Commissions

Space Girl 3000 - Distrubution Methods

Internet;
I will put Space Girl 3000 online on Vimeo, Vimeo does not receive as many views as video hosting sites such as Youtube but at least it'll be online for people to see. It is a big decider however if I want to put the video on Youtube or into festivals. Since you can't submit a film to a festivals if it is already on Youtube I'll have to choose between online publicity or publicity through festivals.

I feel that an internet presence is a big importance since people watch the video and send it to their friends. Because of this I think it'll be incredibly helpful to me by putting it online.






Festivals;
Like I stated in the Internet section, if I were to upload the video to Youtube I wouldn't be able to submit it to festivals. However submitting it to festivals would be really helpful in the fact that it'll be seen by many big names and companies, rather than teenagers on the internet. By being seen by companies it opens doors to many job opportunities that could give me full time jobs, rather than commissions online.


Though I feel an internet presence is important, I am hidden by aliases and am not really presenting myself. Whereas with submitting to animation festivals I am presenting it myself and showing the world what I am capable of.









Word of Mouth;
Though it is not distributing the animation, talking about it through online sources like Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook, and also through family and friends. I can show them via the main source on a USB or a private screening through Dropbox. Like I say, it isn't distributing but it lets people know about it. However the main ways of distribution would be through online distribution and through festival distribution.

Space Girl 3000 - Poster

I decided to create some publicity artwork for Space Girl 3000, the poster contains all the cast; Nancy Nebula, the 2 Fish goons, Mr Philip Money and the Thug. The poster gives the date it will be submitted and a short, 1 line synopsis of the film. The drawing of the characters are from the character sheets, whereas the background is taken from the animation itself.

Space Girl 3000 - DVD

While looking at the module brief, I noticed a section stating that we need some form of publicity artwork, because of this I took it upon myself to create a Space Girl 3000 DVD. I didn't want anything too in your face, I just wanted something that lets you know what it is, so I only placed Nancy and the logo on the front with a background. The back however was where all the information is, a synopsis, what is actually on the DVD, a few stills and information about the film.

Space Girl 3000 - Finished Animation

After over 6 months of production I can finally present Space Girl 3000, an original idea created and animated by myself, with sound design done by my sound designer and friend, Daniel Dunkley. I consider the animation to be a vast improvement from my previous animations such as The Fresh Panda of London Zoo and The Universe of Matt Miles. Through the process of animating this video I have finalised my background styles, I have finally cleaned up my character outlines now and I can finally achieve basic character movement through frame by frame animation rather than tweens.

Running Time Approx 6 mins

1080 x 1920px

25FPS

Full Colour

Stereo/24Bit/96000kHz/.wav

Space Girl 3000 - Completed Sound

My sound designer finally finished my sound design today, with everything timed up he sent me the Soundtrack, the Foley and the SFX. Here are the 3 full audio files;

Space Girl 3000 - Animation complete, Post-Production Begins

Space Girl 3000 has now reached it's final stage where it is near completion, however after checking the module brief it came to my attention that the animation needed to have some requirements that it did not have. Here is the list of things it was missing;

• Countdown clock before the animation begins
• Northern Film School Logo after the countdown clock and at the very end
• Credits in the correct order
• Animated at 25fps

However, with the animation complete just ahead of schedule I can now focus on these points, however until then this is the final version of Space Girl 3000 without the university style guide;

Now that the animation is in post, I have given the final render to my sound designer, he will now begin timing up the sound to this version and finishing up the sound design on his part.

Space Girl 3000 - Backgrounds revamp

After the Meeting with the tutors I have spent most of the time revamping the scenes, adding new things and sorting the backgrounds out. I feel that sorting the backgrounds out has made a big difference to the animation, and really brings out the feel for the film, here is a before and after comparison;

I will now spend most of the time revamping the scenes to the quality of the first scene as I feel that the backgrounds capture the perfect atmosphere for the city. The city is a key part of the animation and has been inspired by such places as Las Vegas and Akihabara;

 

With these in mind I will carry on trying to make my backgrounds look as nice as possible, with the neon-esk citys as inspiration I should be able to capture the true feel of a bright city of lights.

