Group Project - Digbeth

This project began, with our class being merged with a class of architects. The group i ended up in consisted of me, another animator and a single architect. We were asked to create a film depicting the area Digbeth, to possible show developers on whether or not to invest in the area.

First thing we did as a group was to go out and visit Digbeth, for me my only experience of Digbeth was the Coach station, which i used to travel home back to Bristol every few weeks or so. From my past experiences in Digbeth, i found it to be nothing special....to me it seemed fairly normal. However after visiting Digbeth in an attempt to study and learn more about the area, I found that it was quite colourful and artistic. I found that there was a lot of interesting graffiti around and to my surprise, much of it seemed to be with the consent of the city. Funnily, one of the first things that happened to me in Digbeth is something that i feel describes the area perfectly:   Whilst walking through Digbeth with another member of my group, taking photos of the surrounding that interested us, a man proceeded to stop and question us about what we were doing with a camera, Horvath (the group member i was with) instantly clutched the camera expecting the worst of the stranger.....however to our surprise, the stranger was just informing us that he was being paid to graffiti a wall, and was letting us know so that we could photo it....anyway, much like this stranger, i went to Digbeth expecting the worst, however i was left feeling pleasantly surprised.

At the beginning we spent a lot of the time trying to figure out what style of animation would be a good idea to work with...however due to clashes of styles, we found that we couldn't agree on a particular style, this however wasn't really a problem. Just a discussion.

This is an animation that i found particularly interesting, and also loved the style!

I also like the idea of using newspaper or paper with text written on it, as one of the things we were asked to give in the project was a narrative. also around 1:17 a city appears and so if we could use show some of the more recognized buildings such as Digbeth Coach Station and The Custard Factory.

Then Due to circumstances, a group disbanded , and our group was made bigger with the addition of Sally another animator. Sally had already put a lot of thought into the story. Her idea was based around the theme "vintage" after finding a really cool Vespa covered in mirrors. The story followed a rusty old vespa through Digbeth, as the vespa slowly made his way through the area visiting more sights, its rusty old body gradually began to clear up and become new and shiny. We wanted colours and swirls to appear from the surroundings to give the impression that this old rusty vespa is having a great time, this also gives the story an element of magic and fantasy which is fun.

Sally had even created a storyboard, so from here we looked to develop her ideas. We took inspiration from the introduction to the film "Juno". We found the style to be simple but still it was impressive and cool to look at, one thing that i particularly liked was the transitions. Another advert i thought of that we could take inspiration from was a current advert at the time, the Muller advert. It starts of in a bleak dull and grey city but gradually is overwhelmed with colours and cartoon characters and ends of looking lovely and sunny.

I decided that because i felt comfortable using photoshop, that i would attempt to turn an image or a clean new vespa, and turn it old and moldy, because
the idea was for it to gradually turn from old to new throughout the film, and thus portraying to the viewer that Digbeth is a happy and fun place to be.

To begin with we needed to find a new vespa, because although the vespa that Sally found and took photos of was better, it was parked in a certain position and so the angles that we wanted were not able to be achieved. We searched the internet for a picture of a vespa at multiple angles. We eventually found one and i began to work on it in photoshop.

I created this effects by browsing google images for suitable texture, for example, for the body, as it was plastic, i searched scratched plastic texture. Once i found one that i felt would work, i just had to scale it down and apply it solely to the plastic parts of the vespa. I also did this with all the other textures that were on the bike, such as rusty metal, old worn tires and leather seats. From here i just had to work and play with effects in order to create a realistic impression. Some of the things i found to be the most effective was to choose the correct layer filter, using the clone stamp tool, the dodge and burn tool, and also the curves tool which i mainly used at the end to add depth to make it seem more realistic. I did put a lot of time into changing the 3 different angled pictures of the vespa, however a lot of it was just fine tuning the picture to make it seem as realistic as i could, i was pleased with my end results.

As a group we decided to create our animation in Adobe After Effects, a program which I had never used before, although had always wanted to learn. This was a big decision for the group we each had none or very little experience with after effects, and we were merely choosing this program as we felt it was the most suitable for creating the effects that we wanted. Another big problem i found was that the actual program itself was VERY expensive, and for me to work with it i would have to travel 45 minuted too uni to access a computer installed with it. I overcame this problem however by downloading the 30 day trial version which was free, and would allow me enough time in order to finish the animation.

I decided that i would be once again be going to visit Digbeth in order to capture images to use to create the animation.  I re-watched the "Juno" intro just to get a feel for some camera angles and affects. This did give me some ideas. I purposely went into Digbeth to gather photos to use to create a panoramic image. For most of the panoramic i remained in one position an just swiveled my body taking photos. However, i thought a cool effect when animating would be to follow the bike scrolling across the screen passing shops etc...To achieve this i stood facing the buildings and shops that i wanted in the animation and took a photo, then side stepping several spaces i proceeded to  take another photo and just continued this process until i felt i had enough images to work with. I had also been researching tutorial on youtube about after effects, one of the tutorial i found particularly helpful was a tutorial on how to create a matte painting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAMk4QXaTgQ&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdRKybdSUAc

 It explained that you had to apply images together on separate layers on Photoshop, and then to import it to after effects.
 From here you put the layers in to a 3D space and move the images further or closer to the camera to achieve your desired effect. Sounds simple when i say it now tho at the time......*Sigh* not so much. Anyway, as i had researched this, i thought that i could have some railings closer to the camera so that when filming the image it looked slight 3D. So i purposely took a close up photos of the railings, and then in photoshop, cut out the pieces that i wanted and put them onto a separate layer to use in after effects. I also did this in the first scene with a moving car and a traffic light.

My first Experience with after effects i found to be very challenging, however wanting to get better at after effects i can say was worth it as now i have a much better understanding of the program, tho there were a lot of frustrating times and hours wasted trying to figure out things to do which in the end were simple that i could have done without :) Before creating the Actual animation i created  a story board, based of the picture that i had taken, and the script that sally had written.

My final animation for Scene 4 looks like this

Some feature that i added which i enjoyed and found effective was the scene transitions, i found this to be much more subtle and interesting. Something important for the storytelling were the eyes on the vespa. We gave the vespa eyes in order to personify the bike and to give it a personality. So when animation i tried to make it recognisable to the viewer that the bike was in awe at the flashing lights and dancing that was being projected from the club when he was looking at it. I made it so that at one point his eyes almost did pop out. Finally when then camera focuses onto the eyes of the bike i raised its eyebrows to make it seem like he was opening his even more (as you cant open a full circle which were the eyes any more). Finally when moving onto the next scene you can not see the eyes of the vespa so when creating the scene transition, i left the eyes on the screen for just a few seconds more so that people would realize that the bike is still staring amazed at what he was seeing.  I was also pleased with my miraculously appearing cocktail. I wanted it to seem like it magically appeared, so i applied a transition  onto the drink to reveal it to the animation which looked much better than it previously did which was....just appearing. i also added particle to the scene in the shape of stars and animated it so that the stars followed the drink around to create that magic fantasy sense. Despite it probably looking a bit tacky  I was pleased as once again, i am a complete novice to after effects.

For the project as a whole, I did feel that for the Architect there want much to do...as the project was to animate a film and the Architect wasn't an animator. I also didnt like the idea too much about animating a piece about an area, especially an area that, even tho was more interesting than my first impressions, still wasnt something that excited me....just personal preference. I did however learn a lot more about adobe after affects which is something that i really wanted to do :)