Additional Budgeting And Scheduling for Little Red Riding Hood…

After identifying in the previous budgeting post the key job role that would be needed in order to make My LRRH animation, I decided to research how much hiring these specific roles would cost.

Glasshouse was a really useful source as it gave me some of the average wages of these key roles. I decided that because my animation is going to be quite short that I would then calculate the salary per month of each job role. https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/character-designer-salary-SRCH_KO0,18.htm – below is a lose template of the job roles needed to create my LRRH animation…

SENIOR ROLES –

Producer – £5,000 per month – I would like to be the producer as they oversee the production process And make sure everything is following the schedule. This would ensure that the animation goes how I would like it.

Director – £4,557 per month – for my animation I would like to be the director as I know how I want the animation to look like, however, if the film was a large scale and complicated I would probably be inclined to hire a director. This may also be difficult if I was the producer too.

PREPRODUCTION –

Script – someone to come up with the story and create a final script

Storyboard artist – £2,601 per month – again I would like to create the storyboard for LRRH as I know how I want the animation to look

Animatic – adding a sound track/dialogue into a storyboard in order to see how the animation is going to look, giving good indication as to whether its all going to work or whether things need changing

Character designers – (couldnt find a monthly salary as most go off of hourly pay) £17 per hour – I would like to do this but because of the other roles I would want to do, this may be difficult, if so, I would hire someone to do this – would be designing all four characters in LRRH

Set designers – usually between £15,000-20,000per year – I went off of the middle amount of £17,000 per year – meaning that the monthly wage would be around £1,400 – pretty much the same for character designers, i would like to do this but would probably have to hire someone else to do this – would be designing the woods, house, rooms in house for LRRH

Prop creator – £1,250 per month – Would need to create the props for LRRH

Costume design – £1,400 per month – Would need to create all costumes for LRRH, the woodsman and the grandma in my animation

3D modeller – £2,100 per month – would need a 3D modeller to create all the characters as LRRH is a stop motion animation. As there are 4 characters to make, there may need to be more than one modeller

PRODUCTION –

Animator – £2,700 per month – I would probably have to hire a few animators for this role as this process is time consuming and would need multiple sets of hands – may need assistant animator as my animation is stop motion

Lighting – £2,300per month – Would need to control the lighting eg creating shadows in the forrest, making the hallway dimly lit – light casting over her face, creating the bedroom to be dark but with one dim light casting in the middle of the room etc

Camera control – £2,100 per month – would probably only need one person controlling the camera. They will make sure the camera angles are right and i would hire someone for this role for my LRRH animation

POSTPRODUCTION –

Editor – £2,000 per month – I would have to hire someone for this role as I don’t know enough about editing to edit an entire short film

Sound designer – £2,100 per month – For LRRH, I need a soundtrack which will make up the majority of the animation. The sound is there for added emotion during the scenes and to project ‘scary’ atmospheres throughout. the sound design is really important when creating an animation

Foley artist – £1,000 per week / £4,000 per month – Would definitely need a foley artist to add depth to the animation. I would like to do this, however dont think i would be able to with all the other jobs i would have to do

Voice actors – £109 per day – In LRRH, there is only some dialogue and its only between two characters – would probably only need one day max with the voice actors

Digital artist/painter – £2,300 per month – they would go in and touch up anything or add detail to the animation where it is needed. These make sure the animation looks as good as it can and i think they are very important. I would hire someone to do this for my animation

i think that because my animation is going to be quite short, the whole process could take around 12 weeks. I would allocate specific time slots to each individual process in order to stick to this time frame.

https://www.artella.com/index.php/2017/09/21/animation-production-step-step-guide-making-3d-animated-movie/ – this was also really helpful in separating the job roles within the creating process behind an animation. It went into detail about each role and made it into a clear step-by-step guide. This was helpful when planning my LRRH animation as i was able to clearly identify the jobs that would go inti creating my film. This made it easier for me to find out how much to budget for each role.

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After finding out how much each job role would cost and figuring out the total budget for the animation, I decided to look at how to make a schedule table – basically a clear and easy way to see how long each process should/will take. This ensuring that the budget ins’t increased by wrong timings etc.

this is a template that i found which clearly shows the time frames for the whole animation. This will be useful to do for my LRRH animation. However, because mine is a short film, i will make my schedule into a weekly timetable, whereas the example one is monthly.

https://medium.com/cgwire/how-to-prepare-your-animation-production-part-2-the-schedule-cc413d0d8455 – this is another handy site which lay out a clear way to schedule for your animation. It tells you all the things to schedule and how to do so. I would defiantly use this for my planning of LRRH animation.

