3D Animation 25/3

My 2D animatic is very rough, but at this stage it gives me enough of an idea to build my 3D animatic and I think that is more important. The sounds are not finalised, just place holders until I can get access to premiere and get tweaking. I just managed to figure out how to d/l the warner bros sound clips so will spend some time going through them to see if I can find the sounds I want. I have Music Maker from an old humble bundle that I bought, and I am going to play around in that to see if I can create some background music for my animation. Ive noticed that Im spending more time with the modelling for my 3D animatic, than actually setting up scenes but Im unsure if this is a bad thing at this stage since it is something I will have to do eventually anyway. I spent a lot of time trying to get good lighting for the picture in the render view until I realised that Im trying to jump ahead and should be modelling instead. Whoops!

3D Animation 23/3

Discord is now set up for this class in preparation for lockdown if it occurs. Now its just a matter of convincing the other classes to join in so everything is in one place.

3D Animatic is due friday next week, I have a lot to do to get on track for hand-in. Music, foley noises and sound effects for the final animatic. Bring a couple of scenes to class on wednesday for rachel to look at.

Screen Arts 23/3

Richard Williams

Canadian artist and animator that was born in 1933. At 14yrs old he met Walt Disney before studying art and living as an artist until he went back to animation in the 1950's. He spent time in London working on tv ads and passion projects like The Little Island.

In the 1960's Williams was hiring retiring animators from the 30's and 40's, people like Ken Harris(Bugs Bunny), Milt Kahl(Shere Khan), Art Babbit(Goofy) and Grim Natwick(Snow White and Betty Boop).

Creator of the Animator's Survival Kit(2008), Who Framed Roger Rabbit?(1988) and The Pink Panther Strikes Again(1975).

The Thief and the Cobbler was a passion project of his that he had spent 25yrs working on until 1990 when he made a deal with Warner Bros to finance the rest of his film. Due to his extremely high standards, he did not finish the film in the agreed amount of time as he was repeatedly remaking scenes. Warner Bros pulled out when he missed his deadline and he lost control of the film. It was released in the USA under the name Arabian Night without Williams and changed majorly via dubbing, removed characters and cheaper songs. The film had a $24 million budget and it did not recover that in sales.

- What are your thoughts on Richard Williams level of perfectionism? detrimental. its good to have high standards but his were interfering with his productivity.

- Do you feel it was fair to have his film taken from away him… why? Not really no, he had sunk so many years into the project however I believe that was his fault in promising a deadline that he couldn't fulfill.

- In your opinion, what could have been done differently during production to ensure the film was completed on time? Delegation and loosen the reins a bit.


Hayao Miyazaki 

Miyazaki was born in Tokyo in 1941 and studied economics before becoming an entry lvl animator in 1963. This is where he met his lifelong collaborater Isao Takahata. In 1971 they left the company they worked for and developed his style. He wrote a manga strip for the Animage magazine called Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. This mangas success inspired a film in 1984 and in 1985 the two men created Studio Ghibli, going on the enjoy great success in the japanese market. Some of their films are as follows: Castle in the sky, My Nighbour Totoro, Some of the movie music https://nofilmschool.com/2017/11/very-complicated-explanation-why-miyazakis-films-sound-pretty

- What makes a Studio Ghibli film distinctive? The bright colours, the painterly style backgrounds and the childlike storylines.

Research 23/3 (One on Ones)

Started with some digital colour palette tests for bright, pale and dark in Corel and Photoshop. Corel definitely has the textures of real painting whereas photoshop only had one of the 3 brushes and I had to experiment/use the closest i could find for the acrylic and watercolour. Still waiting for the actual oil paint to dry before I can take some test photos, I regret putting it off due to proposal work now but will just have to catch up.




After starting work on my animation, I have come to realise that it probably isnt possible to paint the background the way I want. I could be wrong but I wont know until later on down the track which is too late for this project so, I have decided to stick to creating a painterly style for my comic backgrounds. I will still do a landscape type image for this project, mainly because I feel that there is more freedom in creating an image that isnt already locked into a particular mood, like my comic panels and I think this will result in a better final product for this class while still giving me a chance to experiment with/learn the technique of matte painting.

Research 20/3

Research Types

• Heuristic Research - A personal involvement in the subject, issue or question using pre-existing knowledge or personal experiences to drive the direction of discovery.

This one sounds the most like my research method i.e using my cats zoomies for my animation inspiration last year, or my bf's tattoos and motorbike inspiring my film in the NZCDMD course I did 2 years ago.

• Performative Research - Performativity, in research terms is where the creator performs an action that has a transformative effect on the audience. Performative research isn't grounded in truth rather as an alternative. It doesn't describe something, rather it does something in the world.

• Reflective Research - Creating a work, stepping back and reflecting on it using new mediums in new works such as a journal. A development portfolio for example. Quite often labelled, dated and sequenced and contained for later reference. i.e our blogs for each paper.

• Documentative Research - Works with a project and documents the process to allow a better understanding of the practice. This leaves documentation for others to learn, critique and improve on the original research. i.e interpreting text and data, critiques. Methods used are blogs/journals, timelines etc. i.e also our blogs for each paper. 

I feel reflective and documentative is very similar, although to me reflective has a common theme the whole way through, you are using the preceding version of the work to inspire the new work whereas documentative is just recording everything, all experiments and information whether they are directly inspired or not.

• Immersive Research - Has no goal, rather it is creating and exploring new thoughts.You place pen on paper, immerse yourself in the character and let that characters world inspire what you create. You essentially transform yourself into a new person when creating your work and let their story/personality influence the entire process.

A little of what I do fits this category as well, my angel character last year was how I saw myself if I was living in the Guild Hunter world from the book series I was reading at the time.


Need to sort out some things for my 1 on 1 on monday. My project must have progressed since what I submitted for my proposal.

Audio 20/3

The iLok needs to stay in the same USB slot(2nd slot down in my barnyard pc). Since they still arent working properly, we worked on ADR recording with the zoom and shotgun mics. Got most of the initial Foley sound recorded for our video replacement project, now for the fun task of naming all the clips.

Drawing 19/3

Working on the proposal for tomorrow. Finalised the story last night, just need to finish the thumbnails off and then im good to hand in.

Cupcake Carnage

Muffin is a freshly baked cupcake who wakes up on bakery shelf all wide eyed and innocent, looking around his surroundings in awe. He notices that he is the only one left but as he grows sad, a human approaches his shelf. As she picks him up, another woman goes to grab him shouting “I saw it first” at the woman 1. They squabble, the 2nd woman trying to snatch Muffin for her basket only to be foiled each attempt by the 1st woman. Baked goods go flying off surrounding shelves until the 2nd woman falls to the floor and the 1st woman quickly walks off with him before she can regain her feet. He stares in wonder out the car window on the ride home. During the trip he nearly getting slammed into the dashboard when the woman must brake suddenly, but she catches him last minute and he is put back safely on the shopping bag. The woman carries her groceries inside the house and places Muffin on her counter-top, while she puts away her groceries. When she is busy in the freezer with her back turned, her cat jumps up and proceeds to lick all his icing off, leaving him covered in drool. She finally turns around and sees the cat, scaring it off with a defeated look. The last thing Muffin sees is the bin lid coming down, as she throws him out.

Comic inspirations

Design board inspo
https://characterdesignreferences.com/character-design-boards