Once again I have failed...

GO HERE!!

If your one of the poor souls that has read over the last three or so posts; waited on your computer chair collecting dust and spider eggs inside your brain between now and the last three months, refreshing your page countless time in hope of seeing the new update...you do not exist!

CLICK HERE!!!

In order to get a post graduate three month internship working in a studio, I whored out my bloggers account to create an all new shiny space where employers can see all the shit I created over the years, without having to read through piles of self serving BS written by myself. Instead now they just have to read through a more to the point self serving BS written by myself...or can just look at the pretty pictures, whatever their choosing.

IF YOU HAVEN'T PUT IT TOGETHER YOU CAN GO THERE BY CLICKING HERE!!

For the most part my plans that were once for this blog will be moving over there, so feel free to head over by clicking on one of the above obnoxious links. For achieving purposes I will continue to post the remainder of all work relating to my Final Year project here, until that well has run cold and dry. I plan to eventually still do everything I wrote about prior, just it will take some time as right now I am working full time at Animmersion studios as a 3D junior modeler.

...GO CHECK OUT THE NEW BLOG

For now though, check out the below unfinished header that I originally intended to replace the evil dead one.

Character Information

When animating any character the main things you have to think about are body language and the way they move, a good way to figure out these thing are to figure out their personalty. What follows are descriptions for each main character, detailing some brief history, and information on how they think and who they are.

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TOM

• 30 years old.
• Has worked as "Programming Code Supervisor" at "Bob Enterprises" for the past five years.
• Is 99.99% Dead inside.
• Prefers to be alone in his small personal office because he finds the outside world tedious and confusing.
• Contains a frustrated hatred for his boss Bob, who constantly bothers him with improvement notes, and motivational speeches.
• Has feelings for the attractive secretary Janice who he is too nervous to talk to.
• Feels bitter that the world is usually stacked up against him, usually using humor to cope with this.
• Socially awkward but is king when processing code.
• Loves the job he does, not who he does it with.
• Secretly practices long range gun shooting, and man on man street fighting in spare time...always the quiet ones.

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BOB

• 45 years old.
• 100% Dead, both inside and out.
• Founder and head of "Bob Enterprises" until he was bitten on the shoulder, by a zombie during a lecture on the importance’s of synergy.
• Feeling more alive then ever after being turned, he UN-lives in a constant satisfied feeling of positive unchained bliss, similar to that of a drunk or someone on drugs.
• Using the networking skills he acquired in life, has appointed himself manager and representative of the impending zombie hordes, who are gathered outside his ex business.
• Has brain dead ignorance to the fact that his employees don't like him, even considers himself their friend.
• Enjoys stamp collecting, good times, and easy listening country music.
• Has amazing communicational skills, and exceptional singing voice.

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JANICE

• 28 years old.
• Worked as "Secretary" for "Bob Enterprises" for past 4 months.
• Gushing with life, spends most of her free time with her attractive friends going out and partying.
• Became a secretary to fund her insanely active social life and living hobbies.
• Looking for a man who will treat her right, yet sexually attracted to bad boys.
• Is very afraid of zombies and being eaten by them.
• Demon in the sack.
• A basic and standard, mostly clichés male fantasy.

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Project Plan

In order to make sure I stay on task and keep to a schedule, I have created a project plan so that I will consider all that I must do to complete the project before the deadline on the 4th of April 2011.



To break down the work, I have split the project into three stages:

Stage 1 is all about research and black and white concept art.
Stage 2 focuses on the animatic and animation preparation.
Stage 3 will be where I decided on colour, the final fully produced animation, and my dissertation write up of all that has transpired.

The plan is made up of a table with the task to be completed on the left, and the area in which it should be completed marked in red under the appropriate month on the right.

Rough Plot Description

After selecting the song Re Your Brains I spent many hours listening to it over and over again, thinking about what could be happening during certain lyrics and musical segments. After much thought I wrote down a rough draft of bullet points, that goes through every shot, event, and important character movement to figure out unstrained everything that will occur in the video. This was also a great opportunity to figure out how many characters I wanted to use, and how visually Tom and Bob would interact with each other.

