The Animation Process with Lisa

Lead Animator

Lisa's Experience

These sketches are character designs for our Character Portrait assignment.  We decided to use basic silhouettes to portray our characters.  At first I tried making realistic silhouettes, but we decided to take advantage of the fact that we’re working in animation and make more stylized, cartoon-y characters.  I tried a lot of different shapes to get her design down - the 4th one is based on a flower, for example.  My personal favourites are number 1, 3, and and 6.  Ultimately we decided to use number 3, but with a slightly longer dress and longer hair.  

I found the male form harder to draw.  I always find males harder to draw, and stylizing them just makes it worse.  We’re going to go with something close to number 3. 

Lisa

A motion study of the main character for our Character Portrait assignment.  I animated her in Flash.  The animation is smooth, but I think I to adjust her stride a bit so her steps aren’t as long.  She seems to be strutting her stuff here, which isn’t exactly the look I was going for.

Lisa

The Process


Character Design & Colour Swatches


As we are working in silhouettes Lisa was charged with creating the form of both a male and female lead that reflects the characters cultural background: Chinese. As well as the color palette. The original backgrounds were going to be tea-stained, with accenting colours matching that ofthe Chinese and Canadian flags. Hence red and white, and red and gold. The colours below were taken direct from country flags. 

Colour Swatch by Lisa Galbraith

 First Character Design

Lisa's first take on the silhouettes was to draw them realistically. This may have been a reflection on The Lost Kiss video that I produced earlier in the year which inspired the group's desire to use silhouettes. However, as an animation project it did not seem appropriate to try to reenact a human's movement and mannerisms (The Lost Kiss was filmed with a green screen), nor did a realistic representation that was not the actual silhouette of our interviewee seem appropriate. Instead, to reflect the uplifting tone of the interview Lisa was asked to create the silhouette in a more universal representation of a girl and a guy that reflected Asian lineage.   

First Character Design by Lisa Galbraith

Second Character Design

The second character designs reflected the universal female image mainly due to the use of skirts. The first sketch was hard to understand the overall appearnce due to the side angle. The second lacked a skirt. The fourth sketch was excluded due to the Victorian nature, and the fifth due to the childish nature and body-shape of the starfish. The seventh still reflected too close to realism.

We decided that the 3rd and 6th sketches were the closest images that matched the animation concept we wished to reflect from the interview.  

Second Character Design by Lisa Galbraith (female)

The third character sketch here is the closest match to the 3rd and 6th character sketches of the main female character above.

Second Character Design by Lisa Galbraith (male)

The Motion Test


We were still designing the character when the motion test was due so Lisa had to decide to draw a temporary figure for the motion test or finalize the character first. She chose to use a temporary female image and then not alter the character design.

 

The motion test went well, and had a decent amount of frames. Lisa did not continue to use that amount of frames for the final animation.

Re-Designing the Main Character

There were two instances that led me to push Lisa to complete the character design even after she had started animating without the go-ahead. One was when an Asian friend watched the animated clips and thought the silhouette represented myself - a tall, skinny white girl - then didn't believe me when I said she was Asian.  The other was a comment during our roughcut review that suggested the silhouettes could be more defined. I agreed with both these points: that the silhouette should feel Asain (or at least be an anonymous silhouette), and that the detail in the shape of our character was lacking. 

To help Lisa grasp these concepts I sent her the following links:

To help identify that she is Asian I thought a fairly common old-ish Asian hair-style would work: 

Asian Hair

To assist her understanding of how abstracted silhouettes can be detailed without being realistic I sent her this clip, suggesting to watch around 2:50 to demonstrate how each line identifies the shape, with a caution that the skeletal style they are using here is not what we are after. We want a female that is short and Asian.  

Invention of Love (2010) - Animated Short Film

Roughdraft

After the animatic's completion the group began their project.  

