My unit 8 project is based on a Hindu mythology that looks into the God “Kalki” who is an incarnation of one of the trinity God Vishnu. His arrival would be 427,000 years from now according to the Hindu calendar, on a land called “Shambhala”, and his arrival would demolish the negativity and corruption that humans have made and re-establish peace and purity and he will start the “birth” of earth again”.

Reference, movie: “Mother”

My original proposal for my unit 8 was to make an animation movie to portray this epic story and show it in a 5 minute animated video. What I was hoping to achieve from making this movie was to get a portfolio of story-boards done and how each scenes would be animated, however as I started the project the reality of doing a storyboard hit me and found out that it is a very lengthily process and that I might not able to make the full movie and that I feel like I will continue it into my 2^nd year.

This video show the amount of work that would go into pre-production and that to do a small scene requires the artist to draw out each scene frame by frame, and to do that the artist require a lot of time and constant discussion, because there would several changes in the story where the artist would have add, take out or place one of the scene in a different sequence.

This project was a man army, where I was doing the story-board, then developing them on a program called sketchbook, which took most of my time to do, even though there were only 4 scenes in this movie. Normally I would’ve done all of my concept art by personally drawing it and painting it, but I thought that using a digital pad and a program would speed up the process, however it took time to get use to drawing on a screen while my hand was drawing on a blank tablet and seeing the image come alive on the computer screen. This was truly a learning experience and a skill that will come in hand in the future.

These 4 images are of the sketches I have used to make my final concept art and it is also my storyboard. As you can see that each scene jumps from one frame to another very quickly. It’s like there is a missing link between each scene.

 

The 4 scenes were an introduction to the land “Shambhala” where the incarnation of Vishnu,“Kalki” will take birth. A sacred land that will emerge in the south land of India, when the time for the world will come to an end.

The four scenes that show how you get to the main gates to the “Shambhala” castle/ temple.

Once the final drawings were complete I later broke down each scene into several layers using Photoshop, because when I was creating my drawings on the program sketchbook, I didn’t work in layers, where each layer would be separate and it would be easy to animate on Aftereffects.

Before I go onto talking about how I imported the final video on to Ue4 I would like to show 2 videos of an animation made on Photoshop and Aftereffects. They were made using the drawings I did for my storyboard.

This animation was done on Photoshop, showing how the leaves would move from the tree. This scene is at the front court of the “Shambhala” castle/ temple, stairs that leads to the castle/ temple.

This animation was done on Aftereffects. In this video you can see I am using the camera to show that you are travelling towards the bridge, which would lead you to the “Shambhala” castle/ temple.

I also imported the finished movie onto Ue4 because I wanted to learn how I would use a movie clip that was made on Aftereffects. On Ue4 I had to do a simple blue print where it would tell the program that to play the clip when you have hit play. I think doing this made me have another skill that we have not covered in our first year, where I can import a video onto Ue4 and use it like cut scenes or small clips for a game that I could develop on Ue4, an essential skill for me to have.

For sound I used a website that use to be on Facebook, called Typatone. I recorded the sound and then altered it on Ue4 by making a sound cue. This was done at the very last moment because to make my project somewhat complete I needed some kind of sound, I would’ve liked to have done Foley sounds, but time was against me.

Initially this projects was going to cover a lot of grounds for example, character design of “Kalki”, a full story-board illustrating the complete story, Foley sound, developing the animation on Ue4, so I would have done some form of 3D modelling or sprite animation and then clipping all of the elements together. However, the reality hit when I thought about how long each steps would take and I would’ve not had enough time to do it. So, I cut down the story line to the point where “Shambhala” and the castle/ temple is introduced. Instead of animating it on Ue4 I used the help of “Aftereffects” to animate my movie and did all my final drawings on sketchbook, finally used typatone to have music or sound in my project.

Learning about how ambitious I was being and I wanted a lot of elements in my project and not able to have them was probably the only negative aspect of my project, not saying that it’s not achievable, but the time frame we had was limited and it was not doable.

To stay on track I had made a time table schedule where we typed our proposal, I will be honest that I stayed and used to an extended period, but then I started to document my work and what I had to do in a journal, that’s just the method I work best in. I felt that having a time table kind of restricted my creativity and let the project naturally unravel itself. Coming from a fine art background the excitement of not knowing what’s going to happen next and let it naturally unfold is an experience of its own kind. I used the timetable to keep myself on track and acknowledging how long I have left for my project, so in those sense it was helpful.

My influence for my project came from various of source, mainly artist and cartoons for example, “Yayoi Kusama”, “Daniel Steegman” who exhibited at the “Nottingham Contemporary Art Gallery”, “Power Puff Girls” and “Samurai Jack”.  If you have a look at my project, there is a lot of dot work where the plants or foliage is done using small dots and you would see both of these aspects in “Yayoi Kusama’s” work and “Daniel Steegmann” who did a VR piece of the amazon rain forest where you would see the forest with white dots that look like water dues. I also looked at few games like “Gris”, “El Shaddai”, “Beyond Good & Evil 2” and “Far Cry”.  This small amount of looking and researching is to give me ideas of what I could include in my movie and what elements I would like to have for example, in the game “Beyond Good & Evil 2” I really liked the holographic element that is shown on the Ganesh statue and I wanted to have something similar and you can see that in the images below.

