Sam Cybs BA3B

Monday Today I finished the TV ad sequence and handed it off to Corey to be edited into the final film. I also began working on the factory flashback sequence. Tuesday Made huge strides with the factory sequence, finishing approximately a third of it. Wednesday Today I intended to get the factory sequence and the original animation both finished for good so I could spend Thursday finishing the written work. Due to several meetings throughout the day and back pain preventing me from sitting down and focusing in the afternoon, this did not happen. I no longer feel confident about getting my work completed on time, but all I can do is persevere at this point. After some feedback on my business card, I decreased the between-text space in the contact info to make it easier to read, and I ended up with two designs for the front. As much as I liked the personal touch of the mini-me I'd drawn, the more minimalist one seemed more professional and consistent with the re...

Finished the TV ad sequence.

Continued progress on the 2D advert sequence.

Continued progress on the 2D advert sequence. I ran some artificial motion blur tests on the stop motion clips completed thus far.

Continued progress on the 2D advert sequence.  Corey asked for an image of a street in winter to place outside the window in the set he was building. I told him streets, backgrounds and architecture were not my forte when it comes to drawing, so we compromised on a foggy, winter-y field instead. I encountered a strange Photoshop glitch whilst drawing this image - I could only make brush strokes horizontally. If I tried them vertically, it would just jump into the move tool and move the whole image around. I later looked it up and found this was an issue with a Windows update being incompatible with Photoshop and drawing tablets, and the simplest workaround was to turn off 'windows ink', essentially getting rid of stylus pen sensitivity settings. I didn't learn about this until after I'd finished the image though.

In the midst of working on the TV ad sequence, I had an idea I wanted to try out for the factory sequence. I created a 2D rig of the worker character for the factory sequence (using assets made in Photoshop), but unfortunately decided against using it because the complexity of the rig made it very difficult to use, and the use of 3D space in After Effects kept causing it to crash.

Production of the TV ad sequence continues.

This week I added our recorded dialogue to the animatic, and production has finally begun on the 2D advert sequence:

This week I finally completed the animatic, it just needs editing to time it to the music.

Continued with the bear building loops, working on the animatic, and continued making visuals for the presentation, such as a film poster. Got involved with voice acting for Andy Angels project.

This week I experimented with bear building animation loops and contributed to the presentation for next week. My idea at this point was to create the TV ad in Flash/TVPaint animation and the factory sequence in After Effects digital animation that more closely replicates the look and texture of the stop motion puppets. Since we came up with the idea to have the stop motion puppets moustache move instead of giving him a mouth, Corey wanted me to redesign the moustache a little (I also took this opportunity to test out several different eyes). I had some fun with the first approach, decided I liked the second top one best, and created several more grounded variations of it for the second batch of designs. I also began storyboarding the advert sequence. One thing we struggled with was how to plan out the stuffed bears 'origin story' that the ad would tell. Upon switching our setting to the 1950's, it no longer made any sense to have the ad be about a colourful ...

As needed, I created some construction sheets to help Corey with the proportions of our characters. I'm quite proud of the fathers one, with attention to detail in his slouching stance. Here, Corey had an idea for what the factory sequence should look like, and storyboarded it - and I  made a quick animatic for it. (Corey also had this idea that we should make our own choir of voice actors to sing silly bear related lyrics to the intense orchestral music that's bound to go along with this scene.) I also worked on creating some expressions sheets for the characters. In the fathers expressions sheet, I wanted to show visually how I imagined the fathers emotions coming almost entirely from the positioning of his eyebrows. Corey intends to have the moustache on a wire so it simply moves up and down when he speaks. The childs face is a little more complex, with smaller eyebrows and a smaller forehead on whic to move those eyebrows, movabl...

The Animatic is taking a little longer than planned, but this week I continued working on the character designs. Once we'd decided on the type of child we were going to work with, I went and designed a few outfits based on what I imagined a kid who watches 90's Saturday morning cartoons to look like, since that was my main inspiration for what I envisioned for the TV ad sequence. I intended to do some research into 'Care Bears' and other cartoons from that era. When designing the bear, I first went with quite a traditional one capable of standing on its hind legs, with tiny beady eyes. Of course I played around with a few other animals and costumes for it, and then tried something completely different just for fun - reducing the character to a literal circle and building cute elements into it. Later I made alterations based on the fact the story was now taking place in the 1950’s. Corey sent me a couple images of typical schoolchildren outfits for the t...

The decision has now been made to set our story at christmas time, so I implemented feedback into the animatic about adding an establishing shot next to a christmas tree and adjusting the timing.  In order to begin making the puppets, Corey needed some character designs, so I began sketching some ideas. When designing the father, I thought about the old semiotics trick of characters made of round shapes conveying innocence and square shapes conveying stability, and I thought that might be a good place to start considering I'd need to make these characters work in stop-motion. I also rather enjoyed making him look quite battered and leathery, as if reality had worn him down and taken the colour out of him. I'm not sure why I made the eyes wide and blank, but I think it had something to do with the simple but effective stylistic choices of animators like 'LemonyFresh' (whose style is pictured below): Coming up with a look for the child was tough,...

This week, me and Corey worked together to produce a schedule for getting things done.  I created a first draft animatic for the stop motion sequences Monday night, ready to present on Wednesday. The timing needs work, but I made this  instead of a storyboard because the energetic and comedic nature of the child was easier to envision from scratch in motion than in images.  Changes that need to be made - Corey envisioned the bear being alive through the child's eyes, and then being lifeless when we cut back after the factory flashback. We also decided we wanted it set at Christmas, so that the child could unwrap the bear as a present.

 BA3b Collaborative Project Proposal Corey Macdonald and Sam Cybichowski Third Year Animation Norwich University of the Arts Overview and Inspiration When first considering an animated piece to pitch for the purposes of collaboration, we remembered an idea that had popped into our heads one day back in our first year, when we briefly visited an Argos store.  Warehouse stores such as these are designed differently from other superstores, in which everything you may plan to buy is behind closed doors and all you have is a catalogue with pictures showing you the products.  What interested us about this concept was that neither of us had seen behind these doors before to see how everything was organized and structured, and as a result neither of us really knew what actually happens behind those doors when someone orders an item for purchase and we would let our imaginations run wild in deciding for ourselves what we thought it could be. This lead to the fasc...