FIRST ROUGH

The issue with Flash is that it is version sensitive. The one available in the presentation room, the mac lab, and on lisa's laptop are all different and that corrupts aspects within the file. Originally we exported the file from Flash to load into FinalCut or Premiere for the audio but the .mov file was corrupted because we used the lab to do this instead of Lisa's laptop when the files had been created on her laptop. Unfortunately, she was not willing to stay with us to export and left as soon as she thought she was able.  Using Flash to add the audio was no better although this is what Lisa suggested we do, and though the file itself was fine, exporting it created both visual and audio glitches. 

Our first roughcut was barely an experience with doubled up audio and glitching visuals that left traces of images on the screen. 

SECOND ROUGH

The second rough cut was much better. Nothing had been timed yet as everyone had their own pieces that they worked on. My Backgrounds had been completed and sent over the internet, and Roshanth had sent Lisa the length times of the animation clips as he was in charge of audio, this included assembling the pace of the piece by the audio interview recording. 

The Animatic & Storyboard

The Animatic was conceptualized, drawn, and assembled in a day. 

The group was given a week to plan their project and have a visualization to show the class. They unanimously decided to create a silhouette animation after witnessing Nicole's final project The Lost Kiss, from her Introduction to Video class a semester earlier. From this point Flash was selected as the animation software following Lisa Galbraith's suggestion and Ying Shan's desire to learn the program. Ying then completed the interview with Suki Bai, and Nicole incorporated the interview data into a storyboard that was scanned and then assembled in Premiere. Roshanth timed the clips to the audio track and within a week the group had an assembled Concept to present complete with audio and basic visuals.  

"What I See" An Animatic

Drawn, scanned & assembled by Nicole Wilk.

Timed by Roshanth Nadesapillai.

Recorded by Ying Shan. 

Voice if Suki Bai.



The storyboard incorporates the interview that Ying Shan obtained for us within a few days of cementing our idea, but Lisa delayed in the character design so I created the storyboards fairly roughly. After review, scene that needed changing was the food on page 5. To incorporate more motion into the piece we created a restaurant scene that incorporates a famous Chinese food chain that serves Duck.

The Storyboard by Nicole Wilk

The Interview Process

This project incorporates an animated interview. My group wishes to look at the multicultural aspect of Canada by interviewing a recent immigrant and finding out her thoughts about living in Canada.


Interview

Interviewer: Ying Shan       Interviewee: Di Bai

Why did you come to Canada?

I came to Canada because my parents wants me to get a better education.

Do you think Canadian people are kind and easy to make friends with?

It's is easier to get along with Canadian people because Canada is a
multicultural country. People came from many different countries and
they are friendly and happy to help people.

How does living in Canada differ from living in China?

In Canada, there are many houses and condos. But in china there are
more apartments and houses which are for rich people mostly.

What challenges do you face in Canada?

I think language is the most hardest problem for me. Sometimes I don't
even understand what our teachers and classmates say in the classroom.

Contrast teachers at High School between China and Canada…

Teachers in community schools are very nice and they are always
patient with students and homework are much less than Chinese school.

Contrast school life between China and Canada…

There are only four classes every-day. and school ends at 3.30 which
is more earlier than Chinese school.

What do you find most interesting about Canada?

The most interesting thing about Canada is Multi-culture. I can make
many friends who came from different countries and understand many
different cultures from them.

What is your favourite part of China that cannot be found in Canada?

My favourite part of china is the food. I really miss my Chinese food
which I can't eat in here.

What is your favourite part of Canada?

The best thing for me in Canada is fresh air and Canada has very nice
environment to make me feel so much better than china.

What is your plan for the future?

For my future planning, I'm in second year and I will go to the
university and after I graduate from university I will find a Job in
Canada. Hopefully I will enjoy my Canadian life later on.

Thank You!

Character Portrait

3-minute digital flash animation comparing China and Canadian idiosyncrasies

Inspiration

Our Character Portrait is inspired by artists Lotte Reiniger and Kara Walker who specialise in silhouettes. The animation technique that our group will explore is in some ways an extension of their work, and in others a springboard for new ideas and techniques. In planning this project, we feel a deeper exploration of their process will be helpful in accomplishing this character portrait.