Space Girl 3000 - Sound Design Update

Now that I have the Timed animation my sound designer presented to me a un mixed version of the full song as well as unmixed Foley and SFXs. Below are links to the separate files;

Space Girl 3000 Music

Space Girl 3000 SFX/Foley

I am happy with how these have turned out and he has really captured the feel of the animation, however because of his course these are what Dan will hand in for his degree and he will redue most of the SFX/Foley to an updated version of Space Girl 3000 in the following weeks. With this said, because of the work he has done thus far the work load he'll have won't be nearly as much giving me time to do final touches before giving him the finished video. Below is Dan's rendition of Space Girl 3000 with his Music, SFX and Foley;

Space Girl 3000 - The Timed Animation and Feedback

Because of my sound designers course, I had to get a fully timed animation done by the 1st of April, what you see above is the timed animation that Dan is putting sound to. It is very much unfinished but easy enough for him to work to. 

I had to go into uni for a feedback session and to show what I have done to my fellow students and tutors, I showed them the animation and got the feedback, the following things are what I have to change;

• The Ending - Need to make it more obvious that Nancy is happy at the end, and that she has both the cake case and the ruined money case.
• Backgrounds - The backgrounds need to keep up the quality of the first scene
• Run Cycles - Some run cycles need improving, as do many other movements

These were the key things that I was told to change, however afterwards me and my sound designer Dan went through my animation and made a full list of changes.

FULL CHANGED LIST

I will now spend the rest of the month trying to sort through the changes and hopefully improve on what I can.

Commission - Little Blue

Before entering the actual production for the End of Year animation, the uni had found someone who wanted an animation doing and put mine, Anthony Price and Will Padgett's names forward. We the decided to take on the work together and hopefully get it done faster.

We met with the client and he introduced himself as Phil Westerby-Jones, a man who has his own company known as Little Blue. He gave us Storyboards to work to and offered us £300 for the animation. Between Me, Will and Ant, for us to actually make a profit we said we'd do it within 3 days so it's £100 a day between all of us.

During the first day we created an animatic using the Storyboards Will had recreated, at the end of the day Phil came to see the progress and he liked what we had done. The second and then final day were spent working on the animation until we finally finished. This is the end result;

Phil came in to see the finished animation and his reaction was not what we expected, he didn't like what we had produced and asked us to do more changes. Because of this we asked him for an extra £50 for the changes, he agreed to this and went on his way.

The following day we had begun doing the changed until we finally finished, this is what we then had;

when Phil came back he still didn't like what we had made and asked us to do more changes. We agreed to do these final changed but we weren't getting paid anymore, a week had passed and we were wondering if Phil would want anymore changes, we called him in and asked if what we were doing was fine... It wasn't apparently. We then said to him we couldn't do anymore work unless we were paid more, however he was not happy that we were asking to be paid more for the changes and ended up leaving. Because of this we threw what we had together and called it a day. This is the final animation;

Phil did not like the final animation, however because of the past arguments and none negotiable ways we decided to let the uni themselves deal with it, since we were not given fair rights during the project. The uni ended up cutting loose Phil and using the animation for advertisement means. We ended up getting the £350 and just going off on our ways. This was certainly an experience and a first hand look at what it is like to have a client from hell.

Space Girl 3000 - Sound Designer

Last year during the production of The Universe of Matt Miles, I took it upon myself to do the sound design myself, and it turned out horribly. After finishing my house mate Dan Dunkley asked me if he could do the sound design for it, so I let him. After working with him on that one I decided there and then that I would ask him to do the sound design for my end of year animation, and discussed the music for each of my animation ideas.

When I decided on Space Girl 3000 to be my end of year animation I consulted Dan about what kind of song would fit the settings. At first I suggested some form of Synthpop track to play through out it, however he didn't think it would suit the animation due to its pacing. I then suggested doing an Electro Swing style track and then it went down well.

After a month of work he then presented to me an example of what the animations music would be like;

See 02:34 - 03:38

I was happy with the song, however while working on the animatic I then suggested changing the genre of song to a 32-bit style song, to fit with the space theme. I presented to him an example of what I was looking for and he seemed to be on board with the idea, the song I showed him was "Casino Night Zone"

Now that I have finished the Animatic Dan is now doing the song for the animation.

