What did I learn?

• Many serious themes & notions can be hidden in even 'innocent' films, such as animated fairytales

• The state of society during a specific time period and the creator's biases, memories & experiences can be intentionally and even sometimes unconsciously woven into the story

• Staging, lighting & colour are more critical than ever when it comes to deciphering potentially-embedded ideologies

How can I apply this to the project?

• I will go over any storyboards/pre-vis shots presented in the group and look at the mise en scene from a more ethical angle

• I will consider the deeper themes that may be present in our chosen prompt & what kind of experience they might create

• I will consider any stereotypes present in the work and how they might affect different audiences (age groups, racial & ethnical demographics etc.)

During the discussion, I took notes of all of the key points that were being shared and tried my best to actively participate in the conversation as well as give everyone a chance to be heard. I think that our group dynamic and general communication skills are quite effective! Together, we even settled on a team name, for which Annie later created the logo and watermark: Touch Grass Studio Clippings.

In terms of the roles that I was given, I am very happy with which parts of the project I'll be leading. We agreed that everyone should constantly share work, ask for feedback and receive help if necessary and the roles were simply 'leading titles'. I feel that my best skills lie in research, organisation & management, which is why I advocated for the coordinator role, which I happily got! It was also pointed out to me that I am proficient in environment design & colour theory. I am pleased that my work is impressionable in those areas so I settled into their respective artist roles as well. I believe I have a nice spread of work to do and am looking forward to pushing myself for this animation production.

I was, and still am, quite excited to be working in a team. Although we had a group project last semester, certain circumstances led to that being a somewhat solitary process, where I had to take on a lot of the roles in the pipeline to complete the animation. With Moviola, the chance to put forward a more specific contribution that is most suited to my skillset and experience a greater collaborative effort, inspires me to push myself and make this mini-movie the best that it can be!

To prepare for my potential role, I immediately started researching various organisational programs designed for collaborative work. I don't particularly like Excel's formatting; although it can be useful for a basic schedule overview, using it throughout the project for updates on ongoing activity is a hassle. Notion is a far better alternative for any form of organisation but unfortunately, payment is required to unlock team features. I needed a free space where more specific administration could take place. Cue Plaky!

I discovered Plaky through their website, although they have app versions available to install on tablets and mobile as well. The headline immediately drew me in - "Free task management software
for simple & visual project planning". I really liked the idea of something easy to use, as a whole group of people would have to pick it up quickly in order to launch straight into pre-production.

From my research, I learned that Plaky keeps productivity and tracking at the forefront, enabling individuals or team members to assign to-dos, share information and most importantly, see all key data at a glance. Although they have various templates, this main facet shined through: the ability to see deadlines and status updates for different tasks rapidly. I also love the fact that everything is customisable and comments, notifications and filters are all available. If my team agree to use Plaky, I will have the ability to structure the layout of our digital project space entirely to best suit the group's needs.

We settled on prompt no. 7, which overlapped with everyone's preferences/concept art. Before splitting off, Annie, our director, ensured that everyone was happy with the idea; we all had the chance to pitch other prompts to explore and consider any problems with this one. Despite the larger workload, however, we felt that the story of a thief stealing a hypnotic jewel from two power-hungry royals was the most developed and interesting, and offered everyone a good amount of work. Personally, I can't wait to explore what kind of backgrounds I can conceptualise for this kingdom!

Overall, I'm really happy with the aesthetic and layout of the document. I tinkered with the slide formats and colour palette to make everything on theme with our studio name & logo and streamlined the content to showcase the highlights of our creative process thus far.

Annie did a great job explaining what we did in the first two weeks and how we arrived at our chosen idea. I had some input here and there as co-ordinator, but of course, I did most of my presenting at the end, with the final slide being all about our team's organisation & overall management. Finally, we received our feedback, which was the most crucial element of the presentation. We discussed a couple of things with the module leaders and I immediately took note of what was stated once I sat down and sent this to the group chat for reference. The most important critiques were about our story length & character designs, both of which we decided would need to go back into pre-production, as some good points were raised about our constraints and audience.

I also updated the Plaky with our next group session, which would be visualising the story on paper to move scenes around easily and cut things out if needed. Personally, I am pleased with how our group fared while presenting and I believe the guidance we received is extremely beneficial. Overall though, I felt this nervous energy within the group that we were starting to fall behind a little due to the changes that now needed to be implemented. I decided that I would double down on my management to make sure nobody was lost and everyone was staying productive. I plan to do a recap after every group session with the schedule in front of me, confirming who has what task and how long they intend to work on it. This way, every member will always have something to do and we can produce material at a continuous rate.

While other members created lists of animals that would work well with a thief character, I whipped up a mood board of artwork that could spark ideas and act as a base of inspiration for us, which I shared in our chat, as with all of our work.

My process followed as such:

General Mood Boards (where I add any art & imagery that I think looks cool) -> Monarchy Mood Boards (collections of images that represent the aesthetics of different cultures of royalty. The key word here is aesthetic - I wasn't focused on accuracy, but rather that differences in style & mood) -> Chosen Aesthetic (rationale) -> Further Research within Chosen Aesthetic (sub-aesthetics, links & examples)

By using this process, I effectively singled out which specific architectural style (Gothique Classique) I would be using to build the exterior and interiors of our animation's environment and explained my reasoning on the later slides.

I will post my notes below, but I want to comment that I didn't find the video as helpful as I was hoping to. Ross goes over the basic steps of creating a landscape, which are pretty much present when drawing anything: thumbnailing/concepts, adding details and then colouring, which everyone has a different method for. He also skipped over a lot of the nitty-gritty, which I can appreciate makes a less engaging video if left in, but would have been incredibly useful to see.

