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Possible Worlds Production Folder

Page history last edited by williamCromar 7 years, 6 months ago

POSSIBLE WORLDS PRODUCTION FOLDER

 

Your blog will contain scans and images from the four basic prep tools for developing an animation project:



Concept Art

 

Concept art is used in film, animation, graphic novels, set design, and architecture, as a means to convey the intangible qualities and emotions evoked by a design. Traditional concept art rendering materials ranged through paints, watercolors, markers, pencils and the like—and this may explain  why modern sketch apps tend to emulate the blending of color found in these media. Much concept art these days is produced in paint programs and Photoshop. For examples of concept art, visit Concept Art World. Tutorials on building concept art can be found at Concept Cookie.

 

At these sites you will see that means of expression in concept art can range from loose, abstract sketching to photorealistic rendering (Figures 2—5). The concept artist is one of many members of a team on a large movie or animation project—here you will act as your own concept artist on a team of one. Look for a means of generating concept art for your environment and your entity that work for you—Photoshop rendering, hand drawing on paper (which can be scanned), or a tablet app. In the app world, several have particular features you might find useful:

  • AutoDesk SketchBook Pro has a symmetry function useful for frontal ortho views of entities.
  • Concepts: Precision Sketching has a useful guide function at the margins.
  • ArtRage and many other paint programs do a remarkable job of emulating media.
  • Photoshop, despite the darkroom metaphor, is a powerful painting program 

 

 

Student examples of concept art, all from studio taught by the author:

 

Figure 2 above left | Rapid robot studies at the start of a project.

 

Figure 3 above right | Inspirational atmospheric pen-and-ink for Greg Caliguri's Boris the Eye.

 

Figure 4 middle left | Detail sketches for a turtle-bird hybrid start to develop material ideas.

 

Figure 5 bottom left | A highly detailed and precise ortho view can easily become an imported reference image in Maya when doing animation.

 

For ART 314 Modeling, you may wish to look at these links for inspiration prior to creating your concept art:


Storyboard

 

A storyboard is a graphic way of representing the story of the animation, similar to the way a graphic novel represents a story: panels in a sequence. Many people on the filmmaking team contribute to a storyboard, and it goes through many hands, making it the most indispensable tool in the production folder. Netta Canfi's The Flying Animator  site contains important information about storyboards here, and downloadable templates to print out here. We render at 1920 X 1080 pixels, so download the 16 X 9 aspect ratio. For animators, it's useful to work with the template that has a place for graphics and a space for notes.

 

Storyboarding apps are a mixed bag. There are quite a few, but none of the ones I've researched as of this writing live up to the usefulness of pencil and paper. Most have a bias toward live action, and tend to exploit people's drawing ability anxieties. Almost all are overpriced for what they do. Print out a paper template, use it and scan it for inclusion in your digital production folder instead.

 

Once your storyboard is digitized, interesting possibilities emerge. For our simple project, we may choose not to engage in them, but as your animations get more complex, consider the following:

 

  • One app that is more than worth it's relatively high asking price is Hollywood Camera Work's Shot Designer, which will be discussed in greater depth below. Shot Designer allows importing images, so as you design shots your storyboard images can be placed alongside the cameras for reference (Figure 6).
  • Sequencing can be tested using scanned storyboard art. Some folks use slideware like PowerPoint or Keynote to actually generate a storyboard (I find this too time consuming), but scanned storyboard images can be placed, and the director can play around with shot order (Figure 7).
  • Timing and audio sync can be tested with scans. In Figure 8 we see storyboard art combined with sound effects imported into Premier and timelined to anticipate rendered scenes. While this can seem to take a chunk of time to produce, as a decision-making tool it saves a great deal of time down the pipeline.

 

 

Figure 6 left | A storyboard image can be imported into  Shot Designer for reference.

 

Figure 7 middle | A slideshow used for sequencing.

 

Figure 8 below | A movie imported from  Premier to test timing and synchronization with sound.

