OUAN503 - What's the Problem?

What's the Problem? is the first studio brief we've had for the responsive module so far. The task is divided into two parts, the first part involves looking into and discovering possible briefs to work on for the individual practice section of the responsive module. A lot of emphasis in our timetabled sessions has been on breaking down briefs in order to understand what they're asking for, and to complete the brief in a way where the main points are being answered and responded to. For one of the first sessions we had to bring a brief with us and break it down using the tools and techniques we were taught about during the class. Another task we were given was to analyse a brief given to us so that we could learn how to properly look at a brief and understand what it was asking from us. This task also encouraged us to look for key words or key sections of a brief. Overall very helpful and easy to apply to the rest of the live briefs and competitions we will be undertaking. Despite being relatively straight forward it has given me a new perspective when looking at the information on a specific brief.

Part 1 - Based on the discussions in the studio session that focussed on your criteria for success within the module and the reasons for entering competitions, evaluate the three briefs that you brought to the session. You will need to reflect on:

• To what extent will the briefs allow you to meet your criteria for success within the module.
• To what extent will the briefs benefit you with regards to the benefits of entering competition briefs.
• Any problems that you can foresee with the briefs in relation to the issues discussed in the session.

Part 2 - Based on your response to Part 1, select a brief (YCN 2014/15 Student competition briefs or self selected brief) that you think will provide an opportunity to fulfil the criteria discussed in the studio session. In selecting a brief you should aim to focus on the problem, context audience, opportunities etc. as discussed in the session and not purely a the discipline specific content. Having selected the brief, you are asked to analyse it using the following questions as prompts.

• What problem(s) are identified by the brief?
• What is the brief asking you to do about it/them?
• What is the brief trying to achieve?
• Who will benefit?
• What is the message?
• Who is the audience?
• How will the message be delivered?
• Can you foresee any problems in responding to the brief?

Secret 7"

The Secret 7” brief essentially takes 7 tracks from 7 of the better known musicians, all from different genres and decades and then presses each one 100 times to 7” vinyl. The organisation then invites creatives from around the world to listen to the tracks and develop a vinyl sleeve for just one of the 100 records to be placed into. The interesting way in which the sleeves are exhibited is that the 700 shown and then sold for £50 apiece. The buyer doesn't know the artist or who created it, or even which song the particular sleeve is for until they have purchased it, in their words - "The Secret Lies Within". Having looked over the tracks, this years artists include; CHVRCHES's Clearest Blue, Etta James' At Last, Jack Garratt's Worry, The Jam's Art School, John Lennon's Imagine, Max Richter's Dream 3 and Tame Impala's The Less I Know The Better. I'm personally familiar with several on the artists on the list, and I am interested to discover the other artists for the purpose of this project, to see what they sound like and develop a sleeve cover for their track. I think the difference between the artists I'm familiar with versus the artists I've never heard before is that I will already have some form of previous knowledge of the style, and type of art that they usually feature. I'm hoping to try to ignore this and produce something original and untainted in respect to this. In terms of the extent to which this brief will allow me to complete criteria for success within the module, I think that if this is used a more substantial brief, and all seven of the vinyl's completed for each of the respective artists, there would be huge scope for experimentation and ultimately create quite a large body of work including research, implementation and presentation of ideas. If this process is repeated seven times, then a nice collection of work in response to a live brief would be available to use in my portfolio or take forward as something I've been involved in. Furthermore, album or record artwork is incredibly diverse across multiple genres and artists so there is definitely some potential for learning about this type of design as a whole and other areas that it can be applied to. Aside from this, if even one of the entries that I submitted was successful then it would be an achievement in itself. Along with this, the number of entries and accessibility to the brief means there is a lot of potential for networking and discovering other artists through the Secret 7" brief. I think because of the live nature of the brief and the amount of work that could be placed into it, it can easily meet and surpass the criteria of the module. As far as any problems that I can foresee with this brief in relation to the things we discussed in class, I suppose being original would be quite difficult but still attainable, just because of the popularity and diversity within the brief. Finally, perhaps how open the brief is could cause a problem because there aren't many requirements apart from the size of the image. In no way does it have to link directly to the artist, and because of this it's almost like we are able to produce anything we like as long as we can find a way to associate it with the record artist. D&AD - John Lewis, Create a Window into the Brand

