6DM022, 6DM012: week 16&17 (22nd February-7th March)

After gaining some feedback that I need to start keyframing my animation for these two weeks, that was my main goal within the workflow I conducted from the schedule. I also wanted to start to doing is creating dummy sound effects for the film which will be shown in another post after the full keyframing and music is roughed out before starting clean up. Also from the feedback, they also mentioned I needed to plan a better workflow to gain the right perception on setting deadlines and creating the sufficient tasks that would be needed to get the right result I want in the film.
For the 4th week into the course, I started keyframing aswell as drawing lineart over the figures to determine what the final draw up look would look like when these characters come to life. For the end result I finished up from sequence 1-8 within the intro to when the mother figures out what she could tell her son from stopping him from going out in the night.

Below showcases the video of these set pieces I conducted within the main software of TV paint.


keyframing sequence 1-8 from matthew danks on Vimeo.

The other task I conducted was creating sound effects that would help generate the mood of the film, add effect to the situation and dynamics and also showcase how I want the story to be told in terms of having non-spoken dialogue and having imagery be the most important to tell the story.
For this to work, me and a fellow student Andrew taylor decided to book out the sound Booth suite and use the equipment to create different sound effects from mumbles to environment sounds and also help each other out with creating these different sounds for our films.
Below shows our basic list of what we wanted within the scenes to tell the story and characters better rather than just relying on visuals and music. What we did was use our own voices making mubble sounds to animal and creature sounds to create what the characters would sound like in the final edit. We also used random objects like elastic bands, crushing paper and cardboard and clicking related sounds to create environment sounds.
Photos below show me and Andrew in sound production.

What I also did as I helped Andrew with his sounds aswell as our plan to work with each other on creating our music, I decided to help him set up his stop motion set that would conduct and result with photos of backgrounds, pan shots and camera angles that are needed when he is animating his characters to tell the story. This included setting up the blue screen on two walls in the motion capture room; setting up the lights; camera and helping with extra lighting focused on specific points using mirrors to reflect the lights onto the set.

For the 5th week I was ill and couldn't any of the week's lectures but I carried on animating and made real progress within doing the keyframed animatic even though I did it in chronological order. The progression concluded with sequence 9-32 finished which indicated that I only and six more sequences to finish off before starting the in-betweens. What I also did was concentrate on making sure I get the action shots and poses correct aswell as pacing right before I would conduct the clean up and lineart stage.

Below shows the export of progress I made for the animatic.


keyframing sequences 1-32 from matthew danks on Vimeo.

In the 4th week we also had an introduction of what is expected when promoting this film in terms of press kit to send off to festivals and competitions in near future if I wanted to take part in these events. But as I was ill in the 5th week aswell as I wanted to keep on track with the keyframing, I will return to this at a later date when finding an existing animator that I can inspire a press kit from. But as I progress through the production this sort of writing will be easily understood on what is required as I could have the things that are needed when some part of the film is finished such as still images and other additional information.