Night Life Blog
Month
As we have shifted the project to focus more on the pre-gathering of user generated content, we are currently in the process of attempting to secure sponsorship which would allow us to offer an incentive for users to participate which would hopefully result in a greater input.
With this in mind, this morning I arranged a meeting with the Societies Officer of CIT.
The thinking behind this was that many of the societies organise events sponsored by companies or arrange competitions which offer high value prizes. The hope was that in meeting with the Officer that she would be able to suggest any companies or organisations that were particularly open to sponsoring student undertakings. We could then contact these organisations greatly reducing the time spent seeking sponsorship.
Unfortunately, she was unable to recommend anyone, simply suggesting that we approach businesses that we think may be interested. Of course, this was always the next logical step but it does mean that more time shall need to be devoted to this task as we try to find a sponsor.
This is another 10sec animation test of vega in motion.
Learned lots here.
I can import previous After Effects projects and re-use assets and animation elements, which is good, very good. I reused the overlay.
Between getting everything just right, creating the assets, and figuring out better ways of looping things, this whole thing took about 6 hours. More in depth animation takes more time, more assets, which means I have to be on-top of my planning and software.
There’s two striking things I learned: Moving backgrounds are going to be a big challenge, but ‘stitching’ our crowd-sourced backgrounds and elements together will make the production flow better, and will make for some really interesting and varied backgrounds to fly passed. I’d very much like to avoid Hannah Barbera style cheap, looped backgrounds.
The next thing I learned is that the eyes of a character must be treated as individuals in order to make for smooth animation.
Mitchell
As we have decided to shift the interactive element of the project to pre-production, we will no longer be going ahead with the installation that we had planned to implement.
As a result of this, the script has needed to be re-written with the branching narratives being removed.
Below is a link to the updated version of the script…
I spent a little while figuring out how to work with animating this project, it ended up being vastly more time consuming and challenging than I’d expected. Yet, I think that’s my fault. I thought I’d try and use Photoshop’s built in animation tools.
Big mistake.
Eventually I came to my senses and just used After Effects. The result’s alright, I added some squash & stretch to the eyes which really makes them ‘pop’ in a nice way, and I think I’ll be keeping that in mind for the full piece.
Otherwise, I’m going to have to figure something out with the flames. More frames need to be generated, of course, but I think I’ll try tweening some kind of transformation between them so it doesn’t like to jittery and weird. Although, this is subjective, and it’ll ultimately depend on the rest of the group’s opinion.
Also, next time I think I’ll make some frames with the flames 'breaking away’ from the rest, to maybe give it a more natural feel.
There’s also a flame frame in there that looks bad, I’ll have to be more diligent in watching for that.
Mitchell
Today we had a meeting with Trevor in order to discuss the current direction that the Night life project is currently taking basically giving him an overview of what we have done so far and out intent going forward.
In discussion he suggested that maybe a good route to go down would be to focus less on the Interactive installation portion of the project and instead shift the interaction more heavily towards the pre-production stage with our gathering of user-generated content.
Citing the work of Aaron Koblin, specifically his video tribute to Johnny Cash, he showed the potential that this method offered. In the piece, Koblin took the music video for Cash’s song ‘Ain’t No Grave’, and broke it down frame-by-frame. He then asked users to select a frame of the video and then to draw it in whatever style or way that they chose to. The video in question is viewable at the link below.
http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com
As you can see the result is very impressive, literally each frame is a unique individuals contribution and they all combine to create an interesting animation collage. The project members present agreed that the effect created in Koblin’s work was very impressive and seeing it in action we have decided to go one step further with our asset collection stage, and possibly remove the installation portion.
We still need to work out specific details and will post them here once we are decided.
Today we discussed the project with Trevor and the conversation led us in a slightly different but still exciting direction for the project. We’re gonna rework the public contributions aspect to be much more engaging and easy to use, and focus on that as the interaction aspect of the project, doing away with the installation idea.
