Character design sketches

Here is our new 'BACK TO BASICS' character designs that I have produced.
Sam and Claire are also doing 'Back to Basics' designs and I will combine all of our ideas into the final designs, test them under the camera and make alterations if need be.

Big THANK YOU to animator and character designer Nick Crimmen for his take of the singing mice (shown below).

Feedback from Pitch on 30th October

After our pitch on the 30th we had some feedback on what we were producing so far.
The feedback was that we should go back to orignal character designs as the ones at the moment are 'ugly'. Also, the story should be put back to basics also. Tutors and peers felt that our idea was loosing its original charm.
From this me and the team agreed that we listened to too many people's advice on our animation and tried to please to many people instead of please ourselves.
SO.
WE ARE GOIN BACK TO BASICS.
On the same day me and Sam sat down and organised the new story which we are very pleased with and feel that it is back to its basic form and charm.
At the same time as discussing the story me and Sam discussed our character designs and we have agreed on several new ideas and the simple shape design idea that was suggested at the beginning of our pre production for this animation. We also discussed with our year about character design and agreed with the route we are going for.
We were very thankful for the feedback on Tuesday and felt like it helped us realise that we were not doing what we wanted to do but what other tutors and peers thought we should do.
The lesson learnt is 'always do what you feel is best.'
Character designs will be put up gradually throughout the end of the week and final characters chosen (hopefully) by Sunday.
Everyone is producing a new animatic for our new yet old story idea and the final one will be decided tomorrow night and hopefully completed by Sunday also.

NEW SHINY Mood board

My take of the Animatic

Within the group we all looked at the animatics so far and discussed what we liked and didn't like. From this we got a clear idea what we all wanted to see in the final storyboard/animatic. So, we all set out to do our own interpretation of the final animatic.

This is my version. I did it in photoshop as I said in a previous blog. 

Sam's Animatic under the camera

While wandering around a vintage fair in Bristol myself and Cathryn stumbled on this rather delightful little band. Being the natural born predators of action analysis we are, we took the opportunity to film and photograph them to look at their posture, attitudes and movement for our own 50s-based characters.

An interesting One Sheet

This is a quick one sheet created with the most recent model. The colours do not stand out strong enough and this is also seen in the photographs of the mice under the spot lights. 

Characters need to be much smoother and colour much brighter. BUT - the huge, out of preparation eyes work well. Especially on this one sheet. 

Lights, Cameras, Action! (test)

After creating the models I decided to put them under the camera and see how they look. As told and advised the baby blue plasticine came out much whiter on the screen. So keeping to bright colours will be best as they will tone down on the screen from the lighting.

When I arrived home from the studio I decided to continue the idea of seeing the mice under spotlight and photoshoped the concept. It has given me a much better idea for layout and how well the mice can be seen. From taking pictures of the mice under a spotlight I have realised that the eyes are too far down, which is causing a shadow under there eyes resulting on not seeing there small noses very well.

As these experimentations turned out rather well me and the team have agreed to produce a quick animatic using this technique. It helps with distance and perspective of the group. 

Developing Characters... again!

After several meetings with Mary and discussing on how to make our mice we have had to change the design. As well as realising with other peers and tutors commenting on the cuteness and child like characters we had designed we felt that things need to be messed around with more.

In these sketches you can see how I try and exaggerate the eyes and mouths even more. These are the key facial features on our mice to express the over exaggerated facial features. 

From these drawings I tried to do several models. As this is a completely new territory for me it took me a while to get the hang of it.

From the sketches these are three characters I have produced. They are defiantly not as cute and are more odd looking. The eyes are also placed on top of the head so they will be easy to replace if need to be for blinks and eye movements. 

Mood Board

We made a mood board together. It consists of a collection of textures, colours, reference images e.g

Background

Plain and simple. A dark stage with red velvet curtains.

Exaggerated Mice

Here are some models I made quickly of some over exaggerated mice characters. I kept referring to Motown bands and the 50s band we seen at the vintage fait. 

Many more characters will be produced by Sam and Claire also and hopefully this will help us finalise what appeals to us and what we feel will give even more of a comical factor.

CATastrophe?!

As promised, here is another animatic. The idea of this animatic is that the sound has been altered and speeded up and down by whoever is in the sound box. The mice look confused and try and keep up with the speed of it all. At the end we reveal that a cat is actually in the sound box and the cat is changing the speed of the song. 

The disadvantage of this idea is that we don't have a song in the background as such to speed up or down. So, it would either be the mice miming the song and the cat catching them out and speeding the song that there miming. 

