drew-mga2022mi6021

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Animatic | CATCH THE SUNRISE

The final animatic of CATCH THE SUNRISE looks incredibly different from what I originally envisioned for this film, and yet, it carries the same energy, heart, and soul of what I wanted to convey through my final project. This film is a labour of love, and an incredibly personal story to me set in what I believe the world could become, the potential pitfalls of this world, and my own inability to take a break unless forced to. The relationships in this film stem from my own fears and insecurities, but unlike Katu I am lucky to be surrounded by people who have proven those insecurities to be untrue.

But this is just the halfway point, it's not over yet. I have so much left to do, but I am confident that the end product I come up with will be something that I am truly proud of. For now, we will just have to wait and see.

See you in MI6015!

[drew-mga2022mi6021]

Animatic | Balancing Dialogue

In Premiere Pro, I had to engage in a bit of a balancing act between shots, where I extended and cut down on certain shots to account for the pacing of the film, the dialogue, and the overall timing of each animation in general, making sure that each scene was given ample time to be processed by the viewer. I applied various effects to the voices of each character such that they were balanced and matched with the position of each character, the volume of the film in general and the timing of each shot. During this phase, even though I extended the length of some clips, I still had to cut down on a decent amount of dialogue. I was glad of this as opposed to the opposite scenario, where I thought I didn't have enough dialogue. Thankfully, this was not an issue.

For the sections where characters speak in Sinhalese, I added a caption to translate what was happening in the scene. This was a simple matter of creating a shape and adding text to it.

Finally, a crucial piece of subtle exposition comes in through the addition of the radio host's dialogue. Here, I applied a parametric equaliser effect set to old time radio, and a single band compressor which thickened the audio of the track. The result was this almost broken radio riddled with static, which fades out towards the end of the scene.

A few notes on the dialogue

The voice clips taken are NOT FINALISED TAKES, but instead just some voice notes that I wanted to use for the purpose of the animatic. At this point in time, they are subject to change. As such, the overall sound design of the film is also subject to minor changes based on the quality of the final audio. With that being said, the final animatic for this module is complete.

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Animatic | Making Edits

Before putting everything together on one file, I needed to first edit some of the clips so that they were closer to what I wanted them to be in the final animation. For example, during the scene where Katu's vision adjusts to the sunrise, I added a gaussian blur effect and animated it such that it looked as if Katu's eyes are refocusing.

For shots where I wanted my characters to shake or struggle, I used a wiggle function on the position property of the relevant layers. This is most prominent in the shots where Katu is struggling to climb the building and when they are looking at their phone, with the shake in their hand become progressively more intense. For this shot in particular, I used a luma key to key out everything except the lightest values, in this case Katu's phone, and applied a Glow Effect to that layer such that the phone was given more prominence in the scene.

Finally, to create a parallax background (as it turned out my canvas size was still too small and could not effectively convey the speed that I needed it to), I used a motion tile effect in After Effects to extend this background and used a blur to make the transition between tiles more unnoticeable.

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Dissertation | Final Draft

With the animatic mostly completed, I also took the opportunity to polish up my dissertation and comb over it for any niggling issues. There were a few, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. This version is the final, definitive version of my thesis that will go in for submission.

For a brief period, I was debating adding an appendix to this dissertation, but decided against it for two reasons;

I have covered most of what I want to in the main body of the dissertation. The purpose of the appendix is to add supplementary, relevant material to this thesis.

The questions and results that I would usually add to an appendix have already been covered in the latter half of the essay.

Thus, while it would have been nice, I decided against adding one in favour of polishing up my final animatic for this module.

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Animatic | Shot 39

The animatic closes on a simple looping animation of Katu and an unknown figure staring out into the sunrise. In order to save some time, I used my style frame, which is already supposed to be indicative of the style of the animation, as the background and simply animated on top of it. The main change that I made to this figure here is making her translucent, so as to not confuse viewers too much regarding if she is really there or not; rather it serves to make them wonder who she is. With this shot complete, the process of creating the animatic comes to a close, and the final step for this module of bringing everything together in editing begins.

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Animatic | Shot 38

This is the most major change to the story of the film from everything previously noted; moving the action of Katu quitting all the way to the end of the film. This provides the audience a small "A-ha" moment, as Katu is now free of the shackles of their workplace. The shot is very simple and reintroduces Katu's smartphone as a narrative device. Through subtle details such as their boss' contact name, the difference in texting styles between the two people, Katu's speed of texting and the time noted on the bottom of each message, a subtle story is being told that reinforces the themes of each character and the story at large.

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Animatic | Shot 37

Shot 37 is arguably one of the most pivotal pieces in this film; the payoff to Katu finally getting to glimpse the sunrise. It is the emotional climax of the film. For this animation, I wanted to place a heavy focus on character acting, taking cues from such monoliths like Studio Ghibli. The fact that this animation is so focused on character expression also means that there is a lot of room to mess up, as character animation is one of the most deceptively difficult actions to capture in animation effectively.

I also wanted to take some cues from the scene of the wolf in Wes Anderson's adaptation of Fantastic Mr. Fox to create an impactful shot. In anime and animation, one seldom sees the camera dead on a front facing character, however this is a striking characteristic particularly in Wes Anderson's films in tandem with his understanding of symmetry and colour. I want to bring these aspects of cinema to this shot, which takes inspiration from particularly Japanese character animation derivative of the style of Hiroyuki Okiura.

Another challenging aspect of this shot is figuring out when to have the mask crumble away. To circumvent this, I decided to animate Katu in their human form first, and overlay the "mask" later, so that I could have a good idea of all their emotions and what point would be ideal to break the mask.

