Animation My Audio
I will also create a making of video.
i have decided to base my work on the idea of madness as the voice clip i have chosen to use sounds quite erratic and even slightly insane. The clip i chose to use for my sound is that of the subject i am recording explaining her dream of flying over mountains and then finally explaining she is a bird however as she is speaking her case quickens as though she is getting carried away with her self and getting excited about what she is saying.
I have provided my audio clips in my hand in folder!
My Idea:
I started by doing some drawings of ideas for parts of the audio clip had. And after some thinking i decided to incorporate the idea of rorschach ink picture into my work to symbolise my theme of madness and fantasy of the imagination into my work.
Definition:
The Rorschach test also known as the Rorschach inkblot test is a psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning. It has been employed to detect underlying thought disorder, especially in cases where patients are reluctant to describe their thinking processes openly. The test is named after its creator, Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach.
i researched some images to gather inspiration and start to develop ideas
i then found this ink animation which used the idea of rorschach however made it into animation abstract visuals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlY_tBBM8H8
I decided that this would be a nice idea for my work as the ink smokey cloud shapes made in the water could represent a clouded mind. And also connects with the audio script slightly as the speaker mentions things being cloudy and misty like the ink.
I have made a story board in my sketch book of a rough idea and sequence of how i want my animation to go. Below is the process i have gone through for each section of the animation:
Clouds:
I made some stop motion animations to see how i would go about creating the effect of moving through clouds. I tried using different sized shapes of clouds to give the effect they were getting larger, or that the camera was moving towards them
Time-lapse of me making the stop motions:
Mountains:
i decided for my mountain scene after drawing out my storyboarding ideas to make a virtual 3d style landscape. When researching 3d landscapes for inspiration i found some low poly examples that i think would be reasonable for me to create on cinema 4d
Low poly is a polygon mesh in 3D computer graphics that has a relatively small number of polygons. Low poly meshes occur in real-time applications (e.g. games) and contrast with high poly meshes in animated movies and special effects of the same era. The term low poly is used in both a technical and a descriptive sense; the number of polygons in a mesh is an important factor to optimize for performancePolygon meshes are one of the major methods of modelling a 3D object for display by a computer. Polygons can, in theory, have any number of sides but are commonly broken down into triangles for display. In general the more triangles in a mesh the more detailed the object is, but the more computationally intensive it is to display. In order to decrease render times (i.e. increase frame rate) the number of triangles in the scene must be reduced, by using low poly meshes.
I found a couple of tutorials that could help show me how to create landscapes like these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFHl05gTgKE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-A0SLuKTVs
I then found these floating island examples of low poly landscapes and thought for my work they resemble a more fantasy themed world and give off a mystical atmosphere which would fit in nicely with the audio for my animation.
i used this tutorial to help me create the landscape in C4D:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VHMUnGcQ34
Once i had the model made i decided to make some set designs for 'Gorgoroth' to get the right atmosphere for the place that my audio speaker made up. This way i can make the audio landscape come to life and start to visualise how i want it to look. I used to photoshop to style and colour the 3d model i made in C4D.
I added in the story background to create a more dreamlike surreal environment to match the nature of the audio i was using to bring it to life.
I experimented with different colouring on photoshop to decide what asthetics to give my creation.
MOUTAIN SCENE VIDEO!!
For this scene of the animation i made the camera pan through this world i have made and coloured to match the photoshop images i made on after effects. I end the scene on the cloud at the back filling the screen with white in order for me to use this as a transition to my ink idea while still being able to visualise the audios description of the mountains in an interesting way which i enjoyed creating.
Bird:
Following my story board i wanted to create a bird figure to fly from the bottom to the top of the screen making its block colour shape look as inky as possible to go with the ink in water video backdrop i will overlay it on top of. To do this my first idea was to try and adapt these tutorials of adding smoke to objects to try and give an effect of a smoky or 'int' trail following the shape of the bird:
Smoke to object:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf3z60OSc7I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx0bKB9aL08
Video i made of the smoke:
After having a go at rotoscoping on after effects to make my bird shape flying across a screen i decided i won't actually need to do this smoke idea to make an inky effect to my bird as when i was rotoscoping i found that it i purposely went over the edges of the shape of the bird and using the refine edge tool on these areas make an ink and smudged effect and this in itself would probably be good enough for the effect i want without making too much work for myself.