This brief which is by John Lewis and presented by the organisation D&AD is to create an "inspiring, inventive, conceptually relevant and eye-catching display for John Lewis’ flagship Oxford Street store for the Autumn season, that reshapes expectations of what shop windows do and can be, but keeps product firmly at its heart". The purpose is to put an emphasis on their display and it's also mentioned in the brief the importance of how a shop window is there to communicate not necessarily decorate. It also mentions that ideally the shop window will make commuters stop for a closer look of the shop window, even if they're in a rush, so it would have to be quite eye catching and definitely inventive. Finally it's purpose is also to draw new customers to the store. This is quite a difficult aspect to the brief, because it would be important to appeal to current customers but also bring in new customers through the display itself. I think there is lots of potential in this brief to meet the criteria set by the module. This happens to be one of the briefs where you don't just have to think purely about the aesthetics of your response but also aspects of marketing, consumers and business, branding and in a sense psychology. Again, it is a live brief in which there is a deadline set by the 'client' in which the deliverables must be handed over and I also think that again there is a huge scope for potential ideas. The brief is begging for the entries to be as inventive as possible, and as different as possible. This in itself creates a problem, because you want to be as original as possible but you want to make sure you're creating something that will still appeal to John Lewis and their brand as a whole, so it's difficult to do whatever you like without straying to far. In terms of the module however, this could be setting you up for success because you can bend the brief a little to suit the requirements. I also think that because it's for a shop window, there is a large amount of research and investigation that can be done, combined with the practical element which in turn could create a large body of work to satisfy the brief and also be a strong portfolio piece too. Entering this brief, similar to the other competition briefs would provide invaluable experience at tackling a problem with set requirements and limitations for a big brand. This gives you a lot of responsibility as an artist and trying to satisfy clients. I think that this could also work as a collaboration brief because of the amount of different roles that could be included, so a level of communication and collaboration would be required to be successful, again an invaluable trait as someone working in a creative job. Finally, I don't think that there are too many problems that this brief could provide except that the lack of experience in this area could mean that you are easily lead in the wrong direction in regards to what is the best approach for this task and shop windows only have a few seconds of people’s attention, which is not the usual way in which I personally work, especially in animation where the end product often requires a lot of time invested by the audience.



YCN - Orchard Pig

The Orchard Pig brief is interesting because it's similar to a brief based around branding except they want their existing logo and brand to remain the same. In a way I suppose this brief is more based on promoting their company through imaginative and inventive ways. In the brief it said that based on the background, history and current position of Orchard Pig they believe it is the only ‘craft beer’ like cider in the market today – this needs to be amplified in an integrated campaign across Communications, Packaging, Point of Pour, Point of Sale and Innovation. They highlighted some keywords that the promotional material should communicate such as Bold, Mischievous, Inclusive, Rooted in Somerset. I think this gives you a good starting point as an indication of which direction to take and the kind of techniques and mediums that can convey the message they want. This brief I think would be good in terms of meeting the requirements of the responsive module because again the live nature of the brief combined with a large amount of research and thought into branding that could mean quite a lot of development and something that I haven't done before, so perhaps a large learning curve when responding to the brief. Furthermore, the module requirements state that the brief as a whole is to build on the experiences of Level 4 and offer us the opportunity to inform their understanding through research within the creative industries, I think this brief would be taking a leap and looking into quite a lot of areas I haven't looked into or worked with before, thus expanding my knowledge and diversity as a practitioner. Next, the benefits of entering this as a competition brief similar to most of the briefs give me the opportunity to compete with other professionals, work to an industry standard brief in a live brief format and potentially have the opportunity to network through the attempt of the brief. Finally, problems that could arise include an inexperience at undertaking this kind of brief and also coming up with an idea that meets all of the requirements set by the brief.



D&AD - Shutterstock

What problem(s) are identified by the brief?

The problems identified by the Shutterstock brief are the mention of the importance if stories as one of the oldest and most fundamental forms of communication and ways of understanding culture, history and people. They also mentioned that for brands, more often than not stories are a way to build a deeper more personal connection with their consumers as an audience. They're right in saying that people will engage with, share and respond to narrative in a way they never would with other marketing messages, because like previously mentioned people connect with stories more than any other form of advertising and entertainment. Which can be seen specifically in nearly all successful marketing campaigns. Shutterstock itself is a global marketplace of licensable stock content for creative professionals. They market photos, illustrations, videos, music clips and other content which brands take and utilise to transform marketing, and bring creative ideas to life. They also mentioned in the brief that "the most impactful imagery is not just beautifully crafted; it also evokes real moments and interactions and relatable stories".

What is the brief asking you to do about it/them?

Shutterstock wants us to pick three of the seven archetypes, which include; Comedy, Rebirth, Rags to Riches, Tragedy, The Quest, Overcoming the Monster, Voyage and Return, and create a still illustration or alternatively moving images for each one that tells a story from the modern world. We are to look to unexpected places, and try to find exciting things that hide in everyday life. In a quickly moving digital world that is dominated by media and distractions, having the time and space to unfold a story is a luxury not often available to different people. The brief is asking us to find a way to distil the essence of it down to something that can be captured in a single moment. Finally, the seven plot archetypes can be seen everywhere, from global news stories to the smallest interaction, you just have to look at them in a different way.

