Holly Telfer – Ba Animation blog

We have created the characters therefore we are now able to create a visual story knowing how they are designed and how they are able to move, since when I animate certain parts of a character can be utilised in part of the storytelling. Such as the fire the characters are made of, animating it in certain ways can add to the story such as it being put out.

We thought having the young musician (represented by the fiery character) have their flower taken away and then being restored and brought back up by a group of unsuited fire characters would represent the buyout process in the fairy-tale whimsical way we are going with this animation.

However we need to incorporate more story and actual words to make part of the animation clearer, such some parts being labelled but in a way that works with the animation in order to consider the audience and they understanding of the piece.

My final outcome is a beautiful relaxed piece which has a deeper meaning and has an element of sincerity in the cautionary tale theme. It is executed like a whimsical fairytale in this bleak yet warm and welcoming background where the flames of the characters glow and produce gorgeous flowers. These fiery characters represent the musician and the flowers are their creative product. I chose to keep the hand’s of the buyout out of frame and only coming in from the side a few times in order to add the distance and uncaring nature between a buyer and a musician. The journey of the fire in the piece also represents the benefit of keeping royalties since the character’s fire becomes free and grows bigger.

However through all of this I have come to understand that I have lacked the addition of clarity to the piece since I did not properly consider the audience and how it might come across to them. The final piece is too representational and as part of an informative campaign this does not work. There needed to be more obvious descriptions and clear information provided since as a whole the piece is too vague. This require rethinking the imagery used and also how I used the characters in the piece, there is room for a lot more development within the piece. Such as considering how to represent royalties in the piece, such as royalties coming to the fire figured to make them stronger and brighter, I also could have played more with the fairytale element and had the free fire characters as godly beings offering their hand from the clouds and raising the suited figure to their level in the heavens. Thinking about these points makes me realise there is a flat monotone element to my piece, it lacks obvious development and depth. This could have been combatted by properly considering the brief and thinking how this could actually come across since it is not an art piece but a promotional campaign video.

As well as the lack of clarity in the main piece there was also no flow between this and the stings. They were quite separate stylistically which further emphasised how we had not properly met the brief. We needed to strike this balance between visuals, concept, message and audience across the main animation and the stings. We should have sat down and thought of an overreaching clear theme and message for all of them so that they could sit well together but also individually. My teammate and also I have very different skillsets which did not aid in creating this piece, however a better evaluation of abilities would have helped the project run smoother and thus the final outcome would have been clearer. This would have helped us realise what we are able to produce and then a more polished final product could be formed rather than setting up overconfident tasks which we could not execute in a beneficial and effective manner.

Since we chose not to use a voiceover, these aforementioned points were things we really needed to have paid attention to since there needed to be something giving the audience the information they needed in order to understand Ivor’s campaign. This idea needed to be landed with confidence and clarity which it was not, I became caught up in making sure that a level of delicacy and warmth was brought to a scary topic. I was too focused on creating my own world for these characters to exist in, when I needed to understand this brief better and know that my work process needs to be altered in order to meet different needs. Therefore it highlighted to be the important of editing what I do and how I need to alter my style in order to work with the manner something is communicated in a piece, such as with Ivor’s campaign. A campaign needs to be clear and provide information which the audience is able to understand easily and learn from. There was no need in this project for the level of symbolic and representational imagery I used, the audience is not going to sit there and decipher it, it may look pretty but this is not beneficial to the campaign.

Also considering the final visual piece it feels very static and flat with its movement, I believe adding some camera movements will have added depth to the piece and helped in developing the storyline. However this is a limit I have met due to the technology I have here in my home, since Uni is not open this is all I am able to use. I can learn to work with this and animate my own camera movements frame by frame, but this is time consuming and not as pristine as it could be with a software that I can use to change the camera angles. This issue I have had with time management is also something that I have noticed in my entire work process over the period of this project. The way I work takes up a lot of time as I spend days and days animating and doing nothing else since how I do it takes so long, this then leaves gaps in other parts of the projects such as the developmental side. Therefore I lose out on clarity and important things which need to be included in the animation since I rush everything else on the project in order to get the animated work. Therefore it lacks refinement which has become evident whilst I have been evaluating the piece, I need to learn to not neglect parts of the project since these gaps on the final outcome really stand out.