I am also not too sure of the ending of this animatic and I feel its not that funny. 

This again could be a situation of discussing and asking peers on there ideas and thoughts of our animatics that we create and which they find the funniest idea to go along with our cheesy singing mice.

Another Animatic

This is a quick animatic displaying our initial idea of spotlights shining on whoever is singing at the time. As said in previous evaluations, we are scared that with just mice singing it might not be enough to hold the attention of the audience. 

Several more animatics will be posted displaying several ideas we have came up with. But, I thought it be a good idea to see an animatic of our initial idea that we have to work on. 

Research for Character Designs

After discussions within the group and with our tutors we decided we should try and change the style of the Characters to resemble actual singers and bands from the 50s ears. At the moment our designs our very children's television inspired and this might be too innocent and cute to get the laughs. So, exaggerating the mice more with huge eyes, huge hair and huge lips is a route we are going to research.

During the weekend myself and Sam went to a vintage fair at Bristol Temple Meads and just by chance had a 50s band singing. I took some photos and Sam toke a video. We thought this primary research would help the development of the characters even more. I will also look at Motown bands and maybe Elvis to get influence.

As a group we agreed that the colours I have chosen are suited for what we are aiming at.

Rough animal-atic

First of all I apologise for the terrible attempt at a pun for the title of this posts but it is early in the morning and I am working away regardless.

I've worked on one of the many ideas thrown around by the group and put it into a rough story board and animatic to try and get an understanding of what it would look like and how it works with the time-slot.

In this idea the spotlight is on whoever is singing and stays on them until they stop, regardless of who else is lit by a separate spotlight. During the performance, the singer of the bass notes gets increasingly bored and drowsy over the repetition of his role. At the end the audience erupts in applause after the performance and throws chunks of cheese and rose at the group on stage. The bass player is dozing off in the background, then a large bra is thrown onto the stage covering all members apart from the bass player. The audience stops applauding and snoring can be heard from the bass player before a fade to black.


I'll have an evaluation session with the rest of the group tomorrow morning and see if I can get some feedback for the next draft.

Mousing around with Character Design on Photoshop

So, I messed around with a plasticine mouse that I made in Photoshop. Give him his facial features and put him on a stage just to get a feel. From this I can already see that the bright red is too dark against the yellow, brown and black stage colours. Which is why I went on to Photoshop from my sketches some pastel coloured mice. I think the colours resemble the 60s feel which is what I am going for with the hair does that I gave each one. 

From the pastel colour experimentation on my mice on Photoshop I decided to edit onto the same background I used before to see if the colour contrast works. The dark yellow, brown and blacks work well against the soft bright blues of the mouse.

And following from that I decided to play them in the triangular set up we are planning on putting our mice in on the stage. As this stage image is portrait I could only get in the backing singers. But, you get a general idea on how it might look. 

Evaluation on Stop Motion tests

After doing some lip sync I realised that we will need to separate our song choice and save each mice part. If we try and do lip sync with the full soundtrack we will not be able to hear each separate mice part clearly enough to animate it. So, we will have to animate to each mice sound separately and then edit it all together so they are all singing at the same time to create the song.
Also, as I said on my last post... to get pack into the swing of Stop Motion we will need to do some tests a few days a week until we start to film the actual thing.

TO DO LIST:
After discussing with several tutors and peers we have discovered that we need to create something else that is going on whilst the mice are singing as we are scared that the singing alone won't keep the attention of the audience for the whole 90 seconds.
So, we are playing around with the idea of
1) Messing around with the music to confuse the mice
or
2) Having attention seeking singers trying to get hold of the spotlight

Until we have finalised the story then the Storyboard/Animatic and sound track can be finalised.

Today I am photoshopping Character Designs which I hope to have up before go to work tonight.

Some animation tests

Today I also went into University and tried to get back into the swing of Stop Motion animation. I decided to look at lip sync and movement of the tail of the mice.
The lip sync was easy enough to pick up again but it took me several go's to get into animating plasticine under the camera. If I keep testing a few days every week I think I will have full confidence in my ability when it comes to shooting the real thing.