What is the brief trying to achieve?

I think that the brief is trying to achieve a certain outcome that illustrates the importance of everyday imagery and stories as a whole. This would reinforce the importance of their services and what they offer as an important commodity in the world of marketing and branding. Ultimately the outcome need to be emotionally provoking, thoughtful and come from a place that the audience can relate to on a human level.

Who will benefit?

The beneficiary of the brief will be I suppose Shutterstock and the people who watch the deliverable, as they will receive the message that's contained within the piece and hopefully benefit from it in some way.

What is the message?

“Stories make us what we are, remind us of when we’re at our worst, and celebrate our absolute human best. For me, it’s the only way to communicate.” Was a quote used in the brief from Dan Germain, Head of Creative, at Innocent. I think the overall message that will be conveyed will be related to the importance of every day life and every day actions. So despite how big or small the final deliverable will be, this will be important to represent throughout it.

Who is the audience?

For this particular brief there’s no target demographic, but I think it's important to consider how and why your images might be used. Ultimately the audience the work is aimed at will come from the tales you choose, the stories you decide to tell and how you tell them. For example, if the story is light hearted and funny it could be appropriate for everyone. However, if they story is more based around crime and holds a much darker story then the audience might be restricted to adults.

How will the message be delivered?

I think the message will be delivered visually, using the art of storytelling. As long as the story is solid and the message is clear then the audience should be able to pick up and interpret the message quite easily. It also depends on what the message is and how it's delivered, it should be fairly easy to deliver message to the audience through solid storytelling though.

Can you foresee any problems in responding to the brief?

The only problem I can see after reading over the brief is that there are a huge number of guidelines and restrictions in place. It depends on how strict the judges are at looking at the restrictions in comparison to the outcome produced, but it will be quite hard to satisfy all the of the requirements and still create something as thought provoking and relatable as the brief requires.

OUAN505 - Presenting Our Ideas - 8/2/16

Today we had our first chance to present our initial ideas and development to the rest of the class in the form of a presentation. Unfortunately, Gavin wasn't in due to illness so me and Callum did the presentation. We had spend the week prior to this making the presentation as we went along, adding slides and certain aspects of the initial design stage. This included things such as our mood boards and research, storyboards and the animatic. The Sunday night before the day of presenting I went back over it and made any final adjustments to the presentation such as adding the animatic to the mood board. Callum had done a great job of making sure to include everything in the presentation that we had produced up to this point, and we were just waiting for the animatic to be completed before adding that and finishing the presentation. In total the presentation was around fourteen slides and lasted around twenty minutes in total. When I arrived that morning I printed off a copy of our script so that I could talk through the animatic scene by scene with the script at hand to explain anything that was needed, with the context of the script to accompany it as we hadn't yet included the recorded version of the narration with the animatic. The presentation overall went quite well, I think Callum and I both covered everything we wanted to in order to gather feedback and in terms of the delivery it felt quite natural despite having not rehearsed anything in particular we were going to say and we were essentially relaying the kind of conversation and discussions that we had been having to the rest of the class. In total there was fourteen slides each covering a specific area of the project, such as the techniques we were using, initial research and artist research, script writing, our storyboard and finally the animatic. The feedback we got from the presentation was mostly positive, Sara said that she liked our storyboard and it looks like we know where we are taking the project which was quite reassuring. A couple of people asked us questions about how we were going approach the making of the final animation, asking if we are going to animate the final scenes in After Effects. We said that we were due to ease and the advantage we would have being able to compile multiple scenes using the same assets, and also that we would have a large amount of control over things like lighting. The conversation then moved onto the idea that we could make the trees sway or 'vibrate' in a sense, just the way they do when a breeze or gust of wind rushes through them. This is an idea that we have been thinking about but haven't tested yet. There is a range of ways I can imagine it being implemented however, for example, last year in one of our After Effects inductions we were shown how to make objects vibrate, and there was a lot of different variables that could be changed to suit our needs if we wanted it to. The last slide of our presentation showed a brief test that we conducted all together, by using the scanned in trees and playing around with layering and lighting. Sara said that before we move into the full production stage she would like us to lay out and complete some tests so that we know what we want to do is going to work, I think it's quite important that we do this soon so that we have a good idea about how the whole process will work in practice. She also said she wanted to read our script to make sure it flowed well and that it is going to be read at a comfortable pace and still fit within the time constraint. I was happy to have it said so that we could have some form of confirmation moving forward that it is a good script. Another point that was raised was if we were going to use music or not in our final piece a long with the voice over narration that we're including. We said that similar to that of some of the short documentary series we've been looking at, music does add quite a lot in terms of the mood that can be created by the added background sounds. I think we just have to be careful not to drown the narration out with it, and have it noticeably but quietly playing in the background. The final thing I mentioned was that we did have the script recorded to a standard where we could use it to plan our animatic around, and essentially use it as a reference and indication for where to place certain scenes.