Still, watching an artist explain their process is always helpful to an extent, and I learned some cool techniques that I might try out in Photoshop. Additionally, it was nice to get a refresher on some principle ideas on landscape layout, such as how to structure the foreground, midground and background to lead the eye and use shape language to communicate information to the viewer.

What did I learn?

• A message may not be received well if too on-the-nose (the glaring themes and over-simplification of climate-related issues were unpopular amongst the group)

• Character motives need to be considered carefully (the general consensus was that Audrey deserved to be the main character because of her genuine love of nature)

• Music can be used to exponentially speed up a story (the songs throughout the film allow for jumps to crucial plot points thanks to their transitions, clear messages and ability to break the rules of the world, such as when a character of huge scale interacts with parts of the scene like props)

How can I apply this to the project?

• The deeper message behind our film is essentially a criticism of the greed of those in power and is based heavily on the general public opinion during the French Revolution. I will do more in-depth research on this if there is time alongside my primary duties

• Our animated sequence is far shorter so character motives aren't explored to such a depth. They are, however, hinted at and it would be good to revise how the signals we have planned to do so look through the audience's lens

I kept this in mind when creating the colour experimentation sheet above. Using Dalton's design, I sketched a quick pose of the thief and proceeded to the website Coolors for some inspiration. I created a couple of palettes as a starting point, fine-tuning what the generator gave me to ensure that I had a nice variety and that there was a warmer tone present in all of them. Then, in Procreate, I played around with positioning, saturation and shade alternatives, sometimes adding or taking away colours I didn't like. Ultimately, I ended up with my own variations, which I placed on the right.

When painting the templates, I made sure not to have any of the same colours adjacent to each other, so that all of the details were visible. You'll also notice that some of the designs have patterns; although our thief will have a mask, I just couldn't resist adding some simple shapes to the skin. This was fun to do and a good variation on our original design, even if we don't end up adding anything to it!

I sent these over to Dalton, who also had some versions of his own. None of them feel quite right yet, but we finally have some potential visuals and can streamline with the director's input.

Since we haven't finalised things completely as of yet, I created variations of the exposition shot, where the castle will be showcased. Using my visual language powerpoint, I pulled small elements from Classic Gothic French architecture to adorn the outer structures, such as the elongated spiked towers and flying buttresses. I also played around with perspective to have ideas to pitch to the storyboard artists for potential camera angles.

In the disposition of pre-production, I tried my best to keep the sketches quick and light, but I'll admit, I got a little carried away with the details. I didn't expect to enjoy drawing such complex structures so immensely and I greatly underestimated how much time I would need to add those details. For my next collection of concept sketches, I aim to be much faster and focus more on the composition and silhouette of the environments.

Everyone pitched different versions of the scenes we had but Annie made sure to keep us consistent and ensure that each shot transitioned nicely into the next. She has an excellent grasp of the overall flow of the animation.

For example, in the second one, there is no need to add so much texture to the hills. I needed to find a quick brushstroke to add shading and perhaps some plants to the foreground, but that's it! I went overboard, correcting silhouettes of smaller rocks and adding trees. It's nice to look at but it misses the point, which is to establish an effective layout quickly and provide the main visuals for an idea.

Later this week, I will research the grayscale method more in-depth so that I can improve on my thumbnailing skills, specifically with environments.

A funny transition to the guillotine scene is then shown through the crowd's realisation of what has been happening, and their angry confrontation of their monarchs.

As you can see, I have made four so far, but I want to get two more done before I receive some feedback from the group. Here is the full list that I have (subject to change):

• Exp. Castle Shot

• Throne Room (Back Perspective)

• Throne Room (Front Perspective)

• Throne Room (Side Perspective)

• Throne Room (Pedestal) - ?

• Birds Eye Hallway

• Hallway (Side Perspective)

• Larger Room/Hallway Space

• Guillotine Square

The bulk of the work revolves around the same rooms, just from different angles, hence why I have specified that they will need different backgrounds with the perspective type in brackets. The 'pedestal' shot is one that I am not sure of, as it may be a case of using a pre-existing background and changing the camera angle, but considering the storyboard, I believe it will be necessary to create a new background, so I have put it on my list.

My plan is to create six of them (the most important ones) and see if I get the 'okay' from the group. I predict that I will have to make some adjustments and potentially change the style. After that comes the colour experimentation stage, which will be in tandem with the character palettes and finally, I will be able to create the real backgrounds that will be used in the animation. For now, there are nine in total, some of which are more detailed than others, so once I have established a set style and amount of time available before they have to be ready, I may be asking for help and handing out one or two to other members.

For now, I am most happy with these, out of all of the ones I have created so far: I tried my best to balance detail (there has to be enough to showcase the gothic architectural style) and simplicity, in order to not overpower the character animation, which is the focus. I might be asked to tone down the throne room from the side perspective (bottom left), but I started out quite lavish since it is the main area of power for the royals, so they would likely decorate it to the highest degree.

After sending these over, it was unanimously agreed that this should be the new ending. Everyone really liked my idea! It is also beneficial to our production time, which will be shortened now that there are fewer cuts to think about. I believe this is a brilliant example of how important communication is, and how our group is doing a good job of sharing world loads, pitching our ideas and improving the work together.

At this point, it was pretty much set in stone that I was in charge of the technical aspects, including the PowerPoint, so I updated it solely by myself this time. To stay organised and promote easy access, I created subsections within the document that allow you to easily skip to new slide groups. The first was the pitch and the second I named Week 5, which is a theme I plan to follow for all of our group presentations.

