It was good to get Quench (the fairly big chunk
of animation for the Scottish Dance Theatre's new production
that I spoke about last time) out of the way. A visual style
was beginning to come together, so I felt this would be a good
time to try and
nail
down some of the ideas that Sally and Janet had talked about
for the rest of the show.
The storyboard below (you can click on it for
the full version) is a pretty rough outline of the whole show,
minus the bits that
don't involve animation. I won't go into the details of the sequence
as I'll talk about the individual sections when I get round to
them - it was really just an attempt to get a handle on
the contents of each scene, how they relate to the choreography,
and also to get a sense of the flow of colour throughout the
piece.
I'll
admit, I was struggling to
get my head around what was
happening with
some parts of the choreography and how some of the
transitions between scenes would work. The
process of developing the storyboard (along with a more detailed
script and list of actions for each scene) over the course of
a week or so, in
between other
things, really helped pinpoint the problem areas for me so I could
go on to discuss them with Sally at a later date. I
usually try to avoid doing storyboards for my personal work (boring boring
boring - I'd rather just animate stuff), but it was
pretty much essential for this project, and has proved very useful
as a reference point for later discussions.
If you have a look at the whole storyboard you might notice
a fairly hefty chunk of it devoted to a dream sequence. This
is
what I went on to develop next, as it was probably the most
complicated and detailed piece of animation that needed to
be produced for
the show - I'll tell you how I wasted a couple of precious
weeks on that one next time :)
For the past few months I’ve been working
with the Scottish
Dance Theatre on some animated projections
for their upcoming show for kids, ‘What On Earth!?’.
The project is still in production, but the lovely people at
SDT have been kind enough to allow me to blog about my involvement
as we continue to work away on it. Over the coming weeks I’ll
be posting some videos, images and notes about the processes
I’ve been going through throughout the course of the
project, so keep an eye out for new stuff :)
'What on Earth is a curious nocturnal journey full
of surprise encounters with strange flora and fauna – dreaming
of planet Earth. This dynamic, physically adventurous, by turns
spooky,
funny and thought provoking roller coaster is for children from
6 – 11 but fun for all the family'
I was really excited when Janet Smith and Sally Owen (who
are collaborating on the choreography for the piece) first
got in touch with me about the possibility of my getting involved
with
the project. The prospect of having my animations projected
as part of such a well respected and talented dance company was,
needless to say, irresistible :)
I've
never done anything like this before, certainly nothing
on this scale, so I've been feeling my way along to a certain
extent, and I thought the best thing to do initially would
be to get invloved as early as possible in the choreography
process.
Sally and Janet were
keen
to get me into the first few rehearsal sessions, so I basically
just sat and observed them to try and get a feel for what they
were developing. It was really interesting to see them at work,
and their process struck
me as
being a
bit like animation, only in extreme fast forward - both practices
are concerned
with movement, or more specifically the
control of movement,
and the dancers would be constantly performing their own individual
movements, refining
them,
subtly changing
and perfecting them in front of the mirror and with each other
- something I found myself strangely identifying with, despite
being a
clumsy,
uncoordinated lump of a man. I remain very jealous
of their ability to make such swift changes to their animations.
It's not fair :(
Quench
Over the next couple of weeks or so the choreography began
to take shape, and the first section that seemed to emerge
was based around
a duck character that Sally had been developing (the piece would later be christened
'Quench'). It was to be set in a swamp, a bottle of water
would be on centre stage and the Duck would
try
to
figure
out how to pick it up. Once he did so, the swamp would drain and dry up
and some
strange, thirsty, wiggly creatures would slither on to harass the Duck and eventually
help re-hydrate the swamp scene.
This was one of the first images I came up with.
Not really a swamp is it? But I liked the idea of the reflected
flower in the water, and for some reason I was keen to use sand
in some way (that's what the textured background is). This idea
developed a bit more, and I came up with the version of the swamp
that you
can see in the video below, which also includes a very rough
outline/animatic of the whole section.
In hindsight, I think I jumped the gun slightly with this.
I was a bit too eager to bring something to the table, and
as a result ended up bringing something a bit bland and in
the wrong aspect ratio. As with most of these things though,
at least it was a starting point, and I hadn't spent too much
time on it.
I think I find it hard sometimes, when I'm actually
being paid to do my own style of work, to let go of that horrible
instinct to sanitise and clean up all the rough edges that you
tend to have to do with normal commercial work sometimes. Sally
and Janet reminded me that they were hiring me for my rough
edges
(which was really nice to hear actually :) so it was time to
get the OHP and marker pens out!
This is a quick mock up image I did in about half
an hour just to loosen up a bit. I was far more happy with this
style.
If
it was to be animated, the different layers would all be moved
quite roughly by hand under the camera and then composited in
after effects,
a technique I wanted to develop and refine for the new version
of Quench
and probably other sections of the show as
well.
Once we had decided upon the aspect ratio (a decision that is
perhaps more complicated and tricky than it sounds - because
the show is to be toured at various venues throught the UK and
Europe,
the stage size will range from the fairly big to the relatively
small, so we were cautious, maybe slightly overly so, about
deciding on the final size and ratio of the screen. Better to
be safe than sorry though) I was able to go ahead and produce
Quench version 2.
So in keeping with the OHP style, I came up with this mock up
and asked Sally and Janet to approve it before I went
ahead with any animation.
An initial version of this background loop included some slightly
over the top movement of the foreground reeds/straws, where I
was blowing them in an attempt to simulate a light breeze. It
didn't work, so I just gave them some much more subtle swaying
movement in after effects. The rest of the movement is all done
with acetates, manipulated and filmed on an overhead projector.
I've put together a quick shot breakdown of some of the elements
which you can see below.
The transition to the dried up swamp
at the end works better with the little bit
of
crunchy
sound design I've done for it, which I'll hopefully get uploaded once the rest
of
the section (where the ground re-hydrates) is properly finished.
The music for the piece actually pauses at this point too, as we felt that
the
animation
would need a brief bit of space for the consequences of the Duck's actions
to properly hit home :D
The timing seemed to work pretty well when Quench
was
performed
alongside the animation at
the
Rep
in
November
as part of Backstage Pass (an event that the SDT have put on the last couple
of years where you get a glimpse behind the scenes at the Rep and are treated
to excerpts from various shows and works in progress).
It
was great to see it in something approaching it's final context, and I was
pretty happy
with
it,
apart
from
the slightly rushed bits at the end. I'll post more about that once its done.
26/09/11 - Dead
Man's
Waltz
'Swings
And
Roundabouts'
