Scarlet Animation Update

I was originally going to add in a key frame that is similar to this, but with the teachers help I have decided to simplify the animation by just moving the head when the eyes and wings appear in the animation to help lower the amount of things happening at once on the screen. Composition wise this image is not very good, and the last frame of that gif  fits visually well with the background that I have made.

Overall I think that I am on track to completing the rough for my animation and hopefully will be onto cleaning up and colouring around the next two weeks. I believe that my cleaning up and colouring skills are good enough that I can allocate more time to the actual animation instead.

StoryBoard Final

Feedback/Self Notes

Some work in progress shots and feedback that I've gotten compiled into some pictures.

Olivia's Ordeal

Olivia sees Tatsuya leaving for work and stops to ask if she could go out later that day to meet up with some old classmates. He replied that she cant, after what happened yesterday in a slightly irritated tone of voice.

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Olivia sees Tatsuya leaving for work. She stops him by calling him from around the hallway wall.

"Hey, can I go meet up with some friends later on today?" she asked.
"What?" he replied with a slightly irritated tone. He drops his suitcase and turns around to face her, "Not after what happened yesterday, you're staying right here!"

Suddenly anger welled up inside Olivia and tears started to form in her eyes. "Why do I have to ask you if I want to do anything!" she shouted, "I'm not your prisoner!"

Suddenly Tatsuya steps over to Olivia and grabs her collar. She is lifted up to her toes and he looks into her eyes. "You will not speak to me like that again, and you will not be leaving this house either." He says in a dangerous tone. "Do I make myself clear?" He asks.

Olivia sees something move behind Tatsuya towards the door. It's the Keyhole Man. The camera zooms onto the Keyhole Man's face and Olivia realizes that this might have been a sign.

She pushes Tatsuya away and runs past him towards the keyhole man. As she gets closer to the Keyhole Man, he starts glowing white and enlarges to around the height of the door. The Keyhole man is now large enough to fill the doorway with it's white light. Olivia stops in front of the door and reaches out. The colour spreads through her hands and up her arms. As she moves further into the doorway her whole body is enveloped with colour and white light from the Keyhole Man. As she stands outside the doorway on the other side, her expression turns to a calm one and tears form in her eyes. She is free.

Timing Fix

With some help from the teacher I decided to re-do all of the movements from scratch on a new layer. I first started by removing all of the existing gaps in my frames so everything was one frame apart - from there I experimented different frame gaps to create asymmetry in the movements of my animation. I used some timing chart examples the teacher gave me to give me an idea for how I should lay out my animation. Doing these before spacing them out helped out a great deal and I am very pleased with how well it turned out.

I slowed down some parts before the bite frames so there is more of an anticipation in the movements of the snake. I am still considering changing whether or not I should make the wings appear at this point of the animation or later on. I think it works decently at the moment but I will still experiment the wings appearing later on in the animation.

Second Phase

Thinking on maybe changing the wings up a bit, perhaps moving the outstretched wings to later on in the animation, during the third eye opening frames to allow it to be more dramatic and make the animation more interesting. Also with colour coming into the snake I think it might be better to limit the amount of things happening on the screen otherwise it may become too cluttered. I also think the transformation may be happening a bit too fast for my liking.

Introduction Process

When Riverford appears in the animation, I am still in the process of making the bite more snappy. I think the timing charts are really helping me with the whole process and when to add or move frames around to allow the animation to flow properly.

EDIT - 24/05

I think I have fixed the animation to a point where I can move on to the next few key frames. I was really challenging to get the timing of the bite right but for now this is decent enough that I am happy with it. Adding a few frames to the start of the bite seems to have helped with a more snapping motion instead of looking like he is just biting something without pausing.

Progress Gifs

1.

2.

The progress difference between the two are quite simple but effective in making the animation time a bit longer. In the first gif it I had made the snake open it's third eye by the end of the transformation, and the only difference into turning into a dragon is that it gains colour and wings/ I wanted to make a physical transformation a bit more obvious by separating the colour and wings from the third eye. Therefore in the second gif the snake transforms by gaining colour, wings, horns and finally opening the third eye.

I am not quite finished with all the key frames as I want the pause before opening the third eye a bit more obvious, maybe by tilting it's head a bit more?

For the colouring style I am not sure if I want to keep it so sketchy and out of the outlines. I think that it is a nice effect but I am not sure how well it will translate into a finished picture. Colouring style is something I will have to experiment in the future.

I had asked the teacher for advice around this point and he mentioned that I should make the snake a bit more fluid and dynamic. I agree with him and will be making the adjustments after I cement the animation into something that I like. I would also like the make the animation a bit longer as at the moment it is exactly 4 seconds and I do not want this to be the bare minimum time required.

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For Scarlet's animation I would like the add a part in the beginning of the animation where she is actually drawing the picture and throwing the picture into the air. Adding some flying leaves in the air to show the presence of wind is something I also have to add. 

Overall I have a lot of work to do but I think that I will get it done in time.

Background Sketch

This is what I ended up with when I refined my sketch. I had used references based on some illustrations of forests and trees in the background of the picture so that it does not feel too crowded. I got rid of some of foreground trees that seem to take up a lot of space. With this new background I like the freedom of it. The left side of the picture is more heavily saturated with trees whereas there is a clear space to the right, but it balances out due to the large tree in the foreground.

For the colour scheme I wanted to keep the green and yellows of my previous sketch, but also added in the darker colours and orange from my other concepts to make it feel more like a complete background. The colours I used in the other concept were quite boring and did not feel like it was a specific time of day, where this picture makes it clear that it is near sunset due to the orange/pink sky and the bright yellow of the trees in the background. I wanted to make the colour scheme kind of an autumn one, but not too orange, I want to contrast the colours with the green leaves in the foreground.

