Research Design Investigation This brief allowed me to learn a little more about the field that I am interested in. Animation. It was difficult for me to figure out specifically what it was about animation that I liked, as it’s such a vague field. Although, what I did know was that I wanted to look into some form of animation made for TV and film. To start this discovery I looked at the types of animation there are. ANIMATION storyboard Cel animation- this is where each frame is drawn out by hand. This is usually done with the use of acetate paper, where each frame gets drawn on top of the last image to create a sequence of moving images. Stop animation- this is where each picture is taken of each frame to create a sequence of moving images. This is commonly found in clay animations. Computer animation- this consists of 2D and 3D animations, made on a computer.
Transcript
Research
Design Investigation
This brief allowed me to learn a little more about the field that I am interested in. Animation. It was difficult for me to figure out specifically what it was about animation that I liked, as it’s such a vague field. Although, what I did know was that I wanted to look into some form of animation made for TV and film.
To start this discovery I looked at the types of animation there are.
ANIMATION
storyboard
Cel animation- this is where each frame is drawn out by hand. This is usually done with the use of acetate paper, where each frame gets drawn on top of the last image to create a sequence of moving images.
Stop animation- this is where each picture is taken of each frame to create a sequence of moving images. This is commonly found in clay animations.
Computer animation- this consists of 2D and 3D animations, made on a computer.
Research
Design Investigation
Animation started with the idea of capturing the human and animal’s every movement.Edweard Muybridge was famously known for doing this.
Then came the zoetrope, a cylinder object with slits in it so that when it spins the still images would appear to be moving. Then the thaumatrope which consisted of a disc with two images on either side, which would then be twirled with the use of two strings on each side so that the two images would superimpose to make it look like one image.
Towards the early twentieth century came cel animation. Disney made good use of this when they started making films. The process was long as each of the film’s frames were individually created. They then got passed onto a different person who would take a picture of the individual frame. Next they would have to create the music, voices and sounds to accompany the frames.
After this technique came the use of computers. 2D animations would be created by using programs found on computers. Now the future of animation consists a lot of 3D animation.
The first picture on the right is an example of the cel animation used in Disney. Further to the right is an im-age of the popular 3D film, Avatar.
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Research
Design Investigation
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ANIMATIONstoryboard
When doing my research on the types of animation, the one that stood out the most to me was 2D animation. I liked the idea of manually working on something by drawing it by hand then processing it digitally so it can be altered on the computer.
The types of animation I enjoyed watching were ones that looked like the details were worked on intricately, and the colours were bright, to create a chaotic or eventful looking scene.
Examples of these animations are the Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough advert by Celyn, and Mika’s Grace Kelly promotional animation. (Both shown in the images on the far right).
While researching a bit more into 2D animation I found the sort of job roles that are consisted in this field.
The list of job roles are split into different categories:
-Development-Director-Producer
-Pre-Production-Production Designer -Storyboard Supervisor-Art Director -Storyboard Artist Designer -Storyboard Assistant -Character Designer -Prop Designer -Layout Supervisor-Background Designer -Layout Artist-Colour Stylist-Clean Up Artist /Design Assistant
Research
Design Investigation
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-ProductionAssistant Director Animation DirectorKey or Lead AnimatorBackground Painter AnimatorJunior AnimatorDigital Paint Supervisor Key Clean Up Artist (Animation)Scanner Assistant AnimatorDigital Painter Inbetweener Line Test Operator Production SecretaryRunner Production Assistant
When looking at the job roles the thing that stood out to me was the storyboard artist. I liked the idea of drawing out storyboards as well as making animations. I therfore decided to look a little further into the world of storyboards by doing further research and by contacting some more professional storyboard artists.
On the right is an example of a storyboard illustration. ‘Horror 2’ made by Josh Sheppard.
Research
Design Investigation
ANIMATION
storyboard
What I wanted to find out from this Design Investigation was to learn a bit more about what goes on in the ‘real world’ or animation and storyboarding. I want to know what it consists of, what are the techniques and processes that are used and how difficult it is to get to do this job.
I wanted to get realistic and honest answers to my questions so that I could get a clearer understanding of what goes on behind the scenes.
Development
Design Investigation
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In order to get specific answers to my interests, I came up with a list of questions to ask some professional animators and storyboard artists. I would write them down in an e-mail and send it off to them.
Development
Design Investigation
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1. What are the processes of communication between the script writer (or director) and the animator/storyboard artist?
2. How did you get to where you are today?
3. How/when did you realise this is what you wanted to do?
4. Were there any obstacles and challenges? If so how did you navigate yourself around them?
5. What are the techniques used from script to visual?
6. Where do the ideas come from when starting to make the visuals?
7. Where do your inspirations come from? Where do you find your visual language?
8.How do you go about animating/making storyboards? (Where do you start? What are the processes?)
Both images are taken from Le Fevre’s animations ‘Anchor Butter’ and ‘Reality Bites’.
To start off a list of people to contact I decided to look at the people involved in the art department of the film The Princess and the Frog. I knew this film had been created with the use of hand drawn images as well as the use of computers, and that had really appealed to me. When I found several names I looked up the ones that had contact details so I could email them my ques-tions. Most of them were storyboard artists though.
