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Captain’s Log: Cask of Amontillado 10x

I totally misunderstood the prompt initially and did a week of preproduction for a project I would end up abandoning…

I was assigned Flowers for Algernon, which hit really close to home for me. Losing my intelligence or memories is by far my worst fear and I saw a lot of good imagery to the story I could use in a simple but meaningful animation. I wanted to represent intelligence by flower height in a garden. The main character, Charlie, is a small sunflower (flowers known for their height) and other flowers bend down to interact with him. Some help him and some mock him. The different characters would have different flower types to represent their personalities. Charlie’s flower starts low to the ground, where Algernon can be seen scurrying around the ground, and the two scientists start to help it grow taller. As the flower grows taller and taller, it shows how Charlie is not only isolated by idiocy, but the intelligence he thought would help him relate to his peers better isolates him as well. The petals on him become more and more elaborate and big, and Charlie’s flower comes to represent the sun in the sky. Then he starts to wilt. He struggles as he goes back to what he used to be, trying to fight back, then giving up. Once the withered husk of the sunflower is left, someone picks the flower and puts it on top of a grave labeled Algernon. Do you know how much easier this project would be if I just stuck to that?

I wrote the script, did a ton of character exploration, and started designing characters. After all that, I decided to scrap everything and do “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe. Even though the story is dark in tone, I always saw it as comical. I mean, this guy just walks right into a very obvious trap. It’s so PAINFULLY obvious. The story is kind of a meme in the American educational system, and even online. I think I could tell the same story 10+ over in an even shorter amount of time...

I started with writing a series of situations similar to how the murder happens. It’s always some sort of betrayal with very little blood on the murderer’s hands. I wrote a series of short scenarios, ranging from tense with actual dialogue to basic internet jokes the modern high schooler would understand (we read it in like 9th grade, the kids need an abridged version). One included the character getting tricked into getting possessed, one is the character foolishly saying yes to a “free candy” van, one was getting hooked on addictive stuff from drugs, tabletop gaming, and bad social media sites like reddit, one is him just being yote off a cliff, one is a callback to the Cincinnati Zoo incident that I couldn’t finish storyboarding not out of lack of time but because of moral obligation and guilt. Anyways, they get increasingly absurd and stupid. I was challenged to fit as many as I could into one minute.

The script underwent a ton of revisions, this was the most time I’ve spent on a script. It was hard because I had to shave off as much as I could, but I think it made the stories better. They’re not supposed to be long set up jokes, it’s a series of punchlines. The joke is set up in the intro, when the characters meet in the original setting and say abridged versions of the lines. Everything else is what happens after. 

One thing that was challenging, but fun, was the character design. Since the characters change outfits, have their faces covered, are often not fully in the shot, and otherwise obscured, I had to design characters that were identifiable by every single angle. That means I had to really stretch the shape of the characters and lean into the cartoonish nature of design. One is a warm and innocent character, so I made him more likable and approachable with a bigger body but shorter stature. The other character is more cunning and harsh, so I gave him harsh angles and lines with a tall pointy stature. I tried to keep both of them in as similar a style as possible, and I think I did alright. Still used a lot more lines than I should of- whenever the characters had to have lined clothes, it was hell to draw. In retrospect, the physical dynamic is similar to two characters I used to draw a lot of in high school... 

The character designs had a base, but the outfits changed. I designed the costumes based on what I needed in the moment, so they weren’t filled with thought, unlike the first ones in the masquerade. I was just playing with shots and angles mainly, keeping information from the viewer and getting the drama across without heavy pauses or shots, just by angles. I also liked drawing the characters with the style, I kept it very simple and it made the process much easier. 

I also considered sound design heavily while the script was being written. I made a list of sound effects I would need for each scene, a list of songs to download for background music, and audio cues. I also designed one if the characters around a voice actor I already had in mind. The other character, I was entertaining using text to speech. 

I got much more comfortable with animating in Photoshop, which was nice. It’s still annoying keeping track of the frames and not drawing on the wrong frame, though. I need one of those set ups for animating on paper, just don’t know where to get one… I have a Lightbox, just need the paper and hole puncher. I found a lot of cool tricks in animating Photoshop, like taking advantage of stretching a frame and using layers. The style I was aiming for was very quick, yet stiff, and I had a lot of issues getting that style completely. It’s something I have to work on, but it all just felt too fluid. 

… I wasn’t able to finish this project. 

It was a lot, even when I cut it all down. I had big dreams and not a lot of time. I also had a bad case of depression which I’ve been dealing with since winter break. It all just felt like an uphill battle. I had so many ideas and stuff I wanted to do, but I couldn’t be happy with what I did or always ran into roadblocks which I would ignore for working on something else. Like, I was working on the project in some way, just not in a way that would help me progress in the way I needed. 

I liked connecting, writing, and concepting it all, but when it came down to animating it, it was just too much to do. I did learn a lot about Photoshop animation and feel a bit better using it, but I do need to learn aftereffects so I can use flat images and animations together more effectively. 

I enjoyed being able to flex my comedic writing skills and push them to the limit. My last comedic venture was more about telling a story with the assistance of a joke that already existed, but this one was coming up with new ways to tell the same punchline in increasingly comedic and unpredictable ways. The audience should know how the joke starts and ends, but how the joke gets to the end is the fun and mysterious part. Writing was where I felt my energy was most effectively spent even if it wasn’t the thing I spent the most actual time on (that would go to struggling with ProCreate and Photoshop). I did get to figure out my drawing and animation style a lot more effectively, though. How I draw characters feels a bit more established and defined, which does feel good. However, I think I need to start even smaller and just work on making small second animations or something. 

