Drawing the Backgrounds

As I decided on a specific style for the artwork sticking to this was key so I spent a while creating the backgrounds I decide that there need to be a decent amount of texture to each one. But not loads as it might look as if it's meant to be realistic. I decided to use a texture as for the main background and blended this in with my colour choices seen in previous post. Other than this I added in the different elements such as the building and clouds at and coloured this sticking to my scheme. I did this for the first few backgrounds whilst also drawing the main elements such as the plane at the same time to make sure they looked ok when put together. 

This one is the first scene of my animation and is meant to be an airport with the control tower, hangers etc. 

This is just a transition scene for flowing between the airport and the warehouse which I think will work well in the animation.

Finally this scene is the edge of the warehouse where the trucks will come out with the city in the background.

Chosen Text

Linking back to my previous post I have decided on the text that I will use in the animation - 

"Food miles cause 19 million tonnes of emissions per year so..."

"Grow your own veg" 

"Buy local food" 

"Together we can reduce Food Miles' 

This is the order they will appear in the animation and I think it will make the message clear as well as help the animation have a kind of story it follows. 

Text over Voice over

After getting half way through designing my animation I decided to add in some text to further the message. As I was not sure it was clear and watching it back I released there was a good opportunity to add some text in a certain scenes. I'm not planning on writing paragraphs or anything like that though just a few lines at certain points to clarify and help the message be conveyed. 

I also decided on text over a voice over as I didn't want to break up the music and getting a flowing voice over to work with the animation could be hard. Time issues also played a part here. 

1960's Animation - UPA

As a follow up to my retro cartoons I think I found a more focused theme to follow. Whilst researching animation I was really drawn in by the style of the 1960's animation particularly the work of UPA (united productions of america) at this time. The style really appealed to me for example the background used were simple coloured backgrounds for the most part with a little bit of texture to add depth often the way these were drawn gave them a illustrative feel. The characters are as I described in my other post but I think focusing on the work of UPA during this period this gives me a stronger visual style as UPA released a lot of different animations around this period (such as Magoo)

and the all had the same structure and style so the company obviously had there style and it one that I want to follow in my work. Hopefully finishing my animation with it looking like it could be from this time. 

Retro Cartoons

As a style for my animation the style of retro cartoons from around the 1950's is a style that really like. The key elements I think would work really well for this project these elements being the use of shading and simplicity, it is also a semi realistic animation style.  I decided to look at these further by searching for examples. To look at the visual style further as well as the way they are animated which should hopefully give me a clearer idea of what I wanted to do. 

Looking through a number of example

s I really like the way the characters are drawn it's a really fun style. They all have these massive noses that helps shape the face and then these tiny legs and often arms and then a simple shape for the body which has added detail for clothes. Which sounds like it shouldn't work but when you see it together it just does. As I said I think this is a really fun style and it will stop my animation from looking too serious considering the subject. Also with the ideas I have so far for my animation I think I could make a unique main character for it which would add a story element. 

As for backgrounds these are kept simple often they are not that defined and there is just textures with blocks of colour and the other elements of the background would be added in by lines. This style works and backgrounds and flat coloured characters go together really well. So far for my ideas I have a variety of backgrounds so I think this style would stop me spending too much time on these elements but also differentiate between the backgrounds well. 

The animation style is also not as complicated as more modern styles which suite the art style and the backgrounds as well. Also it will help me as it's my first project on After Effects. 

It is also (at this point) a wide theme to follow so it gives me freedom to experiment and play around with the visual style a little bit sticking to the overall style of a vintage cartoon. 

Music

After having a long search I finally found a piece of music that I want to use for my animation. It has the vintage rock feel that I was after and I think it will help my animation stand out. The track is called 'Gold on the ceiling' by The Black Keys the first 28 seconds or so are instrumental intro this is the part of the song I will be using. I fairly confident the track will work with the animation i'm also hopeful as I  don't have many other ideas on the music.

The track can be heard here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yCIDkFI7ew

Sound Effects

I found a very good site for getting sound effects http://www.grsites.com/archive/sounds/ which pretty much has most of the sounds I would need. However I haven't decided yet whether I will use sound effects because I have a lot of parts where a sound effect could be applied mixed with the music it might get a bit too much and sound messy. Saying that though if I watch my animation back with just the music a decided it needs sound effects I will look back on the issue. 

The Pitch

So the pitch was on monday and overall I think it went well although my animatic didn't really show up on the projector I think I still got the idea and message across well enough. I got some positive feedbacks on my ideas and style and also some useful ideas from the group on music and how to improve certain parts of the animation. 

Music was useful as I was stuck but the suggestions gave me a new place to go with that, which hopefully works out.  

Now I have a clear idea of what I want to do and the style I want it to be in so hopefully it works out. 

The 12 Principles Of Animation

For this project the brief asked us to research into the principles of animation as I did not know what these were I thought researching these first would be a good way to start the project. After some initial research I found that there are 12 basic principles of animation that cover all the different aspects of animating.