Afterwards Sara came over to read the script we had produced as she said she would like to look it over before we move forward with it. After she finished reading it she said that we had done well to take all the original research and information we had collected and condense it into the script that still contains key information but will fit comfortably within the two limit time limit. I mentioned that the recordings did last around 2 minutes in length and with some proper pacing it should be a good length to coincide with the visual side of the project. Overall the presentation went quite well, I got some good feedback and suggestions from the class as well as approval on certain areas that we had complete. Furthermore, it gave us as a group perspective on where we were up to and what was next on the things we needed to do.

OUAN505 - Animatic, First Draft

The first draft of the animatic was predominantly comprised of the initial storyboard images with some new ones that I had created for the purposes of including any ideas we had thought of since the storyboard had first been drafted. I had a copy of the script at hand, and used the sound recordings we had created of the narration to align the various sections of narration with the different scenes in the animatic. For this I used Adobe Premiere Pro as it has all the functions that were suitable for undertaking this kind of task, without having too many unnecessary features to distract from the simplicity of pairing the sound and visual aspects of the animatic. After importing all of the sound files and various scenes I began to listen back whilst trimming and unnecessary sounds at the beginning and ends of clips. I took individual scenes and coupled them with the sound to gather a good understanding of how they worked together. This overall was quite a straight forward thing to do, but it did take some time due to the number of scenes and the way I had to constantly go back over different sections to make sure it matched up correctly and the way we wanted it to. Before I had made the version with sound, I had created the version below which was a rough kind of mock up for the purposes of presenting to the class for our first presentation. It was important that we had something to show in terms of a concept and what our idea was in terms of the arrangement of the scenes.

The making of the animatic made me feel like we are making real progress with the project, even though the storyboard and animatic aren't to be officially finalised until a week or two from now, based on our schedule. Furthermore, it was the first time seeing everything sequenced up and it's given me a good sense of the style and pacing of the animation that we're creating. Combined with the audio clips of the narration we recorded it feels like the smaller pieces of the project are coming together quite well. The number of scenes we created for the documentary fits nicely into the two minute cap that was put on the project, and doesn't fall short or over run by anything that can't be quite easily fixed by trimming or extending certain sections. So far, as a group we're quite happy with the order and pacing of the different scenes, and I think with just a little bit more revision we'll be ready to move into the production stage with a solid animatic to use as reference for the final piece.

OUAN505 - Initial Storyboarding

Once we had a draft of the script that we were happy with and divided into the appropriate sections, I did a rough storyboard to allow us to kickstart the process and make some form of progression in terms of the narrative and the concept that we were trying to portray. I looked closely at the written script we had produced and tried to create a storyboard based on this, whilst visualising the scenes that could take place a long with the narration of the script over the top. I started by drawing out twenty panels at around the ratio of around 1.78 as this was the ratio of the final production (1920 x 1080). This worked out at around six centimetres by ten and a half centimetres, although not exactly the correct proportions it was close enough for the purposes of this. The way this particular storyboard was produced was simply drawn out roughly in pencil before I went over it in a very fine black pen to capture any important details that otherwise would have been lost in the pencil and colouring stages. The black pen allowed any details to be highlighted, I then scanned it in and compiled the separate scans into photoshop to comprise the whole original storyboard. I was unable to do it in a single scan because the scanner was A3 and the storyboard was drawn A2 size. I started with the scene that we had originally spoken about being the the first shot in the documentary, which was the tracking shot from left to right showing the trees and revealing statistics as they're mentioned in the narration, essentially a scene to bring the audience into the animation and making them comfortable with the style of the film. I tried to represent most of these types of shots in quite a literal way on the storyboard itself so that it was kind of documented as the tracking shot that we had spoken about. Following on from this I drew three panels that would represent the scene relating to the nickname of the Amazon rainforest, "the lungs of the world". The idea here was to have the trees slowly being removed by decay or burning or another method, and the metaphor for decaying lungs in combination with the loss of oxygen through deforestation and through the removal of 'lung' I think portrayed a strong message here. The next scene involves machinery that is used to remove trees from forests, or a wood cutting vehicle. I had to use several reference images for this scene, purely because I wanted a relatively accurate depiction of the type of equipment that is used on a big scale to cut down trees and remove them from the forest. I had several panels next that represented forest fires, logging and wood harvesting as ways in which forests are affected and what methods or causes are behind deforestation as a whole. There are also several scenes in the storyboard that act as establishing shots and landscape shots so that when talking about for example, the rain forests there is a visual accompaniment to the narration which sets the scene for the audience.