Like last time, I selected the most relevant pieces of work from our rota and arranged them to best present the tasks we undertook after the feedback, along with some text here and there for key points I wanted to get across. I tried to be as fair as possible and include a diverse range of work from each member. Much like last time, the 'crown jewel' of the presentation was the last part, dedicated entirely to Kate's updated storyboard. In terms of pacing, we have had to play catchup in order to work on the criticism provided for us and ensure that the newly revised story is up to standard.

Each short film presented a unique line quality, colour palette and movement language that best suited the story, reminding us of the importance of making sure all of our visual pre-visualisation and experimentation is kept consistent by a chosen undertone. There were also some great examples of how to achieve certain effects that are present in a lot of 2D/3D work, in a more creative way. My personal favourite was the protagonist walking away from his house over a hill in La Cartouche. The hill had a great rolling effect to show movement and it looked like the man was traversing a large ball, but this cartoony, comedic look really worked alongside the story - particularly the ending!

Thus far, I've created six 'thumbnails', which in my opinion, isn't enough. They only look at the exposition shot and some potential interiors of the castle, but there aren't many different considerations for each. To help improve my speed, I did some research on the technique that I had remembered earlier this week and found this awesome guide on value-based thumbnailing.

Feghali, the creator, talks through his entire process, summarising the key points in a clear, easy-to-follow manner. I really liked the fact that you are highly limited in the first part of the technique - allowed only three values and expected to spend around 5 minutes on each thumbnail. Doing so allows you to focus majorly on composition, which is what needs to be hashed out first! His scribbly, loose style showcases the effectiveness of this since all of the scenes are simple, yet punchy.

I copied the three values that he recommended into Procreate and started afresh with a new set of boxes on the canvas.

Anyhow, despite lags, I am trying my best to keep somewhat frequent communication going in the team sever, since that is where I feel like we are lacking at the moment. Something I am finding hard to grapple with is how to push for work without being too strict and pushing members further away. Right now, every time that I ask for an update, it feels like walking on eggshells, as I am worried that members will ignore the message out of fear of not meeting my preset deadlines. I've really come to appreciate how important and difficult the coordinator's role truly is, as it involves fostering positive relationships whilst simultaneously keeping to a tight schedule. I want to take my role seriously and keep a good production flow, but I also don't want to pile extra stress on anybody (we have enough of that by our own standards!), which is something I clearly haven't quite learned yet.

Small coordination tasks I did this week:

• Organised team folder & made new system for work recognition

• Proposed making regular group meeting date (minimum once per week) for consistency

• Posed update questions & prompted people to share their progress in order to remind them of their tasks for the week

With the last task, if I had sufficient responses from everyone, I would have updated the Plaky accordingly, but there was not much online activity. I am learning that our group is more productive when we meet up in person, and things like online voting aren't too effective.

Once again, I would like to reiterate that I am not throwing blame onto any members of TGSC, as I myself have also been working too slowly. However, it would be nice going forward if we communicated more, regardless of whether a task has been started or not. I plan to bring this up at the next available opportunity when the whole team is present.

My thoughts on it were, as always, that it is very well-drawn and concise. Kate puts care and detail into each shot and I got a feel for the comedy in our story even without an animatic thanks to her effective visualisation. However, I also noticed that it still felt too long at times, perhaps a little convoluted in terms of characters moving about and random changes in location. While reading through, I had an idea for an alternate ending which I proposed to the group straight away after thanking Kate for another brilliant set of boards. I was advised to try and draw my idea in order to explain it better, so I immediately got to sketching (see next posts).

I drew more inspiration from some images than others, but I included all of the ones that I looked at during my Google search. This time, to match the cartoony style of our characters, I didn't just include 3D concepts, realistic renders or actual photos - I also looked up some more minimal, caricatured backgrounds.

I'll be adding this as a sub-section in the overall visual language presentation that I have created.

I have sent this to the group server but am still awaiting concrete feedback on whether the style is okay and if there is a good level of detail, which is my main concern.

I quite like the repetitive motifs, like the columns, arched windows and rounded triangular decor, which I included because I wanted all of the interior backgrounds to be tied together via shape language, which will then be enhanced further with a coherent colour palette. Overall, my goal is to make the castle feel opulent and traditional, whilst still working in a somewhat simple style for the sake of time. It is precisely why I believe Classic Gothic is the best design style for this, because of the vast architectural detail that I can grab ideas from. I did so with the windows, throne room walls and lines for the smaller details like the standing lanterns.

It was very useful! I like the simple, direct manner in which he tackles the key concepts. His teaching is centralised on industry expectations and there is the added benefit of a huge reference list with artists & productions to study for excellent environment designs. As is usual for me, I took notes throughout. However this time, I wanted to practice what I had learned, the key concept of which was that knowing perspective thoroughly, is the place to begin. Ethan concretely reiterated how vital this skill is in the industry and offered a really simple way to teach it to yourself: breaking down images using perspective fundamentals, which I decided to try out!

In my notes, all of the lines in blue are images or videos that were shown on screen. It was so cool seeing her inspirations, concept development and collaboration with other artists. I particularly enjoyed the behind-the-scenes on set and experimenting with 2D, which can be a real stylistic challenge when working with physical puppets! Based on what we saw so far of her film, I think she executed the transition really well. I felt a little disturbed and confused watching it, but thoroughly interested, which is what she was aiming for I believe.

I was shocked to find out that she has been working on Potter's Mirror for four years and impressed that she had to work around the obstacles that lockdown presented. With post-production well under-way, the final film will be out soon and I am very excited to watch it. Until then, I'm grateful to have had such an in-depth look at the origins of the idea - it's one of the greatest perks of being in the industry in my opinion! Watching the changes and obstacles in the creative construction of an animation was a huge deciding factor for me in choosing this career path, so I'll always be eager to see how current films are being made.

