Team Presentation

Today me and my team had to present our work up until this point to the class and lecturers to get different feedback and assistance. We all had our specific slides to reacd for what we have done and it allowed the presentation to go as smoothly as possible. We included imagery and videos when needed inside to visually show to the audience what we had completed for our animated documentary. We had up to 20 minutes to present it all so we couldn’t just waffle on about different slides because we had to keep it in the time schedule.

The response we got was really good everyone seemed to like our idea, of ‘Noise Pollution on Marine Wildlife’. They liked the fact we had all had a huge part on creating the producing this animation and that noone was left out with noting to do or not having a big part in the production.

Overall I was firstly worried about this task because I don’t enjoy talking infront of a crowd, but once doing it after learning what I needed to say the experience wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be at the build up.

Editing Together The Animation

After creating it all I started to edit it all together, I brought all the sourced material and edited it accordingly to what I had created. I moved all of the different sections together, matched them up with the audio and also included some extra sound effects to make the whole animation feel nicer. Along with this I included a basic title card and credit scene to make the animation feel more like a documentary. I included the teams roles and whoever else helped with the animation. This didn’t take too long because everything was basically finished already. But for now I have finished my role for this group project and I am just waiting to hear feedback if any about what I have created and if anything needs changing. You can find the video of me creating this stage below!

The animated documentary can also be found below!

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I got feedback for my animation and it involved me replacing one of the scenes with one which involved more movement and also to replace the text to keep continuity throughout our project. I did all this quite efficiently and got it all uploaded and saved again for our final animated documentary. There is the updated version below!

 

Finishing Off The Animated Documentary

Today I carried on animating the documentary which I was producing for group work. I was up to the final stage which was the help section! This was hard to do visuals for so I created a sort of bullet point system like on the animatic and had keywords explaining what to do to help the ocean. I added bubbles and the other props such as the stop sign and the visuals for: plastic, oil and sewage to allow for all the resources to be done and for nice little visuals to keep the animation flowing. This was only half of what I had to do because there is a few more lines of information in which I need to include within the animation as the last section.

The last section consisted of me having the first scene inputted again. I included nearly every animal in this scene to make it powerful when watching. I had them all doing different things like swimming past each other, shying away from the camera, meeting other fish and leading their children. With all this the voice over fitted well because seeing all of this and hearing how we are destroying their peace will make them think and try to change their ways. I added the bubbles around the scene and also implemented text at the end to portray the final powerful phrase of ‘We wish for a change!’. With all of this I had finished animating the animated documentary. Apart from any feedback I got this was our animation for the module. You can find the video of me creating these parts for the help section below!

Carrying On The Animated Documentary

Today I carried on animating the difference sections of the animated documentary. The next stage for me to do was the effects section. This section was going to be the hardest because of it being the most diverse, meaning that it had a lot of different information in it so it required a few different scenes. Seeing as I couldn’t merge more than one paragraph of information together I had to do a seperate animation for each of the parts. Firstly I used the first paragraph as my timings and animated accordingly around that for the scene. I used visuals which were relevant and representative to the information that was being voiced over. The visuals included the use of the animals communicating to each other and bubble flowing up containing the key words within them. The creation of the first section of the effects part can be found below!

My next scene consisted of an above water shot, I used Ffion’s boat going through waves test to add a bit of change to the animation style and allow for the work to not be wasted. I added some visuals to this scene too such as a sun to portray that time had passed within the animation by having it moved to the centre of the sky. I created my own quick visuals to describe stress and confusion by using a lightning bolt and a spiral. I had these come up with words next to them to again empasise those keywords for the audience to remember. My final part contained the last 2 chunks of information in one scene, this was about the other types of noise pollution other than boats such as seismic and sonar. I did a visual to explain this using the words similar to what I did in my animatic with the shaking and pulsing. I did the same scene idea except I extended on it and made it look a lot more professional and completed than how I had got it in the animatic. With these done I had finished the effects section until I had been given my feedback. You can find the video of me creating this stage below!