We had the chance to discuss what we had produced so far in the project with the Ivor’s team after developing our ideas from the feedback we had in our tutorial. Thinking on what we had discussed we removed the smoke from the imagery, and thought on how to portray the journey of the flowers through the animation to represent the possession and transaction of the creative piece.

Above, the main suited character grows some beautiful flowers from their fingertips from the fire within their body. However a dark looming hand comes along and removed these flowers taking them from the creator, it proceeds to snuff out their fire. But then a group of fiery characters comes along showing the suited character their rights and offering help, they raise the character back and and replenish the fire. They all join together as glowing flowers and their power destroys the ominous hand.

When we provided these ideas to the Ivor’s team we discussed their thoughts on the things they liked and elements that needed to be rethought or removed. They discussed how the whimsical style works well with the brief as it brings empathy and a connection with the audience. The way that the ideas progress to this idea of unity in the flames works well with the idea of becoming empowered in the right ways. However the educational message of the buyout needs to be communicated somehow, there needs to be more information on what is happening in the piece. Some members of their group disagreed with the others about the use of the fire since they think it is coming across as too much on the side of rebellion than empowerment. The fire holds a more violent and scary connotation, therefore in portraying it you need to be careful it does’t come across as too much, since their union is not a scary place. Additionally the use of a knife needs to be removed since it is too violent and not suited to the campaign due to the connotations, this has made me think too that I properly need to consider my imagery and how it might come across to an audience. I had run away with my story and not properly thought of how it might translate to an audience.

After our first meeting with Ivor’s we were given pointers on how to progress further in the project. Therefore we have focused on editing the storyline and reworking it so that we can remove the knife idea and make sure it remains friendly whilst clearly communicating the message.

Therefore we have made the removal of the flowers in a less violent manner by just pulling them off. Also in the story we were missing part of the journey of the flowers, what does the buyout hand do when it pulls them away? We have added a pile of flowers to the piece where these flowers go and then can be picked up from by the group of fiery characters.

When creating the animatic I realised I had not properly thought about the transition between the last two frames and maybe adding this was making the animation too long which did not fit the brief of a 30 second long animation. Therefore by taking into consideration their earlier comments on making the piece more worked towards their campaign I decided to add their ‘Keep music alive’ slogan in the fire as the last part since it would be shorter than transitioning to flowers in a way that makes sense. I have decided to have the fire growing bigger and bigger and then disappearing to reveal ‘Keep Music Alive’ written out in flames.

After showing the Ivor’s team my work they came up with some important points. Considering this process on a whole though, it has become clear to me that these two meetings were extremely useful in helping me notice things and produce ideas which I had not considered when looking at my work before these discussions. It provides an outside perspective on my work since this is how the audience will perceive it.

The points made were that the word buyout needed to be included somewhere in the animation since the piece was lacking clarification since there needs to be a consideration and connection with the audience. A point was made about how we also needed to consider the staging of the frames, the current ideas do not provide as much depth and visual interest there could be in the piece. The variety and dynamic elements are missing. Rethinking the way some of the frames are set out too is something I need to do, such as the placement of the rights object the fiery characters are holding further up in the frame rather than down at the bottom to improve its position as a focal point. We also need to have a proper think about what we are going to do with the stings and how we are going to develop and carry our message through them. They highlighted that we needed to also make sure that each of the stings worked well together as well as in

Throughout this project I have also been doing some of my own work inspired by the artists I have been researching. Through looking at their work so far it has made me consider how I illustrate and depict my characters in my work. Workshops have opened up new opportunities such as the Harmony tutorials with Su-Lynn. I use very basic software to animate and due to COVID restriction this is all I have had access to, therefore following these basic tutorials has helped me familiarise myself with a new workspace that I intend to make more use of when our studios open again.

