Short Story (Performance and Character)
Excerpt from brief: Design a short story of no less than 35 seconds. With my understanding of ToonBoom now at a better level than at the start of this module, I tried to challenge myself when it came to the ideas behind my story. Firstly I decided that because I had used him for a number of exercises before and because I was growing fond of this character, that I would re-use the character of Ardal. I felt that he would be a good starting point for an ideation of short story plots. Once again here is his Bio: " Name Ardal Jambon Amundsen Gender Male Age 10-11 Ethnicity White Family Mother-Niamh, Father-Einar, Sister-Caoimhe (Kee-va), Nan-Tilly Cultural Background Irish/Scot Celtic and Norwegian Intelligence Lacking Occupation Student Religion Catholic Sexual Orientation Straight though he doesn't understand what that really means Secrets Hates most typical child activities finds far more solace in tidying his room to the musical stylings of Nina Simone Fears/Phobias Mess, Button-up shirts (hates the touching the buttons), the Dark, Most stories about Hell he's been told by his grandmother, school bullies, neighbourhood bullies, teachers and teaching staff bullies, family bullies, a blocking off his mother and has a general social disposition combined with some PTSD-like childhood anxiety. Fave Music Rock (he says) Nina Simone, The Supremes, Aretha Franklin Sense of Humour Fine to have a laugh at anything but is 99% the butt of his friends and family's jokes. Sarcasm and most forms of wit are usually lost on him Adrenaline Moments Beating the record for time taken to clean his room, Getting to school on time unscathed by bullies, any time he is not being humiliated by either himself or peers Physical Description Lanky and tall for his age Physical Disabilities Has some sort of Calamity James magnetism towards accidents and humiliations. Generally quite weak. Has Dyspraxia Character Bio: Ardal Jambon Amundsen is a 10-going on-11 year old boy who attends St Holy Mother All Saints All Virgins Roman Catholic Primary School SHMASAV RCP (sh-mah-ss-av arr-see-pee). He lives within walking distance to the school, with his Mother: Niamh Amundsen (who is of Irish decent), his Father: Einar Amundsen (who is of Scottish and Norwegian decent), his older sister: Caoimhe (who must be of Hellish decent) and his Nan: Tilly (who is probably on a decent into madness). He may be raised catholic but his grades are unholy, as he is at the bottom of his class, as well as the social hierarchy with teachers, students and caretakers alike all unifying together in their combined ill-opinion of Ardal. This might be because of how pathetic he can truly be at times, at least in there eyes, as he's always either humiliating or hurting himself in attempts to go about his daily life. The only sanctuary in Ardal's life away from his angry, work-tired, nurse of a mother, his high-functioning alcoholic of a father, his b*tch of a sister and his senile wreck of a grandmother, is in his bedroom. Where he can secretly listen to the soul queens of yesteryear, like Nina Simone and Aretha Franklin in peace, whilst he takes joy in organising his shoes by colour, (in correspondence to the rainbow colours upon 'Dark Side Of The Moon'-Pink Floyd album Ardal's Dad gave him when he lied about "loving" Rock music). Because of his unnaturally tall height and magnetism for trouble, whether Ardal likes it or not he will always stand out from the crowd to be judged. So will he ever actually ever overcome his turmoil-prone ways? Will years of suppressing all of his anxieties that he's really too young and thick to understand ever emerge? If so, as a violent animal? or neutered House Pet? Will he learn that perhaps he can finally get people to like him? or perhaps even learn that for that to happen he has to like himself? Most likely he's just gonna coast for a while and keep getting into very humorous situations... at least for us. " I started off by noting down any possible calamitous scenarios that Ardal could possibly find himself in. This proved to be very difficult creatively, to think of an original idea that was also relatively short and not too complex to animate. I had a basic idea about him cleaning his room and getting seriously injured whilst using a vacuum cleaner
This was the rough storyboard I came up with at a time. Johny pointed out to me that this wasn't a very strong story because it basically entailed Ardal getting seriously injured rather than an actual goal or problem that he had to overcome.