The colouring process was quite straight forward and didn't take long at all. I tried to envision a colour scheme that could be appropriate to use within the animation. For the purposes of adding colour to the storyboard I tended to drift towards less saturated more washed out and pastel based colours as I thought these set the tone better. There was the element of trying to create something accurate, especially when it came to colour, so I also used reference imagery of machinery and forests to try and determine an accurate colour palette. I think this is something that we will have to look into ore thoroughly a little further into the production and make sure the colours set the correct tone of the documentary and work well with the types of imagery we have created with the paper assets. Some modification and alterations can always be applied in the post production stage if we need to. I'm pleased that at this stage we have an initial storyboard completed. As the script is adapted slightly, finalised and then recorded some modifications to the story board will be made in collaboration with this, and colour be revised or reordered a number of times before it's at the final stage. In terms of what's next for the storyboard I plan to create a more thorough plan.



I plan to use this opportunity to investigate more into storyboarding and refine my ability a little more in regards to what I can achieve. I think overall, despite it being something quite fundamental to animation and film making as a whole I think I am lacking a little in terms of what I'm able to do in terms of laying out a narrative or story in a storyboard format. Something I've never done before is look closely at the timings in scenes and thought about at the pre-production stages all of the transitions, camera movement, character or object movement and other details that should be quite well established at this point. I'm looking at a book by Steve Katz called, 'Film Directing Shot by Shot: Visualizing from Concept to Screen' in which storyboards are gone into quite a lot. Some examples shown in the book have given me some insight into various films such as The Graduate, Citizen Kane and Blade Runner. Last year, storyboarding was something I looked into for the purposes of research and finding out more about it, I looked at storyboards from some more recent films such as Christopher Nolan's, Inception and the film, No Country for Old Men but haven't been able to put it into practice much. So, my goal for the rest of the pre-production stage as far as establishing narrative, story and timings go is to be as thorough as possible so we have each little detail planned out ready for us to go into the production process with a good understanding of what we're doing.

OUAN505 - Research Into Techniques & Artists

At the early stages in the project, I like to revisit or discover new artists or pieces of work that will influence and inspire the rest of the project. For the documentary brief I was looking at different art styles as well as makers of documentaries and artists that use specific techniques such as paper cutting which is a large aspect to our piece. I was fortunate enough to be recommended one of the pieces that I am now looking at closely for inspiration throughout this process, the John Lewis advert - Bear and the Hare. There is a couple of artists and organisations I chose to look at because I'm also familiar with their work and thought it would be useful to apply what I feel I've learnt from watching or viewing their work to the research side of this module. Finally, I'm looking at both the moving image and animation aspect of the pieces I'm researching as well as the art aspect and the quality of the imagery on an individual and stand alone basis.

John Lewis - The Bear and the Hare

The 'Bear and the Hare' was the 2013 christmas advert for retailer John Lewis. The reason I've chosen to look at it is because firstly, they used a range of techniques that I'm interested in applying to our own piece. Most notably, the way the characters were animated was that each frame was drawn on animation paper and then coloured and printed using a laser cutter onto quite a thick card so that they were able to stand up on their own. The cutout was then placed into each frame and replaced almost like stop motion except instead of moving a model the cutout was just replaced. This is something we've considered and are hopefully going to go ahead with on our piece. It came up in discussion around the time we decided to make the entire documentary using paper and thus thought about how to animate specific aspects such as animals or natural elements. We decided it would be good to laser cut individual frames of the flying sequence of a bird, and after testing it on after effects, it worked quite well. The set design in the production 'The Bear and the Hare' is also a very high level of achievement and made me look carefully at the backgrounds I'm using along with the composition of different scenes. I particularly liked how even though the animals are 2D, through the method used look like they are three-dimensional. Another thing I liked about this was the camera shots that were used. Various tracking and panning shots were used at climatic moments and to bring certain details into view, such as near the end when the bear comes over the hill. There was a short feature made explaining the processes used to create the advert and the level of communication and collaboration that's evident in the production is inspiring and something I want to incorporate into our process, as well as time management through the use of time tables and schedules. The use of elements and environment is also something I feel like I took away from this after watching it a few times over. There is an emphasis on elements such as snow, rain, wind and the changing of seasons from spring to autumn and to winter etc. The seasons are an aspect of our animation that we wanted to include in some form and the way it was done in the advert is a good starting point as a reference on what can be done.