In terms of moral, we felt a lot more confident and on-track after this session, but also a little pressed for time, in regards to our Excel schedule.

One criticism that we received within the group was that Dalton did not speak enough and felt it was a little unfair considering a lot of his work was on there. We agreed that we weren't being inclusive enough, explained why we presented like we did and ensured to make a more thorough presentation plan next time to make sure he felt more helpful to the group.

Overall, everyone had a lot of positive comments regarding the new character designs, environment concepts and story, and Kath was very pleased that we took her advice on storyboarding on paper, which helped us immensely with cutbacks. The one notable comment was to see if the lizard character might work better with feet, which would be something to experiment with in animation tests. Apart from that, we were spurred on in general and pushed to make concept art and an animatic. The three of us who were present updated the group chat and made plans to get on with the most crucial tasks.

I decided to start on paper as traditional sketching with pen forces me to work with whatever pose I create at the start. It brings up problems to overcome, such as the angle of a limb or the way a clothing folds, which would normally be avoided altogether in digital art.

As I was drawing, I prompted the group to think about small details & logistics, such as how to render the angles of limb bends (angular & sharp or rounder?) or how many fingers he has on his hands. We clarified these and created example sketches beside our main poses, as you can see above. Despite getting some great ideas for positions in character, I wasn't very happy with what I had drawn so far and moved on to another character.

For now, I have opted to leave out shading & lighting in order to focus solely on creating appealing, interesting colour harmonies. Because of some of the details, even simply adding the flats took a while, but I enjoyed the process very much; the back and forth of constant readjustment, either to balance out the setting or change a particular colour makes it so much fun for me, I truly think that this is one of my favourite parts of the creative process in animation!

This first iteration is mostly beige, yellow and brown, with a hint of mint for that pop of interest. Personally, this is my favourite palette for the castle, as it connotes opulence due to the gold detailing. The black candles and red carpet also contrast nicely with the lighter colours.

My next thought was "Okay, perhaps I need more information on this technique specifically". The tutorial I watched was about perspective in general and led me to this practice method, but now I needed to find a guide on the method itself, so I went back to YouTube.

You'll notice the diverging lines in yellow. I believe this is a third perspective, as it was briefly mentioned in the video that these sit above/below the horizon line. I didn't want to confuse myself so I acknowledged this and left it alone.

I feel like I refreshed my comprehension of perspective and have gained a better grasp on how to break images down and use them for my own work. Following this method, I will now (hopefully) be able to replicate Ethan's process and make some elevated environments for the group project and my portfolio.

Underneath, I have also embedded the two videos that I watched to, yet again, try and improve my skills in this area of the pipeline. Following these are some key principles that are mentioned, which I too note of to try and remember to utilise in my own work!

Something I struggled with was how to draw and frame the tail, which would often end up looking like a third leg due to their similar shapes. As Annie said, the way to avoid this is to nail down size, weight and where to add the bends, all of which I had to be more considerate of.

Lastly, I think the low frame rate and sketchy style both work well for his personality, but of course, these kinds of movements will be a lot cleaner in the final sequence.

In Stephenson, Annie, Dalton and I worked together on more important pre-production stuff. Annie also explained that for the rough animation, she wanted to have templates with the correct perspective and scale to draw over, which meant starting to really think about backgrounds and experimenting with angles. Together, we went through the animatic, suggesting ideas back and forth on what should be behind the characters. As always, Annie took the reigns because she has a real vision for this project!

Above is the shot list I compiled based on our conversation and it includes all of the final backgrounds that are going to be needed, apart from the hallway scene, which she wasn't happy about and wanted completely redoing. I agreed that the angles needed a lot of work because the continuity broke up significantly at that part of the animation. However, seeing just how much I had to do, I felt a little overwhelmed. Annie reassured me that for now, it was just thumbnailing to get ideas and that later on, I would have time to create backgrounds as others animate.

Personally, this colour combination reminds me more of a Scottish castle then a French one, but I like the use pale yellow/beige to fringe the carpet and door handles. Depending on what the group say, I might lean into using this colour for the overall palette.

Dalton did a great job explaining our character refining process, considering I put him on the spot a little, and I also talked through my slides on environment work. Due to illness, Kate was not present, but we attributed both her and Marie's efforts throughout. In my opinion, it went well and we got the reactions we wanted from the animatic, which really spoke for itself (unfortunately, we couldn't play it with sound because OneDrive wouldn't let me download the file for some reason?)

Our feedback was mostly positive and we acquired the green light for our animation idea, which cheered us on considerably. In terms of content, we even received a brilliant suggestion for the last scene from one of the tutors, which we noted down as something to test out now, while we are still in the pre-vis phase.

For next week, my main criticism was to include more specific artwork that members wanted to see, which I promised I would do if I was notified in advance and everything was uploaded to OneDrive.

In one of Annie's renditions, she drew her with a circular head and soft, rounded arms. Although this strays from our design style, I really liked the look of it and also created a pose with such features (round arms) for the sake of experimentation. In my opinion, she looks less menacing like his so we should stick to the angular, pointy look.

At this point, I was very frustrated. I felt like nothing I drew was good enough and I wasn't connecting to Windy's design. My posing felt too stiff and unnatural, but I couldn't figure out how to avoid this while maintaining the pointed corners and sharp aesthetic. I'm very grateful to Annie, who gave me lots of guidance and advice. She sent over the brush packs she used, as she believed the sketchy nature of the ones I was using was limiting me.