This was the animation he showed me, to give me an idea of what a basic short story could look like:
There is a definite problem-journey-solution arc here with a clear goal and a funny punchline ending. This greatly helped in what the story structure should be like but still it was hard to come up with something that was simple. I decided to leave this exercise for a while and come back to it with a fresh mind later on down the line It was on a train a couple of days later that I thought of a better edit for my initial short story idea.
After I had noted down the beats, I further edited my story to come up with this story outline: "Ardal, (A self-confessed clean freak) is doing his usual leisurely bedroom chores. He happens upon a large piece of dirt on the ground, whilst vacuuming the floor. Confidently he whips out his hoover and goes to vanquish the slight upon his floor. To his horror this isn't working, even after a desperate repetition of driving his vac over the dirt. Curious as to why his hoover won't suck up this mucky nuisance, he peers into the head piece of the vac, only to have his whole face sucked in! After a strenuous peeling of his face from the sucky snares of the hoover, he manages to shake off the deformation of his facial features. Now he is back to normal, he switches off the vacuum. He assumes cockily that this won't cause any further facial reconstruction. On his second glance into the machine, he gets completely consumed by the hoover. The hoover sucks him through all of its tubing, all the way to its base machine, causing it to combust and spit him back out again. Ardal is left, splatted on the floor, reduced to nothing but a dirty smear on the carpet. He looks over to the piece of dirt: defeated. The cheeky dust-bunny-dirt-pile looks back at him and then winks to the camera. THE END" It was with this I could create my storyboard:
As you can see from some of these panels and sketches, there is a definite need for me to utilise a cartoon reality style of performance.
With all of this pre-production done, I have recorded the key references that I need from my storyboard. As most of this has a cartoon reality style of performance to it, I have only been able to record references for the shots that will be physically possible for me to act out. This is a reference that ideally will help me out more in terms of timing and how the beats of the story might pan out. I must admit at this stage I am relying on myself to fill in the gaps for the parts that are just physically impossible to perform, i.e. when both times Ardal gets partially and fully sucked into the vacuum cleaner.
I have also shot references for my facial expressions, so that I may have a reference for the shots of Ardal and the piece of dirt's facial features, exchanging looks with each other. This video reference and the pages on key-posing of expression, (from The Animators Survival Kit) have been influential for my story piece, in this regard.
Other pieces of research that I have looked into for this activity, are that of the new series of Mickey Mouse shorts:
I found these cartoons to be an excellent take on the classic Disney production shorts. They really bring the classic style of Steamboat Willie into the 21st Century, with absurd humour and clever originality. I have also noted that this work appears to be tweened and rigged. Proving to me that Straight-Ahead Action and Pose to Pose doesn't always have to dominate the cartoon world, in terms of creative animation. Usually, tweened animation can come across as sometimes being mechanical, cheap and cost-effective, when compared to the effort and detail of frame by frame. What Disney have done here is prove the previous statement, otherwise. The rigs in these shorts occasionally go off-model and displaying examples of creative drawing techniques.
I am going to try and emulate these methods within my own story and try and push the drawings to the best exaggerated limits I can. I have noticed whilst mapping out my bar sheets that there are many poses in my reference. Admittedly at first, I feared that I was padding out the bar sheets with too many holds. But I realise there is action within in-action. The dramatic pauses are necessary, if I want to utilise the principle of anticipation in this performance. Especially because bursts of fast action happen in between each hold.
Now that I have finished all of my bar sheets, I am ready to animate, however, I am nervous at the amount of time I have left to finish this part of the module. Admittedly this is the last animation exercise I have left to complete but it is also my longest one. Now that I have gotten more to grips with the ToonBoom software. I can be confident that this exercise won't take me me as long as the wall climb, (which was a considerable amount of weeks). I have opted to create a new ToonBoom file for each shot, so that the timeline does not become too cluttered. From what I have learned in my previous exercises, must ensure that my rig is fully developed on each possible angle from my turnaround. (at least the basic elevations), so that I might have a bit more freedom in the rig by using a variety of drawing substitutions for each component of the rig. Even some of the props, such as the vacuum cleaner, have been rigged, in order to make sure I don't have to redraw aspects of these frame by frame. In order for me to reuse these rigs in separate scenes/shots/files; I have put hem all into a shared library. That is an aspect of ToonBoom I greatly appreciate compared to Flash, where I was forced to duplicate symbols and generally keep track of a very messy library of assets. Asset management in ToonBoom is far more efficient in this regard. This is important to me as an animator, because it is highlighting why the industry is prone to primarily use this software. I've rigged up the first scene with Ardal, The vacuum & the piece of dirt. For the tube component of the hoover, I have created a bone rig, however, I fear this is becoming a little bit glitchy. Nevertheless, I want to prove how my knowledge of rigging has grown since the start of the semester.
