LoopdeLoop - Whoops

This was my submission to the theme Whoops for this month's LoopdeLoop:

Submitted on the deadline day

This project was slightly rushed since I had so many ideas to go with (and I did a lot of preproduction for each before actually sticking to one idea). This brief helped me practice my 2D hand-drawn animation and some liquid and intensity effects animation.

An amalgamation of scrapped ideas and doodles (that I can hopefully recycle for other projects). 

What went well:

• The foley and sound design really helps sell the movements, the breathing and character noises also help the character acting,
• The liquid and energy fx work really well (thanks to all the practice I got in my COP3 project),
• (Update: It got featured on Loopdeloop's Facebook page!)

What could be improved:

• I spent too long on preproduction, I should choose an idea and stick to it before developing the idea any further to be more time-efficient,
• I still want to try making a loop with multiple camera angles and movements instead of a static camera to make it more immersive/cinematic.

Phrog Character Design

I volunteered to help out with the 3D team's project involving alien wildlife, as I am interested in creature design (more so than character design sometimes). I asked about the key features of the creature and got a pretty detailed list of characteristics:

• a land creature with aquatic features (frog, toad and deep-sea angler fish),
• a bright light source that's used as bait,
• is going to be modelled and rigged as a 3D character. 

Initial sketches to test mixing different features of different aquatic creatures

After my initial sketches and a bit of back and forth, we narrowed down its features to a frog-like creature with a glowing uvula and translucent belly (named the lava lamp belly because of the "organs" you can see through it). I experimented with a few shapes and colour to test out the different moods the Phrog could convey while remaining grounded in reality (or at least an alien reality?)

Shape and colour test (natural on the left, alien on the right)

Texture and details tests

In the end, we went with this design. Since it was going to be modelled and rigged in 3D I made a turnaround with breakdowns of different parts:

What went well:

• Basing the design on real creatures helped make it believable,
• Frequent communication with the 3D team made this process quick and efficient,
• Remembering that this design was going to be used to model in 3D meant I showed a lot more details, like breakdowns, open mouth, stretched legs etc.

What could be improved:

• The features don't line up perfectly, due to perspective and human error, which is more noticeable when modelling it in 3D,
• Not knowing the exact details of the final story made it slightly difficult to design this creature with a motive (but the ambiguity might've helped make it a mysterious character?).

Animating away - SPnU

After Tisa created the final revised animatic (and after we got feedback from Level 5 and 6 together), we allocated the scenes between us and ranked them by complexity. I created a Scene Allocation spreadsheet (I love spreadsheets) and made it pretty interactive, and pretty pretty:

I inputted a formula that calculates the amount of work each person has to do, based on the length of the scene and its complexity, in order to equally distribute the workload. I will, however, be doing the vfx too, which I haven't accounted for (I might need to relinquish the cleanup and colouring responsibilities of some scenes to make up for this). The filter function, allowed me to highlight all my scenes (might've been overkill) and I got working on the roughs:

We shot reference for the more complex scenes, which came in super handy (pun intended)

Some shots probably didn't need reference footage

I have come to find that hand animation is something I enjoy

I've almost completed most of my rough scenes before the scheduled date that Damo, the producer, assigned, so I might do the tie-down and clean up of scenes ahead of time (or I might assist my teammates with their scenes).

Pre-Production & Christmas Break - SPnU

Forming Schwa

Over the summer, we decided it would be a good idea to work as a studio, the very studio we worked as in our professional practice module in second year. The team and I cycled through a few ideas, first looking at the story, and then what medium would best suit it (we initially planned to make more than one 2-minute short film, so we weren't very precious with our ideas).

Roles

Eventually, we settled on a sleep paralysis idea, and the roles we had were: me as the director, Damo as the producer and character designer, and Tisa as the storyboard artist. We knew we would need expertise from other members of the class, so we got Halli to do the backgrounds, and a few other animators too.
The script went through many revisions, I found it difficult to put down my vision in words (and not storyboards/images) so I wrote in a very simplified way using sticky notes. I wrote down alternative storylines, possible problems and solutions, and the reasoning behind them:

 My teammates' ideas for shot framing, story progression and transitions were crucial too, so in the end, it was a story we'd all contributed to. This worked well in making sure the story was not too cliché (and helped the morale of my team too).

Pre-production?

After the scriptwriting, I realised I had no other pre-production roles, so I helped my team members out as production was in full swing.
I made a few concept art panels to help Tisa with her storyboarding, and moodboards to help Damo (and Halli) with the visuals:

I also gave some feedback to Damo on the character of design of the protagonist, Kilo. I kept in mind things like line mileage, appeal, colour palette and symbolism.

Character design was done by Damo

Character Design: Penelope/Demon (Christmas Break)

Damo expressed his uncertainty of whether he'd be able to do the rest of the character designs, so I helped him out with the character design of the sleep demon character, Penelope.

We were still debating whether to use a charcoal-ish texture for the Demon

I also did some prop design of the dream-catcher (which plays a significant role in the story). I also drew different designs depending on how far away the dream catcher was.

With her design, silhouette and pose were the most important things so I made sure she was recognisable and had a certain chill factor...

Trouble arose when I used the same silhouette for her human form:

Penelope initially had very long arms (left) so I reduced that a bit (right) while still keeping it unnerving on the Demon form

Even though the human form isn't on screen for long, it helps to know what she's like

Her human form was designed to retain the same silhouette, but have a contrasting colour scheme and overall appeal, so (spoiler alert) the reveal in the end is a lot more impactful.

Character Design Challenge - Axolotl Adventurer

To practice my character design, I participated in the December Character Design Challenge where I created Axel 'Adventure' Otel:

Proof of submission (2 days before deadline just in case)

Making lots of rough sketches helped me find out what worked well and prevented me from being too precious with my initial designs. I focused on character alignment, shape language and the world it would be in. Creating a character using the guidance of a brief helps me practice creating a character for the animation pipeline and so I focused on creating a character suited for animating, so it had be made of simple shapes, flat colours, and too many details:

 

I also experimented with colour schemes, keeping in mind personality, environment, and fashion sense:

2 was the best suited as it conveyed a light-hearted, goofy, but also realistic mood.