I think this session was extremely beneficial because we got to bounce off each other and share tips on how to draw the thief. For example, above, you can see that I took inspiration from Annie & Kate and used their poses to recreate the art style we're aiming for. I admit, I'm a little worried about matching it during animation, but thankfully my role will be mainly to fill in gaps between key poses (if help is needed there) and make backgrounds.

You'll also notice that the first sketch of Windy has feet! I finally decided to try out Kath's suggestion and see what he would look like with feet, but I think we all agreed that he looks better with just the sharp points. This way, our animation will be easier to do and the sneaky quality of a thief will be more evident to the audience. Furthermore, there are not a lot of scenes where the bottom of his feet are visible, so either way, it wouldn't make too great of a different aesthetically.

Using all of our sketches, Annie then compiled the overlapping elements and effective design components in one document. We had a template for the lizard! Dalton is now going to form the guideline via a turnaround, using the breakdowns for reference.

To maintain productivity, I turned to a lighter, more enjoyable task; using Dalton's lineup of the selected characters, I went to Procreate to create some palette suggestions.

I have been speaking to friends & family and am grateful to have people to guide me on potential solutions, such as taking longer breaks to ensure quality rest and even considering more long-term alternatives in order to recuperate. For now, I am still pushing on, as I fear that if I stop uni work altogether, I may not be able to pick it up again. The project is ongoing and I don't want to let my team down so my current technique is 'slow & steady' and stepping away for a bit if I feel overwhelmed. Hopefully, this will pass soon.

I am so much more aware of the power that we hold as animators - we create media, a tool which has long been used to manipulate the masses and recycle the same themes that have structured society for centuries. We have to be extremely careful of what we put out there as, as Kath pointed out, a lot of it is still accessible on platforms like YouTube!

As for the updated tasks, which I put on the Plaky straight after the session, we are hoping to get things done by the end of the week, for the most part.

I felt guilty since I am the coordinator and am supposed to be organised, and I also wanted to get on with my tasks myself. However, I recognise that this is not a team mentality and it is not how the animation is going to get done. Annie did the right thing in making my workload a little lighter as it gives me a break and also ensures production continues running. For the two hours that I was there, I did a bit of crying, a lot of discussion with Annie and Kate, updating the shot list and even creating four thumbnails for new angles. Considering I was not doing too well, I'd say that I was pretty productive, although, at the time, I did not feel this way.

I am grateful to have such supportive friends. I cannot even hope to have similar treatment in the future, as a lot of the time, I will be working with people whom I do not know and am not close to. My respect for my current team only increases each time we work together, because they are able to maintain a professional work output and sense of productivity alongside personal life, all while being considerate and encouraging.

Looking at it now, some critique from myself would be that I didn't get his proportions spot on (I made him look taller than he is and his head needs to be bigger) and also, the cape has a weird cut-off that makes it look like it no longer covers his body entirely. My thought process when doing this was to make it seem that he had thrown it around himself with such force that it moved entirely from one side to the other. However, I see my mistake was not adjusting the volume of the object when doing so - it would be much bigger if its entirety was on our side. Still, I am much happier with the movement overall and I wish that I had used a reference earlier!

Below I will post some of the inspiration behind the last three, which is the shot I've been struggling with the most (throne room, side perspective).

Most of the artwork looks more finalised and on-theme and I think you can really see things coming together now, with the heavier background work. Of course, including the latest version of our rough animation is a necessity, and this time I coupled it with a sample of Marie's sound work, so the original video (the animatic) and the more refined version, including some key poses, can be directly compared. It shows how much work Annie has been doing and is quite fun to watch!

In terms of style, environments can be a bit harder to match than characters, as they are often full of different objects and items, for which there would not be enough time to outline individual turnarounds/design sheets for each and every one. Nick pointed out that our thumbnails looked a little different, and at this stage this is alright, but to remember upkeep and constant communication so that the final look is cohesive. At the moment, I am the one in charge of making the final art for the backgrounds, so this shouldn't be an issue, but even if Kate were to join, I believe that our communication is cogent and practical enough that we would agree on how things should look in the final animation.

I took my usual notes and sent them to the group server afterwards for access to anyone who wanted to remind themselves what individual advice they were given. I had already predicted that I would be continuing with background work, but the more specific remarks I made sure to type out immediately, such as the design suggestions Annie made for pre-existing backgrounds.

Unfortunately, my rough sketch didn't fit the bill. I wasn't able to make the cape swish like I wanted and something about the arm didn't look right because I struggled with how to naturally position his upper body as he was drawing the cape around himself.

I wanted it to be dramatic and clear, so I varied the speeds and ferocity of the action, as well as exaggerated my pose to translate better into animation. Like my original two attempts, I created a spiky, claw-like shape for the hand holding the pendant and also swooped into a lower pose for the later versions, to give myself options to choose from when making the skeleton of the clip.

I built a very basic 'throne room', using the raised throne room dias as the only reference for scale and tried to position it in an appealing way. No matter how I moved it, I couldn't find an angle that met all of the criteria and was dynamic enough for the animation sequence. Still, I tried it out in the second to last thumbnail for experimentation purposes.

Most of the content examples on the list were things I was already planning to include, which is a good sign!

So, I redrew one of my first thumbnails that Kate confirmed we would use in the final animation, which is the front of the throne room. I admit, I made the lines far too thick here, but by the time I realised, I was already one palette in, and couldn't afford to waste the time re-drawing, especially since this was mainly about the colour combination. What a challenge this first one was! The two palettes have shared tones, so I didn't think it would be so difficult balancing them both, but I went back and forth many times and made a lot of changes before reaching the stage you see now.

