Category: Chosen Idea 2 | Places of Mind

This week was dedicated to frame-by-frame animation for the opening scenes. The initial ones were a bit easier to do as compared to the helmet scene, where I had to even draw the reflections frame-by-frame. The frame rate was set at 12 fps and increased the speed in premiere pro.

At first, it seemed a nightmare to go in an colour each frame as well as do shading, but I discovered that all I needed to do was to create a clipping mask, copy and paste it onto each layer and warp it according to the frame.

The most time consuming scene was creating the reflections on the helmet visor. Even if the character movement was created, I had to go back in to match the background movement.

After adding in the backgrounds and lighting, I am quite happy with the way the project is turning out. Below is the very first render of the finalized opening scene.

Today I worked on the character animation for the child in the last frame. The child is a caricature of me. The charcter style is a disney-esqued style and the colours of his costume innterplay throuhgout the video. In reality the child is wearing a home made paper bag helmet. At first I wanted to make a more polished version of it with a foli cover sphere and a visor attached but opted for a much simplistic paper bag version, as I belived the gave the character more innocence.

After basic animation was set, I worked on the background for the last scenes and after a bit of compositing I am happy with the final result.

In to the Warp Speed Effect

At first I thought I would hand draw the whole warp speed effect frame by frame, but It would have been much time consuming and a hassle. After some research I founf it is much easier to do it after effects and after some tweeking I was able to achieve the desired effect.

I followed the tutorial scene by scene. Added some colour and glow to the effect and created the sun in the middle.

I have added the craft in the scene and things are falling into place quite nicely

Once this was all set and done, I incorporated the drawings into it, added a fast blur, glows and motionn tracking and stood closer to a finalized scene.

References

http://www.youtube.com. (n.d.). How to go WARP SPEED in After Effects. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YboQC8pOOv4 [Accessed 24 Jan. 2023].

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Jet – concept arts

The jet itself is an essential character to the story. As you can see above I have tried to find a common ground between a jet and a rocket while the core design should resemble what a paper airplane should look it. The above paper airplanes are inspired by the ones I used to in school e.g. the straight basic one was a standard template and we used to fold the wings edges to give more of speed and used to see how far it would go. Another memory which gave me inspiration while changing the concept.

The front and back images are a work in progress of the launching scene itself. Here I am working out the colour pallette of the craft itself.

This is a more finalised concept of what the craft boosters would look like. I have added a glow and some rusted metallic texture to which has given the whole thing a finesse.

The Paper Plane

Final Animatic

While making this animatic I realised that since the rocket sequence was a dream sequence, it needs to be cinematic, should have a glow in it with black bars on top and bottom. While the reality part needs to be full screen.

A thing I should point out before hand, the instrumental used in it copyrighted and I have left it like this for now, just to convey the overall concept, look and feel of the project. When developing the final producting I will produce orginal music.

The Storyboard

I took time with this, as I wanted to lock every frame and compostiton with this one storyboard. A lot of revisions were made and if you comapre this to my last storyboards, I have made this one is much greater detail.

I am pretty sasified with how the story has come together and in the next post I will try to cover the animatic

It took a while to come up with something new. The research although did not take me far and wide, all I had to do was think about why someone would fanntasize about being a astronaut. Then it hit me, Toy story and Top Gun Maverick were a good example of this. After discussion with my teacher, we worked on the new concept a bit and realised mid way that this would be much more relatable. My only fear is that, whenever we think of a space ranger we immediately associate it Buzz Lightyear.

THE NEW CONCEPT

Scene 1

Montage of an space ranger/astronaut suitinng up.

He puts on his suit.

His locks his pads

Wears his gloves.

Picks up his helmet (in the reflection we see the character for the first time).

Scene 2

The rocket, (which is an amalgamation of a space rocket and a F-18 jet) is getting into place.

Voicer over on radio

Ready for launch

Engine fire up and rocket takes off.

Scene 3

We blast through the ozone layer and sound barrier innto space

Voicer over on radio

Ready for hyperspeed/hyperlaunch

the space ranger, pushes buttons, heats up the engine, closes his visor. As the rocket starts up pick up speed. He presses the hyperspeed buttons and the rock blasts off into warp speed.

Scene 4

high pitched sound almost deafening of being in the warp speed vaccum.

Scene 5

Voicer over on radio

40% hyperspeed achieved

He pushes the lever for more speed.

Voicer over on radio

60% hyper……. and it starts to glitch.

Scene 6

The rocket jet is going haywire and catches fire.

It is about to crash.

Voicer over on radio (glitching)

Warning! Warning! Warning!

The radio is is picking up some frequency.

The rocket flies towards the screen

cut to:

a paper airplane, crashing into a tree.

We track out to show we are in a park and it was a kid trying different paper airplanes.

I’m quite happy with the story and it all depends on the execution. In the next couple of blogs I will try to post the storyboard, animatic and concept arts.

After discussions with the program leader, we found the places of mind animation concept had potiental to be further developed. The story seemed to resonate with alot of people and I believe that was the basic intention behind it and have been sucessful in tha aspect. During the class it was pointed the concnept was similar to an already made short film coin operated. A have attached the link below for the film.

The link was purely coincidental, although a key ascept is the same where the coin operated machine is a plot device, but mine was fairly different. Since there is now a threat of plagiarism or appropriation I feel it is best to deviate away from this concept and rework out some aspects.

References

Coin Operated – Animated Short Film. (2018). YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L4DQfVIcdg.

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