Did some simple stop motion tests today, not the best as i looked mainly at key frames and shapes.
will try again to create more relevant motion tests

Character Designs in Development

From recording several songs (as seen below) we discovered that we like the sound of the mice being in a Barbershop quartet. It gives the mice much more character and sounds rather good too. So, with this in mind whilst doing some character sketches I decided to give the mice a bit of an old school look, just like the sound of a Barbershop quartet. 
I tried showing this old school style in items of clothing and hair. 
With the clothes I find there is too much going on. Especially as we are trying to keep the character simple. I felt there was too much going on in a small area for items of clothing to be added. 
I moved onto hair ideas. And I liked this thought much more. With the quiffs and thick strands of hair I can already imagine it swaying along with the music whilst the mice are bopping to the rhythm. The hair styles also start giving the mice a style and era (50s/60s). This idea of an era influencing the design is very appealing and gives a lot for me to base my designs on. 
Other additional things added to the mice are the famous, two sharp front teeth. This just adds more mice like features to our simplistic forms, as well as the whiskers, big ears and tails.
I also looked into the idea of them having legs and arms. Although in the performance it is not necessary I thought "no harm in trying". The conclusion was that the simple well shaped lumps of plasticine is all we need and has a better aesthetic look to it. 
The last two images on this post our what I am basing the final Character Designs on.

Song Choice

While reviewing our work with the class today, we decided to take the opportunity to get some feedback from the audience to help us reach a decision on the song choice.
We played the Four songs we'd already done and asked everyone to say which was their favourite and why.
Engaging the reaction of the audience, you could tell which ones were making the best impression. 'Stand by Me' produced a lot of smirks in the audience and a little bit of laughter, 'Highway to Hell' seemed to get the poorer response, the cheese lyrics in 'Crazy' made a lot of people in he audience smile but it was 'My Girl' that took to the spotlight and had everyone laughing. 
This was heavily reflected in the results of the tally which are shown below, each cheese wedge represents one vote.

             Graph showing the results of the vote

We then looked at all of the comments on why each person preferred that song, we picked out some of the more helpful and entertaining ones, quoted underneath next to the song they voted for:

"Just so much more recognizable. Unexpected Barbershop quartet style song so works perfectly ! its a slow enough speed to understand the lyrics" - My Girl

"The cheeses lyrics were the best but you could apply that to thew other songs. Possibly Summertime, I Said Yeh Yeh or Dinnertime by Mungo Jerry" - My Girl

"Try highway to hell with the mice puns and cheeses" - Highway To Hell

"The cheese references stood out really well. Simple and Distinctive" - My Girl

"Goes with the mousy voices i can picture it best. The lyrics with cheese really connects it to the characters much better and makes it the most funny! No doubt!" - My Girl

"The laughter kind of spoke for itself. The lyrics were the easier to hear with this song too. Recognizable to!" - My Girl

"Cuz it's cheeeeesy!" - My Girl

"I actually laughed - the cheese names fit nicely" - My Girl

"Its really catchy - was hoping you'd sing highway to cheese" - Highway To Hell

"This song can make the lead singer go wild" - Highway To Hell

So summing up from the comments here, it seems like we should stick to the idea of changing the lyrics to various types of cheese so I'll look at where the lyrics work, where they don't and see if there's any way of improving it.
We're also going to check out the songs that have been recommended and make a rough recording if we think it could work.

Written and edited by Sam Mealey

Mice Girl

Carrying on with the idea of using an old classic song we decided on playing around with The Temptations song 'My Girl'
Ideally we're aiming for a catchy song that will get stuck in peoples heads and remind them of the animation and My Girl's definitely been doing it for us. We experimented with the cheese-oriented lyrics again while keeping the time and pace of the song intact.
This is the first of our experiments that would involve 5 characters to cover all of the roles, which is rather exciting and has lead us all to go wild with ideas.
Keeping it focused however, we've got the Lead singer, the bass notes, the lead guitar notes and two backing-singers (one higher, one lower) We've looked at designs for short and fat then tall and thinner characters which could be used in some kind of clever, ironic way for the sake of visual humour but that's something Cathryn will be touching more on in her posts on character design.

We're planning on showing all the videos to everyone in our seminar tomorrow and get each person to vote for their favourite song, maybe even delve into a cheeky bit of target audience research and ask them to give a reason why they liked it.

So once again the original lyrics for the song segment we've chosen are:

I've got sunshine on a cloudy day
When it's cold outside I've got the month of May
I guess you'd say
What can make me feel this way?
My girl (my girl, my girl)
Talkin' 'bout my girl (my girl)

The beautifully improved version becomes:

Mozzarella, Parmesan too

Gorgonzola, Edam and Buxton blue

Stilton, derby

Camembert and British Brie

Cheddar (cheddar, cheddar)

Red Leicester Cheddar

goat’s cheese

Blue

Of course, following the lyrics is the conducted piece, enjoy.

StoryBoard

Our StoryBoard

A simplistic storyboard to give the initial impression of how we want the layout for our animation.