Even with this version, I am not entirely satisfied. Because of the green, I had to omit a lot of the reds and ended up just making another version of the beige/gold combo with a different accent colour - green (the reds turned into more of a maroon so that they wouldn't clash). I also had to consider the positioning of each colour relative to each other and relative to where the character would be. For example, since Windy is going to sneak up to the case, the thrones and the back wall behind them couldn't be green, as it would mean washing him out. I always try and keep the character animation at the forefront of my mind, since it takes the spotlight.

Needless to say, I didn't really like this one, but it was still worth creating for the sake of experimentation, and to answer Annie's question, which would be no. The two palettes don't really work together, as there are too many colours.

After realising that explanations weren't too effective (understandable, given that we are visual people), I went ahead and made a mini template for Marie of the kind of thing I was expecting. There are many aspects of the design to play around with, even if it's only one object, which is why I quickly sketched out some simple versions of each.

• The shape

• The chain

• The pattern

• The colour

• [Final] Different angles of the design

I also put one of the examples in Annie's royal pose (which I think is amazing by the way!) and sent the whole thing in the group chat for Marie to draw inspiration from. I think this really helped because she came back soon after with over 20 different patterns to choose from for the pendant.

For Moviola, I was chosen to do environments because Annie believes that I excel in that area, which even in kindness, puts a lot more pressure on my outcomes. I haven't ever done anything to this professional standard, with spot-on perspective and an animation sequence in mind - not to mention a more clean, finalised look. Additionally, the lighting would also need to be included - all of these things seem so out of reach for my skillset at the moment. I was, and still am, feeling imposter syndrome to a large extent, as well as the fear that I simply won't be able to produce good enough backgrounds.

When I told Annie about this, I greatly downsized the issue of course, and simplified it to not being knowledgeable in the lighting aspect. She suggested that I do some research and find out how other productions have tackled that part of the process. Following her advice, I scoured YouTube and watched a bunch of videos on background art, taking notes on the crucial tips of course.

It feels better knowing I have this page to refer back to, and it was a nice recap of the fundamentals that I already knew, not to mention all of the new things I learned as well. As always, the fear still lingers, especially seeing how easy the artists make it look in the videos. But hopefully, I can produce work that is adequate thanks to the collaborative aspect of this module.

To bring some pop and contrast with the rouge, I made the details such as the thrones, chandelier and candle holders blue/turquoise, pulling the focus further to the central area.

But my task was clear - using these two, I would make versions with thinner, coloured outlines and no outlines at all.

Despite things seemingly going well, I didn't finish the template because something caught my eye yet again! In Annie's concept art of this specific shot (see post Pendant Sketches), her simple background doodle has a much more dynamic angle, showing the dial from a higher perspective. I prefer this, so I want to try re-drawing the thrones and display case from an upper angle instead.

You'll also notice that I redrew the candelabras, again, with more detail and a more historically accurate shape.

For now, I have left the walls bare to save time because I predict that I will be adding details when I create the finalised environment art.

In order to design them properly, I did some research on traditional chairs and throne designs during the era of Gothique Classique.

One thing that worries me is if I have added too much detail, which is what I suspect will be pointed out by someone in the group. I admit that I got a bit lost in the drawing and didn't keep one important fact in the forefront of my mind: the character animation takes the spotlight. If this is the case, I will happily reign back and tweak my design, but I believe there may be a way to make these details subtle since they could simply be carvings in the wood and wouldn't be as visible with the right colouring & shading.

To aid with the visualisation of said angle, I attempted to create a rough mockup of the throne stage with pictures I found online of similar chairs. These two looked too wonky, so I tried again with a different photo.

Initially, I wanted to draw a phoenix, but again I thought of the deeper meanings and potential implications that this would instil into the piece. Perhaps having that as their symbol, it could mean that the royals find a way to 'rise up again from the ashes' and return to cause more harm even after their death. So I changed direction slightly and decided on an Eagle, a ferocious and cunning hunter.

I was proud and super impressed by her organisational skills, especially considering she easily could have handed them off to me and asked for some help! But no, she did an awesome job making clear lists of shots, and backgrounds, taking notes and preparing all of the necessary instructions to give to the team. I think we all felt a lot more confident after seeing everything laid out and knowing we had an extended period to hand in more solid work.

I will also be copying the main list into Plaky and updating that too, so that the team know where I am in terms of work.

If I could have, I would have worked off a photo-realistic side perspective, but I couldn't find a single one and had to use another cartoon example. To be fair, it worked in my favour, because this background needs to be an extended one, as it will be made into a GIF to match with Windy's running shots.

Feedback

• Everyone liked the little ghost that comes out of the pendant once it shatters (Annie's addition)

• It was stated the the soundtrack worked quite well. The music helped move things along and accent certain parts

• Overall, the animation is funny and well-paced

I found this brilliant article which lays things out nicely: Wool Over the Eyes

Personally, I couldn't connect very well with the directing style and surrealist scenes in combination. Although the vignettes are supposed to be separate, yet connected, I struggled to follow along and maintain an interest - only occasionally horrified/confused by what I saw. I can recognize however, that the scenes are effective and sensitive and the level of craftsmanship in the animation is quite superb (I had never thought about wool puppets in such a way before!).

Something that I didn't think to put in until the last minute when I checked Kate's hallway concepts, was a chandelier! I quickly got some references that I liked from Google, all within the Classic French Gothic era and whipped up a design. I then duplicated it and moved it to other positions along the hall ceiling.

Looking back at the other one, I tried to picture Windy running through the halls and knew that it was a bit too fast, so I made the loop a bit slower. To my happiness, with the extended hallway, the transition is a lot smoother!

I'm also very happy I installed Procreate Dreams; it's simple, intuitive and full of possibilities. I can't wait to see what else I create with it. At the moment, the one thing that is bugging me and affecting the work for this project is the fact that you can't export GIFs, which is why the video is an MP4 - hopefully, they add this feature soon.

