, or even scenes to be re-shoot. As well as this I had to constantly name and organise the different scenes we shot. Another part  I found I noticed during capturing was timing, sometimes when the armature needed to be balanced, for instance if he was standing on one foot and someone had to hold him in position, I had to time the shoot so that when I captured it, the armature that would be swaying due to it being held in someone's hand, would be in the position that made the animation look its smoothest. However a lot of the time we overcame the balance issue by using blue tack, this was also used to stick objects down.

Dope sheet used when animating:

Another thing I added to the animation, was the use of some cut up cardboard strips stuck to a ruler! very technical I know :)...however I used this to place in front of one of our lights to crate the effect that when the room was lit, the light was shining through a boarded up window, I thought this would be a good idea, as we had in fact placed a model of wooden boards up against the window which would be visible in other shots, I thought that this would help keep continuity. Another scene called for a toothbrush to be thrown into a cup, we however found this a bit tricky to animate, only to be told a simple and very easy solution by a classmate. As opposed to using string to hold the tooth brush in mid air, or to even drop the toothbrush into the cup and hit the capture button as many times as we could to try and capture the fall :S....I dunno XD, he told us that we could just remove the wall that we were working on and place it on the desk, then we were free to animate creating the illusion of a falling toothbrush, without having to worry about gravity ruining our scene.


I did enjoy this task, despite not being able to take part in the animating...., I enjoyed working with the group that I was in, however I do believe working till 7 o'clock at night does make you go a little crazy, and can also cause you patients to be shortened. I believe in our team however there were too many strong leaders, and some of us were possibly dismissed a little, still I am glad and thankful as they did put in an extreme amount of effort into the task, and although, some days I may have not made it in, due to physically being sick mostly, I ensured that whenever I was in, I made sure that I worked with the other members of my group until the last person went home, and I tried to make the most of the time whilst I was in.