 

 

Starting To Animate The Documentary

The past few days I have been focusing on animating the documentary for Noise Pollution on Marine Wildlife. My progress so far through this has been completing the first part which is the Overview. Using the pre-animated characters and props I merged them into a scene on Adobe After Effects along with my voice overs to create a well timed version of the animation. With my basics covered and my idea of what I though the scene would look like I exported it and uploaded it into the google drive where I asked my team to tell me what they thought and if there was anything else I should add. I got quite good feedback from my group with only little changes to the scenes. These were easily fixable and changeable so I completed what they had asked and uploaded it again to see if everything was up to the standard in which they wanted and had thought of. I am still waiting to see if they are all okay and if there are any other things which needed doing. Unfortunately I didn’t screen record any of this process.

The next part I started to animate was the needs section. This was the shortest part of the animation because it only consisted of one scene and it was just over 10 seconds long. I animated this quite fast because of all the pre-animations on the characters made it an easier process. I used Ffion’s parallax of the ocean floor for this scene because I thought it fitted really well with the script and also because it allowed for a panning shot instead of still along with including other members of the groups animations and it not just being all of my own. I will also ask for feedback from this section and see if there is anything else which needs adding or changing. I screen grabbed this section and it can be found below!

 

 

Creating The Individual Character And Props Animations

Today I organised all of the individual resources for the animation. I downloaded all the characters and props that my team had created. There were a few characters which had already been done but I finished off the rest of the animals and wildlife we were going to be using and the props. I made sure everything had a small movement no matter what it was, I did this because it would show to the audience how alive the ocean actually was. With this it also allows for a more exciting experience for the audience because of all the movement and everything going on in our scenes. The animals mainly had swimming animations with their tail, head and fins moving about. The shrimp and fish eggs were just moving on the spot in mini circles and the boat was vibrating to show the engine running. Once onto some of the props I had the bubbles growing and shrinking as they floated up the screen with the different designs I had been given. The final thing for props which I completed was to have stop sign lightly pulsing to include that extra little visual for the audience to enjoy. You can find the video of me animating all of these individual parts below!

Updating The Noise Pollution Animatic

Today I went back to my animatic which I created for my Noise Pollution team project and updated it. The way I did this was from the feedback from the group. Firstly the animatic was too long and it had to be shortened. I had already updated the script and removed any unessecary parts which weren’t needed or didn’t correlate with the aniamtion properly. With this updated script done I needed to do a voice over for it again. This time around I did my voice over properly and made sure there were no mistakes or stumbles in it. This was because incase we couldn’t get a voice actor we could just use this go over I had done. Another benefit with me reading out the script was that when I spoke through it and noticed if something sounded a bit off I could just correct it and make it sound smoother while going through. When completed I duplicated the animatic and started to modify it towards my new script. I removed all of the old voice overs and replaced them with my new ones. I also cropped, sped up and slowed down different parts of the animatic so they were able to fit in nicely to my new and improved script. Once finished I watched back and made sure the overall time was correct. It was and I had lowered the time down to just under 3 minutes which was in the brief specifications. With this done it will give me and my group a great example to how the timings will take place in our animation so we can start our production on that. The video of me updating the animatic can be found below!

The updated Animatic can be found below!

Finding A Voice Actor And Updating The Script

Today I decided to reach out and try to find a suitable voice actor for the animated documentary module. I needed someone who could professionally speak through the script and be able to create a strong feeling behind the words. I firstly spoke to Joe Dembinski and asked if he could be our voice over. Unfortunately he didn’t class himself as a good enough voice actor so I had to keep searching. I then spoke to Johnny my lecturer about maybe getting in contact with the performance students and hope they would be up for the job. Johnny recommended me to speak to the third year Adam Lee because he had contacts which he has used in the past also. Another thing he recommended was to email him a message which he can send to the performance lecturer who can then ask his students hopefully. I sent Johnny the email with the message and also spoke to Adam about it. Adam told me of someone which he used from Scotland called Rob who is very good. I went on to message Rob to see if he would be up for voice acting for me. He responded quickly and asked for me to send over my script when ready so he could get start his production.