About Lotte Reiniger & Her Process

Lotte Reiniger

Lotte Reiniger's artistic medium was established at a young age. As a youth, she created silhouettes to perform Shakespeare in her shadow theater. In 1917, while creating silhouettes of actors and actresses at Max Reinhardt's school of acting, she made a connection with film-maker  Paul Wegener. He hired her to create silhouettes for the titles of some of his films, and eventually helped her discover the secret of animating her silhouettes. From then on she created some short silhouette films.

Hansel & Gretel by Lotte Reinger

We found her process of animation inspiring as it is much like today's animation process. While not created on the computer, each piece of her animated work has several important parts, such as the creation of characters, movement  of those characters, characters  settings, and sound effects (including speech and musical compositions). Secondly, we are motivated by how each scene is created using a storyboard, with every detail drawn in full color. The figures and scenes are later reduced to silhouettes for animation. Taking away the lines and colors of each drawing, however, did not destroy the charm of Reinger’s characters.  She also believed that the lack of color in the black silhouettes allowed the viewers imagination more room to expand and interact with the story. This idea is very inspiring to us because our story involves the audience to interact with the story and put themselves into the main characters shoes. We are hoping to achieve this goal by using non-coloured silhouettes despite dealing with a concept of nationality and race. 

The Adventures of Prince Achmed by Lotte Reigner

References:

The Animation of Lotte Reiniger
Lotte Reiniger by William Moritz

About Kara Walker & Her Process

Kara Walker employs silhouettes to tell stories much like Lotte Reiniger. Based on a study of the popular art form from the 18th century Walker began experimenting using silhouette as a story-telling medium. She chose the basic black outlines of character as it simplifies the persona being represented and because her technique is based on 18^th century backlighting portraitures. In Walker's eyes, a silhouette is a substitution for a true likeness of a person.  She explores the medium in many different forms, from larger paper silhouettes, to installations of cast shadows, and to the animation of silhouette marionettes. 

Kara Walker: My compliment, my enemy, my oppressor, my love

We hope to follow her character design style but with a digital twist. Her characters have exaggerated features which makes them cartoonish, and in doing so she adds some humour to the dense subject matter of race, gender and sexuality that she explores. It is important to mention that most of her animations involves around the theme of "history". She is able to portray history in her own unique way that makes it interesting again. She is both trying to entertain and inform her audiences which is what we want to do with our projects. It is very impressive how she shows us the past in an interesting way through the use of cut-paper silhouettes. We hope to achieve that same feel with our character design. Walker’s work holds interest because no matter how many times the work is seen, there always seems to be something new that had been unnoticed. 

 

Art 21: Kara Walker 

Reference:
The Art of Kara Walker
Art 21: Kara Walker

Choosing A Story & Interview Biography

Following Lotto Reiniger’s exploration of silhouettes we decided to animate our story. However, much like Kara Walker's silhouette compositions in choosing a re-tellable story, we decided upon a story that could relate to and communicate a current world issue brought on by globalization: the living lifestyle of different countries as experienced by a youth of today.

Flag & landmass of China

We will explore the subtle differences on how lifestyle and values are experienced between the native Chinese and Canadian cultures. Our idea is born from a question brought up during a group discussion that we thought interesting with endless possibilities: Why do so many Chinese immigrate to Canada, while China is growing fast? In order to explore this concept, we interviewed Di Bai. 

Di Bai is a Chinese girl who came to Canada around one and half years ago. Her family immigrated to Toronto in August of 2010. She is a grade 11 student at Earl Haig high school, which is a famous public school founded in Toronto. Before she came to Canada, she lived in Da Lian, a beautiful city north of China. Since she spent her first half of high school life in Da Lian and the other half of high school life in Toronto she will have a lot of specific personal experiences and challenges, which she may share with us. She is our link to compare and contrast the life of international students between China and Canada. We will animate her interview using silhouette animation.

