Animatic 19

Yesterday I started working on the chibi close-ups of the characters' heads, starting with the boy when he is drawing.

Today I continued, edited that first image to make it more simple and then working on the shocked face and the determined face, and trying to animate the first face. I also did the girl's shock side-view face.

All of those pictures have been put into the animation and I have tried to animate them a little, to avoid having completely static images.

Boy concentrating version 1:


Boy concentrating more chibi:


Boy shocked:


Boy determined:


Girl shocked:

Animatic 18

Yesterday I spent the morning editing scene 22: the scene where the camera move up the emu as it towers over the boy. I made a replacement scene (22B) in which I inserted the scene 22 video interspersed with closeups of parts of the emu to make the scene more interesting and dramatic; it is also a technique that has been used in anime. I had to used three copies of the scene to place after each cut scene, in order to have the scene continue on from when it left off, rather than having it continue to play in the background with the extra parts playing over the top of it. The first cut is a close up of the beak, reused from the following scene, and the second is a close up of the eye, also taken from the following scene.

I found that the changes to the scene made the transition from this scene to the next (the close up of the emu's head with flames in the background) not as sharp. Now the change doesn't seem so dramatic that is would seem out of place; which is what I was starting to feel before, especially after I added a pulsing temple vein to the emu's head. It fits better now.

Some other things I did yesterday was to edit the movement and timing of the two scenes where the chase goes over Uluru. I made the movement better match the shape of the terrain they were running on and slowed it down a bit. I also added some variation in the relation of the emu to the children running. So it's not too close together, especially if the children are supposed to lose the emu in the following scene, although not quite the same on the way back.

I also made the happy emu head for scene 43, and some twinkling shines around the eyes. The glimmering of the emu's eyes look a little off, I'm not sure whether it's too subtle or if the shines are moving in the wrong way, but it should be hard to figure out.

Animatic 17

I got a lot done yesterday. I added the adult emu into a few scenes, as well as the girl in one. On Tuesday I spent some times adding the baby emu to the boy's run cycle, which I also finished yesterday morning. I am a little concerned that the baby emu is too small to see and possibly too detailed for a chibi.

I started with the scene that goes up the emu as it stands over the boy, since all that was required was moving apart the legs and moving around the head and some other details to make it look strong and angry and towering. I also made the emu a tiny bit darker for this scene to make it look more ominous.

Then I did the close up of the face in front of the flames in the next scene. I redrew the eyes to try to capture the rough, fierce look I'd captured in my storyboard sketch. I also darkened this image and increased the brightness in the flame background as they were a bit dull. I still need to add the temple vein to this scene.

The next thing I did was the close up of the girl's concerned face later in the animation, which wasn't very difficult, took the front view, changed the expression, moved the arm and then had to edit the body to raise the shoulder.

After the girl I went back to working on the emu. I did the charge sequence, where the emu runs at the camera. I did this using only 4 different frames. I tried to add two others to add some variation - one where it leans back before jumping forward and the another at the end switching between that and the last frame as it runs towards the camera, but I found that it looked better without those additions. I also animated the background a bit because it looked dull with a static background.

Finally I worked on what I was originally planning to work on next which is the emu's chibi run cycle. I started with one frame which I put straight into the animation as a placeholder so I could replace all of the storyboard emus straight away. As I did the replacements I also lengthened some of the chase scenes, making the characters run across the screen a bit slower so that the animation cycle would read better. Then I went back into Photoshop and drew the rest of the frames for the run cycle and then put them together in Aftereffects in the same way that I did with the other character's run cycles. So apart from the temple vein for the emu and the shock lines for the kids and baby emu the main part of the chase animation is done.

The boy's new chibi run cycle:


The looming emu:


The angry emu head:


The girl's sad face:


The four frames of the charge:


The emu chibi run cycle:


And at last my most recent animatic:

Animatic 16

Partly yesterday/the day before and mostly today I worked on my chibi run cycles, for the boy and girl. I only did 4 variations of leg positions for the run, and only 2 for the body. I discovered how to use the "match colour" function in Photoshop, which was very useful when editing the boy to turn it into the girl, so I could use it as the base, and change the colours rather than repaint them. There was still a fair amount of editing to do despite the cheat. I found it was easier to edit the second body frame (of the girl) from the first (already turned girl) rather than edit the two from the boy individually.

