lockdown gifs

week 1

Brief

On Monday we were given a short one week brief to create gifs based on words that related to lockdown as a class, we've got to choose 10 of these words and turn them into animated gifs with specific requirements of colours we can choose from. I feel this may be hard to work with as I love using colours a lot but I think it does add on a bit of extra challenge which could come out being fun. I am overall excited for this project as It doesn't seem to rely on creating a full on animation but rather just having any sort of movement in our illustrations.  
Monday's Quick Exercise 
We had been given a task to try and recreate a small gif of ourselves turning around - this one wasn't restricted with colours so I went a head and took some photographs of myself and illustrated myself. I had some issues with the export as it looks as though I have been using different sizes which is odd as I've used the animation feature in procreate before and haven't had this issue. 
Size
500 × 500px

Colours!
#ff0000 #0066ff #ffff00 #00cc00 #000000 #ffffff

Frames
2 frames, 3 frames, 5 frames, 6 frames, 8 frames, 9 frames, 10 frames, 12 frames, 15 frames, 20 frames

For our first weeks task we have to pick 10 words that relate to our lockdown experience and create them into gifs with specific frames and restricted colours. I feel I will have a bit of trouble coming up with ideas for the words just based on the colours alone as the vibrancy isn't what I usually work with. I am thinking not to just choose words already as this seems to restrain my ideas even further so I'll be choosing out of the ones I do like and see which ones would work with the frames. But for the majority I have thought about: Animal Crossing, Stargazing, Sleeping, Reading, Anxiety, Amazon, Plants, Sims4, Depressed, Coffee, Cleansing, Haircuts and Bunnies - these may be changed for other ideas that our class has come up with.
Video Research

Before I began any more gif making I have been looking into tutorials for both procreate and photoshop to help me understand it better. 
Gif Research (Illustrations)

I went to Pinterest to get inspired by other illustrators who create simple gif images to help me begin this project and get some ideas on how I could choose some lockdown related words. 
Amazon - 2 Frame

This frame was the hardest to work out as I wasn't sure what I could really do with a limited time frame. I chose Amazon and decided to have a parcel stack on top of a larger parcel as through lockdown most of us have been ordering deliveries online. I decided to add some colour to this gif as It looked overly plain before. I'm not sure if I like this though.
Sims4 - 3 Frames

This was the first gif I decided to work on and I had the vision of using the sims loading screen. While making this fully line art I was wondering if I should make it a larger frame rate but other than the yellow glowing sparks I wasn't actually sure what else I could do with this so I left it as and put it at 0.1 seconds to make it still look as through it is rotating. My first idea was to try and use the other colours and change their layers to shade which I prefer much more as it just ads more to the gif. 
Masks - 5 Frames

Masks wasn't really on my list but I had the idea of creating animal themed ones - my original colours however suited them more but my koala looks pretty plain without colours and I've had to change the brown bear to a polar bear as well as changing the owl but there wasn't too much lost with that one.
Sleeping - 6 Frames

After realising I couldn't mess with the layers to make the colours to my taste, I decided to keep the previous gifs but make them line art for most of it - with the sleeping animation I was thinking of bubbles which would then expand to the person sleeping. My original idea with the lighting was 2 Frames but with the bubbles I needed more frames to work with and decided that 6 would be the best choice.
Depression - 8 Frames
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I feel like during lockdown that it's hard to sometimes cope with everything that's happening so I chose Depression to represent how difficult mental health can affect someone. I tried to incorporate more colours into this one and see if I could also work with a darker theme as the dark entraps the character. I had to go into photoshop later as some images began looking pixelated within the colours but that was a pretty easy fix. I did 2 different gifs where the ending lasts 1 seconds vs 0 seconds.  
Walking - 9 Frames

For this gif I wanted to try and create one that had more motion into the character so I chose walking for this frame - I did however find it a bit tricky trying to get the legs and arms correct and I tried to use different colours to show more depth as it it's supposed to be from a side view.
Reading - 10 Frames

I took some photos of myself flipping through some books and having them stack up as I finished reading multiple books (why each size book is different), I added blue to the background as to add a pop of colour and make sure you could tell that was the background and for it to not blend with the foreground.
Gaming/Nintendo - 12 Frames

Originally I was going to choose Animal Crossing as the beginning of lockdown the newest version of the game was released and caught everyone's attention but I decided against it and chose Nintendo but focused on Legend of Zelda breathe of the wild. I wanted to try animation with typography for at least one of these gifs and the font for the game looks pleasing to me, I didn't go all out with the animation as I wasn't sure what much to do with text so I kept it simple. I did two as I wasn't sure of the first design but decided to keep it in - now I think it doesn't look too bad and I like the glowing affects.
Discord - 15 Frames

I chose Discord as it's been the main social site to keep up with everyone as well as being able to join in communities - for the gif I wanted to add a bit more to to the screen so I added an accepting call, some texts, face calls and an end call at the end. This was done pretty fast although it has many frames.
Haircut - 20 Frames