Art - Faeries Background Retry

As you may see from my current background for the blog, I am having fun with sunsets, lighting and colour. I wanted to recreate something I did a while ago, namely the Adventure Faeries opening I started;

I really wanted to animate this fully, however due to time restraints I had to create something with a more simplistic plot. However I hope one day in the future I can come back to this and finish it off, until then, have a recreation of the opening background (unfinished);

Space Girl 3000 - Entering the Production

Now that I have all of my characters and backgrounds fully designed, the script complete and a sound designer on the go, it's time to start the production for my animation. My schedule is as follows;

I will work closely with my sound designer through the project so we know where we both are with our side of the project. Hopefully if I stick to the schedule I should be finished with the the animation by May. With this in mind I will now begin the actual animation. Here is a poster I did for the animation;

Space Girl 3000 - Animatic

After finishing the Animatic I now know where each shot takes place and how many scenes to make in Flash. Now that the animatic is finished I can talk to my sound designer about the music, with that in mind, now that I have the animatic finished I better time my animation for him.

Space Girl 3000 - Concept Art - Part 3; Background Design

The Backgrounds for this animation were something I always had in mind from the beginning of the project. If I didn't make the backgrounds believable that it's in the future then the whole feel for the story would fail. To get an idea of what other people had done for a futuristic city I researched other shows set in future such as Jetsons and Futurama.

Including these shows, I also researched into Pulp comics for their backgrounds. Pulp comic backgrounds are always very abstract and helped me create the first concept background;

I had consulted a few of my course mates and they suggested that rather than focusing on the actually planet, I should focus on the city itself. Now with that in mind I started designing a futuristic city. I wanted to make it filled with buildings and full of life, here is how it turned out;

After drawing this I decided that the colours would take all of the attention, so I wanted to make the city's buildings a single colour. So here is what it turned out like when changing the colour;

I was more than happy with this background. However I felt that the future seemed very utopian and clean, which I didn't have a problem with it being like that however I didn't think it felt right for the city. I needed to decide on some form of key colour to stick with that wasn't too clean, so after watching a few films to get inspiration I had finally decided on something.

During talking to a course mate they recommended making the city seem rich with power, since the city is home of Mr Money. So I wanted to use alot of yellows and oranges to indicate a golden city. While watching a film known as Metropolis I got an idea for what I wanted the city to look like.

See 01:30 - 03:00

With this in mind I started drawing up the city in Flash, this is what it turned out like;

I was very happy with the city, however didn't know if the colours would get boring fast. Because of this I decided to play with the colouring a little, beside that I was happy with the look of the city. This resulted in a more neon kind of look to the city with much more vibrant colours, this is what it turned out like; 

Now with the colours decided I can happily work with the rest of the animation.

Space Girl 3000 - Concept Art - Part 2; The Secondary Characters

After designing Nancy, I needed to design the other characters such as the main villain, his goons and the Office worker. I will go through each process individually on how I got to their final designs.

MR PHILIP MONEY

Mr Money is the main antagonist of the animation, the character Nancy is to deliver the package to but somehow gets it wrong. I wanted Mr Money to look menacing, but at the same time not look intimidating at all. To do this I looked at some business men villains, and the one that stuck in my head the most was the main antagonist from the "Space Jam" movie, Mister Swackhammer.

With this character in mind, I began designing my character. Unlike Nancy, I wanted him to have as little colour on his as possible, mainly working with black and whites. I finally decided on what he looks like resulting in this;

I like his design very much so since it screams "evil business man", I then decided to deal with the colouring. I spoke with Ged Haney about this and he suggested a white business suit with futuristic appeal, however I was inclined to disagree and went with blacks and greys for his outfit. 

Now that I have the colours sorted, I consulted Ged about him, his feedback was to make him seem more villainous. To do this I consulted character design books and looked for villains, one thing I did notice is that to make a character seem more evil they have battle scars. I thought of a good way to make him look more evil then, by giving him an eye patch. Now that I had decided how he should finally look I began creating a character sheet for Mt Money.

With Mr Money fully designed I then went onto designing the other characters, I had to think about Mr Money's Goons.

