Stuff What Moles Did

Needing the assistance, I recruited the help of Chris Moles in the first year to produce titles and to design posters for the introduction of my film. This also counts towards his own work.

Above are the two shots he produced (one of mine goes between them) and the two posters he designed, which will be animated together in After Effects using fade effects and masks

Work What Jo Did

Joanna Staniforth used 74 hours on my film, and worked on the following areas of my film:

Pre Production Assistant: As already stated, Jo Staniforth was essential in editing the original animatic, shaving over a minute of footage off, which was urgently needed if I was to complete the film.  Her opinions and suggestions were also put to use to give my guinea pig more character.  Jo's support during the pre production process was greatly appreciated and much needed.

Sound Design: Claire and Jo assisted me in producing sound effects for my film.  Specifically, Jo helped with the creation of the drum kit falling.  She discovered various items that could be used for the desired effect, such as chairs, and suggested different ways in which sounds could be collected.

Colour: Jo offered early in the process to colour my frames.  No easy task, as my character originally had 6 main colours plus four additional colours for less common parts, such as the drumsticks.  This was cut to a total of five, mostly to ease her pressure.  On top of that, my character is incredibly fiddley, especially in long shots where he is quite small.

Despite this, she did a brilliant job of the colouring, and I am extremely grateful for the work she did in that department.  Above is an example of the final out come of the frames she coloured.

Additional Shaking and Shooting: During the post production process, while I was still working on Maya for my own film and Laurie and Rich's film, Jo offered her assistance by shooting in the inked frames and Shaking them.  This, again, was a real help.

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Work What Laurie Did

Laurie... Laurie did a lot of stuff, so it's difficult to gauge how many hours exactly he did on my film.  We worked out that it was approximately 32 hours, which was spent on the following areas:

Model and Rigging:


Above are shots from the drum kit that Laurie made for my film.  His design for the kit was thorough and researched, as well as being true to what I asked for.  Not only did he make the drum kit look lush, he made it completely user friendly, so I could adjust the drum kit to my specifications without breaking the rig.  Even more amazing was the rigging for the bass pedal.  The pedal actually worked!  By rotating the axis of the foot, the beater moves as it would on the real thing.

On top of that, Laurie also set up a lighting rig.

I could not be happier with my drum kit, especially after seeing it rendered with the Vector render.  

Shake Script Design: As already mentioned, Laurie wrote a Shake script for Jo and me that allowed our paper frames to be coloured with ease.  This saved us both a lot of hard work, which we are both incredibly grateful for.

Technical Assistant: These hours were the hardest to add up, as Laurie gave a lot of assistance for various technical issues.  From changing the length of key frames, to fixing broken rigs, and even tiny, mundane things such as keyboard short cuts and how to create a playblast!  He was patient, clear and always able to solve any issues that arose.  Laurie was an angel, and the majority of the group would certainly agree.  

The Cutting Room

The time has come to put everything together.  Learning from my mistakes animating, I have taken on the most difficult shots first.  These involve the guinea pig interacting with the drum kit, such as shot 26 (dragging the drum across the floor) and shot 38 (final shot, hitting the cymbal.)  

Composing the shots will involve up to four layers.  

The base layer involves a simple, grey block.  I did not want a defined space for the drum or the character, as I wanted it to be enjoyed for the sake of itself, without the speculations of why, where and how.

Next is the drum kit layer, which sits perfectly on top of the grey back colour, thanks to the alpha channels in the targa image file.

This is similar of the guinea pig. After going through Shake a second time, alpha channels were made in the new set of targa files. The guinea pig can then be placed over everything.

Using a technique dubbed "nesting" in Final Cut Pro, I am able to arrange the frames to my personal specification in a separate sequence, and drop that sequence into the main sequence. This means that the alpha channels on the guinea pig remain, whereas Quicktime files won't hold alpha channels. As a sequence within a sequence, I can move and resize the guinea pig to the correct specifications, just like resizing a film clip.

A final layer of foreground is necessary in two shots; shot 16 (playing the drums, with the cymbal stand in front of the guinea pig) and shot 31 (richochetting between two drums, top drum needs to be on top of the guinea pig.) However, as the top drum in shot 31 moves, masking the drum in After Effects may prove a better option.

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Work What Claire Did

Claire work on the following areas of my film:

Sound Design: During workshops with Jo and myself, Claire helped to gather sound effects with Jo for my piece.  This included the falling drum mix, and the scraping cymbal. These two sounds were essential to my film, and the help in gathering the sounds were important.

Outside of the workshops, Claire gathered the drum sound effects for my film, using her boyfriend Andrew Bannister's drum kit.  She also collected a variety of drum rhythms for me to pick and animate to.  The final piece I chose was a drum rhythm she played herself!

The sound work that Claire did was vital to the final film.  Without the drum sounds she gathered, I could have been stuck with free sound clips that would have spoilt the sound of my film.  Thankfully, the real drum sounds add an extra layer of depth to the piece, and I am incredibly happy with the work she did.



Ink and Clean Up: Claire volunteered to ink my frames and rub out the pencil lines beneath.  Not a popular or exciting task, but one that needed to be done, which again, I am very grateful for.  She did a brilliant job of keeping the guinea pig's form, and the lines came out clear in Shake. 

Above is an  example of Claire's work.

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Shake that Thing!

Pictures from the Shake process.

First image: Pen inked, cleaned and shot in through the line tester. The inking and cleaning was done by Claire Burn.

Second image: Shaken script one.

Third image: Coloured by Jo Staniforth, with white areas green so that they can be colour replaced.

Fourth image: Shaken script two. The final result, with alpha channels.

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As Quickly as it Began...

... it was over.  Without even realising it, all the 2D animation was finished.  Kind of an anti climax, really.  All that's left is the After Effects and the titles and poster to drop in from Chris Moles in First Year.

There's still plenty to do with Maya, but I feel considerably more at ease now.

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Shake a Tail Feather

To make colouring easier for Jo (and likewise to make Jo's colouring easier for me) we were required to put our work through two different Shake scripts.

The scripts were written by Laurie Priest, and made very simple to use.

The first script increased the contrast, and made the lines picked up in the line tester matt black. It also made the backgrounds perfect white, so that to colour the characters, all that was needed was the paint bucket tool in Photoshop. Anything white, however, had to be coloured bright green.

After the frames had been coloured, the frames were taken back into Shake. Anything painted bright green was then colour replaced in Shake to white, and all background was turned into an alpha channel.

This makes layering the final film together much simpler, and makes the colouring process far easier as well.

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Getting there...

The final animatic, with linetests starting to be dropped in.

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