Plaky is easy to pick up, so anyone in the team could probably jump straight in and figure things out themselves according to how I've laid it all out. Just in case however, I made a quick video to showcase the changes and clearly present how it all should/could be used. I uploaded this in the shared folder and let the group know with a message to the Discord server that I put below.

I was so excited about the release of this app, like most iPad creative users! But when it finally dropped, I decided to hold off installing it right away, partly because I didn't really need it at the time (I was mainly using FlipaClip) and partly to see what the initial reactions were and how effective the program really was. But the moment came and I took the leap, purchasing Dreams and starting to learn its interface right away with YouTube tutorials.

Since there have been quite a few, I'm going to link the rest here:

• Watch This Before You Open Procreate Dreams

• How to Gaussian Blur in Procreate Dreams

• Creating Animated GIFs in Procreate Dreams

• Change Playback Mode in Procreate Dreams

• Learn Procreate Dreams!

• Procreate Dreams Tricks

• High-Tower Hijinks

• Green vs Green

• Revolutionary Green

• Pendant Pandemonium

• Caught Green-Handed

• Spellbinded

• Robbery & Revolution

So far, the fourth and last ones have been most popular amongst the team but I am open to other suggestions and looking forward to the final vote.

I'd also just like to say, before you continue reading, that the next month was spent working in a consistent frenzy to try and get this project done. Most of us abandoned our padlets until the end in order to focus entirely on the assets and animation (hence this update, after weeks 19 & 20). This is why the following content won't be as in-depth as the rest of my blog.

I left the flags out to animate later and also separated the clouds from the rest of the layers to do so as well. My plan was to create the base for all of the backgrounds first (except those that were moving) and leave any animation for after, which is in order of necessity for what is needed for the animation, with a background, in general, being number 1 priority (aside from character animation) for every shot.

Anyhow, I tried to play around with the colour harmonies by changing up the values or hues, which is why we have these two alternate colour blocks of version #2.

To keep the attention on Windy in this crucial scene, I made the stage darker and slightly blurred. This also reflects the camera angle and the natural effects of depth perception in the viewer's position.

The main issue was the throne stage - in the templates I had, it was too far off-screen for the shot where Windy falls down from the window. However, lining it up where it needed to be wasn't right either, as the king then didn't jump off the stairs correctly, and the queen overlapped the stairway. I almost tore my hair out trying to sort this one out, but I had to start eventually, so I went ahead with what you see on top. It was the closest I could get to 'perfect'.

By this point, I had a solid method and I was following it diligently:

1. Flat colours

2. Soft shadows & depth

3. Darker shadows

4. Texutres (if applicable)

5. Highlights/reflections

Obviously, some objects involved extra steps, or mixing up the order in order to achieve the right look. For example, the curtains have a different texture to the borders of the windows: to make the material feel soft and bunched up, I went back and forth a lot between steps 2 - 4, using a different brush and different brush size than usual to emanate the soft, darkened folds.

Once again, things that characters interacted with had to be on separate layers, which is why the open window and stage are all divided up into their segments. Unfortunately, we had a few mishaps later down the line with the way I merged/organised layers. I kept making little errors and mistakes that hindered Annie, such as not dividing the stairs from the throne stage. I went back as much as possible to try and help her out, but it was difficult to balance that with continuing with the creation of backgrounds, especially towards the end when we experienced the tightening deadline.

One thing I don't like about this background but couldn't change because I accidentally drew them on the same layer as the imported corridor texture, is the thin, bold, purple lines. They're simply too dark, and I had no way to fix them without restarting the corridor.

Surprisingly, the door handles were an accident! I only realised after that I made them look like angry men, and this worked in our favour so I kept it in the design. Overall, I used Kate's template for this shot as a base and only tweaked the details on the doors to make them more interesting and fit the architectural style selected.

This is something I feel I have really improved on throughout this project - learning to take the fails and critique in flow and simply move on. I wasn't upset at all that these jars weren't used, which is a stark different to how I would have behaved before the course! I simply understood that it's all for the sake of the final result, and sometimes that means not using certain pieces of work, even if time was spent making them look good.

Although I am happy with the shading on the column, I messed up on the perspective, as can be seen when looking at the bottom versus the top. I didn't notice this until way too late and it bugged me irrefutably, but again - there was no quick fix, and the time constraints demanded I press on.

Creating the shiny glass material was a fun challenge - it involved a lot more highlights and intensive layering (glass behind -> pendant & stand -> glass in front -> top).

I am not very proud of the nook where the statue is; I tried a new pattern along the rim for interest and thought it looked good, but upon later review, I wasn't too big a fan. I also think I could have made the outlines thinner for the railing and front columns, but other than that, it looks fab! I love the colour balance - definitely made the right choice for the palette - and the statue is a great centrepiece for the room. I give a lot of credit to Kate for this one, as she provided the template that I used as a base for the staircase and object positioning.

Flat squares for the buildings and guillotines at the start forced me to decide colours early on. I went for browns, reds and yellows to contrast against the castle palette and showcase the poverty and discontent of the citizens. I knew then, that I wanted the anger of the crowds and classisim injustice to be the main themes for this piece, and I started building up more of an idea of how it would look: dark, smoky and dramatic.

Building on this idea, I pulled the focus down to the guillotine by simplifying the crowds (just simple squiggly shapes with shading) and using monochromatic colour schemes for any detail that needed to be visible for the buildings. This way, the attention of the viewer is pulled instantly to the most important aspect of the scene: the catalyst for the anger and rioting - the execution. I made smoky clouds and a dusty sky and shone the spotlight directly onto the people on the stage. I am particularly proud of my decision to make them dark silhouettes with bright red highlights for minor details, which creates that visual drama I was going for.