I looked at the various movements of birds when thinking about animating my bird figure:
This is the video footage i rotoscoped to get the movement of the bird shape i needed:
I edited the colours once i had rotoscoped it so that it was a black white shape (then later changed this to be a block black shape for combining with my ink animations)
my first bird animation:
this was the first attempt at the flying bird i did for my animation using the rotoscope brush tool. this was when i wanted to add the smoke to this animation to make a flowing ink effect as though this was also ink in water.
SECOND INK VIDEO OF MY BIRD:
i then created this animation again using the rotoscope brush however i also used the refine edge brush and purposely went well out of the lines when refining my edge to create slight smudging effects round the edge of the shape of the bird which moved in each frame. giving the overall effect a more inky look. This also meant that i now don't need to over complicate things by trying to add the smoke to my bird.
I made this animation with the idea of adding to my ink animations (like the video i researched at the beginning) and have this bird coming out of the mirrored ink shapes. Once i have filmed and edited my ink videos i will the add this footage over the top as the bird shape is separate from a background and so i will be able to overlay these two clips without blocking out any footage.
Ink In Water:
The way in which i lit my tank of water made the ink reflect on the bottom of the tank and although i like how this looks especially in this photograph i did not want this for how i was going to be making my animation with the ink so i had to position my camera just above the base line of the tank which you can just make out in this image. This stopped the reflection.
When recording my ink in water footage i often swirled the top of the water slightly (without the stick i was using going deep enough into the water for it to be seen in my video). By doing this i was able to have some control over the movements of the ink and manipulate them in order to get the footage i was happy with.
The work space (shooting set for the ink in water) i had low level lighting with spotlights just on the white screen behind the tank to avoid reflections.
I had to replace the water after each time i droped the ink into the tank as it made the water go cloudy after too long especially when i was swirling the water a lot to manipulate the movements of the ink.
This video is a good example of the kind of visuals that i want my ink animation to have (mirrored in the centre with high contrast between white and black) and even the videos playing through the ink of gnarls barkley singing i have in mind in my story board drawing of playing footage of a birds eye through the black part of the animation mdd by the ink. This is why i did not want the bottom of the tank showing or the reflections of the ink at the bottom. Also why i didn't want the top of the tank showing where the ink pools at first at the top and then drops into the water, i only wanted the drop to be visible.
One example of some of the original footage i got from filming the ink in water which i then edited in after effects (brightness saturation contrast and a mirror effect) to then go on to use in my final animation:
INK IN WATER EXAMPLE edited after i filmed the ink
https://youtu.be/9YMCM1dnwCY EDITED INK IN WATER!!
INK IN WATER AND BIRD COMBINED!!
This is the animation i made by combining these two elements after i had made them.
Elaborating on the clouds idea:
After combining the ink animations i made with the bird combined i decided a good way to transition this scene to the next scene would be with traveling through clouds this is also the next thing the audio at this point mentions. Following my story board idea the initial thought i had was to zoom into a black spot of ink and then have dark clouds start to move in this ink out of the way to reveal a moon. however this did not work well when i was trying to make the scene so instead i used a section of my ink animation where the ink made a small triangle space with white behind it and i used this to transition my sevens. I zoomed into the triangular space and then once inside had the clouds moving then where the viewer appears to be flying through the clouds. This worked as the section of the triangle space starts of too small to be able to see the jump from being a white background to the cloud scene so it works nicely.
Images i used to make the moving through clouds animation (i later coloured them in after effects to make them darker). I made the pictures slowly scale and move off the screen to make the effect of moving through the images.
CLOUDS BEFORE EDIT VIDEO!!!
i changed the colour of the clouds so they are dark clouds like the audio says in after effects:
CLOUD ANIMATION SECTION!
