Within this blog I am going to document the journey that my good friend Kyle Magowan and myself will be embarking on, focusing on the techniques and inspirations behind Avalon, a 12 week ambitious project to create an animation piece that will play at least two - three minutes long.
Weeks 1- 3: Pre-Production.
For both Kyle and myself this would be the first animated project that we would tackle, at least of this scale. We both felt that a great amount of detail had to be paid attention to when regarding the pre-production phase. The story behind this piece was conceded prior to the Christmas holidays of 2016, to which would then be developed and morphed into what it is now. We wanted to create a short piece that would take a character on a journey through colourful and bizarre landscapes. This stage was a great deal of fun as the possibilities were endless, we explored so many crazy ideas, regardless of our technical ability to pull it off, looking at designing buildings and even an entire city; to where our protagonist would reside or having our scenery above the clouds(similar to Bespin in the Star Wars universe). As the story was being redesigned one thing remained constant, that our protagonist would progress through our world to discover a large alien monument, a simple A to B motive.
When our story was complete it was time to design our world. Both Kyle and myself are massive video game fans, this was the first place we would look for inspiration. Games such Fire watch, Journey, No Mans Sky and others within the sci-fi genre played a huge part into designing the world that our character would visit. The art style was a important factor that we needed to nail, we looked at hundreds if not thousands of work from amazing concept artists on Pinterest and dribble, saving and cataloguing pieces that we felt would fit best with our vision.
Over the course of this time I started to sketch the backdrops that would later be painted within Adobe's Photoshop. I personally prefer to sketch into a notepad rather then straight into Photoshop as it gives me a firm foundation to work from. Throughout this process I then took a single piece into Photoshop to experiment with colours and styles You can see some of these sketch's here:
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
Weeks 4-6: Pre-Production
For these few weeks we used them to refine our story plot and story boards, once the story board and backdrop sketch's were completed it was time to paint them within Photoshop with the art style being of a low-polygon standard. The process was very simple as I would take the polygon tool to draw rather then my graphics tablet. I repeated this process for all sketches, creating a very simple scenery that would later be perfected weeks down the line. The process was extremely fun, as I painted I could almost see the animations playing out before me, to which I would quickly doddle down for the future.
Weeks 7-9: Production
It was this stage that the heavy lifting was done. Our story was completely painted and was time to make them spring to life. To achieve this we imported our files into After Effects. Throughout the weeks I would animate Foley effects such as lighting, camera movements and smoke effects; jumping back and forth with Kyle until we both felt that everything was just right. Creating the smoke effect that would be used throughout the animation was a tedious, slow but rewarding process. Adobe's Animate was used where I would draw frame by frame for a total of three seconds. Fortunately I was able to discover a technique that would aid in creating the motion of smoke. Within After effects I took four layers and placed them in their desired positions, a wave warp effect was then placed to create a waving motion. This would act as my template to sketch over in Animate. At this point Kyle was responsible for rigging the main protagonist for animation; which would be rendered out and placed into these scenery's.
If you'd like to read more on character rigging why not check out his blog here:
https://magowankyle1.wixsite.com/logicalorder/single-post/2017/05/10/AVALON
​
Lighting example:
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
Week 9 was dedicated to sourcing sounds that I felt would best fit. I used a variety of both Foley samples and synthesises to create the piece. Drills and other metallic sounds were used for the drone, variety of percussive elements for the journey and synthesis for transiting scenes. I didn't want to create a piece that would be simple, fun and not overly complicated as to not take away from the animation.
All that was needed done for the final weeks was to cut it together, add the audio and clean it up.
Well that sums every thing up. Be sure to keep tuned to the page as I will be continuing to add further projects and blogs within the future.