Gravity Falls

Early on in the project the art style from Gravity Falls was mentioned because of it's simplistic but universal appeal style combined with the use of colour and lighting to add a dramatic effect to the imagery and scenes that are used within it. After this I went away and watched several episodes of the series to get a feel for what the backgrounds added to the overall production and if we could in any way draw inspiration from it. The first thing I liked about the style was the consistency when it came to natural objects such as rocks, trees, leaves etc in that they all had the same style, and had a relatively high level of detail on them but the actual shapes were quite simple. The shapes of things became important when we decided to make the documentary out of paper cutouts because it was the shape and outline of objects that was the only relevant thing left when they shapes were cut out. In terms of colour, the colours used in Gravity Falls are quite natural with a slight cartoon feel but everything looks right. On top of this the use of light and shadow makes certain scenes and backgrounds look a lot more impactful because of the dramatic aspect they bring to a scene. This has encouraged me to look at and make sure we have good lighting in the scenes throughout our production, despite the difference in mediums. This will probably be achieved in After Effects. Something else that I really liked in the Gravity Falls scenes that I picked up and thought worked really well was the use of depth of field. The illusion in creating a depth of field on the 2D image to make it look almost as if you could walk into it, and added a sense of realism despite the unrealistic art style. Since we will be using paper trees and paper cutouts in general in our animation by layering them up in 3D layers, adding a depth of field would work well to create the illusion that the scene has a depth to it that would otherwise only be present if we shot it physically on a physical set. Overall, although we aren't using 2D drawing techniques in our documentary animation, there is a range of aspects including colour, depth of field, and shape of objects or style that have heavily influenced me at this early stage already and given me things that I plan to implement into various scenes later on in the project, when we are at the production stage of the process.



In a Nutshell - Kurzgesagt

The 'In a Nutshell' series by Kurzgesagt has been one of the more influential things I've looked at as research for this particular project. It's essentially a series of short documentaries that are produced by a small team covering a range of topics such as biology, cosmology, history and lots of other things. I discovered them a while ago and regularly watch any new material they produce and released online. The reason I've chosen to look at them for research for this module is firstly their approach to documentary making. They're quite straight forward in their approach, they make their videos to inform and entertain using a combination of interesting material and solid script writing, a good narrator, an appealing visual style and keeping their videos relatively short. Some of their videos are around three minutes in length whereas others are up to ten minutes or so. In comparison to what we're hoping to achieve, we are aiming for two minutes in length so quite similar to a shorter video by Kurzgesagt. The videos they make could easily appeal to a wide audience of all ages, from children to young adults and older people that enjoy educational videos whilst having that element of entertainment also factored in. The narrator that does the voice over for all of the pieces they've produced has an incredibly likeable voice, and sounds quite enthusiastic whilst also being quite calming. The script is easy to digest and isn't to heavy despite the subject matter being occasionally quite heavy, in that it's explained in a very eloquent and interesting way, sometimes even having humour included. This is the style of script I'm hoping to write for our documentary on deforestation, informative and interesting without getting to heavy or flooded with statistics. I think we're going to attempt to keep the script quite conversational in regards to this. Next, the art style is very graphic. I suppose in a way it will also have a certain influence on us because of our approach to the animation and using paper cutting as a medium, it will be inherently quite graphic and a little bit more simple than some other approaches we could have chosen to take. They use a lot of smooth animation and creative transitions throughout their documentary pieces to bring new scenes into the audiences view and this again adds to the dynamic feel of the animation. They have developed their own unique art style over the videos they have produced and it's quite recognisable by this point. Overall, the way they assemble and layer the different graphics without subtle music and a solid narration makes for a truly successful way of both informing and entertaining. I think what I want to take from their approach aside from the things previously mentioned such as script writing and editing are the level of detail and effort that's funnelled into each aspect of the animation, and I really want ours to be of a good standard too so that the people who watch it can enjoy it but also learn something through the information we are relaying to them through the narration that runs over the entire visual aspect of the animated documentary.