For emphasis on some of the shots I have used flare-ish aesthetics to aid me in the conveyance of extreme angles and certain significance on various props.
This is a technique that I got from watching various augmented and high octane action scenes in Japanese Anime: Stardust Crusaders: Jotaro Vs Steely Dan
Dragon Ball Z: Piccolo Finds out Shin is the Supreme Kai
Girlchan in Paradise: Episode 1
I've been finding the majority of my glitches from the bone rig of my of my hoover tube.
For some unknown reason the top of the bone rig shoots out sharp lines when the bottom of the rig is manipulated. I have decided to not focus on this issue too much, as I am still happy with how the rest of the bone rig animates the hoover tube. If I didn't use this rig, it would become very time consuming to animate it frame by frame. For this particular shot I allowed myself to animate frame by frame, simply because the effect I wanted was impossible via tweened methods. I still love this way of animating as I really feel that as an animator, I can implement my own artistic style within each new drawing of a frame.
Taking advice from Arin 'Egoraptor' Hanson, I tried to follow the principle of Arcs within the springy and dynamic motion of Ardal's head going from a solid object to a jelly-like, flexible, putty-head.
I must admit I was pleased with the results:
This did prove to be difficult when animating Ardal's head in a transitioning way to go back to normal and thusly a tweened rig. I found that using the squash and stretch technique of 'smearing' my drawings helped me out with this process as my drawings could be loose and off-model.
When I moved onto other shots within my short story, I was faced again with having to animate the tubing component of the hoover. Instead of bone-rigging the hoover-tube layer, I decided to go frame by frame to avoid more glitching.
Once again I have tried my best to follow the principle of arcs here, as I am aware that I have not had reference footage for this particular scene. I feel this is quite a nice visual for how effective it was in helping me realise the motion path of this object. I also enjoyed getting to be artistically free whilst frame by frame animating the SFX for the fire, lightning and smoke, as the hoover combusted.
Once I had the basic principle of putting the particles in some sort of trajectory as they got smaller, the outcome was pretty convincing. Inspired by the 'That's All Folks' endings from Looney Tunes, I used a circle wipe transition to take us to the 'Fin' screen.
I did this because I felt it was an appropriate stylistic choice to help me convey to the audience where the final, punchline beat of the story was.
By implementing this homage to the Looney Tunes era style of ending, I have hopefully followed through my choice of cartoon reality performance. When I had finished off all of the shots for the animation, I took them all into Adobe Premier to edit together.
This is the final version of my short story piece:
Evaluation In evaluation of this activity, am pleased that I managed to turn it around in the time I had. However once again, I was complacent at the start and I let time get the better of me with this whole module. I hope that there is a clear journey conveyed in these blog posts of my understanding and skills with ToonBoom, that was perhaps not present at the start. I am glad that I pushed myself to undertake doing this module in ToonBoom. n all honesty: I hated it at the start. I was so set in my ways with Flash and I refused at first to accept that the industry had moved on. I never warmed to Maya in First Year and I feared the same would happen with ToonBoom. Now that I have pushed myself I can really value all I have learned about ToonBoom from this module. Because I was a Flash animator. I can really appreciate the rigging features available in this program. It's so rewarding in that respect and (not to sound like an advert), I can't believe how I managed some of my old processes with Adobe Flash. My only regret has been time there is so much to tweak with this module's ensemble of animation activities and if I had not taken so long on the Wall Climb activity, at the start of the semester, I'd like to think my animations would be a lot more cleaned up.