THE GOONS

The thing with the Goons is that I didn't know what kind of character I wanted them to be, at first I wanted them to be on the ball and ready to get the job done, because of this I decided to go with a Men in Black kind of look. However, I then realised I didn't have any aliens in my main cast, despite the show being set on an alien planet in the future. So I decided to scrap the tough Men in Black look and went for a more goofy alien kind of look.

I was looking into alien designs for a goofy kind of look, until I decided that maybe a character similar to Earthworm Jim could work, Giving them a muscular body but a goofy and irregular face. Now the main thing was the head, I thought it'd be nice to give him an animal face to contrast his huge body, I then decided on a fish. I didn't know how to draw a fish head without the body attatched, so my course mate Anthony suggested to look into the fish mascot for the Band "Goldfish".

After watching I had a good idea on what I wanted the Goon to look like, and I began drawing up some sketched of the Goons.

Now that I have the designs on paper I decided to draw them up in Flash, similar to Mr Money there is no need for colour tests since I had an idea of what I wanted them to look colour wise. All that I need to do now is redraw the Goon in Flash and colour them. Here is what the Character sheet turned out like;

With the Goons fully designed, I could now focus on the Office worker.

THE OFFICE WORKER/SHADY MAN

Now because of the rewrite of the script I ended up designing two characters, the first character was going to be an overworked Businessman. I didn't have much inspiration for him and I actually found it difficult to decide what I wanted him to look like, after consulting a character design book I finally came up with a young curly haired business man, this is what he ended up looking like;

Now that I had him designed I went on to colouring him, however during this process I was talking to Ged about making him look more futuristic, to do this I ended up adding some neon to the character. This is how he turned out;

After finally designing the character, I ended up changing the script and writing him out of the story. He was then replaced with another villainous character. Now I had to think of a totally new villain, and during the time I was designing him I was watching a cartoon show called "Codename; Kids Next Door". In that show the antagonist is a very simple design, simply a shadow of a man.

Now because of this, I had an idea to make my villain lurk in the shadows making him in indistinguishable, and when visible it turns out he's just a solid black colour. With this in mind I began to draw the sketches for the villain i'd call "The Shady Man."

After drawing up sketches of him I began drawing him up in Flash, since he was a solid colour I didn't have much trouble redrawing him and colouring him. These are the final character sheets for the shady man.

With this Character sheet finished I had finally completed all of the character sheets for each character. With this done I could focus on the background designs.

Space Girl 3000 - Concept Art - Part 1; The Creation of Nancy Nebula

Back when I had the idea of Space Girl 3000, I wanted to art style to be very recognisable, and the colours to be very vibrant. Before I designed anything else, I started designing the main character, who would be known as Nancy Nebula. I quickly did a flash drawing of what I wanted Nancy to look like, taking inspiration from shows such as The Jetsons and Futurama. With those styles in mind I created the first drawing;

If you remember in a previous post, I said that Nancy would become the soul successor to the character I had previously drawn. However, I kept trying to revamp the character so to represent her personality, I had come up with the idea of her being a badass girl who just wants to get the deal done, this is what I imagined she'd look like;

After creating the second draft for the script, I had decided to change the character again into a much more innocent looking character. During one evening I had sketched up some examples of what she'd look like;

I liked the new design very much so, and I decided to do some colour tests for her, so I redrew her up in Flash and began playing with the colours.

I had now decided on a colour pallet for Nancy, in which I could still incorporate the vibrant colours. Now that I decided what she looks like and what colour she'd be I then began to play with her and do a few character tests.

Although I was happy with the Character design for Nancy, I felt that the hair was something of a downfall for the character design. She was difficult to draw from a front perspective and because of this I decided to change the head completely. Because of this I had to design a new hairstyle, or some form of alternative.

During this process I had come up with an idea to give her a helmet of a sort, this would make her head easier to work with. This is the design I had come up with;

Now that I have the design of the helmet down, I had to decide on a colour that would match Nancy's outfit. This lead me to a second colour test with the helmet.

I have finally got the full character designed, now all that is left is to design some character sheets for Nancy and I could work with the rest of the characters.

Now Nancy is finally complete, I am very happy with her design and I think she'll work well in Space Girl 3000. All that is left now is to design the rest of the cast and the background designs.