Anyways…

Your move, Poe. 

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Captain’s Log: Roundabout the Block

We were told at the beginning that this project was a favorite project. I mean, telling a secret? Talking about ourselves? Seems like fun. Everyone likes to talk about themselves, and we know ourselves the most and best. 

… Thing is, I had no idea what secret to tell. I have a pretty interesting backstory. I’m a foreigner, I was raised in a cult and had to leave, I have an autistic little brother, I work with kids and the wilds or Midwest America, but a secret… 

I started compiling a list. Most of them looped back to “I’m desperately alone in this country and I don’t know to handle” or “I miss my friends at home” or “I wish the people I loved were closer” or “I’m stressed out” but… everyone’s gonna do something like that, right? We’re all stressed. We’re all tired. Most of us (foreign at least) are coping with being away from home. Naw, if I tell a secret, it’s gotta be something funny, something humanizing. This isn’t a chance to open up to the class, this is a chance to show how stupid I can be. This would not only be a Stupid Thing I Did, but a insight into who I am: A Joke. A Jest. A meme. 

I started designing how I wanted to present myself first. Even if I didn’t have a story yet, I had a main character. I spent a lot of time on it… it just never seemed to look like something I wanted to portray myself as. I tried to adhere to the goal of making a simple character, and I think I did okay with that. The body was easy to draw, but fluid and dynamic. 

At some point, I realized a secret I could tell. I almost got struck by lightning in my youth. It had lasting effects on my psyche later on. I realized if I set it to a song called “Roundabout” by Yes, it would show how it affected me the best. I have terrible fears of loud unexpected noise and being out in storms, and all that was impacted in one split second. A second I didn’t know was coming. “Roundabout” captured this feeling almost perfectly.

I designed the other character first, my dog. Then, while I was visiting home, I took sketches of where it happened and figured out where the characters would go. I kept the foreground open to allow for more movement and put more tall stuff in the back to make it more filled, but how far back it was staggered in distance. I had a lot of fun drawing my dog, Brooklyn. I’m not very good at drawing creatures, so finding a style was a challenge. I was kind of inspired by the body style of My Little Pony characters, but didn’t realize this until later on…

“Roundabout” happens in key parts. There’s three riffs, then a drop where the lightning would happen. Each step to that lightning, I aimed for recreating that memory for the viewer. Slowly, the background comes back to life. The clouds roll into the sky to the music. The rain drops slightly, but never really starts heavily, creating a fake sense of calm. Everything is focused on making sure the audience is waiting for something to happen, building tension alongside the song. 

The first part is sketching up the place it happened. I’m in animation, so I’m expected to be able to draw. When you want to show someone what something looks like but you don’t have a picture, you draw it, either physically or with word pictures. I designed the background, then did frame by frame to show how it came into existence. Then, once it does and the building note suddenly ends, it pops into color and becomes more real and tangible to the audience. Then, the color is lost when the clouds come in, showing the situation isn’t as it always is. It only changes when the sun gets blocked out, ‘cause it’s gotta be a little bit of a logical reason. It’s emotional and practical, okay? I wanted to do more with the color shift in the clouds, but whatever, it was a bit too late to change it when I thought of it /shrug. 

Next, the rain has to come in on the notes. I only animated one raindrop and it took me legit hours. I didn’t do heavy rain because it would lead the audience to the conclusion that it was rain/water related too soon. I wanted it to be implied, but not given away. Once the characters enter the scene, the audience should let the raindrops move to the back of their mind. I also didn’t do heavy rain because it was Too Hard To Animate. I tried, it sucked. 

Then, the characters enter the frame. Finally, a more tangible focus. Brooklyn enters the frame first, kind of ushering in my character. The two are supposed to be opposites in movement. Brooklyn is energetic and spirited, Scout is tired and lethargic. She barely moves at all. The moment seems so meaningless and non-dramatic, the key moment seems to be when Brooklyn shits, which of course got laughs… I didn’t mean for it to, but it did so, uh… Anyways, it’s just more juxtaposition between the music and the action, all while happening with instead of entirely against it. The moment is so mundane, when my character had to step back to get Brooklyn and the lightning strikes where she just stood, it should take the audience a moment to think over “wait what the FUCK just happened” because not only did the visual tone change (with a filter) but the musical tone finally gives the drop the audience has been waiting for. The foreshadowing of the music is shown best right before, like the first bit is only adding up 1/4th of the build, but really drags it along to make it heavier. Then the lead up before the drop is a warning, a “wait, whatever’s happening is about to happen” that’s more heavily juxtaposed with the same mundane movement as before- there’s no change in the movement, a tonal inconsistency. 

In conclusion...

THIS PROJECT WAS A MAJOR FUKKEN TECHNICAL NIGHTMARE. 

I swear to god, not one animation software would work on my iPad. I learned maybe three different softwares and had to keep switching between them. I’d animate something for hours then realize I couldn’t use it. It sucked! It was terrible! I did way more work than was shown. Work that will never see the light of day. I don’t want to go too much into detail but it SUCKED. 

I also did way too much action in the segment with Brooklyn. I colored and lined almost 50 frames but only used 25. I cut out a whole action in which he chases a squirrel around a tree, that was so much time lost…

… in all, I tried my best to keep it away from writing and more visual storytelling. I think I did an okay job. I tried to cut it down instead of monologging endlessly, even if I did overload myself with work still, but not as much as I could have. I also got laughs! I was funny! And I was also right about the majority of secrets. A lot of them weren’t necessarily dark, but they were more serious. The fact that I managed to get a big reaction and laughs after the audience watched so much serious material was a shock to me, it breaks the main rule of comedy. 