Maude White

Maude White is a papercutting artist that I've been following on social media for a while now. The reason I've chosen to look into some of her work as research is because I think she has demonstrated some of the amazing possibilities and outcomes that can be achieved by the technique of paper cutting. Of course hers are a lot more detailed and refined than the assets we create for this particular animation but it's great to see what kind of things she's managed to achieve through the various approaches that she has undergone. For example, one thing that I find quite interesting is looked at the way she plays around with positive and negative space to create different scenes and manages to tell subtle stories in just a single still image or frame. This is definitely something I want to be able to take away from her work since we will be telling a story and informing the audience in a visual way just as she does with her work. I'm happy that I looked into her work because it has made visible to me the potential in paper and paper cutting as a medium for storytelling and animation in general. Maude White creates all of her paper cuts by hand using a scalpel, however I'll be cutting ours using the laser cutter for practical and timing reasons, essentially so we can get things cut efficiently. She has a great range of scenes and imagery depicted in her work, which again reiterates to me the diverse uses that paper cutting can be applied to. This has given me confidence in the technique we have chosen and I'm looking forward to seeing how far we can take it, and how the production looks at the end with the amount of detail that we could incorporate and the room for visual storytelling through paper that we will be trying.

OUAN505 - Recording the Script

On Tuesday the 2nd February, Callum and I thought it would be a good opportunity to book an induction for the sound booth so that we were free to record the narration for the script whenever we wanted to. We went to the resource department and asked if we could have our induction. Luckily for us, we were booked in for one at an hour later. We were shown down to the sound recording booth, and shown firstly where the lights and air con switches are. It was also mentioned that it's quite important to turn the air con off when recording because due to the sensitivity of the microphone the whirring of the air conditioning can be heard in the background and can lead to some bad audio in a sense because of this. The set up in the sound recording booth is very simple, consisting of some chairs, a Macbook pro for recording onto and a microphone stand with a condenser microphone at the end of it. Condenser microphones are ultimately the most common types of microphones that are used in places such as studios, for example. The reason for this is that they have a much wider frequency response, meaning the spectrum of sound pitches it can capture. As well as this, they generally have a louder output, but are a lot much more sensitive to loud sounds. To counter act the sensitivity of the microphone and to avoid picking up undesirable noises when recording voice a pop shield, or pop filter is used. A pop shield serves to reduce or get rid of all together the 'popping' sounds caused by the impact of fast moving air on the microphone during a session of recording speech or singing, if that's what it's being used for. Besides this practical use it also acts as a barrier to stop moisture from getting onto the microphone, which can be unhygienic. Something I learned about condenser microphones are that they are much more expensive than 'dynamic' microphones because of the reasons listed above. We were then shown some of the available software we could use for recording. Ultimately however, we chose to use audacity due to its simplicity in conjunction with how simple our recording process was. I've used audacity quite a lot from being at school and even more recently on projects from first year, so I feel comfortable using it, especially for something as straight forward as this. We asked some questions about the best way to record something similar to what we were doing because we wanted the best results possible. It was also quite interesting learning about the equipment and using the sound booth as a whole. We tested the headphones and the microphone to see how they operated and our induction was finished. In order to get some form of sound recorded, we booked a studio slot for the following day at 1pm as we were free in the afternoon. We booked the slot for around an hour, we didn't think we would need more time than that but it meant we were pressed to get something recorded.

When the time for our allocated slot arrived we signed the key for the sound booth out from the office and headed down to start recording the script. The overall set up was incredibly easy and it was quite nice doing something fun that I haven't done before. On the script we had split it into around six different sections, and so we recorded one at a time, reading from the notes. The method in which we went about recording was firstly, we tried a couple of different methods of reading the script. Quite a slow, deep tone and a more enthusiastic faster paced reading. We decided we liked the faster paced one more and it would fit into the time frame of two minutes better. Furthermore, there were several instances where we had to redo sections because of various slip ups reading lines or background noises for example. It took around an hour to record the whole thing to a standard where we thought we could use it at the very least to plan our animation around it and use it as a guide. After we had finished recording the various sections, I exported them and saved them to a USB drive along with the audacity file so we can go back and change things if we need to.

OUAN505 - Planning & Time Management, Schedule

From previous projects I have learnt the importance of trying to plan and manage time as effectively as possible. As ideas were thrown about early on in the project and we had established a method in which we were going to approach the making of the documentary. The opportunity arose to create a detailed schedule for the group in order to make sure we keep on top of the process, as well as remembering important dates and deadlines such as crits and presentations. I decided not to use a pre-existing timetable format and just create one that featured the things we needed, just making it so it was more personal to our group and was tailored to everything we needed from it. The four titles I had for my schedule included the date of the day that was at the start of the week, so essentially the date of the Monday. The next column consisted of any tasks that we had to do, so for example by the week that starts the 15/2 it was our goal to have the storyboard and animatic finished by then. The next column was reminders. The idea behind this was to include any important events such as presentations, crits or inductions for example. This came in useful straight away making us aware of the sound booth session we had booked as well as the imminent presentation where we will be demonstrating the early stages of our projects and explaining our initial ideas. Finally, a column for us to mark whether a certain task has been completed, which will be a simple way of documenting what we have done. There is also a notes section at the bottom of the schedule so we can make any small notes we want, such as the artists we are looking at. I'm happy with how we're doing up to this point, and having everything broken down visually has given me a clear aim for the project, and it is surprisingly motivational in a sense because of the goals that have been set at the beginning of each week.