I had to think about how much detail to add to my chibi characters - as chibi/super deformed characters are usually very simple and don't have much in the way of shadow, shine or details. Working out how to show the boy's shorts was a bit challenging, because I wasn't sure how it would work without just looking like a skirt.
I used to same technique for these cycles as I did for the emu chick's cycle last time. I think I may have to slow down the movement of the legs in the scenes where they are actually moving across the screen, because their legs are moving too quickly to pick up on the movement, unlike the scenes where they are still and it is the background that is moving. For that scene I had found that I needed to reduce the space between frame changes because the animation looked too slow.

The next thing I'll be doing is slowing the cycle for the moving scenes, and then drawing and animating the baby emu into the cycle. Following that I will work on the adult emu and its cycle.


The boy's first chibi run cycle (chasing the baby emu):

The girl's first chibi run cycle (chasing the baby emu):

The boy's second chibi run cycle (being chased by emu):

The girl's second chibi run cycle (being chased by emu):


And my most recent animatic (with the chibi run cycles):

Chibi run cycle

Yesterday I decided to research the chibi run cycle, to use for reference for my own characters' chibi run cycles. I found one at the start of episode 6 of Steel Angel Kurumi.
I took screen shots of the 6 frames of the chibi run cycle. Each frame of the cycle held for 2 frames and then usually had a ghost to transfer to the next frame, at least for the slightly larger movements if not between every frame. Here are the reference images:

Animatic 15

Today I did some more baby emu animation. I did the two run cycles, which are really only two frames rotating and blended, using the same technique as the pecking. One is more simple in design than the other. The only baby emu I have left to do is the little one of it clinging to the handle of the bag (present in most of the chase scenes).
So quite a few scenes completed now. After the baby emu is completely finished with I'll work on the adult emu and then work my way through the kids.

Animatic 14

Yesterday, after sorting through most of my notes, I got back into working on my animation a bit. I finished the scene that I was working on last time (Scene 11), where the emu enters, pushes open the bag and pecks at the food. I fixed up the necks of the pushing the bag open animation. Then I animated the emu pecking the bag, using one of the techniques that is used in anime, which uses still extreme poses and blending those with inbetween ghost frames. For this particular animation, I used only two extremes, one with the head down and one with it up, and only one frame inbetween, which I set at 50% opacity and overlaps with the other two extremes for switching between them. The final touch to finish the scene was simply adding an extra frame inbetween the emu finishing walking and opening the bag, just to smooth the transition between the two extreme poses of up and down, I didn't blend in this case because it worked better as a solid frame.
The only other thing I might add to this frame if I have time at the end is a few crumbs flying out of the food as the emu is pecking it, just to add that extra something.

The next thing I did was start working on the emu hanging on the bag (scene 40). I used a still from scene 11 to get the proportions for the bag right...which is when I realised that the bag in scene 11 was too small and I had to go back and make it bigger, which I managed to do without ruining the position of the rim of the bag, which the emu pushes, so I didn't have to edit any actual animation, only those few frames of the bag to stretch out the length of the bag and to extend the length of the strap. I managed to finish the image of the emu in the bag. I wrapped the strap slightly around it's neck (using a duplicate strap folder and a mask) so that it would sit on the strap better, considering the size and length of the emu's neck it would look odd for it to just be sitting on the strap as it was in the storyboard.
This exercise had been a caution for me not to reply too much on the storyboard images as reference, since the images in them (proportions) aren't necessarily correct or consistent throughout the animation. Especially since originally the emu chick didn't have a long neck.

After scene 40, I did the next simple emu chick scene, 42, where the emu is inside the bag. This was simple, I used the bag from scene 11, rotated it redrew the strap and cleaned up the other outlines, stuck the emu chick inbetween the front and back and it was pretty much done. Then I just had to stick in into my animatic and animate it a little. I also saved an alternate frame where the emu chick's eyes are closed, so it could blink. I did a similar thing with scene 40, I had two frames to alternate between: in the second the emu chick's beak is open wider and the shines in it's eyes are slightly bigger (to create the shimmering eyes effect that is so common in anime to show emotion).

So at the end of the day I managed to finish 3 scenes. :)

This is the frame I added between the walk and bag open:


This is the walk cycle:


This is the emu opening the bag:


These are the two frames of the emu caught on the bag:


These are the two frames of the emu in the bag blinking:



Animatic:


On a side note, when I was reading the other day Dreamland Japan (by Frederik L. Schodt), I found it interesting to learn that in Japan they have the same issue with words as we do, that the word manga means similar to comic, in that it implies humor or something not to be taken seriously, and the media (magazine titles mostly) actually use English or other foreign words to sound more sophisticated.

