Category: Children’s society

Start with the recently changes of animatic. I mainly changed the half-later part.

This is the first version of this part.

Then I decided to emphasis how the music treats and helps her. It’s not enough to only show her expression. So I let the strings appears from her ears and with the moving of it the shadow disappears. Then she stands up and pats the dirt off her body. I want to express she is not afraid anymore, the pressure and scare leave her just like the dirt she just patted off.

This is the third version. I add the scene that she is writing music and also change the camera angle to make this scene not too simple. I prefer not to let the character stay in the middle of the background all the time.

Some keyframes of the bullying scene. I considered a lot about this part. I don’t want to show the violence elements so I focus on the shape-changing about character’s body. She becomes soft like a sponge, easily shaped and vulnerable.

Also I finished some animation of character. These three scene are simpler relatively.

About the background, I may not change it a lot, the problem is how the people fade when the character walking on the street and how bullying people appear and disappear. I think I should work on it first and then finish the rest animation of the character.

After the tutorial I made some changes about aniamtic.

I remembered when I delete the part which she is writing music I was thinking about to put it at the end of the story but I didn’t do it. But seems this thing is quite important for this girl so I changed this part to emphasis it. The strings still are the symbol of music and I put some geometric shape on it and they will move with the music. I think the changing of this part makes it more smooth especially the connecting with the scene that she passes this therapy to the other.

Also this part. I add more expression on her face and finished the animation of this part.

Some animating work based on the established part of animatic .

This is the beginning scene. The interesting thing is these two parts including the animation principle exercise that we did the last term. The lip-synch exercise is really helpful at that time so it’s not that difficult for me to draw this one. This is a side face and only had the head in the scene which is easier than the previous work I did.

The walking part is not smooth enough and the character doesn’t go back to the starting point.It’s an unsuccessful loop needs to be improve.

And about this part, I already did some keyframes before but when I work on it I still need to record a video of my self. I try to bring her feelings to my mind like what I did during the LAS course and finally get a good one to use. I think the moment that she takes her hand out of the pocket is an important point. It’s a starting of the movement that she turns around and at this time her arms form a trace line of her body which I think worth to focus on.

I think the early stage work is almost done at this time.

This is the finished animatic for now. https://vimeo.com/417526148 password:MACA

Also I made a lot of changes of the animatic.

This is the old one.

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The new one.

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This part confused me for a long time. Because I don’t want to delete the writing music part. But it is really hard to connect with the later part. I prefer to design a transform between these two scenes instead of change to another scene directly. So I made a new animatic for this part. And I will put the writing design to the end of the story maybe. About this new animatic, I choose the strings to represent the music. I’m not saying she is playing the guitar or some specific instrument. It’s just a symbol which will appear at the later part of this story as well.

And I also updated these two style frames which I think have the biggest contract. The first one is the bullying part. I’m about to use a very rough line to create the people who want to attack her and also use a very bright colour to make this scene have more visual impact.

I try to make this frame to be gentle and peaceful. And the strings will shows at this part as the symbol of her music. The shapes will move gently with music and it was inspired by Oskar Fischinger’s work.

I developed the character design with the model sheet. Fortunately, I don’t have to change a lot of this character design.

Charles helps a lot about how to express this girl’s fear and panic when she walking on the street. I think a good animator must be a good actor. We really need to feel how the character feels and express it for the characters

We mainly discuss this part. Charles is super good at express character’s mood with body language and I was inspired a lot. When I follow his lead I really understand the feeling that the character has and really involved in it. When we discussing the part about the character was swallowed by the shadow, Charles first told me to stand up and down several times and I was a bit confused. And then I realized this is the preparation for the part when the character crouches her body. I crouch my body too and calm down. Different from the feeling that I do the stand-up and down, my body was warm at that time but now I really feel helpless and my body is not warm at all when I brought the characters’ feeling to my mind.

So I made some keyframes in the following days to not let the feelings go away.

After the tutorial, I updated some content of the animatic. This is the ver 2 animatic.https://vimeo.com/414478558

I add the scene that she is writing music. But if I draw the composition like this it’s very hard to connect with the later part so I may change the composition. And I was recommended to have a look at Oskar Fischinger’s works which is really inspired. He made the music visible through the changing of different geometric shapes. This is what I would love to do at the end of my work. The girl is listening to music, her expression will be soft and gentle, and a lot of shapes and pattern is moving with the music.

And come to the part where she is swallowed by the bad mood. I made some changes to this part. Because the old one is hard to link with the front frame.

About the colour tone. Firstly I was thinking to use the cold tone colour to express the panic of the character. like this:

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I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to make this scene lose all the colours become to the simple tone which I think maybe more effective to show her feelings.

I finished the storyboard which I think is really a big progress.

And I got more information about this character: she writes her own music. I could add more things to the apart which she said her music is a big sort of therapeutic release to her. She could relax and peaceful when she is writing music the could have the contract with the later part(the school bullying) I think this animatic is a bit empty for now. Some part is too long without moving so I should add more contents.

These three frames which I think is the most important part of the animatic so I finished them first. They link together and also a contrast between two different mood.

I was thinking about how to express the school bullying scene and also had a look at some works about school bullying. This one made me empressed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPZm-B0zQN8

This film is really attractive and amazing, but the bullying scene is too directly to make the audience feel a real sense of stress and painful same as the character. I want to do it differently, just to show the shape of the bad guys. I may focus on the reaction e girls to show her pressures.

I changed the start of the story. I did some research about PTSD. There are lots of “triggers” can cause people who had PTSD re-experiencing of traumatic events like nightmares, flashbacks and painful thoughts. The reason why I put the character on the street is I want to express this kind of negative feeling will happen without warning. One second before she walking on the street just like the other people but suddenly everything change and become aggressive. But she could do nothing because the feeling is so strong.

And the part that she is enjoying the music. I keep the music bar behind her. Her expression will be more and more relaxed with music. It may show how music treats her mind.

After the tutorial, I decided to develop the character based on the figure at the right corner.

I kinda mix this figure from all of my initial design. A short hair girl with the sweater, and a headphone in her ear. It’s an ordinary girl with nothing special. I don’t want to make any exaggerated features for her. I think she becomes a special one when she starts to tell her story.

I draw a little start of the story. The girl is talking about she’d argue she had PTSD. And she feels panic and stressful frequently. I don’t know what things made her had PTSD so I just describe her feelings with shadow. The shadow represents the bad mood which is spreading through her body and finally covers her. Then the scene becomes black and transfers to the back of her locker. The next part is about her experiencing school bullying so I made this part start in front of her locker which I think is a signal of school.