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.
Since the backgrounds will be publically submitted, resulting in a mis-matched and diverse range of imagery almost reminiscent of a scrap book, we have decided to make the other visual assets (characters, props, etc.) follow suit by utilising a paper cut-out style similar to the following:
Although that artwork is created traditionally, the same effect can be achieved digitally quite easily through the use of texture overlays and drop shadows. We will be collecting our own textures; card, paper, wrapping, any materials one might find in a scrap book. These will then be scanned for digital use.
This also adds an interesting constraint to the design of the project: if we can’t make it out of paper cut-outs, we can’t use it in the animation. The scrap-book theme is not an explicit aspect of the project but more a style guide for us.
The crude nature of the design will also allow us to focus more on the animation itself rather than taking too long working on very complex characters and objects.
Today we learned from Trevor that the end of year exhibit won’t be taking place in Wandesford Quay Gallery after all, but in either the CIT Nexus Center or more likely the old FÁS building where Every Way Out was held last semester.
However, this doesn’t make our trip to the gallery earlier in the month a waste of time as it still gave us valuable insight into the practicality of setting up the installation and got us thinking about our limitations.
Working through various designs. I’ll be uploading them as they’re ready.
The faces are intended to be expressive, fun, and understandable. It’s important they’re appealing and nice.
The ‘star’ effect around them is merely a placeholder for these faces, and I’ll experiment with more types in time.
-Mitchell
In the previous semester I spent a lot of time figuring out and working through various styles.
I uncovered various techniques to create suitable scenes based on the preliminary script and paint locations. However, continued study throughout January has lead me to come to put these techniques under severe scrutiny. In that they look much worse than what I could be capable should I expand into new pieces of software.
For example:
This is something I created last semester.
As you can see, some elements, specifically the planet, are kind of terrible.
Using “3DS Max”, and learning a little about how to texture objects, I ought to be able to create something like this.
There’s a series of comprehensive tutorials on how to achieve this. I’ll be digging deep into them to understand how to apply these techniques to a multitude of scenarios.
-Mitchell
Been working hard on After Effects and various Photoshop techniques. I’ll begin sharing them in time.
Here’s the results of the first series of experiments.
The painting was created in Photoshop CS5, and the video in After Effects CS4 using “Particle World” and various other techniques, including “Wiggling”. “Wiggling” is a powerful 3D camera manipulation technique.
I experimented with various 3D camera functions, however, these turned out to be a little unsuitable.
I’ll keep working independently.
Mitchell
An important aspect of our project piece shall be incorporating elements that allow the viewer to interact with the piece before viewing and having their interaction dictate the events that will then take place on screen. Though how this interaction shall be carried out has yet to be decided upon.
During the time off we have been investigating a number of methods of possible interaction that we could implement into our final piece.
Using this method we would develop a series of buttons or pull switches with each switch corresponding to a particular scene of the animation. Once the switch is pulled its corresponding scene will then be loaded to be played into the animation and once enough of the switches are pulled the animation will then begin. As the main characters of the animation will be stars we envision these switches to be shaped as such and will illuminate upon being used. In surveying the site in which we hope to display our piece we have seen that these switches would be buttons placed upon the wall of the space or possibly pulleys hanging from the ceiling.
If we were to move forward with this method we would more than likely be using an Arduino setup as well as developing the appropriate back-end code.
Another method that we have explored has been to use QR Codes as an interactive element. In a way this system would work similarly to the one outlined above, in that each QR Code would correspond to a particular scene and that upon being scanned would lead to a URL page that then loads that scene into the animations timeline. These QR codes again could be embedded into star shaped stickers to keep in theme with the animation and could be scattered amongst the entire Wandesford Gallery instead of being restricted to the display area. However a downside to this method is that in order for people to interact with the piece they will be required to have a smart-phone or other device capable of reading QR Codes.
A further method we are considering would be to develop a system similar to the one seen here in the project Tangible Viewpoints.
http://mf.media.mit.edu/pubs/conference/TangibleNavigation.pdf
In considering how we would replicate this system, we envision having a webcam looking down upon a surface and on that surface projecting the image of a star chart. We would then have star-shaped counters and possibly using Processing we would be able to track where the counters are placed upon the star chart. By splitting the chart into a number of different areas and assigning each area a particular scene, the placement of the stars by the users could then be used to determine the story of the piece.
Today, Robert and Alder attended the script writing workshop with Darren Bolger. He covered a lot of valuable ground with us, from writing a treatment to script writing software to the appropriate language to use.
We started by writing a treatment. This gives an outline of the story to potential funders and acts as a foundation for the script. He told us it should be written in the present tense and be about 10 lines. This is the new treatment we came up with during the exercise:
The two human characters, male and female are lying on the bonnet of the car, star gazing. The female asks the male if he thinks there’s any life “up there”.
In space, the two main star characters, Altair and Vega, are sneaking away from school.
They cause mischief, harass constellations, and fly down to earth. Altair interacts with children who react with wonder and terror. Vega in competition with Altair’s antics imitates cows in a nearby field.
They fly back out into space and unwittingly awaken the antagonist monster character who begins pursuing them.
Their parents are informed of their absence and go looking for them.
The monster wreaks havoc in pursuit of Altair and Vega and corners the two but Their parents arrive just in time.
The monster comes close to destroying Altair but Vega tricks it into consuming itself. There is a flash of light and for a moment it is unclear whether Vega survived.
The protagonists are revealed to be safe and well, and are happily reunited, but with a lesson learned.
Returning to the star-gazers, the male human answers the opening question by simply responding “nah.”
Darren’s only criticism of the treatment was that we should use more descriptive language and action verbs.