Animatic 13

Today I added more detail to my asset list, making sure I included every single asset for each scene as well as more depth such as how much of a character's body is showing and what kind of eyes they have etc. I also made a seperate one for each scene folder, so I can use them as kind of check lists when I go into the scenes to make sure I have everything, and know what I have to work on.

After that I drew the bag in Photoshop, it was more difficult than I thought as I had to make it look like it was actually sitting on the ground. I also added a few extra frames for the moment when the emu chick pushes open the bag to peck at the food.

Once the bag was done and imported I worked on the emu chick. I did a frame by frame leaning, saved as pngs and imported that way, then made into a composition. I thought that it would be easier that way than trying to rotate it in Aftereffects with the lines on the neck. Then I made a walk cycle for it, using the same technique. It only runs one in the but it gets it from the side of the screen up to the bag.

Then I struggled to figure out how to animate the neck movement for it reached down for the bag. I found that the bag was a little too close to it so I had to play around with the placement of both the bag and the emu chick. I found that I couldn't just rotate the neck, because of how long it is (I hadn't realised how long emu chick's necks are when I drew my storyboard) it has to bend in a strange curvy way, where it goes down then back up, like a 'U'. I drew a few frames of this bendy neck using the solid base colour and some different head placements, to match up with the movement of the bag opening. I still have to fix up the neck, adding the outline and pattern. Which shouldn't be too difficult to achieve.

Another thing I notised while doing this (which is something I anticipated) is that the scene will have to be extended in order to fit in all of the actions and to achieve effective timing.

Research and pose

After writing that back story yesterday I realised that I had to think about where the children were heading. Especially since I said that the father lived in the West and they are moving right across the screen, which would be East if the camera was facing from the South. First I had to work out which way the sun sets, as I'd never really thought about it. I knew it set the same way every day but not sure of the compass direction. I looked it up on google and learned the sun sets in the West. So for them to be walking to the right in front of the setting sun (as they do at the end of the animation) that means that they are headed North.
I don't think I'll decide exactly where they are coming from or headed, but so long as I have a general idea of where they are, it should be fine. At the moment I think it's likely that they are coming from somewhere in either South or South-East Australia, and headed towards North-West (the top of Western Australia). And the setting of this particular animation is somewhere South of Uluru.
Another thing I'm not sure of is when it is set. I don't really want there to be mobile phones and the Internet, or mass media. I tried looking up characteristics of different decades in the 1900s, but it didn't really help me decide. This will just have to be another unknown factor.

I tried to pose the boy in the position that he's supposed to be in in the second scene, but his legs didn't want to sit right, so I'll probably have to draw them in that position seperately rather than attempt to pose the broken up character. While doing this I realised that I hadn't completely finished preparing my boy character for import, so I finished that.
Then I found an easier thing for me to work on. A regular view of the girl from the shoulders up, so I wouldn't have to work out a full body pose. I had to alter a few things since it was a slightly angled shot, not a straight on front view, including the shape of the hat and the position of the face, I also had to pose the arm, which also looked off, but I managed to fix that by adding more to the shoulder.

Then I imported it into Aftereffects, I was still overwhelmed by the number of files that imported due to layers, so I went back and compressed even further. Then I decided to arrange my assets in folders by scenes, as I had read in an animation book (Producing 2d Character Animation) that's how it's done professionally, as it's a way of keeping everything needed for each scene together so nothing gets forgotten. I had to update most of the files in Aftereffects after this change, but it should make things easier.

Backstory and more

Today I decided that I would sort through all of the Aboriginal names I collected and remove any that I didn't want, to narrow down the choices. I haven't entirely decided, but it's narrowed down to less than twenty per character.
I picked two names purely based on the animal meanings of them: Arinya (kangaroo) and Banjori (koala), to use in a back story. The back story explains everything from their mother's forbidden romance and their births, to how they got their animal hats and ended up alone.
Then I spent the rest of the day preparing my front and side photshop files for importing into Aftereffects. Also yesterday my brother kindly composed some music for me which I may be able to use in my animation, although not all of the samples suit the feel I was going for in their particular animation.