With all this sorted out I started to re-create my script. I used what I figured out during the creation of the Animatic. I decided to remove parts which I couldn’t visually explain or weren’t of as much relevance. I changed the wording to allow it to flow nicer and sound less robotic. I made it my own and recreated parts to give it the unique feel. Once finished I sent it off to Rob to hopefully complete his voice over for it!

Creating The Noise Pollution Animatic

Today I started production on the noise pollution animatic for my group project. I had been given all the resources needed to create a basic animatic to get an idea on what to create for our final piece. I started off by designating a folder for everything which was to be involved in this animatic. Once everything was collected I recorded myself saying out the script in order to get an idea of how long each scene will take and when to have the objects moving when. With all of these I was ready to start production on my animatic.

The first section was the overview, for this part I decided to have the underwater background and have a whale and some smaller fish swim across while I was narrating. I then zoomed into the coral to talk about effects on smaller marine creatures to finish off the first part by filling the screen with water. Following this I used the sky background and started it off under the water to then bring it up and explain the distances which sound travels in different volumes such as underwater and on land. I also visually showed sunlight getting distorted when traveling underwater. With these 2 scenes it concluded the overview.

The next section involved the needs of sound for marine wildlife, the first part of this section didnt involve much because I couldnt think of what to put there at the time but on the second half it involved visuals explaining finding habitats, mates, navigation and communication. I exported the this section of my animatic and that was the needs part finished.

The following section was the effects, this had to have a lot of visuals it it to show the effects that this pollution had on marine wildlife. I included a boat which disorientated fishes for the first part which fitted with the script. Along with this the second part I reused from the needs section but I changed it up to show that all the fish were getting confused once the noise pollution hit them. I showed them leaving their mates and habitats and swimming the wrong way towards the noise. The third part included me to show seismic and sonar energy which effected marine animals ability to hear. I showed two fish communicating until it gets disrupted with sonar activity which leads the fish getting confused. Following this I had a paragraph come up on screen explaining the next section because I was unsure on how to visually explain it other than that. This concluded the effects section of the animatic.

The final section was the help section, this included a sort of bullet list for the first part simplifying what it said in the script and getting straight too the point visually for the audience. I included visuals for the last three headings which were plastic, sewage and oil. The next stage included a much more peaceful scene with two fish swimming in position with a blank screen. I didnt know what else to put in this scene so at the end of the script I just involved a few powerful words at the end which emphasised the last seconds of the animation.

I then went on to bring everything into premiere and work it together such as the sound and after effect exports to create the animatic. I also added other sounds into the animatic to improve the overall feel of it and allow it to be more professional in the end run.

Overall I found this all to be quite a bit tricky I had never used after effects mainly before so it was all a bit still new to me. I feel as though I have got the hand of it through doing this and I can create better animations from it. I am open to changing or adding things into the animatic if my group wants to see more visuals or needs a better idea into what is going into the animation, but so far I have included everything that I could and that I think makes a successful animatic for our Animated Documentary.

The Animatic can be found here!

Learning Adobe InDesign And Its Use For The Production Bible

Today in my lecture I was told about the importance of Adobe InDesign when creating a production bible. I had used Adobe InDesign in a previous module for a production bible so I already knew the basics and how to work my way around the program. I was told useful information about how to set up the document in order to create an efficient production bible. I was firstly told how I should work with 4 pages at a time because doing this would enable me to keep a double paged spread and not have an unbalanced document. I was also told about safety guidelines again and how to enable the safe zones in order to show where point of the page could get cut off during printing or viewing from another monitor.

Another thing I was told about was how to create a strong and powerful production bible with design tactics and dedicated pages to different stages of production done and to the individual members of my team, doing this would allow work to be portfolio worthy and it increases the production quality of what we have created. I learnt about master page templates and also how to individualize a page and only have specific features on that specific page to create a change up on the production bible instead of having every page the same layout.