With all that said, this was the final result. Overall I am quite happy with how I tackled this shot, but there are a few things I'll need to brush up in the later processes of this film, like the crumbling of the mask itself and gaining a further grasp of Katu's human form's dimensions. One thing that I added to this shot was Katu looking downwards with their shoulders raised up. In the animatic, with the sound design, this will become more clear that Katu has just received a notification; a text from their boss.

#Youtube

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Animatic | Shot 36

As I suspected, the presence of this shot post Katu's wide eyed expression may be a little redundant. Nevertheless, I am still undecided on which shot I want to proceed with for the final animation, as I like both. For this version, I will need to rely on a little bit of video editing in order to make the background blur in and out of Katu's focus, and I may even play with a little bit of image doubling as well in order to give a disorienting, duplicate effect to the shot.

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Animatic | Shot 35

In this shot, Katu pops their head in frame as their eyes begin to adjust to the sunlight. This also functions as a pseudo parallel to just before their journey to see the sunrise, where they are looking into the distance with the same expression (sans the tears). Curiously, after animating this, I wondered if it was necessary to have this shot at all in the final film. This was mainly because the next shot may render this one redundant, as it is a POV shot of Katu's eyes adjusting to the sunlight. Whichever the case, I will try animating both shots and figure out which one looks better for my film during the editing phase.

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Animatic | Shot 34

This shot is an extension of the previous one, and as such I used many of the same references when crafting the animation for this one. In the editing phase of the animatic, I plan on adding a shiver to Katu, to illustrate how much they are straining against the climb to the top. However with this, the film finally plateaus and begins the de-escalation of the story as Katu reaches their goal.

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Animatic | Shot 33

The climbing animation for now was one that was tricky to nail, mainly because of the timing of the frames. I wanted to show Katu in motion, yet straining against the limit of their ability. The solution I came up with was to have them pause for a moment after each rung. This seemed to momentarily do the trick, but as I mentioned for some other animations in this animatic, the greater nuance would come through during the rough animation phase. Here are some of the references that helped me out;

#Youtube

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Animatic | Shot 32

Following Shot 31, I needed to have a continuous motion between Katu catching the rung and them steadying themselves. Thus, I had to find a tricky balance between the force exerted by Katu on the rung vs. Katu's own weight and centre of gravity trying to balance their body. The solution came in one of the most fundamental animation exercises taught to beginners; the pendulum. Treating Katu's arm as an anchor point and their body as a really heavy pendulum that would eventually settle helped immensely in getting the motion down. The implication here is that once Katu's arm settles, their other arm grapples onto the other side of the metal bar, which then starts their climb upwards.

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Animatic | Shot 31

The trick with this new shot was that I needed to animate Katu's run in two perspectives; profile view and front facing. Not only that, but I needed to accurately nail down the transition from front to profile. This video really aided in guiding me through this process. A couple of other notes that I made was to make sure that Katu's body moved in sequence. First, the head turns as they see the corner, then their body leans and finally they twist before settling into profile.

The original plan was to keep them running, but then I had another idea. At this point in the story, Katu is at the cusp of their goal with very little to stop them. Time is quickly running out, and i wanted to amp up the desperation that they felt in this moment. So, I changed the run up to the ladder to a jump. This also makes sense with the shot that comes right after this, which is Katu's hand falling on the first metal rung with force. It would not have made much sense to have that force come from a simple run up. Plus, this jump adds a sense of continuity to the two shots. I am very satisfied with how this shot flows, and in my opinion it seems to further work to enhance the fast-paced nature of the film in general.

#Youtube

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Animatic | Shot 30

With Shot 29 already blocked out, Shot 30 was a breeze to complete since I already knew each of the key poses that I needed for this scene. Here, I decided to change Katu's expression to one that was more worried, and added sweat beads dripping from their head. The more nuanced animations I plan to add would come in through the rough animation phase of this project.

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Animatic | Shot 29

This shot, much like shot 24 features a parallax effect in the background, so animated on a much longer canvas than I usually would. To help me further with the animation itself, I created two arcs for Katu's "run cycle"; one for their elbows and one for their knees. This was so I could figure out how to space the elbows and how the elbows and knees would move fluidly.

In addition to this, I was inspired by the runs seen in anime, where a character would compound a secondary action of slipping or falling or jumping into their run. These were some of the pieces I was inspired by;

The last video in particular really helped me wrap my head around the intent behind Katu's run and how to further amp it up.

#Youtube

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Animatic | Shot 28

This shot is a short segment of Katu's bike falling down, meant to illustrate Katu's desperation to get to the sunrise. Since it is a very short shot, it does not require many animated elements. However, I did need to familiarise myself with the physics of an object as heavy as that bicycle, which took a few tries. Ultimately, I referred to a falling brick for reference. Since these bikes are further powered by electricity, it stands to reason that they must be heavier than regular bikes.

I also had the solar panel at the back of the bicycle slide away and collapse after the bike falls, as it was perpendicular to the ground while the bike was upright. The solar panel can be pivoted left and right, so there was no real damage done to the panel since while it was falling, the panel would have been able to slide to the right.

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Animatic | Shot 27

Shot 27 features an aerial view of my version of Pettah's 2nd Cross Street. There is very little animation involved in this scene, with only the crowd shuffling back and forth. As such, I felt that I could simply use the panel from my completed storyboards in my animatic, as it wouldn't make much of a difference and only served to invest more time into an idea that was already clearly conveyed, time that I could spend elsewhere to properly flesh out more important aspects of the animatic.