As I mentioned before, this written form is unstrained, meaning I didn’t hold back much when writing it in terms of limiting myself to a sensible amount of drawings and realistic work required. I’m sure as I go further with this project and get into the animatic, things will get cut out or changed altogether for things like timing and execution.

Animation Outline: First Draft

• Tom is in a cold, dark, sterile office begrudgingly typing away on his computer.
• He hears his boss Bob’s voice coming from the window next to his computer.
• Tom’s window is closed has the shade down; he rolls his eyes.
• He takes a sip of coffee from his “code monkey” cup, and sits it on his desk.
• He reluctantly goes to open the shade to see what Bob wants.
• On the line “…except that I’m a zombie now” Tom opens the shades to see a zombie Bob greeting him.
• Bob has his face pressed up against the window and is drooling on the glass
• Tom jumps in a “what the fuck” manner.
• He runs to the door to see zombies of Jill from accounting, and Bill from marketing stumbling towards his office in the hall way.
• Tom pushes his file cabinet up against the door. Grabbing what else he can to barricade himself inside.
• He presses himself up against the side of his desk which is opposite to the window where Bob is talking to him.
• Slowly he crouches up to look over his desk and out the window.
• While Bob continues to speak, he sees fellow co workers get attacked and bitten by Zombie Jill and Bill. The windows are broken and there are more zombies in the background.
• Camera pans back to Bob who is holding a memo and says “But here’s and F.Y.I, your all goanna die screaming”
• Camera flies outside to a sea of zombies (Like outside the mall in Dawn of the dead).
• We are shown the massive crowd of zombies from the back surrounding Toms work building. All screaming “ALL WE WANNA DO IS EAT YOUR BRAINS”
• Bob picks up some eyes from one of the dead co workers below off screen, and throws them away. “We’re not unreasonable, no ones gonna eat your eyes!”
• Another shot of the crowd of zombies swaying in an almost “comb by yah my lord” kind of way.
• Bob flips through his notes, acts suggestive while pointing to a pie chart behind him on a stand up dry erase board.
• Cuts to Tom horrified, unbelieving face with jaw dropped and eyes wide open. His head still stuck out from behind the side of his desk.
• A zombie hand smashes through the glass of the window.
• Many more zombies start pouring into the building.
• As they start scratching at the door, Tom kicks it open crushing several zombies.
• Tom stomps their heads as he steps on the broken door on the floor
• He runs away from the broken windows deeper into the building, pushing away the zombies as they attempt to grab him.
• Holding his coffee cup, he pours his remaining hot coffee in a zombies face, and breaks the cup on ones head.
• He also throws his pens, pencils, and other stationary at them.
• It is then he notices Janice, the nice sweet looking sectary that he had previously been to nervous to talk to surrounded.
• He noticing the emergency shot gun in the “emergency shot gun, break now to open” case.
• Possible idea if there is room: he ignores the emergency fire alarm, cleaver, and chainsaw in favour of the shot gun.
• He pushes a moving cart, jumps on it and starts shooting at the Janice surrounding zombies. Hitting one of them in the head.
• He hits the rest with the cart and they tumble like bowling pins…but with more blood.
• One of the zombies tries to pull his shot gun away from him.
• Tom shoves it to the ground, aims his gun and blows it away as blood his face and he smiles.
• Amongst all this we cut to zombie bob realizing that he indeed a monster. “I’m, not a monster Tom…well? Technically I am…I guess I am”
• Tom grabs Janice and pulls her into a windowless room, slamming the door shut from inside.
• Zombie bob awkwardly walks up to and knocks on the wall to the windowless room Tom and Janice are in. He does it in a way that shows he knows he’s bothering his employee but he really has to tell him this important information.
• He taps his watch “Got another meeting Tom maybe we could wrap this up”
• Bob points over to the door where three zombies are attempting to get it open. One is chewing on the door knob; the others are standing around looking confused. “…I report back to my colleges who are chewing on the doors. I guess we’ll table this for now”
• Tom is shacked up with Janice. Janice is under bed sheets; Tom is shirtless smoking a cigar.
• They are secure with silent hill 4 like locks on the door; there are many weapons around, and plenty of food.
• We inter cut with them and Bob as he gives his motivational speak. He eventually leaves walking off with a sense of pleasure that he did a good job as he says “…and we’ll put this thing to bed, when I bash your head open.”
• Tom gives the thumbs up to concerned Janice, to reassure her that everything is going to be fine.
• Tom hugs Janice and suddenly notices the big oozing zombie bite on her back.
• His hands fly off her in terror, then his expression changes to a “what the hell” look. Tom shrugs.
• He puts his arms around her again and they tumble like lovers off camera to the ground.

