One Leg Too Many (the animation)!

 Here it is! I understand it's been too long since I should have uploaded this, but I was unsure about the whole copyright situation with YouTube. I've uploaded it now anyway and there are no problems!

 So this is the final outcome. After using the lightbox to draw each scene, I photographed each shot and imported them into After Effects. After almost half a week of tweaking and editing, such as: the zoom shots and the music, the animation was complete. I'm certainly very proud of it and it was a great start to the second year.

More Music and Sounds!

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 In the process of creating my animation, I needed to acquire sound effects to sample. I made a few of them myself including a 'splat' noise and the rest I recorded from the internet.

 My main choice of sampling was a instrumental score composed by Quincy Jones, named Ironside. It came to my attention from watching Quentin Tarantino's film, Kill Bill. Tarantino samples the music himself for Kill Bill and uses it for whenever the protagonist sees her next victim. It is some form of alarm sound, which I find appropriate for my animation when the creature sees his rival.

 Another musical score that came to mind was something from the epic video game saga, Final Fantasy. Whenever the player claimed victory in battle, a distinct chant of music would play marking a success. My creature will find something that he very much desires, in which the music will play.

 Lastly, a sound effect from another video game saga, this time known as Metal Gear Solid. Whenever the protagonist was spotted by an enemy, a sudden alert sound would play. My creature will spot his rival, the Cheshire Cat, alongside the alert sound.

Musical Influence

 For my animation, I wanted to add something that would make the process ever more nostalgic. As a child I watched Cartoon Network for hours upon end and I was intrigued by everything it threw at me: the visuals, the camera angles. the humour, the sounds... This cartoon in particular had an instrumental intro which has remained in my head since it aired in the early 90s. I now happen to play both guitar and bass (mainly bass) in my spare time, so it seemed very much appropriate to apply these skills into my own animation.

 With the aid of my dad and his recording equipment, we created a short score together which would play in the intro and finale for the animation. I wanted it to be short and snappy, so we kept it a 30 seconds maximum. I played both the distorted guitar and the high treble bass and we chose a drum beat from a drum machine. We also scored a bluesy bass line which would play in the first scene involving the creature acting 'cool'.

My Animation Process

 I have almost finished drawing my sequence for the animation!

 To start with, I bought myself a lightbox from Ebay. I positioned two strips of card onto the box creating a right-angle in order to keep the sheets still whilst I drew them. The media process I used was nib and ink due to its success of looking effective in my sketchbooks, as opposed to a standard fine-liner. This effected my choice of paper too, seeing as some qualities of paper would take longer to dry from the ink. So I decided to buy 400 A5 sheets of inkjet printer paper, because the ink would dry relatively faster; however the accidental stains and splodges on the sheets will give the animation a rough edge, which is what I am intending for.

 As soon as I'm finished with these drawings, I will photograph them and start editing within Adobe After Effects.

My Sequence

 Now that I have developed the character's appearance, I can now develop a narrative for the animation. Doing this I created my own sequence. The two images above are parts of the sequence.

 My style for this is cartoon-like and I have taken influence from various techniques used from the likes of Ren & Stimpy and other cartoons from that era onwards. I've kept it simplistic in the most kinetic parts of the sequence and have put most detail into the facial close-ups. The images above are just parts of a storyboard, not the actual animation.
 I plan not to use colour because I want to stay authentic of how I used to practise drawing when I was a child. Perhaps if it comes to creating another animation in a further project, I'll consider using some colour; but for now it's going to remain monochrome.

 The narrative will host for two characters: the two-bodied dog (the T'ao T'ieh) and the Cheshire Cat. It's a classic cat vs dog scenario: seeing the obvious victim (being the cat) outwit the dog.

Character's Environment

 Now I haven't really given this much thought, but what I was thinking was just a vast plain in which the creature can roam about as much as it wants.

 I did a few paintings using watercolour of what it could look like and this one came out most successful. It depicts a sweltering desert where even the sun melts. Depending on how relevant this sort of environment is to the creature, I'm unsure as whether to include it within the animation.

My Doodles Relating to the Project

 

 Leading up to designing my creature's appearance, I thought it best to develop ideas through the use of doodling. I have always doodled when developing a character and it's narrative.

 At first I hadn't chosen my desired creature, so I came up with various ideas for what it could be. When it comes to doodling, I find myself coming up with the strangest assortment of characters. They can be based on something I've seen, or they can be completely random. I also drew a handful of the creatures from the mythological book as to how I would perceive them, because I didn't want to lead away from the project's requirements. 

 I experimented with colour using either pencil crayon, pastel or watercolour. I used the watercolours pretty simplistically and even let them run with the ink outlines. They proved to be very effective in comparison with just the black and white ones.

 My development lead up to me picking the T'ao T'ieh, which is similar to the Greek Mythological creature Cerberus (the dog with three heads) except it is a dog's head attached to two bodies.

Sequence Technique

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 Looking at a graphic novel's perspective on things, sequence is number one priority. The same applies with comic books and all that related genre of storytelling.

 The image above is from the graphic novel Godspeed: The Kurt Cobain Graphic. It illustrates the life and troubles of Kurt Cobain through various sequencing techniques. For example in the image above, it portrays him as a child with his imaginary friend. It displays a brief montage of some of his childhood. Montages are used a lot in films to express emotions and messages. The montage above represents Cobain's short period of happiness and with it carries a strong sense of foreboding.

Pulp Fiction Sequence

 For the first part of our project we had to sketch out a scene from one of our favourite films. By this I mean I made a sequence of the on-going actions and changes within the scene. I deliberately chose the film Pulp Fiction due to it's unique camera shooting and iconic images; such as above.

 The particular scene I chose was when Vincent arrives at Mia Wallace's home to take her out on a date for his boss. The scene acquires close-ups, pan outs and even the perspective through a security camera. The scene is slick and applies little motion, however having to draw the change in shoots one after another took some time. The scene lasts almost three minutes, but in the time I finished it it'd been just under an hour. It shows that the time and effort needed for shooting a whole feature length film requires a lot of patience.