 

 


Shot Design | Dope Sheet

 

If you are animating using Maya, working with repetitive cycles such as walking, you'll create such cycles using Maya's Dope Sheet interface. Maya's Dope Sheet is a metaphor based on a tool long used in animation, known as the exposure (or "dope") sheet.

 

The traditional dope sheet is a spreadsheet—rows and columns (Figure 9). Rows are time, expressed in frames. Columns are elements and instructions. The first column is reserved for frame numbering, and other columns keep track of individual elements or layers in traditional hand-drawn cel animation. The exact timing and positioning of each element is noted, frame by frame. The final column at far right contains instructions for secondary movement—camera pans, dollying, zooms—and transitions like fading, dissolving or quick cutting.

 

Time-based programs like Flash, Premier, Audition and Maya use the metaphor of the dope sheet as a familiar interface: the timeline (Figure 10). If you turn a traditional dope sheet 90 degrees, you will see the similarity.

 

  →   E L E M E N T S   →  

 

 

 

 

 

T

I

M

E

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 9 left | A traditional dope sheet.

 

Figure 10 below | A computer animation timeline.

 

 

 

→   T I M E   →

 

For a complex, multilayered project, an exposure sheet remains a useful tool to design shots, and you can download one at The Flying Animator to print out. However, another tool does what the dope sheet does in a less abstract GUI, and for this project, it might be better...

 

Hollywood Camera Work's Shot Designer  is rapidly becoming an industry standard tool that uses icons for cameras and elements, vectors for movement, lines for walls, placement for light, and imported images to generate a top view of a scene that will be very familiar to users of modeling programs. This app takes a lot of the guesswork out of shot design. It does not generate a dope sheet per se, but it does give you shot lists, animated scenes and other features that do what a dope sheet does.

 

There is a learning curve for Shot Designer, but not a steep one. Visit the tutorials, and in a half hour you are a director!

 

 
Figure 11 | Simple vector dragging and familiar icons make shot design intuitive. Figure 12 | The Shot List helps plan your project. 

 

As an animation or video artist, you might not be using "actors" but remember: the actor icons are icons, and thus can be used to represent anything.

 

Some complain that Shot Designer  export functions are limited if you are working with the free version. Want to export? Hold menu and power buttons to make a screen shot to share on your blog. 


Progress Chart

 

As a student you know how important time management is. As an artist involved with video or animation, you will use time management strategies to work in a deadline-driven industry. Artists don't much like deadlines, but they are a fact of professional life. Some call the organization of time project modeling, and one of the effective techniques for doing so is the critical path method.

 

The essential technique of critical path is to list all activities needed to complete a project, assign a time limit to complete each part, and diagram their dependencies. That last is the "critical" in critical path: it's here you find out what needs to be finished before something else can start (the "critical" activities), and which activities can be delayed or "float" without effecting a deadline. Any delay on a critical activity can compromise your deadline. Visit Tim Tyler's explainer:

 

Figure 13 | Tim Tyler: On the critical path

 

Critical path diagrams have an advantage for artists over simply listing dates, because they express time in a visual way.  The standard Calendar app does this, but may not be flexible enough to reveal dependencies among tasks. Many apps geared toward project management exist, but the simple, elegantTrello is an artist-friendly, intuitive interface. A link to a shared Trello board can document the progress charting aspect of your online production folder.

 

Visit Trello for a test drive »

 


Production Folder

 

In a traditional video or animation project, the above-mentioned tools are placed in a folder and given to project team members. Instead, you can use your personal blog to keep your production folder in the cloud.

 

Use blogging tools such as Pages, Categories and/or Tags to keep these items conceptually together as you post them to the blog:

  • Concept and concept art
  • Storyboard
  • Shot designs
  • Timeline for project

 

Remember these tools are documenting a work in progress. As a project evolves, expect there to be definite differences between your plan and the resulting product. In other words, allow these tools to guide but not limit your creativity. Instead, embrace change and evolution, documenting it where necessary. In fact, you garner great insight into your own creative process by seeing the differences between plan and final outcome! 

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