(And I’m not sure if Léo was mocking me when he asked if we could watch it again…)

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Captain’s Log: 3D

Part I: Y’know, it’s pretty hard working with 3d things for me. What made it worse was always having a camera in my face. It SUCKED. 

We made 3d animation armatures, and I decided to go big or go home with mine. Even after being told it should be taller and more humanoid, I still decided to make a mothman, because that seems to be my default… The main reason why was because detail would be less important, I’d just have to worry about making sure the black mass took up enough room and do some texture work. In comparison, he’s really short next to the other armatures, but thats what makes him special. He’s got massive double joined ‘arms’ which function as wings. After the model was dry, I went home and tore up an old black t-shirt for the body and wings and basically made it a body suit. There’s some layered fabric for detail. Also, gorilla glue doesn’t just coat your skin if you get it on you, it fucking gets ABSORBED by your skin and it’s the most painful thing ever. I entertained the idea of a wolf but ehh that’s a lot of detail I didn’t feel like doing. Plus the arm to leg proportions made it look like a hulk werewolf or something. 

My group decided to put our characters in space, because where else would all these whack characters meet. We had a cast of an astronaut, a robot, and a mothman. Literally nowhere else would make sense. 

We had fun painting the background and the planets around the creature, too! People kept filming us, so at some point I started messing with them by looking right into the camera. I’d glare, or wink, or make some kind of hand sign, or at one point I started ranting about conspiracy theories. A lot of people pulled me aside to talk to me about my character and what I thought animation was. I was told it was deep.

Everything I say is pulled directly out of my ass and should be treated as such. 

Part II: Everything That Could Go Wrong Went Wrong

I was hella tired after pulling a late nighter, the rest of my group was in a similar situation, so we were all bitchy towards each other for the most of it. We got over it, but having cameras shoved in our faces sure didn’t help… we were stressed and crowded, which was just a terrible mix. Someone joked that it was like “The Real Animators of Camberwell Foundation” ;;;;;;;;

My poor mothman broke, so I was on picture taking and set moving duty. We came up with a lot of the movement as we went, we had no story structure or idea of where we were going with our characters. One motion kind of just flowed into the next, which was nice. It was so much more freeform than 2d animation, I wonder if 3d computer animation is similar… something just seemed really organic about it, more so than the 2d stuff we’ve done. We got like 9 solid seconds of animation, it was gonna be edited together but eh… that requires opening premier and managing files, and I didn’t feel like it.

It was fun playing in a 3d space, though. I think I’d like it more if I could do it digitally instead, I’ve seen a lot of 3d animation I’d like to take a crack at. I mean, if I’m going into game art and development, I guess I have 3d animation in my future. I wanna learn how to use Blendr and make rigged models over the summer. Maybe for my final project…?

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Captain’s Log: Actually Animating

Part I: Today we did Lightbox animation. Even though I willingly chose to do animation, I had no idea how it worked. It always just seemed kind of foreign to me, so I never directly tried it. So sitting down with paper and a pencil with the intent of making movement was kind of intimidating…

We did frame by frame animation first, I revisited the idea of my Mothman character emerging from a black ball and getting spooked. We were supposed to do 24 frames… but I did 50. It was fun playing with how making the frames more or less different affected the movement, I also played with doing 2x frames in some parts and 1x frames in others for varied affects. I ended up going back and coloring the frames in, this character is for sure my favorite to animate. It just feels so much more fluid and free form. I need to learn how to draw people this simply and confidently… 

Next, we did pose by pose. It was MUCH harder. I’m such a perfectionist when it comes to this kind of stuff, I always wanted to do more motion than the number of frames allowed me to do, too. I animated my Dungeons and Dragons character, Bo Phadez, throwing her head back with an evil glare before getting into a fight. There were WAAAAAAAYY too many lines in the character, it was super hard to animate… the keyframes were the hardest, the middle frames were the easiest. I had trouble keeping track of all the frames, though… 

Everyone else seemed to be moving much faster than me. Even the keyframes would take such a tiny amount of time for them. I think part of the reason was knowing more confidently where their lines went and simpler character designs they were comfortable with. 

What I learned is that I need to simplify my characters and figure out a simpler style that I can animate quickly with. Still, that’s one and a half animations under my belt.

Part II: Today we played more with the fluidity of the animations we did, and it honestly just takes practice. I still have no idea how much motion to fit in a second, sometimes it feels like too much or too little, but I’m figuring it out. We did a three pose animation, so I did one of a (simple silhouette) guy standing absentmindedly, then pointing finger guns as sunglasses fell from the top of the frame, then dabbing. It was fun playing with how the character shifted around and where the motion went, but damn animation takes time. I also just like knowing I can bring these characters into creation and make them do whatever I want/whatever my artistic ability allows me. 

Next, we pulled a scene from our animatics. I did a mostly still frame of Robyn standing with the skull mask after the battle with Ursa Major, their back to No One. In the original animation, No One reaches down and takes the mask as Robyn falls to the ground, but again… too much movement and not enough time. In the animation, both stand as the wind blows gently around them, a moment of serenity in the aftermath.

I learned that I need to stop using so many goddamn lines and stick to basic shapes, maybe even try animating digitally with just coloring in the character without the lines. I also need to learn how to animate digitally… fuck. Guess I’ll figure that out next project or something. 

