Independent Project

 Introduction

For my independent project I want to focus on the animation part of it. Specifically, I want to make a 5-10 second cutscene using a storyboard. The technique that I want to use for this will be rotoscoping. The idea behind this is to make the processing of getting into animation much easier and to far better familiarise myself with how joints work. 

Storyboarding

Storyboarding is the technique of creating rough sketches to plan out a story. Storyboarding was first used by the Disney company in 1933 in the short “Three Little Pigs” and was credited to Webb Smith. He drew different scenes on different pieces of paper and attaching them to a bulletin board. This idea was also used in the shorts “Steamboat Willie” and “Plane Crazy”. Disney was the first to introduce a separate story department with artists who specialised with story boards into their studio. Storyboarding is also used in live action films. Starting in the late 1930s, the film “Gone with the Wind” was one of the first live action movies to use storyboarding. This makes sense as it helps directions know how and where to spend money and create a good budget for their film. Many animation directors expect to use storyboards in their projects. Storyboards are very useful to breakdown how you are going to make every individual scene. It also allows for feedback because you can check what works and what does not. Storyboarding is not the only technique I plan to use. 

Sources

Maitrai, S. (2022). The History of Storyboarding. [online] makestoryboard.com. Available at: https://makestoryboard.com/blog/the-history-of-storyboarding.

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Rotoscoping

I also plan to use Rotoscoping for my project. Rotoscoping was first invented by Max Fleischer in 1915 to improve the look of the characters he animated. He also did it to make the characters more realistic. The technique was first achieved by projecting film on to glass panels so that an artist could trace over the actors. In the 1930s Disney started to use this technique in their films. The very first movie they used it in was “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”. It was used to animate all the characters and create more realistic movement. It was then used in “Cinderella”, and “Alice in Wonderland”.  The first live action movie to use Rotoscoping for special effects was “Bride of Frankenstein”. One of the most famous examples of live action rotoscoping is in “Star Wars” which came out in 1977.  The movie uses rotoscoping to create the lightsabres. In 2006 the movie "A Scanner Darkly" was released. The entire movie is rotoscoped in a very realistic style. It is an amazing piece of work and a brilliant achievement. Keanu Reeves beard was very difficult for the animation process. My favourite example of rotoscoping is in Doctor Who. When the daleks shoot their lasers rotoscoping is used for the special effect.

 

Sources

https://youtu.be/IS1hCSsmH1E

https://www.intofilm.org/films/filmlist/87#:~:text=Rotoscoping%20describes%20the%20process%20of,make%20them%20look%20more%20realistic.

Rotoscoping Identity in A Scanner Darkly – Establishing Shot (iu.edu)

My Plan

My plan is to create storyboard of a character walking into a room and then they see a dalek enter that room. They then get exterminated and fall to the floor. I then plan to film that scene that I have just described and animate over that via rotoscoping. I think this plan is doable and I am really looking forward for the results.       

This is the story board that I have drawn out. I am really happy with this. Its rough and messy but it works.

The Reference Video

I have filmed this reference video to rotoscope over and I am really happy with how I filmed and directed it. 

Tutorial Video

 This is the tutorial video I used to learn how to rotoscope in Adobe Animate. I have imported the video into the project and have started animating over it.

I have done some research into storyboarding and rotoscoping and have created a plan for what I want to do for my animation. I need to do more research on rotoscoping and to add more images and sources.

This is the first few frames of the skeleton layer for my animation, I think the start looks worse than the end. I will have to do a lot of work to fix it. 

I have made the basic animation. It is a basic skeleton that I have animated to fall over. I do not like the start of the animation because it looks too wobbly and inconsistent. I hope when I add the details to make it look more human, that problem goes away. I am now going to add the limbs to the animation. I hope this does not take too long.

I have filmed the other half of the scene with the dalek. It took multiple shots to get right but I am so happy with the final result. Keith brought his full size dalek model into college and I am so happy that he did because I now have footage of a dalek that I directed. 

These are some videos of me directing the video with the dalek in it. I am really proud of how I directed here. It did take multiple shots which I will show here.

I am going to use the last video I directed because it already fits in with what I directed and animated. I am really proud of these shots because I learned a lot of technical skill with the camera.

This is the gif with the finished animation. I do hope that I manage to get audio added onto it of the laser firing. 

These are all the layers that I used for the animation. It was a lot of work to get the timing just right but I am very happy with how it turned out.

This is how I adding audio to the animation. I got audio from Doctor Who and imported it into Premier Pro and put it under the animation.

This is the final animated video with audio added in Premier Pro. I am really proud with how this turned out because it took a while and a lot of work to get right. It is how I envisioned it to look like when I planned out the storyboard. I unfortunately did not plan enough time to finish animating the character or fix the issues I had with him because I spent too much time on the Dalek.