A1 Assignment: Identity - Pre-production & Planning

Week Three - Day Eight

On day eight, I decided to put my whole title sequence into a storyboard. This would help fluidity and efficiency in the production process as it would be clear to me which scene comes next - my thoughts would be organised and orderly.

The start of the title sequence, shown in panels 1-4, is Stephs morning routine. It starts off with an alarm sounding to commence the title sequence, followed by a fast paced montage accompanied by upbeat music and sound effects. The fast paced montage was inspired by the The Simpsons title sequence with the chaotic and busy scenes creating an uplifting atmosphere that viewers enjoyed. As the audience reviews on The Simpsons title sequence were mainly positive, I decided to incorporate my own fast paced montage as to appeal to my audience in the same way The Simpsons achieved. 

The middle of the title sequence, as shown in panels 5-9, is the showing of the photos. Taken by Modern Family, as Steph passes each photo frame decorated on the wall, it will zoom into full screen showing the memory behind the photo as it was captures. This not only relates to the theme of identity in showing how memories and the people around you are what make a person who they are, but it also links to the Modern Family title sequence of how they used photo frames to capture each family and setting - a creative concept that showed the main characters, settings and also captivated the audience. Because this specific concept was widely respected and admired, I decided to take inspiration for my own title sequence to hopefully make my title sequence more original and recognisable.

The ending of the title sequence, as shown in panels 10-13, express Steph as frustrated as the bus ends up zooming off without picking her up for school. This links to the start of the title sequence where Stephs mum yells "Hurry up!". As the bus zooms off, it reveals the title of the show standing behind the bus almost like how the clouds reveal "The Simpsons" in their title sequence. I wanted the title of the show to have its own scene as many shows, like Family Guy, Modern Family, The Simpsons etc, have a separate scene to emphasise the title of the show. The last panel is Steph exclaiming "Ugh, typical!" as to incorporate a bit of comedy in there whilst simultaneously creating the shows atmosphere as positive, comedic and uplifting.

Throughout my title sequence will also be the credits in typography relating to the theme of the show, like Anne with an E displaying their credits in the branches of the trees. By using typography linking to the theme of the show, the reviews of Anne with an E mentions its beautiful visuals regularly - I am hoping that linking my typography to the theme will also receive positive reviews just like Anne with an E did.

Following the storyboards, I decided to create a little mood board of colour palettes, what the animation style would look like, the atmosphere and tone I was hoping to create and the things that will be added such as backgrounds and characters to fully get my thoughts out of my head and expressed onto some sort of paper for an even clearer process.

Week Three - Day Nine

The start of a new week meant the start of a new task. This week's focus was on our pitch. Our pitch would present our final idea, explaining what it would be, what it would include, where we would source our effects from and, overall, what it would look like.

Week Three - Day Ten To Fifteen

I presented my pitch to my tutor, Paula, who afterwards had a clear understanding of what the visuals and sounds would be in my title sequence. Before I could definitely begin, however, I needed to complete a risk assessment to show professionalism and my understanding of the potential risks involved:

Completing my risk assessment, the last thing I needed to do was to have it signed by my tutor Paula. I sent it over and, luckily, she had it signed in no time - I was good to go.

With my storyboards, risk assessment and rough sketches all finished, it was now a matter of actually beginning and finalising.                 

First, I collected all of my sound effects of both Mixkit:

And Pixabay:

Then I started to draw the assets and backgrounds I needed for my title sequence all on Procreate: 

Procreate is primarily a drawing app used on iPads. They offer a variety of tools, brushes, techniques and colours allowing you to create anything you like. Though I won't be using animation on this app, you can make short animations if you wish as well.

I completed all of my drawings on my iPad and Apple Pen:

of which I planned to transfer onto the Apple Mac in my college classroom where I would use a combination of After Effects, Premiere Pro and Photoshop to animate these drawings:

Something to keep in mind is how long it took to draw all of my assets for jut this short title sequence. For future projects, I will definitely take into consideration how long it took to complete the drawings if I choose to go down the animation route again.

Here is a time lapse of the process of drawing my backgrounds and characters:

Some assets I had to put together before hand as they needed to be Photoshopped into the actual photo frame, like this town photograph:

And so, with all my of my assets completed and ready to go, it was a matter of trying out techniques to make sure I knew how to do them before I dove straight into editing on After Effects.

A technique I needed to learn on After Effects was a Puppet Pin Tool. The Puppet Pin Tool is where you place pins onto your character and image allowing you to warp and move your character or image by moving your placed pins. This is the tutorial I watched before hand:

Following the tutorial, which I found to be quite straight forward, I had placed my pins. However, it wasn't long before I encountered my first problem.

Problem One:

Because I had drawn Steph with her arms right by her sides, this in turn warped the whole of her body when trying to make her arms swing up and down using the Puppet Pin Tool.

Here is the original drawing:

And here's how it animated using the Puppet Pin Tool:

How did I problem solve?

Well, the solution was quite easy to find: all I needed to do was redraw Steph so her ams had much more space from her torso.

Here are the changes I made:

And here is the animation I was able to create:

As you can see, having the arms out allowed me to experiment further with movement, making the movements more fluid and the body less warped. I also added "Easy Ease" to the keyframes just to get the full effect of the new animation I was able to create.

Reflection

Although quite a hassle, I'm glad to have come across this problem as I now know how to draw my characters if I wish to animate on After Effects using the Puppet Pin Tool and drawing characters with their arms spaced is vital. 

After much experimentation, drawing, shading and perfecting, I was finally ready to start my title sequence.