Galapagos - its about the volcanic island 'galapagos'
Heat - looks at how governments and companies are dealing with the 'looming' environmental disaster in are changing world
Ray Mears Goes Walkabout
Yellowstone
Tribal Wives - British women spend time with some of the most remotest tribes.
Tribe - Bruce Perry goes to visit six of the most remotest tribes (don't think he's on the same flight as the wife's)
Walking with beasts - aimed at children (shown in the morning)
also, its Darwin week on eden! and David Attenborough is on the station all this week at 7 and 10 pm! its a win win.
So there's a lot of stuff happening on this station; Effects on the environment, how beautiful the environment is, architecture, tribes, so on so fourth.... All educational but some verging on trash t.v (tribe wives) but mostly serious stuff, so I'll be putting my serious face on for this brief.
The station runs from 9.00am till 2.00am (this could change on each day...but gives me an idea roughly)
Having a air time from so early to so late means what ever I produce will have to appeal to both children and adults,
Go like three days to pick a television channel i want to make an ident for. I've gotta know what they stand for, there ethos, target audience etc...
Literally typed in 'television channels' into google and got this website which i picked channels which i thought might be good to create an ident for. !!!!LINK!!!
These are the channels that intrest me....
BBC 4
This channel appeals to me because i watch it quite a lot, probably the only channel i do watch really.....I don't watch t.v.
Here's BBC4 in a nut shell...
'The remit of BBC Four is to be a mixed-genre television channel for all adults, offering an ambitious range of innovative, high-quality output that is intellectually and culturally enriching. Its focus should be on the provision of factual and arts programming.'
So its audience is adults, has programs which are meant for enriching are knowledge and focuses in on factual and art based programms.
Here's some of there idents...
So at the moment they have this thyme of quartering the screen and making the peice of film look abstract.
Also, BBC4 took over BBC Knowledge in 2002...here's the ident for BBC Knowledge
Film 4
'I always remember when this first came out' ..... that was what i was going to put, until i realized that i don't remember when it first came out. I remember when it became a free service.
It used to be called 'Film Four' and looked like this (back in 1998...when it was a subscription service)
Film Four was second channels created be the channel 4 company...so in these idents we see the channel four logo split up (like it dose normally) but then one of the segments becomes the film four logo. so its feeding off the famouse channel 4 logo, so we make that connection between the two being linked.
Once it was established, it didn't need the channel four logo there...so it just showed the film four logo.
Then it became free in 2006 :o
Eden
Part of the 'UKTV' company Eden deals with...in a nut shell...
'Eden is the gateway to the greatest shows on Earth. From the scale and beauty of BBC blue chip series like Planet Earth, Ganges and Superstorm to the revelation and intimacy of Tribal Wives and Big Cat Diary, Eden guarantees a daily shot of astonishment. With the aim of stimulating minds and provoking a sense of wonder and awe, Eden promises a bigger, bolder and brighter window on the world'
So they deal with shows from different networks,like from the BBC, the programs they show are like nature based ones, also looking at different cultures around the worldetc.
Here's some of there ident's...
There using earthy colours and places which represent different parts of the earth, from the rain forest to the deserts to the north pole.
The UKTV company have all the logos of its channels circular... it looks nice when there clumpted together...but as single channel logos, dose it work?
I've cut up the animatic, and put in the animation i've done so far, it looks good...I'm happy with it!
From this, i may need to scan in some of the animation's to a 1024 x 576 size. but some of them i can just zoom in on (like I've done...with the walk cycle)
I'm happy with the timing of the whole thing, and also the continuity...i think continuity is the right word, I'm talking about how he goes from the shot of him coming up (from putting the milk down) to then going into a walk.
After showing everyone in the class the video above, i got feedback in the form of post it notes.
For some reason I got the impression everyone wanted me to add sound?
So, instead of carrying on animating, I'm going to add sound to the video for the hand in day. (but i will probably carry on doing the animation in my spare time :)
oh, and here's a drawing me n' john collaborated on
This is a break down of the second shot of this story...
So I started off by recording my self doing the action...
I studied myself doing the action, looking at where my foot turns to go back into a walk on the way back, how I balance myself etc etc...
Then...I did a rough version of how it would look (I didnt do any key frames or anything, just went from the first frame to the last)...big mistake, here's how it looked...
It looks wheeey to real and stiff. I had to push malc's body, think of what mood he's in and lastly do some key frames.
I started by making the first frame really exaggerated
Having him balance on one leg to start with meant that he's going to hit the ground hard, which firstly means less frames, but also, he wouldn't just stop suddenly stop after than, his arms would keep going.
Rick was telling me about thinking ahead of the key frame, it doesn't just stop there, the character would go and do something else, what ever action he/she was doing leaves a mark on the limbs that are free, so looking at the this key frame when his left leg finally touches the ground...