This is part of a piece I did during one of these workshops, this workspace is a lot more complicated than what I am used to using therefore it is quite daunting when you take it in. Learning to use this software is going to take me a while of experimenting however having this guided introduction to the basics has been inspirational and is going to influence and become part of my practice in the future whilst developing my skills. This is due to the complex tools it offers, there is a lot I cannot do with my current software and I feel like it is hindering my style’s development and getting the opportunity to learn with this software is exciting.

This has been poignant to me since it has become part of how I am starting to consider my specific style. I find it necessary to streamline what I do a bit more so that I have a cohesive palette, style and imagery I can transfer between illustrated and animated work. Looking at different artists on this project has aided in furthering my ideas I have about my style, taking inspiration from their comic book styles panels, dreamy landscapes and bizarre characters is something I have used in my illustrations.

I have begun thinking about the actual character’s story and the space they occupy in the piece, considering size and perspective. Perspective in a piece is not something I have properly considered and playing around with it in a few pieces has helped in making the illustration richer to the eye, such as the flames in the piece below. I have also noticed my interest in incorporating real imagery from part of photos I have taken, it almost adds a more personal element for me but also satisfies my urge for collage, stitched together elements in a piece.

After the last presentation with the Ivor’s team we had to rethink a few things, mainly our communication of the brief. We needed to make sure that there was a clear story being told with our characters if we were going to show this to an audience. As shown above, I needed to rethink the staging of the animation in order to help the story be told visually, it was essential that I worked alongside the brief in a closer way in order to make sure the points that were made were met. Therefore I added a beginning scene which showed the full suited character, introducing this part to the audience straight away. Therefore I decided to add a close up of the character’s flowers growing to bring the audience closer into the warmth of the flames. Another scene I added was the buyout hand dropping the flowers onto a pile so that the audience knows the journey of the flowers and it is clearly illustrates. By putting an eye watching over the flowers I carried on this narrative of a foreboding overarching hold on the creativity of a musician when going through a buyout. To illustrate that the character ripping away the flowers was the buyout I decided to have the hand melt into frame and form the word ‘Buy-out’ in the slime before it melded into the hand shape.

With these things taken into account and introduced into the narrative I have created the final piece after animating each clip in Procreate then putting them together with the audio on Premiere. When considering the audio, it was extremely important to us that we followed the theme of supporting young musicians, therefore I contacted someone I know who makes music and we found a piece which would work well with the visuals. The musician is Tom Dodkins and the piece is called ‘n87’ from a new unreleased EP. This was beneficial since it has opened up a dialogue with Tom where we know our styles work well together and we agree on the theme and aesthetics, therefore, in the future we know we now want to work on a personal project together.

Here is the final piece which I have created as an assimilation of my ideas and development throughout the project. Here are the links to my team members work on the stings: sting 1, sting 2 , sting 3.

During our tutorial we showed Stuart our plans for the project so far and from this he gave us feedback on our characters and designs which we have been making, here we also discussed the storyline which we had been thinking about and how we can then take our characters further in order to create a final storyboard for our work.

We discussed the smoke coming out of the head of the character, as it can come across as dark and polluting. Therefore it needs to be removed from the character design since it is bringing a dark element to my character that needs to be light and glowing. The smoke gives the character a burning almost factory atmosphere which is not what we want communicated. We thought that the buyout hand coming in to snuff out the fire was appropriate yet this is also imagery which is a bit darker than necessary since fire also has a link to life and does not sit well with Ivor’s idea of empowerment. Therefore this loss of creativity represented in the dulling of the fire needs to be shown in another way to work with Ivor’s focus on empowerment. There needs to be an element of growth and development in the work and less dark imagery and actions in the story.

At the moment we have many ideas for the storyline and the main focus coming away from the tutorial is properly considering our imagery and what it communicates so we can streamline these ideas and come up with a more solid concept to present in our meeting the the Ivor’s team.