This particular schedule was incredibly easy to make, and took a short time to create. I've found myself checking it on a bi-weekly basis to make sure we're on top of things and we are where we planned to be in certain stages of the process. Ultimately it acts as a guide for us to work by, and if for example anything needs to be rearranged or one week something doesn't get completed it's not too much of a problem. What I've learnt from the previous projects we've undertaken is that it's very rare for a project to go exactly as you predicted, it's just important to plan ahead. Looking at the timetable now, I don't think that the production process will necessarily last for five or six weeks, and I actually think the pre-production stage will be the longest because we have to design individual assets and have them laser cut. This is also the period where any frames of animation will need to be created and in terms of this project, the production process is simply putting everything together on a scene by scene basis.

OUAN505 - Research, Mood Boards

In order to set the tone early on in the project I created some mood boards on various aspects of the production that I thought could make use of some inspiration in the form of imagery and colour palettes. At this early stage I like creating mood boards or image boards so that I get a sense of what I'm aiming for. I chose to do four in total, depicting trees from North America, trees from the Amazon rainforest, an art style we liked as a group and some detailed paper cuts, as that is also a technique that we were interesting in looking at using. Overall I'm happy with how they turned out. I think they set the tone I was hoping for and seeing the images together like that, although all different, I feel come together and demonstrate the vast amounts of visual references and inspiration that is available to us.

This is the first mood board that was created, based on the trees of North America. As the topic of our documentary is deforestation, early on I had envisioned the North American pine trees as the trees that would be suit featuring in the documentary because they're so iconic and recognisable, especially when thinking about the dense woodland of North America and the deforestation that does occur there. I tried to gather a range of images, some inside and outside the forests as well as some areas that had been affected by the act of deforestation. Furthermore, I was looking specifically at colours and the different tones of the trees in order to try and determine how I was going to colour the trees. The original plan was to cut them straight from coloured card and paper but some small tweaking of the colours in the post-production stage might be necessary to bring the quality up. Ultimately the mood board dedicated to North American forests will provide a great resource when it comes to needing reference imagery to design assets for the production process. Furthermore, the moods and colours that they depict translate a lot in terms of the colours, lighting and atmospheres that I hope we can recreate in our documentary.

The next mood board I created for the initial research stage of the production was based on the Amazon rainforest. The reason for collecting imagery related to this is that the Amazon rainforest plays a large part in terms of the amount of deforestation that occurs and due to its importance and relevance in our project, I thought it was important to include. Unlike the images for other forests this is so vast that the majority of the photographs are taken from an aerial view. One of the things I liked about these images was the shape and appearance of the river from above, it looks like a curve has been cut away from the forest, this is something that I want to incorporate into the animation, as a way of giving a sense of scale. In contrast to the first mood board I also noticed that the colours of rainforest trees are quite a lot lighter than the evergreens. This will be something to consider when designing the different assets. Some of the more revealing images I found of the rainforest and the deforestation that occurs there show baron wastelands of dirt and sand where there was once a dense forest. Several shots of burning forest also revealed the scale and damage forest fires can do in closely packed forest locations too. Overall, this mood board demonstrated to me the scale of the forests that are affected, and the damage that is done to certain forest areas by methods of deforestation. I think the mood board comprises a good range of reference and imagery for inspiration for the section of the documentary focused on the Amazon rainforest.

During the very first conversations we had as a group, we mentioned that we like the gravity falls art style and wanted to somehow incorporate the relatively simple colours, and shapes in combination with the lighting they use. One of the things I liked about the style they use is that each scene has it's own colour palette and works well as an individual scene. Another reason gravity falls became a reference was the fact it's set in a forest and a huge number of scenes involve a forest or some kind of heavily wooded environment. The translates well into our documentary on deforestation in which the scenes will mostly consist of forests and trees. The scenes also look quite dramatic and often have a large sense of scale.

Finally, I produced a mood board to highlight the technique we were looking at along with the work of an artist named Maude White, who creates intricate paper cuts of various things. The reason I wanted to assemble imagery related to paper and paper cutting was that at this point we were experimenting with the idea of creating the entire animation from paper. It was interesting to see the limitations of what it could be used for, and some of the things that I've looked at that have been produced have been incredibly detailed, showing what can be achieved with the medium.