3rd Year Induction Project

BenchSpotting from ECA Animation on Vimeo.

For this induction project, we were given the task of creating a film inspired by the map of Edinburgh. In the first week we could go out and explore Edinburgh in anyway we could think of (Possibly in a calculated way or perhaps randomly), however we had to stop at 20 locations and sketch down not only our surroundings but the thoughts, feelings, and sounds that emitted from those places. Week 2 and 3 would be spent actually taking our findings and locations, pulling them together and creating a film out of them, again in any way we see fit. 

Week 1:

To start off with we began by having a group discussion on how we should go about going to 20 different locations and the possible routes we should take in the limited time we had. We ended up just deciding that we should all go out and find a starting point and decide where and what we were going to do from there. 

We ended up finding ourselves at the cross roads next to the main campus of Edinburgh university, where we then decided (once we sketched down the location) that the best way to cover all 20 locations as a group was to split up into two's. We all aimed to reach at least 6 locations between us by the end of the day and since there was 6 of us this was perfect, allowing us to branch out in completely opposite ways. 

While we were discussing the ways we could possibly go, we thought of the idea of asking people at the places we were at: what they thought of the place? and where we should go next? We thought this was a good idea since it would give us a different perspective of the places we were at, and not just our own. Calum and Abi choose to continue down towards the university, while Peter and Yu Chen headed towards Tollcross. Alice and myself headed ended up heading towards the city's center, stopping firstly next to Grayfires bobby. 

Our second stop was next to the national music library, just at the top of Grass Market. 

Continuing on we reached the mound...

Then we sat outside the national galleries...

And then we finally stopped in princess street gardens. 

Since we had reached our 6 locations we decided to stop for the day and continue again from the gardens the day after. 

The next day we ended up heading down towards George street and then onto Dundas street, after that we felt like we had enough locations in our pair and so we ended heading back up to the studio. 

At the end of the week we began to discuss and compare each others findings, before our catch up with Allan in the afternoon. As we began to talk we noticed that Edinburgh has many contrasts with in it. What I mean by this is that, some places are quiet and natural and others are loud and built up, there is a mixture of buildings old and new and there are even cooler coloured areas and warmer coloured areas. However what seemed to strike us more than all of this was the people that live and work in Edinburgh itself and also the weird people and things that we saw/encountered on the routes that we took. We ended up wanting to go forward with these aspects when we would eventually get started on making the film itself.

Week 2:

Firstly to begin the process of coming up with a film idea, we all got together and began to hash out a rough film concept. We simply started to sketch a rough narrative outline on sticky notes, allowing us all to visually see what each of our ideas were and also see what ideas worked and what ones didn't. A narrative began to form around the idea of a man myself and Alice met on George street who was complaining about the lack of benches in Edinburgh. We wanted to take him and subsequently make him walk down the routes that we walked down, seeing all of the weird things that we all saw. We thought that it could be quite funny if he was perhaps looking for the perfect bench that faced the castle, giving him a reason to be wandering around Edinburgh. What we also wanted to do was have the people or things we saw stop him from reaching the benches he finds and then at the end of the film have him finally find a bench, only to discover that its facing the wrong way. We all quite liked this idea and so I decided to take the rough drawings and make them a bit clearer. Making it so that we could see the film in its entirety and change things if we wanted too. 

While doing this however I began to realize how much time and animation the film would need if we were to go forward with it, and it just wouldn't be possible to completer it in the two weeks we had to do it in. This meaning that we would need to think of a different idea, something a lot, lot simpler. 

After having talks with Jared about figuring out ways of condensing the narrative, he gave us the idea of simply focusing all of our attention on the bench man. He could still be looking for the "perfect" bench, however we could just have him going from bench to bench with these benches being marked out on a map- so basically actually having him bench spotting. We ended up really liking the idea and the whole group did too, and so again I went a head and drew up a quick post it note story board (as seen above). This time however keeping in mind ways that we could shorten animation time allowing us to get it done in the week and a half we had left.

Bench Man Character Sheet 

I also drew up a quick character sheet, since we ended up liking the once I used as a place holder in the storyboard so we ran with him. This was used as a place holder so that if anyone else needed to draw him then they could use this as reference. We did end up changing his overalls to a T-shirt that says "I Love Bench",  since he looked too much like he was doing a job and we wanted to plainly put across that he was really into benches. 

Bench Spotting ANIMATIC from Tyler Carrigan on Vimeo.

The next thing on the agenda for me before I could start on the animation was get an animatic sorted out, so we could figure out timings for the film. This was most helpful for scenes like the bench montage and the butt sitting on the bench at the end, since these parts needed there timing to be right. It also generally allowed everyone to get an idea of what the film would look like as an actual film. 

Since everyone was kind of in and out and there wasn't much time we each picked areas of the film that we were going to do. For example Yu Chen went ahead and created backgrounds out of all of our sketchbook drawings from week 1 and helped me out by inbetweening, Alice decided to help with the coloring of the character and other smaller scenes, I took on the larger chunks of animation to keep everything cohesive and Calum did some animating of the hands in various scenes, created the maps and done some coloring. Peter was away to Rome at this point but also did a good bit of the coloring and Abi was in the background helping us out when we needed her for decisions and such (this due to her being busy with 4th year stuff). Overall we tried to divide everything up in an equal manner that aloud the new guys to try out stuff they have not had a shot at before and just generally keep everything cohesive looking. 

To limit down the animation time I ended up experimenting with stretching individual frames. I had done this once before with a ski animation previously and I knew that it would work quite well here and it wouldn't take much time. 

 Week 3:

The last big scene of animation

Half of the last week was spent animating the rest on the scenes and getting everything generally together. On the Wednesday Abi got in contact with a composer Mathew who said that he would make us a soundtrack for our film which as great. However we needed to get a rough draft of the film done for him to compose sound too, and so Abi took it upon her self to edit together the rough version for him in after effects, following the rough animatic as she put it together. The whole day Thursday was spent putting together the final version in premier using most of the sequences Abi had put together the day before. It took quite a while to get everything together but we got it done and I think it looked pretty good in the end.

Final Thoughts:

Overall I feel like this project went really well and everyone pulled there weight when they needed too. I feel like we also dealt with the time constraints well too, especially since a lot of us were in and out and doing other things at the same time. I think the things I enjoyed about the project were being able to teach the new guys things in After Effects and Photoshop and such, its just nice to see the surprise on someones face when you show them something new.  Everyone was a pleasure to work with and I would be happy to work with them again, I really quite enjoyed this one!