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Captain’s Log: Puppets

Today we were puppets actors for the film students. It was fucking freezing outside. That’s all. 

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Captain's Log: No One

I did roughly 8 hours of field research for this project. If that doesn’t show how hyped I was, I don’t know what does. 

We were told to go to the British Museum to take notes and sketches of artifacts that interested us. We’d then incorporate our research into our first animatic by centering/including the artifact in a story. The British Museum is a pretty fukken big museum, host to artifacts from cultures all over the world. I was gonna be there a while. 

My first area of interest was the Ancient Egypt section. Even thought it was packed, I took a lot of sketches and notes on stuff I could picture as the centerpiece of a story- a means of congregating or hosting. For instance, a lot of libations bowls that would be used by many people a day who visited a temple took my interest, or the towering sarcophagi that looked way too big for only one person. I initially didn’t want the artifact to become the character, but to assist the characters interacting with it. That way, I could tell a story around it. 

My next stop was the Ancient Greece section. As a kid, I knew everything about greek mythos. It’s a religion not only with multiple gods, but fatally flawed gods is so interesting to me. I took a lot of notes, but most of the notes ended up being around the story as opposed to the aesthetic of the artifact. The Greeks shared an area with the Romans, so I took some notes there as well. I moved onto Ancient Asia. There was a lot of interesting material, I liked to look at the jade crystal carvings and imagine the cronch from biting down on one. They had interesting masks, but not too much stood out to me in there. As I spent more time in the museum, the more monotonous everything got. I don’t think it’s the cultures being repetitive, but it does show how humanity fixates on very similar topics, even beyond cultural barriers. Kind of like parallel evolution. Where I really started to find my spark was Ancient Europe and Scandinavia. Aesthetically and mythologically, I love vikings. Pagan traditions are really cool as well, it all just seems so foreign to me (we don’t learn much about it in American schools). Stuff was interesting me again, but nothing was really catching my eye… Until I was being ushered out of the museum at closing time. I saw a deer skull, the antlers still attached, with holes drilled in.

It was from Star Carr. Made of red deer skull, it served as a headpiece and is among the oldest evidences of shamanic religion. It seemed so unsettling in an ancient and earthy way on its own, the idea of someone wearing it intrigued me. Coming home, I started on three base ideas to bring into class. The first was using an ancient viking mirror as a gateway between an eldritch horror and a young adult who’s distant grandmother just passed away and received the mirror as inheritance… except the eldritch horror acts like an elderly guy with clearly racist beliefs but trying to seem like he doesn’t. They talk by fogging up the mirror and writing. 

The second was two people arguing over who would win in a fight: a person on horseback or a centaur. Inspired by the fact that any times centaurs are featured in art, they’re always fighting a human. Even after writing a rough script for it, I don’t know who would win. 

The last idea was using the mask I found. I liked the idea of it holding an ancient spirit tasked with protecting a humanity that has long since forgotten its existence. I also liked the idea of it being able to possess other living creatures. Not sure if I wanted it to be horror or not, but it would certainly be unsettling. You can probably tell which idea I went with. 

Today, we wrote a script. This is the only area I have any expertise in. My script ended up being 10 or so pages of screen direction and character building, but I finished the dialogue as well. 

The story follows three hikers who venture into some Scandinavian woods on a backpacking trip. Haak is the most serious and the leader, he has the most survival skills out of the group. Maya is the prankster of the crew, but is just as experienced as Haak. Robyn is the physically weakest character, often scared by everything and unnerved by the surroundings. The characters leave their car and enter the woods, but not before trying to make sense of the cryptic writing on the worn and torn trailhead. Robyn is the only one who seems to pay any mind to it. As the group start, a narrator that could be Robyn starts speaking about “tales for a trip through the woods.” The tips start out as actual advice one would use for a backpacking trip, like packing extra food and always having a map, but slowly get more cryptic and unsettling. The characters make their way through the assortment of settings in the woods, focusing more on the nature around them instead of what the group is doing. As the tips get more cryptic, saying stuff like “it may seem like the trees are following you, they’re just keeping an eye on you” and “be grateful you don’t know what’s under the dirt, pray you never find out,” the forest seems to retaliate against the characters. For instance, they get lost and double cross an area they’ve already been in, get haunted by the eyes on the birch trees, and more. Eventually, it all leads up to a normal bear attack being an Ursa Major, a bear with stars in its pelt and no need to hold a solid corporeal form. Haak and Maya get struck down by the bear after supposedly subduing it. As it’s coming for Robyn, Robyn backs up into the form that was following from beginning. The head is out of shot, but it puts a strange headpiece on Robyn, and allows Robyn to fight back against the bear. Once the fight is over, Robyn is faced with the ancient spirit who saved them- a towering, scraggly figure made of twigs and forest materials. It’s creepy to look at, and was framed at the start to be the creature tormenting the group. The creature reaches out and touches Robyn’s forehead, using their body to say verbally “no one believes in you, you should believe in yourself, too.” In Robyn’s voice. The next scene happens where the group dropped the car off, Haak blinking back to consciousness. Somehow, Robyn saved them, and Haak passes out again knowing they’ll be okay. Help arrives as Robyn looks back at No One for the final time as the spirit disappears into the forest. 