Flag & landmass of Canada

We designed our interview questions to be interesting to the viewer by exploring stereotypes, challenges and comparative questions between the two countries. The difference between China and Canada are more elusive and include differences in lifestyle and mindset that might not stand out immediately when one thinks about their first forays onto Canadian soil; though these differences stand out over time. These will be further illustrated by our interviewee which then will be used to form our script. Our final animation will explore these subtle differences between living in China and living in Canada as experienced by the personal story of Da Lian.

Designing The Story

Understanding Di Bai’s story is first step towards animating our project. With this information we will create imagery to fit the story by simplifying and abstracting the backgrounds using paper art; we hope this will offset and compliment the solid colour of silhouettes. We find that it will be easier to tell the story in animated silhouette because the viewer doesn't get lost in the little details of the character's clothes and features, but is forced to see the character as a whole. We believe keeping a character in silhouette allows a deeper connection with the story and the audience. Instead of a character with a specific trait to identify with, the character is ambiguous enough  for the audience to relate to universally. 

A paper scan by Nicole Wilk

We will break the story into scenes depicting Di Bai’s thoughts concerning the interview questions. These visualised thoughts will be illustrated movements and actions related to the matter at hand, these thoughts will be both literal and abstract and will not follow reality directly, especially during scene transitions.

Creating Characters & Backgrounds

Understanding the weight of shape in silhouettes our character has been through many designs. Our goal in creating Di Bai as a silhouette is to make her vague while representing her nationality, and in that we made her stature small (short and thin), and took care to make her appear fashionable and tidy. This is vague enough to follow Asian stereotype as well as reflect the actual appearance of Di Bai. 

The silhouette animation will take place within Flash, which uses Vector drawings.  Within the application frames are drawn and then altered individually utilizing toolbox and frame-by-frame editing. Our main character (and her family) will be represented as a white silhouette to differentiate her from the crowd (representing by the common silhouette colour of black). We will use Flash to animate movement and will rely on it for flat backgrounds that are also silhouetted.

The backgrounds will be an environment for the characters to inhabit and interact with. This may be difficult as they will be raster-based from scanning, photography and photoshop editing. The backgrounds will be abstract and creative while not being distracting. We understand that careful background design is important in order to establish the mood of the story.  Our main concept is to create simple and entertaining animation to amuse and engage the viewers. Our interest in relation to stop frame animation is the use of the silhouette.

Sound Composition

The animation will consist of voice- over narration of Di Bai herself from the interview. Sound effects will assist scene placement as well as transitions. Sound effects will be gathered from  from freesound.org which is covered by the creative commons license. 

The People Involved

 GROUP MEMBERS

Nicole Wilk 

Group Leader

Background Artist
Opening & Credits Animator

Nicole has graduated Delta high school in 2004 and was rewarded a plaque for her artistic performance. In high school she studied the fine arts, sculpture and photography.

In 2006 Nicole graduated Mohawk College of Applied Art and Technology with a diploma for Graphic Art And Design.

In 2007 Nicole graduated Mohawk College of Applied Art and Technology with a diploma in Comic Design And Scripting.

Since then Nicole has studied art and technology and enrolled at McMaster Universities' Multimedia program where she has completed seven multimedia courses: The Digital Image, Multimedia & Digital Society, Design Fundamentals, Vector Graphics, Introduction to Video, Introduction to Audio, & Introduction to Animation. At the time of this project's creation Nicole was studying Advanced Animation, Programming Fundamentals, and Information Technology.         

I am an Animations Student at McMaster University with a background in Graphic Arts and Comic Design & Scripting from Mohawk College.

I believe art is experimental in and of itself within both the realm of fantasy (abstract) and reality (accurate renditions of life), thus presenting endless possibilities for creation, experimentations, and chances for learning in both the ever expanding and upgrading program software available, such as Adobe After Effects, but also in the materials now more accessible than ever, as well as cheaper equipment. With endless ways to create available I believe the medium being the message is an important concept. The way in which the thought is expressed is important.