Watch the clip to see the glow on the Ganesh statues- (watch it from 1.55)

The way I achieved that glowing effect is by playing with the opacity on Aftereffect. I do agree its not like the Ganesh in the game”Beyond Good & Evil 2″,  but you get the idea where I wanted to go with my work.

Doing this project solo I mainly did it on my own however, my peer Sam and my tutor Jez helped me on how to use the camera on Aftereffects and how to move the camera to make it look like that a still image is moving. I also got a bit of help from my 2^nd tutor Owen on how to import the video on to Ue4. This project was a straight stream with not a lot of complications. Also when I had my first tutorial with my tutor Jez, he cut out a rectangular boarder that he used it as a camera “lens” to show how the camera would move from one angle to the other.

I have learned a lot doing this project and how challenging it has been. To learn more with what I could have done with my project, I did a survey on Survey Monkey, a website to gather date of your work. I had asked 4 questions on my survey and this are the 4 questions.

I have tried to ask questions that would help me and find out from my peers of what they think of my project and how I could elevate it further. Some responses where great for me, there where some re-occurring ones, for question 3 i ask about sound and Foley sounds, a lot of the response has been that not to use Foley sounds, but use variety of sounds that would play with symphony, have a variety of sounds and have a smoother transition.

Quote: “I feel like it would’ve been difficult to create such a psychedelic sound using Foley so id say that the way you created it was fine. it did however seem very repetitive and didn’t really change much at all during the whole animation”, Response #15

I can agree with this answer that I need more varieties of sound and that it was a bit repetitive, but this next quot made me think that I could perhaps use Foley sounds,

Quote: “Foley could be used for the wind and swaying trees and other plants.”, Response # 7

I also wanted some research material for other animators or movie that are animation based I could use and watch, so I could add it to my library and reference back to it.

Quote: “I think you should look at a lot of Anime! I go and see Anmie at the cinema whenever I can. Sure, some of the narratives are a little unrewarding but the techniques used are usually very impressive; a mixture of 2D and 3D. I think you could learn a lot from examining this approach. Also, any Studio Ghibli animation. The Tin Tin 2D animations are very good too. (Not the 3D ones which are dismal.) Watch all of Disney from Steamboat Willie through to Snow White, Fantasia etc … Anything from Disney that is pre-digital. Watch the Loony Toons cartoons too and Tom & Jerry. If you’re serious about animation you need to know about all of it ..”, Response #21

 I completely agree with this response, that I should watch more Anime and look at more of the old fashioned animation like “Steamboat Willie, Snow White”  from the Disney franchise and also “Loony Toons” and  “Tom & Jerry”, great source of materials to look into and doing a bit more research over my holidays to enhance my skills. I could even achieve this by making a simple flip book that would show me how animation works frame by frame and how I could use this to my practice and develop it on Ue4.

And a final quote which I could not agree more and that I have been working and using software as a fix instead of using it as a tool to paint something elaborate, in the same way that I would use oil paints to do nude painting, which come from my fine art background. I really need to use the Ue4 or even Aftereffects as a painting tool and really explore what I could possibly do with it. I do think that I will be doing this in my 2nd year and really abuse and use the software in every single way I could possibly think of using it.

Quote: “I think you were too fixed in your destination when you began. I also feel that you didn’t allow any time for gestation during the early stages of production. This was further hampered by a very erratic relationship to the flow of project: you seemed to operate in fits and starts. These ‘background’ functions have a massive impact on development. Perhaps try and explore the idea of ‘play’ in relation to software? Innovation comes from play as opposed to fixed destinations. Going back to my first comment – the way Anime uses both 2 and 3D sources – I think you should be looking at this as an approach” Response #21

This response was to my forth question where I am asking what could have my peers done differently in my project and this is one thing that I do need to do it differently, and that is to use the software to my advantage. I should also do some research by reading books, blogs and reviews, and not rely on just videos of YouTube and Wikipedia.

To conclude my essay I would like to say that I have learned a lot from this project, especially that animation is not a easy task, where you can use a software and have it animating it for you. I have learned that if I am serious about animation then I need to practice more and dissect it. Open it up and then resemble it or dissect it and see what each segments dose. It’s all about exploring and not knowing whats going to happen next in the same way as an fine art course would run. I will definitely carry out doing more animation, but I would love to develop it on Ue4 and really focus on some of the responses I got from my survey, it will really help me to move further in my practice. Furthermore I would like to work in a team with my peers and do cut scenes for a game that we could be designing it together and I could focus on the animation which would get incorporated in the game. A great year to be learning different skills and acknowledging how I could use it to my benefit.