The idea is how humans have interacted with and continue to interact with nature. The reality is the forest provides, but it does not protect. People putting faith in the old gods to protect them is a tradition long dead with history, but the idea of this god still holding onto life for the soul purpose of protecting those who may wander into its domain is a very human story, even if it’s behind a creepy mask with origins we don’t entirely understand. It’s inspired by my love of hiking and nature, I actually work in the summer as a camp counselor at a ranch that takes our campers backpacking on the weekends. Each of the human characters show some kind of recurring theme I see in the people I go on these hikes with, and some are named after them. I think drawing the sets and characters for this will be pretty fun, I look forward to it. 

Character design is up next. I started with Robyn, the rest of the characters would follow in style. 

I wanted Robyn to have a very childish look, but not dumb childish. Like a smart bookworm who has no idea how to survive outside a library, much less civilization. However, Robyn couldn’t look like they thrived in society either. They should be a shy nerd who’s out of their element everywhere, not just in the wild, which just makes being in the outdoors that much more terrible. I also wanted Robyn to come off as genderless so anyone could relate to them. The story isn’t about their gender or age (even though in cannon the characters are in college/university/living on their own, but the style still makes them look like children… oh well) it’s about the forest and how they interact with it. 

I had a hard time getting a grip on the style I wanted, everything seemed so forced and I was never happy with what I drew. I kept erasing and redoing and changing without keeping anything. About halfway through the day, I was still only half a character sketch page done and feeling quite hopeless. I realized I was trying to be perfect on a sheet that wasn’t supposed to be. It Sucked… but I figured out the style I wanted. The t-shirt and swishy basketball shorts is the epitome of beginner hiker attire. I stopped caring so much about the quality of the drawings and just started drawing action poses. 

The next most important character would be No One. I had a lot more fun playing with No One’s design, probably because I didn’t have to make it look human. I wanted to make them look imposing, scary, but made of the environment. Like, with clothes of moss and litchin. Almost stitched together. I played with making them tall, wider, hunched over, in layers. The hardest choice I had to make was the horn shape. I pulled a lot of references from different horned creatures even though the original skull was a red deer. 

Eventually, I came up with final designs for both. I made up Haak and Maya while storyboarding, their designs were simple and based on real people, like their personalities. No worries ‘bout that. Their character models followed the base Robyn’s exploration found. 

Next, storyboarding. I spent so much goddamn time in storyboarding. Not too much happened, but I did like plotting out everything. I realized I can pretty easily plot out the setting and where the characters are in relation to each other then manipulate the camera as needed. Pretty nifty. The only problem is 1. Im bad at drawing and 2. Drawing the same thing over and over again kinda sucks. I spent a lot of time designing the varying backgrounds the characters would walk through and played with how the forest would interact with them. For instance, what if a path suddenly changed or wasn’t visible on the second cross through? What if you could see the reflections of eyes in the cave shadows before the characters entered? 

The idea originally started over the summer. I was hiking through a birch forest and noticed the markings on the white bark looked a lot like eyes… what if they were watching while you passed by? I let this fuel my imagination and inspire the script. I liked playing with where mystery or malice could hide in the forest, which is a lot of places. Sure, people generally feel threatened by the animals, but the terrain is arguably more dangerous. I didn’t want to introduce a wildlife enemy until the climax, or it would just make it less impactful. If a wild animal is revealed to be evil, it gives another face to the force tormenting them, which takes away from the little cameo No One gets at the start. 

Nothing really important happened over the storyboarding period. Just little epiphanies. I realized I got better at drawing the characters and much quicker at it as time went on. I spent a lot of time editing shots and order, which is why the storyboards are messy AF. Made me feel kind of self conscious because everyone at my table had works of art for storyboards, but whatever. They’re supposed to be tools. I also made the very stupid choice to go over every single goddamn board in digital. It was hell. Next time, I’ll probably do everything digitally… 

Capturing audio was hard not only because of the location but because of the season. For instance, I need cricket sounds, nature sounds, car sounds (that I could control), and quiet crisp sounds. Too bad I go to school and live on a street that’s triangulated by a fire station, police station, and hospital. And everyone seems to be lighting things on fire, getting crimed, or dying. 

I got what sounds I could, but I had a fun time recording with everyone. It was the first time the class was forced out of their comfort zones and made to talk to the people outside their tables. It was a welcome change and I met some cool people. We would talk about what sounds we needed in our stories and whenever we realized how to get that sound it was a group epiphany with excitement. Too bad nowhere in Camberwell is quiet. 

Instead of having one of them narrate my lines, I just did them myself at home with my own microphone. It was just easier because I knew what tone I wanted this character to be. In terms of pitch, I just edited it in Audacity. The quality of it didn’t matter, because it wasn’t supposed to be exactly human. I played with it being lower pitched, but if I wanted to make it seem like Robyn was the real narrator, I would need it to be higher. It sounds pretty close to what I wanted- hollow, indifferent, but all-knowing and wise beyond the years the voice should belong to. 

I knew from the start I wanted one of two songs in the soundtrack, even though Joe said no songs… sorry, but I envisioned it with this music, it wasn’t structured around it but it was structured with it. Both are the instrumentals behind the songs, so there’s no words, but I did make a playlist of music I wanted to inspire this animatic with at the start. Both songs were at the top. The first song is “Welcome Home, Son” by Radical Face. It’s got a steady beat, good organic guitar, piano, and what sounds like bells. It’s got a REI feel to it (and I’m realizing now that you don’t know what REI is, probably… but I’m keeping the comparison because it’s true) which is kind of like adventuring somewhere greater than yourself, understanding the greatness of it, being slightly scared of it. Like you’re on a quest with no destination. Like facing the mortality and insignificance of yourself in this vast and wondrous world, but instead of fleeing in fear or rejecting the fear, accepting it and finding a home in it. The background vocals add to the feeling of humanity that’s not quite ‘human’ but when tested it tended to mess up the dialogue. The sound of bells and wind chimes was nice, like a feeling of emptiness or forgotten home. Just all around a great song. Also there’s a wind sound effect, like it’s blowing through the trees outside the mouth of a cave. I just think it’s neat and put it at the beginning. 