Finally, the torches and weapons you see were added later on, when I realised that the crowds should have fire to make the torch transition make sense and that there needed to be some minor animation. Once again, I was amazed with the final result - you truly don't know what you're capable of until you push yourself! Something I would improve on for this specific background if I could go back, is to make the weapons more pointed and menacing, as they look too cartoony as I left them. Does that play into the style of the animation so far however...?

• The rope - longer than the canvas as it is pulled down, in front of the pillars to be visible

• The stage - behind the pillars but in front of the crowd

• The pillars - in front of the stage and the scythe

• The scythe - will be animated falling downwards, has to be behind the pillars

And aside from that, usual layering for the sky, back crowds, clouds etc.

Annie requested that she be included in the crowd as the final easter egg (because the rest of us were included in other parts of the animation). I drew her near the right pillar! For the crowds in general, I used the same method as the detail for the buildings by drawing them in a simplified manner in a darker colour than the flat. Keeping things monochromatic allows the primary character animation to stand out.

For this background, there are only two layers - the columns & wall (front) and the hallway (back) because all of the characters interact in between them!

I found this cool tutorial on YouTube and really liked the look of the effect. In After Effects, which is a program I am quite familiar with, I followed the steps and recreated it myself in green. It was fun to make and the result looked really cool!

The response I got was to try again. So try again I did. Creative projects do wonders for your grit and persistence. And patience.

Annie explained that it is supposed to be a hypnotised eye behind Windy, and I understand that because the design style is so simplistic, the eye looks rather flat. It has to, in order to match. Still, I wish I had some more time to tinker with it, perhaps adding layers of depth such as shadows and glows to the green swirl.

This was harder than it seemed and involved a lot of back and forth to make sure that the sizes between the individual components stayed the same and that everything was moving at roughly the same speed. Many changes later, and I still didn't have these things perfectly ironed out for each object, but I figured since they weren't going to be on-screen for very long and they weren't the main focus of the scene anyway, it would be alright. I used the running loop of Windy to test the speed of the motion and match up his pace with that of his surroundings.

• Moving clouds

• Moving crowds

• Bouncing flames

• Flame texture & movement

This was enjoyable and simple to do, but I'm not fully satisfied with the final result. I don't know if the bouncing crowd animation works, but I also didn't have any other idea for how to animate the crows in time, so I moved on to the next background. I figured that if something was so terrible that it needed to be drastically changed, Annie would let me know.

Instead of doing a simple bounce, I went for a very simple boil - again, aiming to keep the viewer's main focus on Windy, who would be in the centre of the shot. Because of this, I only did 2 different versions of the crowd and put the animation on a 4 frame boil, duplicated for the entirety of the end of the animation. I figured this was safest, even though there is a zoom in the middle and Windy takes up most of the camera in the last shot, obscuring the crowd. Like last time, I also added some flame texture to the lit torches in the crowd (handy little brush in Dreams) and animated the clouds to warp/move.

I used Procreate Dreams because it is easy to use and more importantly, fast. Moreover, its links to Procreate make exporting and importing assets a lot easier. For shot 1, I exported all of the individual Photoshop layers as PNG files and assembled them anew in Dreams. There, I keyframed the clouds and animated the missing flags frame-by-frame. Finally, after grouping all of my work, I added the camera movement, a zoom towards the bottom of the castle to tie everything together.

Truth be told, I wasn't too happy with the Zoom as it didn't give the viewer a chance to appreciate the full piece. However, I knew it was important to follow the rough animation and the dynamism of the shot overruled the need to see the full castle. I could admit that this worked better, despite being a little crestfallen.

None of the backgrounds I have drawn before have been to this scale and this magnitude, both in terms of the environment itself and the detail added. Technically, I know that they are far from perfect - for example, I need to learn to push my values further, gain information on advanced colour theory and by far, the biggest thing I want to improve on is lighting. Lighting was the final aspect of each background for me, which really shouldn't be the case and was probably why I was so stuck when it came around. I would resort to doing simple rays of light from a certain direction, but that isn't enough. Light affects the shadows, colours and mood of the piece, which are all things that need to be considered at the beginning of and throughout the design.

So lighting and environmental animation are my key takeaways for weaknesses I have gleaned through Moviola. But I have gained a lot too. My teamwork skills have increased in leaps and bounds, I feel more confident in my work and my ability to create backgrounds - I actually feel like I have somewhat of a grasp on perspective! I can handle criticism and redoing or just scrapping work much better now and I also have a greater understanding of the animation pipeline, having partaken in it legitimately myself.

Something I wish I did better was maintain my coordinator role even through production. I had to abandon it, for the sake of focusing on the backgrounds, and even though the team had a system in place, I feel like things would have been easier to keep track of if I had stepped din with folder organisation and enforcing Plaky (which nobody ended up using 😔). Also, I have learned that I am not great at confrontation, as there were times when my opinion was needed for lighting and matching animation to backgrounds, and I couldn't express where I felt someone had gone wrong or what they needed to change. From spending so long on something, I know how horrible it feels to have to go back and start over again, which is why I can't bring myself to point something like that out. If I want to develop my team coordination and management skills, I need to toughen up a bit.

But truly, the entire journey has been wild, tiring, funny and exciting. Which is what creating animation is like! It feels like I have gotten a step closer to what working in the industry would be. And now that I have put my blood, sweat and tears into a project, I can be sure that my passion is leading me in the right direction. I loved it. I hated it at times, but I think that once I see the final animation, it will all have been worth it!