Implications this will have on the project:
Another important point Trevor made was that despite this is primarily an animation project, we have yet to show any actual animation work, so experimentation with that needs to commence very soon.
As mentioned previously, the script for Night Life as been finished.
If you feel like contributing art or textures you can get an idea of the sorts of things we’re looking for by clicking on the download link below.
An important element of our meeting was access to Primary Schools. The more Night Life matures, the more I feel kids would love to be involved with Altair and Vega.
It’s important to remember Paul was most keen on the idea of integrating our project work into the currently present Primary School curriculum.
Through this, we can possibly open up the project to Primary School students, which could be invaluable to both spreading the word and getting adorable content. We can organize small in-class competitions through participating teachers in order to generate motivation and interest.
Mitchell
After reading and re-reading the script a number of times, I drew this.
Mitchell
This morning we met with Paul to discuss the current state of the project. The meeting went well. We were advised to adjust the website to make it clearer what we are asking the public for, which will be fixed soon.
We were also advised to engage in user testing for the website, which not only will help find any problems on the website that we overlooked, but will also look good in the hand-up document at the end of the semester.
We also discussed our approaching schools to collect work, and we agreed that primary school students are more ideal as at that age they are more open minded and enthusiastic about art, especially the type of art we are looking for.
We were also advised to give examples on the website of the sort of imagery we are looking for.
One of the leads that I spoke about yesterday in Liverpool has followed up with me. This is not a guarentee of participation but it does spread word even further and boost the chances of more uploada. This is very encouraging in the early going.
As mentioned previously myself and Ken have completed work on the script.
One of the key aspects of the story is how the narrative contains a number of scenarios and that the scenarios displayed shall be dictated by user interaction before viewing the piece. In order to illustrate how this will work please see below for a graphical breakdown of the story flow structure.
The titles of Scene 1,2 etc are simplistic but the theory remains the same. The scenes in blue shall remain constant throughout all viewings while only one red scene out of the options given shall be placed within the timeline. Each red scene shall correspond with an interactive element and, depending on which elements are selected by the user, this will then determine which red scene is played.
At the moment, with the number of scenarios that we have written there are 24 different possible narratives that are available to be shown.
We are preparing to promote the website extensively but to get us started in the mean time I have followed up a couple of leads I had.
I contacted a friend of mine in Liverpool who teaches students that are in a similar area to our own and many of whom are from artistic backgrounds.
I also contacted my old Secondary School about encouraging some of their art students possibly taking part. I also enquired about the possibilty of talking to the art teacher there and maybe some of the classes to promote participation directly.
This is a strategy we are hoping to adopt across a number of schools as we see it as a good way to get a firm commitment on participation. This can only enhance the project.
We decided a more direct approach was needed in conjunction with our other efforts just in case they are not as fruitful as we hope. As we have all learned from previous experience drumming up participation online even amongst friends can be difficult.
The website is now finished and ready for users. We’ll be working on extensive promotion very soon both online and offline.
So as I sat sketching faces I thought “Man, cardboard sure doesn’t have a whole lot to do with lines”. It’s more like the idea of silhouettes from painting, the stronger the outline, the stronger the subject. As in, you can’t rely on the inner details to define the object, the shape of it has to play it’s part. It’s just how things work.
This was after I drew the following.
Not long after that, I ran with it, and combined it with Alder’s star designs. It’s stronger. It’s our love child.
Mitchell
Working on more faces.
Nope.
-Mitchell Galavan
Man. Back to the drawing board.
Mitchell
Previous blog post covered some theory. Here’s the result.
Mitchell Galavan
So I just uploaded a bunch of different star faces, and a lot of them were just for playing around, and really could never feasibly be in anything ever, some of them were pretty serious. I don’t think anyone wants me to go through which is which.
Essentially, it boils down to this:
No Emoticons. This isn’t a slight against anyone’s previous artistic endeavours, no matter how devious… but since we’re dealing with small yellow orbs here, it could be pretty easy to just accidentally make emoticons. But then, having eyes and actually looking at the content can help with this.