Roshanth Nadesapillai

Audio Master 

Student at McMaster University, majoring in Multimedia

My name is Roshanth Nadesapillai. I'm a third year Multimedia Program student at McMaster University. I was initially educated in the communication studies, and somewhere along the way I fell in love with graphics and I've been a practicing graphic designer ever since. Graphics are something I’ve become very passionate about over the years and I believe that we all need passion. It’s what drives us, moves us and forces us to change the world around us.  I’m very passionate about many areas of interest, and I strive to have massive influence by applying my passion for graphics to as many of them as I can.

My thoughts and imagination are my most precious resource. Everything begins there. I would say that they are the heart of my graphic design. I communicate these thoughts and ideas, observe, invent, experiment, grow, create, and enjoy. To me, its all about It's creativity. It's about passion and creating a work that is enjoyable and fun and at the same time showing my art. My passion for graphic design started even before I was aware there was such an art. I loved making posters for school projects back in elementary school and this love for arts in general and graphic design in particular grew with me over the years. I make beautiful things to inspire thought and action. In my designs, I capture the essence of an idea with images, to move people toward a purpose. I understand that great design is about communication.

 

Ying Shan

Animator 

Ying is a student at McMaster University, majoring in Multimedia. He moved from China to Canada to study multimedia and economics in 2009.

 My name is Ying Shan, a second year multimedia student at Mcmaster university.

    I am passion for animation, break dance and digital art design. I'd like to spend unlimited time to work on digital media and art design project. In my opinion, media art is fantastic and amazing. It can describe our daily life in various ways and open our eyes to discover the wonder of the world. Also it may drive us in  different perspectives to watch and think about our life. I believe in the future, the digital media art will be gaining ground in this world, and that may lead our life be more vivid.

 

Lisa Galbraith

Head Animator

Student at McMaster University, majoring in Multimedia with plans to specialize in Animation and writing . Lisa graduated high school at the Center for Advanced Research and Technology in Clovis, California.

My number one interest in this course is classic, 2D animation and the methods of producing it, both traditionally and digitally.  I’m interested in increasing by abilities with programs such as Adobe Flash.

Project Information

Project Spec's

Written by Franci Duran

Communication Studies and Multimedia – MMEDIA 3H03—Advanced Digital Animation—Winter 2012

Character Portrait—Rough Cut and Final Project Deliverables

Rough Cut

Posted to vimeo or youtube before class and ready for presentation to class.

Value: 15% of assignment

• A rough-cut contains all of the sequences of your movie in order and with audio or text-based voice-over.
• We must be able to understand your portrait without explanatory notes.
• Major “movements” within the animated elements must be evident or most of the defining artwork is in place.
• Timing does not need to be refined.
• Titles, effects, sound design do not need to be complete, but put in necessary placeholders so that we can
• understand your portrait.
• You need to able to address class and instructor feedback and questions in a professional manner.
• You must actively participate during the peer review process

Rough Cut Evaluation

/5—Level of completion

/5—Effectiveness of Rough cut

/5—Professionalism

Final Project

Value: 60% of assignment

Deliverables:

• uncompressed .mov file (on DVD);
• final movie posted to your blog;
• interview transcript submitted as hardcopy and posted to your blog;
• +/-500 word rationale posted to blog and submitted as hardcopy;
• process work posted to blog

Final Project Evaluation

Concept and Ideas 25%

Developing a creative and unique portrait based on the project guidelines, and ability to experiment with and within the format of the project. Demonstrated understanding of the project parameters, goals and objectives. Formal and conceptual integration. Level of practical, technical, visual and scholarly research conducted.

Refinement of the Concept 25%

Demonstrated ability to take the original idea/s and develop/improve and apply them throughout the projectʼs duration; demonstrated critical evaluation of ideas and solutions; demonstrated level of engagement with project;

Skills 25%

Translation of ideas to visually and technically refined forms. Technical and aesthetic quality and control of the final portrait, in terms of composition, spatial and temporal considerations, registration, choreography of elements, motion quality and timing, sound design, editing etc… and careful attention to detail.

Presentation (Paperwork and Professionalism) 25%

Completion and quality of all deliverables; rationale; active participation during critiques and peer-review; ability to address class and instructor feedback and questions in a professional manner.