We then went on to using script writing software Celtx which is free and offers a lot of automation for the process and was extremely easy to use. We wrote the beginning of the story with Darren’s feedback and advice. He also gave us printouts about how to write realistic dialogue as well as a glossary of scripting terms.
Overall the workshop was very much worthwhile and informative. Ken and Robert will be completing the script next week.
Myself and Ken have completed the Literature Review investigating Narrative Structure and Narrative Theory.
This review can be found at the following link
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1Chiw36w-ZU44opLPeyxY9QLyCblFx6KF9FpDFMoK_c0
As you can see we looked into a number of narrative structures both from a typical and an atypical viewpoint. We feel that this process has proved worthwhile as in doing so we know realise what it is that we must do when constructing the story for our piece. Namely, to create a story that fits within a typical narrative structure yet utilize the methods that appear in the atypical structures as regards branching and interweaving stories.
This knowledge, combined with what we will learn at the Scriptwriting workshop tomorrow will prove invaluable as we move forward with developing our narrative.
We have decided the project is titled “Night Life”. This means straight away we need to register a domain for the website as the website will be in use very soon. We chose to pursue a .ie domain which isn’t as easy to acquire as a .com domain as we need to provide proof of connection to Ireland and a letter of intent.
nightlife.ie is already taken so we will be acquiring nightlifeproject.ie which is available.
Today we had a working meeting. Members in attendance were Alder Cass, Robert McGrath and Ken Kidney.
Robert and I worked on the Lit Review. It is now almost completed and the results should be posted in the coming days.
Alder worked on the Website for the project and sought input from the group based on the work he produced.
This morning we visited the Wandesford Gallery to scope out the spaces available and evaluate our options in terms of the set up. This was important because we need any installation we design to be suitable for the space available. Otherwise we may have been wasting time we do not have on an unfeasible design. It is much easier and quicker to design an installation with the considerations of a space in mind.
A post describing our visit in detail will follow this one.
-Ken
I have recently acquired two books that are renowned as being the best resources for aspiring animators.
The first is “The Illusion of Life” by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.
The second is the latest edition of “The Animators Survival Kit” by Richard Williams.
I am always looking for resources like this to aid us in the process and I will continue to keep an eye out for them and acquire them as they come to my attention.
-Ken
The following is a treatment I have written for our animation. It serves two purposes. It provides Mitchell with a context in which to begin preliminary concept art work. It also acts as a guide for Robert and I when we go to write the full script after the script writing workshop.
Night Life
Themes: Freedom, The pursuit of freedom, Consequences and implications, the desire by some to suppress the freedom of others.
Setting: Space, Earth.
Premise:
The maincharacters are the two stars, which the short film will focus on. They are bored by their surroundings and yearn to be free set out to explore on their own without the knowledge of their parents. They have fun at first and cause mischief in their wake but soon learn their actions have consequences as they awaken a dormant black hole monster that’s only seeks to consume and destroy everything in its path. This not only threatens themselves and the ones they love.
One boy and one girl will be present at the beginning and end, to ground the concept as a child’s fantasy. They are young children. They are lifelong friends and are bound by their mischievous natures. The kids act as bookends for the story. In the beginning of the film we see them speculating on whether there is any life ‘up there’ and at the end we see their conclusion.
Characters:
The boy star is foolish, brave, stubborn, and carries himself with an arrogance and bravado. He’s all this despite his small size and young age.
The girl star is intelligent, strong willed, resourceful, brave and a tom boy.
The Antagonist is a “black hole monster”. He is an ancient being, his only instinct being to destroy everything in his path. He is menacing, with a single minded in nature.
The star’s parents will also feature in the story. They will search frantically for them when they see that their kids are missing. They also play an important part in the conclusion of the story.
The main characters will encounter two little girls and interact with them. One will be curious and wondrous the other will be afraid and flee in terror.
Rough Initial Outline:
We open with the credits rolling with stars in the background we then pan down to see a couple sitting star gazing. One ask the others if they think that they are alive up there (or something along those lines).
We pan up to set our scene. We see a community of characterised stars that mirrors a human Town or City.
The two kids sneak off after creating a distraction from school while their supervisors aren’t looking.
The kids cause mischief including:
They harass the constellations (Who will be personified).
They fly down to earth and encounter a pair of kids. One of them transforms into an exact replica of one of them. One giggles and hides behind her hands shyly while the other flees in terror.
Not to be outdone the other star seeing a nearby field with cows in it assumes the shape of a cow and much to their fright and surprise jumps over the moon.
Soon after this they awaken the monster that begins to pursue him and their parents notice they are gone and go after them.
The monster destroys a lot in his pursuit of the pair and he eventually corners them but their parents arrive just in time.
The monster almost gets one of them but he/she outsmarts it causing it to consume itself. However it is a tense moment as in the resulting flash of light we aren’t sure if he/she has made it.
Reunited they shine together happy that they are all safe, lesson have been learned.
We pan out but still see them shining in the distance and see the couple we saw at the start again. The one who was asked the question responds “neh!” (or something along those lines but we know different).
We pan back up and end credits roll against the night sky.
It is symbolic of our inherent desire for freedom from a very young age. We may get what we want but it is a responsibility as there can be consequences. Equally however there are forces that are seeking to suppress this freedom sometimes at any cost. But what’s important is that if even one brave person stands up against these forces that can be a catalyst for change and convince others to stand up too.
Note: Possibility of an alternative ending where one stands up to the monster and it causes the rest who were afraid before, to follow suit but it’s essentially the same message.
Note: Possibility of another alternative ending where either one of the stars is killed or permanently separated from the rest of them.
-Ken
11/1/12 Project Meeting – All members present
2. Website
3. Lit Review
4. Blog
-Ken