I am thinking of adding a little bit of purple to the bushes and tree leaves in the foreground as to make it a bit more interesting to look at, as well as allowing the eyes to adjust better to the bright nature of the colours. I am also planning to make the snake a purple colour (subject to change) so I thought that this might unify the character and the background better.

The original canvas size I used is not correct. I mistakenly used A4 size instead of 1080/1920 and I realised my mistake once I imported the background into Adobe Animate. I have since corrected the size here:

Background Concepts

This was one of the concepts I had for a background. I knew I wanted a forest setting and I settled on trees and bushes in the foreground, while a large amount of trees in the background. The composition of this picture seems very sinister as the trees on the right are almost looming over the characters (if they were placed there). Also the trees are far too curvy and seems a bit off. I feel as though there are far too many trees in the background that it feels too confining. I want a bit more freedom in a sense that the story is going in a positive way, and the large almost negative way the trees compact together does not give me that feeling.

Another thing about the trees in the background is that they are too straight and uniform. To make it feel like the forest is more whimsical and storybook-like I want to curve the trees into different directions.

However, some things that I like about this picture is the colours of the leaves and the ground are quite nice and gives the background a very friendly feeling. I have actually tried some different colour schemes as a base in the picture and the bright yellow and green colour scheme is very important to help the forest not feel intimidating;

Darker Colours:
The darker green and blues doesn't look too bad although doesn't correctly convey the colours I want. I used a gradient map to create both of these and I am enjoying the vast difference in tone and emotion in all three pieces. I don't believe that any of these colour schemes are useless and I will be incorporating them into my final piece.

Scarlet Practice

Did some practice to get used to some of the expressions. Some things I struggled with is her eyes, as there is a very fine line between looking cute and looking creepy.

Outside Research

The Secret of Kells
- Another animation style that I have found is "The Secret of Kells" by Osamu Tezuka has very saturated green colour and a lineart style that is very close to something that I am looking for. The mix of forest greens and light colours are a perfect style to base my background off.
- Some things that I do not like about this style is that the lines look quite straight and precise, whereas the art style that I am thinking of using for scarlet are wobbly lines along with a lot more curves.

Winnie The Pooh

- I have found the environment style is quite reminiscent to Winnie the Pooh, as the tree's shape and the environment's colours are very similar. The use of saturated colours and the storybook style is very helpful to look at to generate ideas for an animation for me to use. However I think that this style may not be entirely be accurate to the style that I am looking for although it is very close to what I had in mind.

- The use of lineart and extremely contrasting colours is what makes this style very appealing.

Development

Clothing:
- Scarlet's clothes are based off the Nintendo character Mario, as they share a similar colour scheme and outfit.
- Mario wears a red hat, long blue overalls with yellow buttons, red long sleeved shirt, gloves and brown shoes. Scarlet wears a short red shirt (with an 'S' design on it), blue overalls (with a big pocket at the front), white knee high socks with a red trim, and black shoes.
- These two characters are very similar in terms of design, but the shapes and expressions of each character keep them both unique and distinct. The designer did a very good job on taking elements of an existing character and create an entirely new one without making a carbon copy.

After Transformation Clothing:
- The clothing design for after the transformation allows for the front design of Scarlet's shirt to show the design "S" on it. The character pack explains that the "S" stands for "Superman" and also "Scarlet" which could emphasis her newly found confidence.
- I feel like it also has a double meaning which shows her new friendship with the snake.
- The designer also played around with different types of transformations with her overalls, at one point only one strap was shown to be pulled down. In the end I think that she stuck with both straps being put down as that is a good indicator to show how her personality has fully improved and shows a lot more confidence.

Shape:
- Scarlet's face is shaped like a square, but still retains the circle form, making it seem round in some angles looking up, and sort of squarish when looked at straight on.
- The facial expressions of the past Scarlet designs are all very nice but the final design with the droopy eyes is the best one - the personality of Scarlet is very much defined by her expressions and I think that the way that the designer created her eyes adds a lot of distinctness to the character that differentiates her from other existing characters.

- Looking at the development sheet the designer kept the shape of her head fairly consistent and mostly played around with the height of her body.
- The designer wanted Scarlet's body shape to be long to contrast with the antagonist who has a squashed box shape.
- Some body shapes in Scarlet's development look either too long or too short in comparison to the head size, but the middle ground that the designer found allows the character to look very visually pleasing.

Character:
- Her pose before the transformation is quite reserved and shy, whereas afterwards her hands are placed on her hips and the expression on her face is much more confident.

Transformation:
- Some parts of character development are shown through her smile, for example she used to have two rows of fully sharp teeth, but this idea was not  used due to it being too similar to Riverford. Instead only one tooth is shown when her mouth is open.

Research

First Impressions:

- The character I was given was Scarlet. I initially thought Scarlet was a boy but after asking the creator and reading some of the notes in the character pack it became clear that Scarlet was just a tomboy designed to confuse the viewer.

- At first the story didn't really make sense to me but after researching a bit it became a lot clearer, and I had come up with multiple ideas that may work.

Transformation: Scarlet
- Scarlet's transformation is her gaining confidence and the ability to become a great artist.
- The physical part of her transformation is her outfit changing - the straps of her overalls comes down to rest around her waist, and her expression and pose becomes a lot more confident.

Transformation: Riverford
- The second character is a snake called Riverford. He also transforms but not in the way that Scarlet does.
- Before transforming Riverford used to eat the colours of the environment (such as trees) and the townspeople (like the antagonist Christopher).
- Eating these living this can be harmful as it seems not just the colour disappears, but the life of the object that the snake eats as well.
- After transforming Riverford starts eating the drawings that Scarlet creates, thus allowing him to become fully coloured without hurting anybody, this seems to be his main transformation.