THE END

• 3 main characters, crowds of generic zombies, 2 less generic zombies

1. Tom
2. Bob (zombie)
3. Janice
4. Random Zombies (same one different clothing / body parts missing)
5. Jill (zombie)
6. Bill (zombie)

Editing The Audio

Despite that this concept design material is intended to recruit an animation team to finish the final product I felt it seemed necessary to edit down the source material from its original time length of 4 minutes and 32 seconds down to something more manageable. Using Nero WaveEditor I removed the second verse, shorted some of the instrumentals in the middle, and took out the ending in favor of a looped chorus that fades out. The song is now much sorter at 2 minutes and 36 seconds.

This helps when allowing me to create a full length animatic under the set time constraints as well as eliminating certain themes and ideas present in the uncut version that limit my creative vision. For example there is a line that I removed about the character of Tom being trapped inside a mall; I wanted him to be inside an office, so with that lyric gone from the audio I am free to do this.

Click the video to listen to the edited song:

Orignal Intro

My name is Mike Lawrence and I am using this blog as a means to help myself keep track of all the research, preparation work, and execution for my final year project. Here I will be posting images and videos that inspire me, mood boards, character and set designs, expression sheets, and finally the animatic and final animation.

The project itself is a 2D animation pitch for a music video, based around the song Re Your Brains by musician and song writer Jonathan Coulton. The idea is to create material that aims to generate interest from other animators in order to recruit them into being involved with the final colour animation. I will be putting together myself the character designs, set designs, prop designs, a black and white animatic for the entire length of the cartoon, and twenty five particular seconds of completed final animation to demonstrate what the finished result could look like with a team’s involvement.

The cartoon itself will provide animation to compliments the entire edited song, consisting of two minutes and twenty five seconds cut down from the initial four minute original. The animation like the song is about a struggling office worker who is approached by his boss, now turned zombie. His boss Bob wants to kill/eat him, but in a professional way. It will contain three main characters, as well as a handful of interchangeable zombie designs multiplied many times to create the illusion of crowds.

I will be using animation and art software, Abobe Flash, and Photoshop respectively, all rough work will be drawn out using traditional methods of pencil, paper and light box before being cleaned up with for mentioned digital programs. There will be efficient amounts of research into different art styles and animation techniques, referencing old material for inspiration and to learn new skills. My objectives are to overall improve my skills in many different fields’ e.g. 2D effects, parallax scrolling on multilayer giving a 3D effect, character animation, background and character art, facial expressions, and develop an appropriate new style that stands out and looks completely different to anything I have ever done before.

Finally copyright violations is not a concern. On his official website Jonathan when asked if his music can be used in a student project, responded in the FAQ section:

"Yes please. And I would love to see/hear it. All my music is released under an Attribution-NonCommercial Creative Commons license that allows any kind of non-commercial re-use provided you: 1) credit me and link to this site, and 2) don’t use it to make money (this does not apply to songs with material that I don’t own, like covers and mashups and remixes). Really, no need to ask permission, just go make that thing. If you want to know more about how Creative Commons works, check out the site."