The other song was “New Slang” by The Shins. It has a similar feeling to “Welcome Home, Son” but not quite as adventurous. Much like the song lyrics say, “Gold teeth and a curse for this town were all in my mouth, only I don’t know how they got out, dear…” it’s about returning home with a bittersweet feeling, somewhere you don’t quite belong, but desperately want to. The simple guitar strumming and bass feel melancholy, and the calm electric guitar (never thought I’d say that pair of words together) just make it seem like an amble through the old woods in the backyard of your childhood home, visiting the old treehouse, and sitting in it alone as you remember back to when you weren’t alone in it and much smaller. The simplicity of the song adds less of a dramatic tone and a more organic and realistic one. It’s also more comforting than “Welcome Home, Son” due to less swells and changes in the sounds. It also has background vocals, but they’re much more human and less dramatic, they almost sound like a mourning wolf separated from his pack, but his calls go unanswered. The thing is the runtime is 1/2 that of “Welcome Home, Son”… The middle section, when edited, made up about 4 minutes. 

I played with both and enjoyed both results a lot. The music starts as they enter the forest and the narration starts, following them as they go on their adventure. It’s supposed to show that time’s passing like a montage, but also ends up showing how the danger is real and haunting when Ursa Major awakens in the bear. 

My biggest issue while editing the animatic was sound design after the music cuts out. It ends at the perfect moment and even follows the story beats of the end, but after that I just had the haunting silence of the forest and the sound of the nature around the characters in which I had to put a dramatic fight scene. I didn’t want to bring the music back until No One revealed themselves to Robyn to show the connection had finally been made, but the fight scene between Robyn and Ursa Major was so empty… It felt like I was just layering bear grunts and damage sounds over dynamic shots, but it wasn’t translating as tense, it was just awkward. I also had trouble with selecting what sounds were real. Robyn doesn’t make any verbal sound, the only sound to come from Robyn is their footfalls and how they interact with the environment. I should have made more steady rules with how Robyn and the other characters are present outside of the middle montage.  

Actually while I’m writing this I realized I could restart the music and have it cut back out once No One takes back their face… fuck.

So, what did I learn from this? That I storyboarded way too fucking much and made way too many fucking characters. I was told all throughout diagnostic to be free and reach for the stars, especially in communication, but the reality is in trying to tell the story I wanted I ended up drowning myself in work. 

I really loved writing this story, though. That’s my favorite part of anything. Writing is the ONLY skill I have over everyone else, and I WILL flex on everyone when I get the chance. It was just too big of a story for right now. I mean, I got everything from a single deer skull, it didn’t seem like much at the time… Maybe when I’m better at all of this, I’ll revisit it and make it more like I pictured in my head. I felt like epiphanies kept coming to me as I was writing the script, but as time went on and I had to plan it, I would get too caught up in the details. I love preproduction though. Like, a lot. That’s for sure my favorite part of making animation and film. Just figuring out where everything goes and how it all works together is just so satisfying and I really enjoy it. A bonus is it doesn’t have to look like Perfect Art, either. The fact that it doesn’t look perfect is one of my greatest insecurities, but it’s something I’ll have to get over, and it’s easier to get over it if it’s forgivable/expected. I know once we do actual animation, it’ll just be harder to make longer stories and I won’t know how to cut down on it all… but whatever. I’ve always had a problem writing too much, so that’s just something I’ll have to learn to manage. I’ll try and do better next time. I was really tempted to make this a comedy, like I always do, but I didn’t. I made something serious for once, and it didn’t end up as I imagined, but it got close enough. 

That’s a victory Royale. 

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Captain’s Log: Zoetrope

Essentially, zoetropes are gifs that are animated in 12 places at once as they all spin. It’s pretty dope, makes for some creative animations. 

I didn’t realize how short 12 frames of animation was initially. As such, I kinda just jumped into my first muse: mothman. 

I did an animation of them in a ball, slowly coming undone, then springing into a cohesive shape before being spooked by the viewer and going back into a ball.

Unfortunately because I had to color every goddamn frame, that took up most of my morning and I only had one zoetrope. I did some other quick ones, an OwO going dark and a fortnite dance. To my absolute horror, Isabelle recognized the dance. That’s a first. I’d like it to be the *last*. 

Overall, I think I did some good work today and tried a lot of different animations. A Good Time. See sketchbook for zoetrope slides. 

#log entries #part ii: animation #zoetrope #one-shot

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Captain’s Log: Scratch It

I am scared to animate because I don’t know the multitudes contained within a second of time. I’ve never actually made an animation before. I don’t know how long a second feels. 

My dudes, this changed today. We did scratch films on 16mm film, and by god it was painful.

My idea was simple: do some simple typography accompanied by a moving thing. That way, there’s two things happening, they can both be shitty on their own but impressive together. 

I pulled a quote from a tweet, specifically “you got ghosts in your blood” ‘cause it sounds so metal. 

I ended up changing it to “u got a ghost in ur blood” because ‘ghosts’ was too long a word to fit on 16mm film. 

