Monday 30 October 2017

The Robo-Shark Scene

Recently, myself and Alan were speaking about the action sequence within my animation. My main focus was to throw in as many obstacles as possible at the character for him to have to overcome. This was all fine, but Alan suggested I try and change the pace of the scene, this is when he suggested looking at Buster Keaton and I am very glad that he did. 
I've looked at the way that Keaton has set up his shots, specifically when getting across a gag to the audience. One of his rules is, if the camera doesn't see it, then neither does the character.
So with this in mind, and some other bits of inspiration, I have put together a rough animatic to try and get across some visual comedy in the action scene. The main focus of the video was to get a sense of timing, I've also added some royalty free music to give a better understanding to the way in which I feel the entire scene would come together.

Thursday 19 October 2017

Escape Zone 3000 Pre-Vis (All Scenes)

I have now completed all the scenes for my pre-vis and I am very happy with how it has turned out, I have taken notes of certain scenes I don't feel work as well as others, some are because of camera movements and others due to the composition and layout of the shot, however, this aside I'm excited for it to be a fully realised animation.

 

From here I plan on moving onto designing and building more of the world. I do have some old sketchbooks from the summer that have quick scribbles of the character which I a plan on taking forward to create some more finished designs. 

Tuesday 17 October 2017

Dance Escape Pre-Visualisation

The dance escape as previously mentioned is a reference/pastiche to Footloose. I always enjoyed scenes like this in film, I simply found them entertaining. With this pre-vis I have recreated various shots from the 1984 film whilst also incorporating a few of my own. 
The purpose of the scene itself is to get the character from A to B in an entertaining way. 
Visually, the scene will incorporate theatrical lighting and a smokey atmosphere to resemble that of the scene that it has been appropriated from. 
The next thing on my to-do list is to assemble a pre-vis for the final scene of the film tying it into the beginning. After that I will piece each pre-vis together to get a sense of the full animation. 

Tuesday 10 October 2017

Action Sequence [Pre-vis and Notes]

As I said in my last post I wanted to take my storyboards and adapt them into a rough pre-vis to get a better sense of movement, which I have done. From it I personally have a better sense of the movement, and the way each shot moves from one to the other. It's also given me a clearer vision of how particular shots, that I felt would be difficult, will translate into animation.


My next point of call is the storyboard the next scene which is a kind of dance/escape scenario. 
After that I plan on putting everything together to see how it all works as one piece.

Thursday 5 October 2017

Storyboarding The Action Sequence

In my previous post I stated that I was eager to incorporate each of the problematic scenarios into my action sequence. I have gone ahead and storyboarded the sequence in a way that I feel keeps the audience's interest, I wanted the camera movements to be fast, and directly in the heart of everything. 
One thing I did was drop one of the problems, I decided to get rid of the jumping through hoops idea as I didn't feel that it was adding much to the scene and it was slowing the pace.
I was also taking into consideration the amount of time I actually have with this project, and was thinking of project management and the amount of animating I will have to do.

Below are the scanned in storyboards from my sketchbook
From this I feel I could make a quick pre-vis to give a rough sense of the camera movement and pacing.
As well as this, my next task is to choreograph a dance escape inspired by the warehouse scene in 'Footloose'