Storytelling and Commission - Script to Screen - OGR #1

From Script to Screen OGR1 PDF

Character Design #3 - Prop Design for a Character and Anthropomorphising Objects

This week in Character Design our first task was to create props to accompany a character we were given at random. I was given this image of Disney's Aladdin's Jafar. 

Immediately I noticed the snake sceptre, and the oversized jewel ring, so tried to combine these designs into my own props as they compliment his character. 

Our next task was to anthropomorphise objects that would be found in a room, the room I was given was a library - so of course I started off with books. I also thought about furniture however, and still on the Disney theme thought of the giant library in the Beast's castle in Beauty and the Beast, and what sort of furniture was/could be in a room like that, drawings and notes. 

Adobe Audition - Tutorial 2

In this tutorial we were once again given some sound clip files to work with, some the same as before and some new ones, including a short clip of as acapella song as well as instrument sounds. Again after introduction and instruction on how to do certain things we could play around with the settings and effects with these clips to see what we could create. 

Maya Tutorial - Pre-Visualisation 1 - Part 8: Coverage

Animation and Character - Abstract animation of a taste - Caramel Coffee

Finally finished my caramel coffee animation! Had a lot of issues with trying to get the movement tween to work, but it is now at least, although I'm not sure if the caramel blob really works, might have to work back into this. 

Caramel Coffee from Pip Harris on Vimeo.

Adobe Premiere - Animatic from Big Fish Like for Like Storyboard

Today was our first introduction to Adobe Premiere, and we used our frames from our like for like storyboards to create an animatic of our chosen scene. Whenever introduced to new software I do feel quite daunted, but more often than not I soon see its nowhere near as complicated as I initially thought to create basic work with. I think the most challenging part of this was trying to get the timings on scene transitions correct.

Initially as my storyboard had multiple images on a page, I had to crop each one out and set the size to be 1920x1080px so it was the correct size for working on in Premiere.

We didn't create an animatic of the whole storyboard, and I would like to go back into my storyboard anyway and edit a few images to work better as an animatic, now I know what sort of thing I need to have for working in Premiere, as where some of the scenes are quite a few seconds long on, but I only have one or two images for them, you are left looking at a still image for a while, so it seems quite disjointed. Once the new drawings have been made to fill in the movement, I'm thinking I can use a fade/dissolve cut to transition between the drawings, to make the movement and scenes flow a lot better.

 

My animatic of 'Leaving Spectre'. (Version 1)

 

 

 

Clip from Big Fish - 'Leaving Spectre', for comparison.

Like For Like Storyboard - Big Fish - Leaving Spectre

For my like for like storyboard I chose the clip 'Leaving Spectre' from the 2003 film 'Big Fish' as this film has been one of my favorites since I first watched it not long after it came out.

I chose this scene particularly for the scene design, I always found Spectre to be one of the strangest settings of the film, but liked the symmetry of the town, plus I liked the camera work when dancing/spinning, simulating the perspective of the people dancing, thinking the multiple scene cuts in this part particularly would be good to storyboard.

However, I wasn't entirely sure how to go about creating the storyboard, initially I thought I would just draw a new frame each time there was a new scene, however some of the scenes in the clip I chose are quite a few seconds long, and contain characters moving over a distance/camera panning around and so on. In the end I just tried to capture the key elements of the clip.

Character Design #2 - Body Silhouettes and Character

Task 1 - Change body type/silhouette of given character - Wreck it Ralph 

Task 2 - Design x3 differing chararacters based on given genre/type  - Ninja. Think what and why.

Adobe Audition - Tutorial 1

Today was our first Adobe Audition tutorial, we were first shown the basics of the program, then given a file pack containing different animal sounds and a few clips of speech, as well as a sound and video file. We could take what we liked and manipulate and experiment, getting to know the basic controls and uses of the program. I created this odd sci-fi-esque short track, feeling quite confident about using the program, and Im excited to start putting together my soundscape! Initially the file was exported from Audition as a wave. file, for better quality, then the file was dragged into a media encoder, which rendered it out as an mp4 file so I was able to put it up on here. 

@Phil Storytelling and Commission - Script to Screen - Initial Plans and Ideas

Character - Taxidermist
Environment - Graveyard
Prop - Candle

Initial Plot Idea Scribbles

Translation-
Overlying theme: Taxidermist is in need of more animals to preserve, heads to a pet cemetery. Candle flicker and wind howl trope as he digs. Back in his studio, as he's putting the carcasses into a fridge to be preserved, ghost of a cat pops up and darts out of the fridge, drawn to the playful flickering of a candle. Cat ghost/poltergeist creates havoc in the studio, moving around, knocking over pots, jars, playing with putting out the candle, walking over the taxidermist and causing chills etc. POSSIBLE First scene we open on the taxidermist dead/knocked out on the floor, dark room and flickering candle, eerie music. THEN cut to graveyard earlier scene. (later find out they tripped over something the cat moved) OR instead house/studio ablaze? Taxidermist in or out? Looking up exorcists?  Final scene will be taxidermist breaking point/knockout. 

Short: Taxidermist is haunted by the playful ghost of the cat he dug up from the pet cemetery.