The animation is as follows: a stick figure fortnite dances without a care in the world. Suddenly, as if struck down by his own hubris, he is struck down and falls dramatically into a heap on the ground. From the ashes of this pile, a simple ghost springs up. Then blood falls from the top of the shot, spelling “blood”, and the ghost appears one last time in the last few frames while “u got a ghost in ur blood” flows one word at a time on the film. 

Was it funny? Yeah. Was it 116 frames? Yeah. Did the craft knife leave permanent scars? Hell yeah. I never want to pick up a craft knife again. 

The last bit was kind of rushed, but it’s not a big problem. It still looked cool as hell, and you could tell it apart from the other scratch films super easily. 

#log entries #part ii: animation #scratch it #one-shot

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Captain’s Log: Smoking Trees

Film and Animation

06/11/18

First day of film and animation, things are already looking up! As per request, I brought in one piece of audio, a piece of written copy, and some kind of prop. I brought my Totoro dice bag with four sets of multicolored dice, a video of two grown anime men screaming about the soup store, and a quote about love over time.

“Our capacity for love increases with each person we cross paths with throughout our lives and with each moment we spend with those people. But too often we neglect that part of ourselves in favor of others, and by the time we realize just how important it is, we find ourselves with fewer folks around to practice with. But the seven of you have something that nobody else ever had. Time. All the time in the world. Time enough to grow indescribably close. Time enough to, to learn how to care for each other, how to allow yourselves to be cared for. And in the case of Barry and Lup, time enough to fall deeply and truly in love.”

- The Adventure Zone, The Stolen Century, Chapter 5

Everyone in our group picked one line from each thing they did and we decided each of those lines would be compiled into a script. I picked “I can’t find them, there’s only soup” from Code MENT and “Time enough to grow indescribably close” from TAZ. 

We looked at all our quotes and it was very apparent that they didn’t make any sense put all together. We started with figuring out a situation and figured that someone tripping the fuck out would only have this kind of dialogue.  

The whole concept surrounded the idea of a guy taking an extended piss on a tree while taking the piss on humanity while talking to a tree that seemed to be emoting. There were two key shots between the tree and actor, and the camera would cut back and forth between the two in increasing speeds as the man got more and more angry. 

While storyboarding and treefaces were made, I did the script. I just threw everything in and tried to use the soup line as much as possible because it seems like something funny to get mad over. 

I sent the rest of the group to film the scenes while I went somewhere else to dub. I had to do it outside in the same park, people kept giving me weird looks because I was yelling about soup.

In all it took like an hour to edit. The low budget and quality of the video was part of the charm of it, plus the incoherence of the script. It was really fun working on this! Considering we had such a short amount of time to do this, it turned out really funny and well. 

#log entries #animation #Smoking Trees #part ii: animation

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#completed

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#completed #art #ELO #mr. blue sky #music video

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Captain’s Log: The Adventure Zone

Art 

19/10/18

 Okay- last day! Fuck yeah! 

 So I went back and realized what I did wrong with Mr. Blue Sky. It’s not the animation that’s the issue, I was focusing on the wrong brand of humor. 

The video was inspired by a vine of a teenager trying to get comfortable pooping. The vine follows him trying over and over again to get comfortable, and it’s all to the beginning of “Take On Me” by A-ha. 

What makes the OG video funny is you can clearly see the line of action he’s making around the bathroom. In the end, it’s like an animation, but live action. There’s not enough time between the beats to catch character or recognize the situation before you’re hit with the next one and that’s the problem with the animation.

What I did instead was film myself on the couch in the common room. After about 40 minutes of footage of me trying to read a book and getting into increasingly absurd situations, I had enough footage to replicate what that viner did, but differently. 

His humor was more meant to be absurdist- the bathroom setting is funny in and of itself while the way he was moving wasn’t true to the title. The movements made sure he was making the best of his surroundings, and that was it. I made mine more relatable by making it about reading a book. In the video, I’m completely disinterested in everything and just focused on reading, as if I don’t even realize what I’m doing around the couch. This made it funny, but also relatable, because most people have had issues getting comfortable while reading. 

 The editing was super fast and easy because the beat of Mr. Blue. Sky stays consistent. I did the first 40 or so seconds, before the beat shifts. If I had more time, I would have done subtitles or something to the music, but people liked it! It was a easy-to-understand concept and had appeal because who doesn’t jam out to ELO? 

 Well, that’s the end of art. I hated that so much. I tried, but it just didn’t do it for me, and I can’t wait to never ever have to do it again.

#log entries #part I: diagnostic #art #completed

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Captain’s Log: Couch Sitcom

Art 

16/10/18 

Photography and time-based media was only interesting to me because it requires electronic mediums. What I did was I just did a project I thought of in communications concerning movement. I just wanted to draw people sitting in funny ways on a couch.

Each color has a different persona. They interact with each other and a story is told through how they move. Unfortunately it took way too long to draw each character, so I only did about four frames per character. Plus the end result wasn’t as funny as I hoped it would be… continued into the next day.

#log entries #part I: diagnostic #art

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Captain’s Log: One Red Thread

Art 

15/10/18 

Today was pretty fun. I’ve never had the chance to explore sculpture before. Doing it with others just made it more fun because it just became about making aesthetically pleasing formations.

All around just fun. I really loved playing with the red string. It kinda connects back to a communication project- following the red thread. 

Red is such a bold color and the way the thread can be used to intertwine is so interesting to me. 