And here is my back story as it is at the moment (a big improvement on what I would have originally wrote as part of an assignment earlier this year):

Robyn, a young white girl lived with her English mother, Louella, in Australia. When she was sixteen she fell in love with a young Aboriginal man named Jirra. She met him in the store where she had a part time job after school. Jirra was seventeen and had been working at the store full-time as the cleaner since he finished year 10 and was completing his VCE part-time at tafe. He was handsome, sweet and had a good sense of humour. It didn’t take long for her to develop a crush on him. She constantly found herself daydreaming about him and staring at him between customers. After working there for more than half a year, without her feelings fading, she learned that he shared her feelings. They started seeing one another.
When her mother found out about their relationship she forbid Robyn from seeing Jirra again. She didn’t approve and thought that Robyn should be with someone her own race, although she hid her racism by claiming his job and lack of education were the only reasons she was against the relationship. She refused to listen when Robyn told her that he planned to study to become a doctor. Her mother would not budge on the matter but Robyn was madly in love and continued to see him behind her mother’s back, even if it meant sneaking out of the house while her mother was asleep. They managed to keep it a secret for six months, but one night her mother woke earlier than usual and caught her sneaking back into the house the next morning.
That was the last straw. Her daughter would not see that [insert racist word here] ever again. They were moving to another state where Robyn would finish school. She kept Robyn locked in the house until the move. They never even got to say goodbye. Louella may have succeeded in separating the couple but she was too late. Robyn was pregnant with Jirra’s child. Robyn refused to have an abortion so her domineering mother hid her away in the house and home schooled her until the baby was born. Louella secretly hoped for a miscarriage but alas the beautiful baby girl was born. Robyn named her Arinya after her father, as both Jirra and Arinya mean “kangaroo”.
When Robyn was nineteen she married a man named Jayden who her mother approved of, despite him being eight years older than Robyn. Louella would have rather her daughter marry a white man with a high paying job who was much older than her than a poor Aboriginal man of any age. She was happy to have her daughter marry this man as soon as possible to avoid her daughter trying to find her lost love, or to end up with another man she didn’t approve of. Robyn never stopped loving Jirra, but she didn’t think she could ever find him and she saw marrying Jayden as an easy escape from her mother’s clutches. She couldn’t afford to move out on her own and Jayden was kind and could provide for her. Robyn grew to love Jayden but never as much as Jirra the love she had been robbed of. Jayden sensed her distance but he still loved Robyn and her daughter as though she were his own.
After being married for two years Robyn fell pregnant. A month before the baby was due her husband died in a car crash. Robyn inherited the house and enough to live alone with her daughter and newborn son whom she named Banjora, she had developed a liking for Aboriginal names while she was with Jirra. Robyn raised her children alone but when they were only 5 and 10 Robyn grew ill and died of a severe infection. The children were sent to their grandmother’s house to live. Their grandmother favoured Banjora but called him Benji or Ben rather than by his given name. She tended to ignore Arinya, as she was still resentful of her daughter’s betrayal and couldn’t see past her tainted blood. Louella took care of the girl as her granddaughter but never loved her as one.
Arinya often looked after her brother while her mother was sick. She told him stories and taught him everything that her mother had told her about her father and what their names mean. She knew that he was in Western Australia and that he was a doctor. Arinya saved up her pocket money for weeks and for Christmas she bought animal shaped hats from an Australian gift shop for her and her brother; a kangaroo hat for herself and a koala hat for Benji, as their given names meant Kangaroo and Koala. Benji loved his hat and never took it off.
Benji looked up to Arinya and has called her Ari since he was old enough to talk. He thought she was really special because she was the only person he knew who had dark skin. He also knew that their grandma wasn’t always very nice to Ari and when he got special treats he shared them with his sister.
By the time Arinya was 11 Louella was 68, as she had been an older mother having her daughter when she was 38. One night Louella was outside on a cold winter’s evening trying to find Benji, who was playing a game of hide and seek with his sister and hadn’t yet come out of hiding. She tripped over a branch and broke her ankle. Benji had since gotten cold and gone to bed. Neither of them realised that their grandmother hadn’t come inside. There was a storm that night so they didn’t hear her calling out and she was soaked by the rain. By the time she was found she had a bad case of phenomena and despite staying in bed and having a live-in nurse to take care of her and the children she died after a week. The children now had no one to take care of them.
Arinya overheard the nurse talking to a social worker who was planning to separate them and put them in foster homes. She didn’t want to be separated from her brother and she had heard that foster homes were terrible places, so she packed up two bags with some clothes, food and a map. She told Benji that the bad people wanted to take them away so they were going to go on a journey to find her Dad. They snuck out of the house and headed off through the Australian desert to find their father, before anyone knew they were missing.