I also found a studio called Nexus Productions when reading through an art magazine. This is where I found the animation made by Celyn, as well as a few others.
Other studios I looked at was AKA Studios and Sherbet.
Out of the twelve e-mails I sent, I received four full re-plies.
The first reply I got was from Celyn. I had accidentally sent him and Le Fevre an identical e-mail, so I got told off for it. He was nice about it, but I knew I could have easily avoided this obvious mistake. Lesson number one learned.
I got two replies from animators; Jim Le Fevre and David McCue. And two replies from storyboard artists: Anthony Zi-erhut and Mike Vosburg.
I felt like their answers definitely helped me under-stand what goes on with animation and storyboards. I learned some new things and have kept some of the advice they gave out in mind.
On the right are some quotes I found stood out the most in the answers I received from these designers.
Development
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Anthony Zierhut-“There is usually little or no communication between the script writer and the storyboard artist. Storyboard artists work for the director.”
“Mechanically speaking, it goes like this:1. meet with the director, take lots of notes, ask good questions2. make a shot list3. draw thumbnails4. draw rough panels5. draw finished panels6. check in with the director, get notes7. address notes (repeat 2 through 6 as needed)8. get the scene approved, move on to the next scene”
Mike Vosburg-“Once you become immerse in telling the story you simply start to see the images. Part of it is practiceand a logical approach, and part of it is simply magic that happens when you let your mind go.”
David McCue-“The competition for thesefew positions is fierce and often highly skilled specialist s travel from other countries for work.”
“establishing a look and feel for characters and environments, colour schemes, textures or if the visu-als are more abstract this would be refelected in the material gathered at this stage.”
Jim Le Fevre-“I’d say the biggest obstacle is yourself. It’s incredibly hard but incredibly simple but the most important thing is just to DO things. The easiest trap to fall into is to complain about things and talk about what you could do but never do it. Actually doing something is incredi-bly hard to initiate (even picking up a pen and a sketch-book and wandering around the city) but once you’re doing it it’s so incredibly simple.”
“You’re obviously interested in something because you sent the email so that’s one good thing you can notch down on the list of ‘What Danika Is’ now build on that!”
I decided to base my final artefact on the hypothesis of what would happen in this Design Invetigation.
I started off by drawing out the storyboard for the animation, that way I could work both fields I was looking at into my final piece.
The idea consists of a character representing myself, typing out an email that gets sent of to the designers. After this email is sent, I wait for a long period of time. During this time cobwebs will appear and the character will grow old. Eventually the character receives a new email, only to find out that it is spam. At this point the character gets angry and therefore smashes up the computer.
Final
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The final artefact was made using Adobe AfterEffects. The images were scanned in from sketches then digi-tilised in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Some of the images were created individually, frame by frame, for example the typing hands or the action of hitting the computer with the bat. When I had finished making the animation I decided to add some sound to it to bring it a bit more to life. The sounds were recorded individually then put together in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Final
Design Investigation
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My Design Investigation started with a struggle of figuring out what field I would want to specialise in, in the future. I knew I wanted to create animations; bright, colourful, intricately detailed ones that would be made for anything but advertisements. I started off by looking at several art magazines, where I found several names of designers whose work most appealed to me. The one that stood out the most personally was Nexus Studios, so by looking at their website I found a couple of their designers whose individual work I liked the look of. All their work consisted of 2D animation. The first person I contacted was an artist called Celyn then another called Jim Le Fevre. When doing so, I accidentally sent out the exact same e-mail to both of them, despite mostly reading through the messages and altering a few words before sending them. Celyn picked up on it and helpfully warned me that it wasn’t a good idea to ‘copy and paste’ messages when sending them to designers and to tell them a little more about your own work, what exactly it is about their work you liked and how the questions relate to it. Jim Le Fevre on the other hand replied to my questions in great detail, giving me a few tips on how to start off in this field by telling me about how he started off.
After contacting these designers I thought long and hard about what other sort of animation I liked. I knew that I love hand-drawing my work so I wanted to be able to discover a bit more about how that could be implemented into 2D animation. Disney has been known to hand-draw their films, so I had a look at the names of all the designers who helped create the movie ‘The Princess and the Frog’. Once I had a list of the names I then checked out the ones who had their own website. While doing this I found that a lot of the names were of storyboard artists. Looking at their work, I realised that I was really interested in learning more about it, like the processes, techniques and skills needed for it. I decided to make a list of names for the storyboard artists of whom I could contact. I got two replies, one from Mike Vosburg and another from Anthony Zierhut. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about their experiences with storyboard, and learned new things from it, for example, I assumed that the storyboard artist communicated with the scriptwriter, but in fact they don’t talk to each other at all. The only communication done is with the director.
Although I had sent out twelve e-mails but only received five replies, I still found out all the essential details that I wanted to learn about. All the designers who contacted me were lovely people, informal with their replies and ended their e-mails by asking me to keep them updated on how the rest of my work goes. Their replies were really insightful and helped give me a clearer understanding of how starting in the animation and storyboard field needs to be done and how I can progress from there. I also got a better understanding of what to expect in the real world of animation and storyboarding. By doing this Design Investigation I have discovered.