The principles are -

1. Squash and Stretch
2. Anticipation
3. Staging
4. Straight Ahead and Pose-to-pose
5. Follow through and overlapping action
6. Slow in and slow out
7. Arcs
8. Secondary Action
9. Timing
10. Exaggeration
11. Solid Drawing 
12. Appeal

Typography

For my animation I decided to go for the retro style that I had researched and liked, such as the 1950's Looney Toons or the Skin you alive animation. So with my style being decided I needed a font that suited this style as well. Although I have little typography in my animation it is important that my typography fits in with the overall feel and theme, so I decided to go look for fonts that had retro, vintage feel to them. I narrowed my choice down to a few but finally decided that to go with Bellerose I decided to choose font for a number of reasons, first off I love the simplicity to the font. It is not big or flashy like some of other fonts I looked at and I think this will really work for the style I want to achieve.  As well as this it is readable and has a nice vintage feel to it. 

Visual Style - Lluis Fuzzhound

Whilst researching retro style animation I came across an animation which had a very unique style which was based around the 60's and you can see this from the similarities between this animation and the work of Chuck Jones for example. The animation had some style elements that I really liked and wanted to try out in my own work. 

The artists name is Lluis Fuzzhound also known as Lluis Sanchez, the animation is a music video for the song 'Skin you alive' and can be seen at http://vimeo.com/48997795. The elements I really liked from the animation is the drawing style, use of colours and textures. The drawing style is an illustrative style particularly for the background which just really works and also brings out the main elements such as the characters and objects from the animation.  These main elements have flat colours and this combines really well with the illustrative style textured backgrounds. 

The use of colours is also really good as even though it is done in a black and grey scheme it still looks pleasing and everything is coloured in a way that makes the parts stand out and get your attention. This is also helped by the black outlines around the characters and objects that might not even be noticed but really help the elements stand out.

Food Miles

After researching into possible topics for my animation I decided to base it on food miles for a number of reasons.

What are food miles - 

• Food miles (or food kilometres) describe the distance that food is transported as it travels from producer to consumer.
• In the UK, our food travels an amazing 30 billion kilometres each year. This includes imports by boat and air and transport by lorries and cars
• Food transport is responsible for the UK adding nearly 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year. Over 2 million tonnes of this is produced simply by cars travelling to and from shops.

Why I am basing my project on food miles - 

As I said there were a number of reasons I wanted to use food miles for the theme of my project. First off I initially liked the idea of using food as the theme but I had very little ideas around this, and ways I could make an interesting animation on this. After researching however food miles seemed like the right idea as it has an element of transport which I thought gave me more freedom to come up with ideas. 

The other reasons I decided on food miles as I had little knowledge on the topic and it was not something I had really considered. So I thought it would be a good topic to bring to peoples attention. 

Research Climate Change - Transport

I also researched into how transport affects climate change I looked at a number of topics such as airmiles and the idea of using eco-driving. For the animation I started to think of ways I could use these topics for my project. 

Airmiles - With airmiles causing a massive carbon footprint I could base my animation on ways to reduce this and cut down on airmiles in general. I could promote local holidays or possibly less holidays  but this may be a hard topic to promote and encourage.

Cars - Cars are a massive cause of co2 emissions and there are many ways I could promote to cut down on this. One possible route would be to promote walking and cycling where possible to reduce the amount of unnecessary car journeys. I could also promote using public transport where it might be cheaper or easier than driving. Finally I could make my animation about electric cars, using biofuel or the idea of eco-driving all of which would help reduce the co2 emissions that come from the use of cars.

Research Climate Change - Food

One of the themes that stood out from the brief was food and the way this effects climate change, I decided to research further into this and found some topics which would work for my animation. 

I used two main sites for my research - 

Environmental protection agency - http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-adaptation/agriculture.html

Sustain web - http://www.sustainweb.org//foodandclimatechange

The main topics I found whilst researching were - 

Food Miles - This is the term given to the emissions involved with transporting food, this includes the importation by boats and planes and the transportation by lorries and cars. Food miles cause massive CO2 emissions and food in the UK alone travels 30 billion kilometres a year. Reducing food miles could have a dramatic effect on reducing CO2 emissions and the impact the food sector has on climate change. The solutions to this include buying locally and in season as the food does not have to travel as far as well as growing your own fruit and vegetables.  

Impact on crops - The impact that climate change has on crops is another topic I could cover these effects include and increased CO2 concentration in a large amount of crops.  Higher temperatures can prevent the crops from growing as can droughts. For my animation I could highlight these impacts but I would also need to show a solution. 

Impact on livestock - The animals are affected by the heat waves caused by climate change as well as the droughts. Climate change may also increase the chance that the livestock will suffer from parasites and diseases. Similar to the impact on crops I could highlight these issues in my animation. 

Impact on fisheries - The fish are also affected by climate change as the oceans become warmer and more acidic. This threatens the structures of sensitive eco systems in the oceans as well as directly harming the fish such as shellfish. The temperature change in the Oceans could also affect the timing of reproduction and migration which could have an impact on the sustainability of certain fish. 

Food waste is also a massive factor in global warming however I think this has been covered and highlighted as an issue enough so I decided not to focus on this.