...i had to carry on the force of that left leg hitting the ground whilst also getting his right leg to start moving forward.
Here's the final result
I'm pleased with how it came out, and learned a lot along the way.
After talking to rick, here's some other changes made...
1. the camera angle is looking up at malc's face from the phone now, rather than from malc's view point looking down at the phone. This also lead to me changing his reaction, he now looks round (as if he dosn't know who's phone is going off)
2. he looks down at his phone during the long shot (after the above shot)
3. instead of cutting from the long shot to the close up of Malc's eyes, now (because Malc's looking at the phone in his pocket) the close up also has Malc going from looking down to looking straight at the camera.
Right, so the idea is that Malcolm's phone rings and he goes into a world of his own, where its like 'good, bad and ugly' and he's in a show down. Once he picks up the phone, he's got a missed call.
Here's the storyboard/animatic with notes on..
I'm doing two things at the same time really, I'm working out the storyboard/ animatic and also drawing ideas for how he will stand and what he will look like etc within the scene.
I drew this...
I liked the idea of exaggerating the 'putting hand in pocket' to get the phone, but up to now, the phone was on his belt, so i've changed it. Otherwise its going to look a bit drab, i think, i need to put some kick into him whilst he's in his imagination.
So here's the animatic/storyboard with extra stuff...
This is just over 30 seconds long, so it might have to be shortened...meaning this post was irrelevant.
Before I'd finally picked a character, I did this walk cycle for Malc the Milkman.
Mike Evans's (from graphics) first words were "woh, he's striding", Mikes right, Malcolm's looking too confident in this walk cycle, he needs to look a little more...i can't think of the word, but i think its the arms which need to be sorted out. The arms need to be a bit more free and floppy, not so stiff and confident.
The walk cycle works and looks good, but its just not Malcolm.
For the 30 - 60 seconds of animation, i was thinking of showing a walk cycle a run cycle and some other stuff showing off what malc the milk man can do, plus a short story of how he imagines things.
This is an animatic of how malc would imagine things happening once hes watched a film or television program. In this case he's watched the spaghetti western film 'the good, the bad, the ugly', so what ever happens in the day, he'll make it seem western like, in this short, his phone has started to ring...
This was one of my favorites of all my ideas, looking at...
1. How Malc imagines things
2. Referencing a well known film
3. making it comical
I had other ideas for the western, but this stood out because it also mocks the way we wait for ages before someone, in the film, makes a move and shoots someone. And transferring that to how Malc imagines it happening and waiting so long that once he dose pick up his phone, its rang out.
To animate a character, I've gotta have a good idea of what facial expressions he would pull in different situations.
I drew a neutral face on paper, it sounds easy, but i had to make this neutral face look convincing and believe and also not make him look to goofy and silly.
The neutral face (can be seen in the bottom image *click to enlarge*) looks boring, but it will emphasize the more exaggerated expressions he will pull once hes in his imagination.
I wrote down loads of different expressions, and picked out a few which i thought are 'classic' facial expressions. I then took pictures of me pulling these expressions (i really tried to exaggerate my face, so i can pick up on how the cheek looks when smiling, or what the eyebrows look like when angry.
I scaned in the neutral face and stuffed it into photoshop and made duplicates, the neutral face will also be used as the 'master head' so that the size stays the same in all the other expressions.
so, this is my work space, looking at me on one side and encorprating it into malcolm's face on the other.
I also decided to think about colour as well, I don't plan on colouring the animation in, but I still want to know what he would look like in colour. (I saved the swatches I used, so i can go back to them at any time on any computer, plus i named them so i done have to remember!)
One thing that i do, is i tend to play it safe with colour. For example, i wanted to have the nose a different colour to liven his face up a bit, so i chose a really simmaler colour to his skin...but a tiny bit darker. It looked really boring and non adventurouse.
What colours do famouse character have to make them intresting?
Here's ren and stimpy, look at stimpy's nose, its in total contrast to the rest of his colour pallet.
Mines not that extrem, but I pushed myself to choose a colour that is away from the skin colour, i think it works well.
So, Malcolm (thank you Oriana!.....Oriana came up with his name) has the imagination of a kid, he see's things happening around him from what he's watched on t.v or at the cinema, but how can i cut from one to the other, and how do you know when its his imagination or real life etc.
One thing that i had in mind was to make all his expressions really exaggerated in the imagination, in comparison to the real life.
Heres a really really good animated short. I saw it a while back on 'cartoonbrew' website and loved it. Now its helping me work out where the imagination starts and when real life takes over.....
Love the camera angles and over exaggerated body lengths etc, but to focus in on the imagination side of things, I like the idea of building up to something, then just cutting back to the real world.
Another bit of inspiration which Rick Clapham pointed out to me was a 1960's film (became a television series as well) called Billy Liar...