Space Girl 3000 - Visual Research - Logans Run

Michael Anderson’s Logan’s Run is one of many science fiction films I watched, the film was mainly shot in a futuristic utopia in which has various futuristic devices and gadgets. Though the plot of the film itself didn’t appeal to me, the atmosphere really did. It is a perfect example of a retro future; huge futuristic looking buildings, access to teleportation in your living room, transportation to one building to the next etc.

The thing that appealed to me the most was the design of minor things, such as walls, cars, gadgets and even outfits. Everything was designed to have a futuristic feel to it, which is something I want to try and do in my animation, no matter how minor.

Space Girl 3000 - Visual Research - The Jetsons

The Jetsons was a television show I did not watch growing up, however I did enjoy various other Hanna-Barbera shows. Hanna-Barbera’s art style is iconic in the animation universe, and considered very retro, this is something that work well with the Jetsons; the show is set in this retro future and the retro art style works incredibly well, no character seems out of place in the show and the scenery captured the future world.

The character designs in the Jetsons greatly inspired me, sharp clothing with simple colours and wacky hair to match. My original character design for Nancy Nebula had her with large pointy hair and simple clothing; however over time I did redesign her to have much more iconic clothing, similar to the fashion in the Jetsons.

Space Girl 3000 - Visual Research - Metropolis

Osamu Tezuka’s classic animated film; Metropolis is one of the main sources of research. The main aspect that I have been researching into is the background art. Metropolis is considered one of the best animated films to come from Japan, with its beautiful shots and its tight story, however, one of the most spectacular things in this animation is the background art. 

Mainly rendered in 3D, the backgrounds usually focus on establishing shots around the city. These shots are varied in angles, looking all over the city, panning up and down buildings and zooming through them, this gives us a real feel towards the scenery in which this film takes place. This is something I want to try and do in my animation, using a variety of shots to get a real feel for where the protagonist is, and what is happening around her, be that a bustling city or a quiet waiting room.

Space Girl 3000 - Mood Board

Space Girl 3000 - Scripting

Now that I had a basic plot, I had to turn it into a script. I was talking to Ged Haney alot about this, and he informed me to write it as quickly as I could, then he'd be able to help me. And so, I created my first draft of the script;

FIRST DRAFT

I showed it to Ged and he suggested that I should give the secondary character more screen time since he is a vital character (The man with the other briefcase). This was when I decided to have 2 parallel stories, one with the protagonist and another with the secondary character, this led me to write up the second draft to my script;

SECOND DRAFT

After much debating, we decided to scrap the 2 parallel storylines and stick to only one, however we'd change things up abit. Now instead of a secondary character like the protagonist, we'd have a secondary character like the antagonist, another villain. I then rewrote the script into what would be the final script;

THIRD DRAFT

Or so I thought, I was informed to keep working on the script until I had a set idea, so I decided to make some minor changes. This script kept almost all of the elements of the previous draft, however some locations and settings had been altered to give it a more real feel. And so I finished up the forth draft to my script;

FORTH DRAFT

After finally deciding on everything that would happen, I decided to do a final script, in which it is layed out perfectly for both me and my sound designer. There wasn't many changes to the script in this version, but I did lay it out much nicer. This resulted in my final script;

FINAL SCRIPT

Now that I had a final script, I decided to work on the concept art and find a sound designer.

Space Girl 3000 - Plot development

Space Girl 3000 began it's life as an idea of a female protagonist in the future doing something. I had drawn a character that I liked, but didn't know what I wanted her to be doing. All I knew is that I wanted to create a silent animation using her, showing off beautiful backgrounds and fluid animation.

I thought of a nice plot, in which a girl heads to a planet in her ship, lands and then delivers something to someone. I didn't know what yet, but I know I wanted it to become a deal gone wrong and ends up turning into a massive chase. However, I then decided the deal gone wrong and wanted to go with her delivering something delicate. I decided this because I could play around with her having to be careful with a box or briefcase when everything is trying to get in her way. The idea was similar to an animation series "There She Is" in which during an episode the protagonist has to deliver a cake, the outcome would be similar, below is the animation;

After thinking long and hard about how I wanted it to play out, I decided to go back to the deal gone wrong, and with the help of Ged Haney I was able to write a script!