 For my project, I made a model of a cat and tried to use red thread to show the life flowing through it. I liked the idea of the metal frame being draped in soft and gentle yarn in contrast. Also, it was a replica of my skeletal cat roommate, BoneDawgg.

#log entries #part I: diagnostic #art

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Captain’s Log: Starting Small

Art 

11/10/18 

 Today frustrated me so damn much. 

I think I’m pretty good at drawing. I enjoy pencils and pens and stuff. That’s the one thing I find solace in and that’s how I got my start. But this? I’m beyond frustrated with the chain of events today… 

 I think I got a new perspective in the lecture, but I already knew this mode would suck for me. I like meaning and narrative in my work, and I hate abstraction unless it’s a part of a narrative. So, after the lecture, we sit down to start drawing… and I get chided in front of everyone for having drawn butterflies to represent anxiety. The idea of having us draw what we were feeling in our bodies was really cool and unique, but at some point after trying to fix my work it just felt like I was mindlessly making marks that didn’t matter, and I didn’t like that. 

 Even the work I did for free study time was criticized. I was told my style was childish when I put a lot of thought to make it more abstract… and I really enjoyed the work, too! It was fun to make. At that point I just figured I’d never get this tutor’s approval. As a result, I just sequestered myself to a corner and started drawing the solar system. I’m not proud of it, so I’m not continuing it. Today was just a dud.

Someone also threw out all the damn pages I made... there was some good stuff on there I wanted to save, and I also lost the hairtie I used to tie them together.

#log entries #part I: diagnostic #art

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Captain’s Log: Blood, Bone, and the Unknown

Art

09/10/18 

Alright… painting and collages. I can do this, but I wanna do it digitally.  

What I did for my piece is I took the same idea of overstimulation from one of my Communication prompts and flipped it over. Instead of the world being a state of being weighed down, it was now a state of chaos. Human brains are always under the pressure of so much information at once, it’s hard to keep track of all of it. I get overstimulated a lot- I’ll snap at the smallest noises, I’ll grit my teeth in annoyance as someone bounces their leg, I’ll tear up when I can’t get the right volume setting. It’s just an anxiety thing.  

I wanted to do a collage of newspaper because most newspaper is just two colors: black and white. Then, after making the background, I wanted to add red. I’ve always loved black, white, and red. It’s such a good combination, I think it’s because it seems so violent and bold. It’s almost primal. This was mainly inspired by the covers for The White Stripes albums. 

So, to start, I collected a bunch of newspaper clippings on the web about how the world is going to shit. Then, on top of that, I just really wanted to use a bad picture of trump made by a Danish paper printing the photo a certain way on the page, then the papers stacking up. I extracted the orange man and made him look a bit more grotesque, then started writing some raw dialogue. Raw dialogue is what I consider the epitome of writing- most of the time it’s powerful and bold, but also a bit confusing and poetic. For instance- “To become god is the loneliest achievement of them all” is pretty raw. I came up with some sentences, used some from songs (like “this fire grows higher"). Overall, I like how demonic it looks. 

But the painting part… I just wanted to try it. I don’t really paint, but I wanted to express the overwhelming emotions in a normal person. I tried that with the Trump stack, but since that face is one normally associated with Hell that wouldn’t work for a normal person. So I drew some portraits of people overwhelmed and painted using red and black. 

I call the piece Blood, Bone, and the Unknown because of the colors. The deep red is the blood running fresh. The white is the exposed bone underneath the flesh. The black is the darkness of the unknown.  

This piece was really cathartic. Pretty sure it wasn’t what the tutor was looking for, but eh…

#log entries #part I: diagnostic #art

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Captain’s Log: Tate Modern 

Art

08/10/18

I was sick as hell that day, but here’s some noteworthy pieces I saw when I went back. 

#1: Sculpture

This piece reminds me of a game I really enjoy called Persona 4. In the game, a group of ragtag Japanese high schoolers go through TVs into a strange static world between dimensions and stop a serial killer from threatening their town. It’s a fun and impressive story with about 70 hours of gameplay and multiple endings. Anyways, this seems kinda like a stronghold tower you’d find at a castle, and I really appreciate that. I also like how it’s all sorted by age, like we’re building to the pinnacle of technology. Very interesting. 

#2 Drawing

I chose this one because it fucking pisses me off. 

A blackboard is a temporary medium by both definition and means of existence. It cannot be immortalized in its physical form. The fact that they hide the chalk behind glass just makes it worse. What’s on it is information that’s written and drawn in universities all over, so why keep it locked away in a museum?! Of course its illegible handwriting because it’s scientists… I feel like this piece had good intentions, but ultimately betrayed the very surface it was drawn upon and therefore ruined the entire piece.

#3 Painting

What I enjoy about this one is how they all congeal into one mass entity with multiple faces. I especially like how they all look almost like ancient pagan gods- they look tall and intimidating with sunken eyes and deaths on their souls. The colors are very nice, too. They all follow a mostly cool color scheme, making the hints of red and pink really pop out in comparison. The whole piece looks very washed out as well, adding to the sense of ancient age and wisdom beyond its years. It’s like it holds the secrets to the unknown. Also the character designs are really good and definitely inspired me. 

  #4 Time-based Media

This one was… just kinda whack. It felt like being hypnotized and drawn in. There wasn’t really a deeper meaning to it, it was just really fun to look at and watch for long periods of time. I think even if something doesn’t have meaning, if it’s appealing to people and satisfies something in them, it’s good art. 

#log entries #part I: diagnostic #art