For my last gif I didn't want to over complicate things just because I had more frames to work with and I felt like haircuts should be the best option as I and a few other I know have just been cutting our hair during the lockdown weather out of boredom, wanting to try a new style or just not liking it long. I went with 3 different hairstyles and shortened them or made them become less thick. I used a variety of colour to make each character stand out. I think I like this one mainly due to the pencil textured line art brush I used. The process images I have are from how they saved to my laptop in which I used photoshop to draw over the pixelated areas especially when it came to the reds.
Sketch Gifs

I did some quick sketches to begin this last gif as the frames where long and I couldn't think of many ideas at this point - I played around in photoshop to see if moving the images would help me figure out what I want from this last gif but I think cutting the hair short shows more of lockdown compared to letting it grow out so I will be using the first gif. For the second character I didn't cut their hair shorter but made the volume in the hair become flatter/thicker. 

Title Sequence

WEEK 2

Brief

Create a title sequence of between 25 and 45 seconds.
Your title sequence should contain the title of your feature.
Your title sequence should contain the name of at least 3 of your actors.

Select 1 from the following list:
YA SciFi TV series, Costume drama,  True Crime Documentary series, RomCom film, US Dramedy, US Dramedy, UK sitcom, Reality TV / fly on the wall series, Hospital Drama, Specialist with a quirk, Supernatural horror, Scandicrime. 
Research

I was going though some of my favourite shows and their title intros, I tried to find different genres as possible to show the differences. At first I was going to go through the genres listed but found this a bit hard as I don't really find those genres that appealing other than a few shows so I thought best for me to show the ones I've seen and enjoyed before I decided to pick a genre.
Saul Bass has a more simplistic way of designing and animating her intros but he still manages to make them look good. 
The animations in Studio Ghibli films are one of my favourites from the action, the adventure and scenery. 
I moved on to looking for story board artists and see their thought process and how they come up with ideas - most storyboards are just quick simple sketches in greyscale. I will be working on thinking of theme Ideas of the Title I'll be creating so I can understand what I want the title to be called as well as how it's structured. 

Genre: Fantasy/ Sci-Fi

I have decided to choose Fantasy as my genre, although not on the original list we asked some questions and have been told that Fantasy is perfectly fine to go with. I will proceed to do more research on fantasy title sequences and anything that feels like it would help me come up with ideas for my own title and ideas.

"Probably adapted from a popular book series where the world/galaxy/realm can only be saved by a seemingly normal teenager who is surprised to discover that they've got amazing powers & skills." This is the description given for the YA Sci-Fi genre and since I'm doing it fantasy I thought best to try and keep with the description as Sci-Fi was the general genre I was going to pick out. 
Continuing my research I looked into the Game of Thrones Intro more to find concept sketches and details of the show. When It comes to GOT they revolve it around the Dragons as well as other characters, there is no main character at all but rather main 'Houses'. Looking into these images I really like the aspect of it being a map that shows the entire world of the franchise as it swoops around and builds itself up.
The Hobbit and Lord of the rings does not really have an intro but their end credits look just as good. I like how there's some sketched details but there's not really much when it comes to the affects as it just blends into the next credit. The world of Middle-Earth however does have the must stunning scenery and colours.
The art of How to train your Dragon & The Hobbit

I had some book research ready for this project as it shows the art of how these films where made as well as some storyboards and character designs. I also thought this would be helpful with my Dragon theme title sequence as it shows different variety of Dragon styles I could work with as well as background location and sketches for the hobbit and the maps used for their fantasy world which reminds me of the Game of Thrones Intro title. 
After Effect Tutorials

​I want to try out after effects for the title and possibly the sound for my title sequence and have found fantasy related videos that could help me. I looked into transitions ass well to see how I could go from scene to scene in other affects. 
Sound

​I really enjoy the music of ambiance sounds as they give a warm vibe to the affects and sounds as well as making me want to begin an adventure. I have also been recommended kpop versions of bard core and enjoyed the style of it. I am not exactly sure what to do with the sound or if I may think about doing a story line voice over.
I decided before I choose a cast and title I should think of the themes so I can understand the whole overall idea better and I am thinking of going forwards with the dragon idea as I find it the most appealing (although talking animals does sound great too).
As i was looking up the size for my animation I noticed that the 4:3 ratio is far too small and I wanted a more wider landscape. I will most likely use ratio of 16:9 (1920x1080). Luckily Photoshop also has this file under 'Film & Video' already so the file should be easy to work with.
Storyboard Ideas

I feel my ideas on paper don't make much sense so I'll be writing up what I thought when designing them. 
I tried to come up with different title names after the first two as It would be best to write them out and play around.
1. My first Idea for the sequence is to have a dark forest setting where an orb glows as the frame moves the orbs turns into separate tiny pieces which later transforms into a dragon - I want the dragon to be able to slide into the title at the end.

2. My second Idea was something similar of Game of Throne's title where it Includes the map of the world and how certain areas pop u/ start being constructed. Almost like a pop up book. 
3. For this I thought about an eye that would open up to show the world these dragons lived in and with the 2 characters looking out in the distance. This would later turn into fire and the title will be revealed, I went with Tail instead of Tale for this idea as it's similar but also makes the title feel a bit weird. 