EYES SHINING GOLDEN GLEEMS:
In this section of the animation i had a footage of an eagles eyes which was good and the colour of the eagles eyes were golden to match the audio narrative. However following my story board idea of making a shape (tear style) move from the eye and the camera follow the beam to transition to the next scene, i found that this did not look effective at all. and the shape i made looked too contrasting compared to the eagles eyes as the eagle was actual footage and the shape would be a digital shape however i didn't want to loose the effect of having a realistic eagle eye (i didn't want to make it a cartoon eagle eye) So instead i experimented a bit on after effects and decided to play this eagle footage through the black parts of some more moving ink animations to create a strange visual effect but while still making the eagles eyes noticeable. I had to find the right section of my ink animation in order to make the footage of the bird very visible especially the eyes and i edited the bird footage to make the eyes really pop.
EAGLE ON INK VIDEO!!
"AND I FLEW FREE AND FAST"
for my last scene to go with my audio i thought it would be nice to end on a scene of a bird flying. I didn't want to just repeat my previous bird flying animation i made again and i wanted it to look slightly more detailed than just the block black shape of my previous bird and so i will try and include more detail on the features of the bird i create such as the face.
!
to make this video i used the rotoscoping brush again and the refine edge brush over some footage of an eagle setting off from a branch. When i was editing the colours of this one however i didn't make it compltly block colour like in my last bird animation. This meant that some of the birds features were showing through which is what i wanted. I then put this animation into photoshop to touch it up slightly as some of the edges were too blurred in this animation and the roto brush wouldn't fix it. The script for my audio ends by saying 'the mists were surrounding me... and i flew free and fast". This is why i made the swirling vortex style ink shapes and placed the bird animation inside this so that the ink was surrounding the bird as the ink has a 'misty' quality to it.
The visual effects of this video is supposed to be kind of entering the strange mind of the narrator and exploring their mind in a sense through the form of the story she is telling. The ink and mad visuals are supposed to reflect the mad and chaotic state of the narrator with the rorschach style ink animations symbolising this also. The first scene of the mountains is the calm before the storm in a sense and then entering the cloud is like entering the narrators mins as this is when the visuals start to move fast and get more chaotic. The audio speaks very fast and breathlessly through out until the end where she goes slow and calm when she says and i flew free and fast. I though this could be like a good symbolisism of the desire to have a calmer state of mind and the white bird iv placed at the end is a good symbolic calm look to it which is why i end with this scene.
When the video goes from gorgoroth to the white screen in which the ink animation then beginning this is like a symbolism for entering the narrators mind.
Sound:
The sound i used in the video i changed the recording which originally chose to use and got my speaker to re record it so that it was slightly slower and less breathless as this did not work too well in the end. The voice is calmer and more thoughtful for this end piece and i made what she was saying match up with each scene e.g. i was a bird plays when the first bird shape animation shows. I also made the music i used match to the sections of my animation as it kicks up more when the video starts to kick in faster when the pink eagle face shows. i changed the volumes of sections of my sounds to emphasise the scenes and what the speaker is saying (i turned the music volume down in the last scene when she's says and i flew free and fast, i make the volume of the music lower when she says fast to emphasise this and then i make the end ink shapes move faster to relate to the audio).
I cut up sections of my narrative audio so that when she is speaking about something the visuals match it.
I am happy with what i managed to produce in such a small space of time however i am still not fully satisfied with my end result. During the process of making this animation there was lots of different stages as i divided my animation into scenes. I would like to elaborate and explore/ experiment with each of these scenes also as i found some interesting accidents when i was making my animation that i would like to explore further and see what i can make. This will be my project for my self over the christmas holidays.
My making of video is supposed to show the expanding journey of how i made my animation and hat i used to make it (e.g. soft where or elements for each scene and making of the elements in each scene) i have done it in order of the video so it is easy to follow. If i had more time i would probably also add some references to some of the youtube tutorials i watched to help when i got stuck on what to do with some parts of my animation. Also screen filming would be a good thing to add to my making of video.
No comments:
Post a Comment