Less is more. I’d like to think I’m an advocate of this sentiment, in this case it makes me very sad. I could in no way shoe-horn the child scarring wonder of the Ren & Stimpy show or mentality into this project. The limitations of the desired style, and it being straight up unsuitable for the script just knocked this one on the head an hour into some Photoshop play.
Somewhere in the middle. Loony Toons was another staple of my childhood. Of anyone’s child hood. Before Hannah Barbera came in to cheapen the whole thing up with mind alteringly awful programming, Chuck Jones and Tex Avery created some of the most wonderful shows ever. Expressive, fun, and just…. God damn fun. They don’t need any more adjectives than that.
Within these cartoons is where animation’s soul lies, and it’s something I wanted to capture. It’s a little over the top sometimes, and what we’re aiming for is nothing like this… So I won’t be capturing that either. But I can enjoy the toons, learn what I can, and figure out ways to warp these little stars into little personality machines.
Oh Tex, you were the man.
Mitchell Galavan
Today myself and Robert finished work on the script for our animation. It has been specifically designed to allow for the interactivity we are proposing.
Each group member will take the opportunity to read the script over the rest of the weekend. There will be a meeting on Monday to flag any problems or concerns. If there are no problems the script will be signed off on and work on the storyboards will begin. If any issues arise time will be taken to rectify them.
As soon as it has been signed off on the script will be posted here for download along with a simple diagram detailing the design of the interactive element of the script.
- Ken
Just got a response regarding the domain sooner than expected, we’ve been accepted and confirmed, I’ll be setting up the website with the domain later this evening as well as this blog on a subdomain if possible.
Acquiring nightlifeproject.ie has taken a lot longer than expected. I am using letshost.ie as they are the cheapest available. They then act as a go-between with the IEDR who handle the domain registration, requiring the following:
Thank you for your application. As you are applying under the Natural Person category,we will require the applicant to submit a copy of one of the following documents:-
- Irish passport
- Irish driver’s licence
- Irish revenue document, Social welfare document/card showing PPS no.
- Irish birth certificate
- Irish marriage certificate
- Irish utility bill (e.g.: UPC, SKY / ESB, Airtricity / Bord Gais / Eircom / Vodafone, O2, Meteor, Three - bill pay phones only).
- A copy of a bank statement for a personal account, with the financial details blanked out.
We also require information outlining the applicant’s claim on the proposed domain name. This must show their claim, intent and connection and be a clear reason as to why the applicant wants the particular domain. It must be complete relevant and legal. Please submit a letter from the applicant on official letterhead (if applicable) outlining their claim on the proposed domain name. The claim must relate to the domain holder and not a 3rd party.
So I submitted a scan of my passport along with the following letter:
To the IEDR,
I recently bought the domain nightlifeproject.ie and wish to register it.
I am a final year multimedia student in Cork Institute of Technology. “Night Life” is the name of my bachelor project. It is an interactive animation project, the story being about 2 stars, hence the name night life.The website will be used for collecting publicly submitted assets for the animation production, as well as promoting and showcasing the final work.
As proof of time and effort invested in the domain, the site (in progress) is currently available at http://nightlife.aldercass.com
See also the attached scan of my passport as proof of citizenship.
Yours Sincerely,
Alder Cass
alder.cass@gmail.com
086 128 1153
I am now awaiting their response. I expect we’ll have the domain by Monday.
Since the backgrounds rely on the participation and contribution of the public, we decided that as soon as the website is up and running we will approach local primary school teachers, asking them to spread the word among their students and get them to contribute artwork. This could take the form of a contest, a winner being given a copy of the animation on DVD once it is completed. We may even convince teachers to make an in-class activity out of it. This would be a great way of collecting a lot of backgrounds to use and to generate public interest in the project.
This task will need to be approached with the utmost professionalism. We will need to create posters to distribute to the teachers, as well as contacting them beforehand to organise meeting.
Interfacing with teachers will mean being able to get participation from children without having to deal with all of the red tape and difficulty with interacting with them directly.