4. I was looking at the Bridgerton sequence for this one and liked how the tree was forming objects and characters so I thought of using a tree that would lay a dragon and some eggs, this would later pan out and go to the top of the tree for the title.
5. This idea was inspired by lord of the rings and to have a forest with ruins hidden deep inside where a special egg would lay. Next I have a village that is hidden within the mountains. I laid this one out weirdly and have used arrows to guide. I thought using an arrow for the title would be cool as the main character's trait is having to have archery lessons.

6. I used my artist research to try and make an intro look more like vector art and Saul Bass inspired, I have drawn different designs of dragons but I could possibly change this to the 3 characters. I am just unsure about what movement could be included. 
7. Watching the intro for The100 I realised they began with the title clashing and then moved onto landscapes of the world they are based in and what they expect to see that season. I tried to make the title go first but /coming up with ideas after the title was hard so I'm not really going to be taking this idea further.

8. For my last idea I tried to include the traits of each characters along with scenery shots, at this point I thought maybe the animals in this world could also be big... or at least some. I'm not happy with the font idea for this but I will be coming up with better ideas for fonts digitally that on paper. 

WEEK 3

Audio and Title Testing

Before I begin to sketch out final designs for my animation I wanted to jump into Premiere Pro and figure out the sound, at first I was going to use After Affects but have been told this software is much easier to use. For this i want a forest like ambiance with some sounds of Dragons and perhaps Taverns. I chose a simple forest photograph and sized it to the size I will use in Photoshop as a thumbnail, I went back into it a bit later to change the photograph slightly by adding cloud affects and a simple title. I am still unsure how to move text from Photoshop into Premiere so I think for the final I will use Premiere's text options.  At first I messed up by thinking the overall time was in minutes and not seconds so I had to go back and edit it shorter but I had a lot of fun working with audio and just editing. 
I decided to do a small amount of more research before I began to think of my final idea and I had remembered about the Avatar episode of the original avatar and the style it has. I have been thinking to make my dragon characters based on the 4 element so this would tie perfectly with it. 
Raya is a newer movie that is based on dragons but i thought the style was a bit similar to Avatar but it is more paper like which I think would be hard to convey over on a digital media however I do like the colour scheme of these designs.
Final Storyboard (Digital)

Before I began to think how I was going to use my thumbnails to fit more time I created more thumbnails and thought about what else I could add and how this would work with the elements.
Process

Below I have put up images separate and created small bits of them into gifs to show my process clearly. I think for most of these the images may end up being a bit low quality, I am still unsure how to fix this as it may be due to weebly itself. I have been using procreate and my file size only managed up to 93 layers so for most of my animation I will need to separate some animations and then bring them back all together once finished.
I have separated my thumbnail animations to show the full process of how I create the movement. I started off with the title with the Dragon, I think this needs a background which will fit well into flying scenes. This was so far the hardest as I couldn't copy and past and needed the dragon to physically move it's entire body and head so it wouldn't look stiff.​
With my forest thumbnail I wasn't sure what to animate until I added two trees in the foreground and made it look like my image was zooming in then the trees would disappear from view. I haven't saved all my mages and converted them to gifs to leave out how i'm managing transitions as I usually think of them later.
I then moved onto more landscape based backgrounds and I wanted the orb to be bright to show more visibly during night and day. After this I was thinking of combining the dragon shadows I made in my thumbnails ideas but change it to look similar to the Brooklyn nine nine intro where it shows the characters(dragons) up close that are going to be laying around in the landscape.
With the end title I wanted fire to breathe out of the dragon as the text later on appears. I think this last scene is my favourite so far.
Overall this file size didn't have enough layer space so I ended up having to split them up while also still making sure the transitions worked well. As I was working I did manage to find out what a mask layer does and this helped me when it came to the actor names. I did think to add all my layers but this seemed time consuming as I had to work with 93 layers for 8 files so I have tried my best to show my layers. I have a separate area filled with images that haven't been merged as I was trying to figure out the best way to make it all work.
Putting it all together

Once I had finished my animations in Procreate I put it all onto Premiere Pro so I could add the audio and make sure each file was there and not cropped weirdly. For my actor names I played around with the animation by hand but with the title I played around in Premiere Pro instead, watching it through the play button it comes off a bit blurry but once exported it became more clear as I worried a bit in case it wouldn't. I also added a few more sound affects to my original audio such as wind, water and fire noises.

final

I am pretty pleased with how my final came out, If i were to do this again I think I would prefer less time and spend more time using Premiere Pro to do transitions instead as it would have saved me time but i chose against it as I wasn't sure how else I would manage to just get in between 25-45 seconds. I also feel my ending should have been a bit longer as my text seems a bit glitchy as I did have to cut it down making the movement appear weird. Overall i have had some experience doing animations but really short and messy ones so I enjoyed making one that was more clean and colourful. I had to make sure the volume was accurate on mobile as it was on pc and had to re upload everything, hopefully it works well on both devices. 
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