Links to Little Red Riding Hood…

A short film which I think links to LRRH is the ’Sandman’ by Paul Berry. The film is a short stop motion film based on a mythical creature who steals children’s eyes at night, if the child is awake.

The reason I’ve used this as a link for LRRH is that its obviously a short stop motion film – this is what LRRH will be. This film also doesn’t include any dialogue and only has instrumentals as a sound track – LRRH will include a small amount of dialogue but will mainly show emotion and mood through the music and lighting. The sound in the Sandman is all that is used to show the emotions in this film, the models are fixed faced models, meaning that they aren’t able to show emotions through facial expressions (i found this interesting as i thought that facial expressions were the main source of emotion through an animation, but this film proves that sound can have the same effect). This is something i would think about for my LRRH animation, after watching this. The sound in the Sandman adds dramatically to the eeriness of the film and works well with the tonal lighting to portray the sinister motive behind the story. The lighting is dark and creates alot of shadows, making the hallways look bigger (good hiding places for the boys imaginary fears to lurk). You can see that the boy is hesitant to leave his mother and climb the stairs as he is forced into the darkness, you can see this from him physically holding back, and also from the use of the music becoming suspenseful and unnerving. The use of foley in this film worked really well too. I highlighted things like footsteps, creeking doors and stairs – this intensifying the fearful mood. For LRRH, I think this would work really well as that too is supposed to be a ‘scary’ short film – i think it will also give depth to the animation.

You can see from the boys acting that he is terrified of the Sandman. After getting to his room he jumps into bed and almost immediately hides under the covers. As he is hearing scary noises in the dark, he starts shaking in fear and overall looks very uneasy. For my animation, i would like alot of the emotion to come from the characters acting – for example, LRRH nervously looking round in the woods as she hears noises, or when she hears the wolfs voice and jumps slightly, or when she enters the house and instantly knows something is wrong so becomes very guarded/cautious. I think that showing the emotions in this way is much more effective and ‘real’ then just using vocals to express the emotions in a scene.

I think another way that this film links to LRRH is that the main focus on the story is one character – however, theres a point in both where there are two characters in conflict. This is almost like the peak in the films where they come into contact with one and other. This is interesting to me because in both animations/storys the two conflicts involve a young-ish child and an older figure who has very sinister intentions.

Further Designs for Penguin animation…

I decided to do some further development for the penguin animation as I don’t feel as though I have enough.

After deciding that the ‘pencil drawing’ designs would fit the theme and style of the animation, I wanted to design him wearing a jumper (taken from the other designs I did). I really liked how these turned out as it adds a level of charm (close to the snowman film) which I really want throughout this animation. I defiantly want to use this design as the main baby penguin in the animation.

After figuring out the style i wanted my characters to be in, i decided to create some ‘emotion designs’. I wanted to experiment with how the baby penguin will look when feeling different emotions throughout the animation…

emotion = nervous — when he is approaching the other baby penguins

Emotion = sad — when he is left out and bullied by the others

emotion= sad/lonely — when he is alone has no friends

I wanted to do a rough animation test to see how the bay penguin is going to walk. Due to lockdown I only had my ipad to do this on so it didn’t turn out how I would have wanted. However it was useful as I know when his arms have to move in order to fit with the feet movements. I also found out that he needs to move side to side in order to get the waddle effect.

if my ipad hadn’t have broken whilst we were in lockdown i would have created more designs of this nature and also would have created a few more animation tests – however, just from doing these i have a good idea for how iwould expand on this if i were to create this animation…

for this animation, I want all the baby penguins to be wearing different coloured jumpers – making each on stand out but also being similar. They will all be normal sized but the main baby penguin will be much smaller than the others, as seen in the script. I want this to be really noticeable in the animation, making it clear hes being left out. The reason i also want multicoloured jumpers is that the background is quite plain in colour (due to it being snow), this will give some colour to the animation and also make it more interesting for children as its a child animation.

My Portfolio –

For my portfolio I wanted to ensure I was only showing work that I thought was best and the work I would like to be hired for. I tried to make it have as many subjects within it as possible to give a potential client an idea of my range. I realised that alot of my work contains people – this is something I plan to broaden for when I start applying for jobs. To make my work clear, I created two sections, one for illustration and the other for animation.

ILLUSTRATION SECTION –

Alot of my work is digital, however I put in some hand drawn creations also to add some diversity. I would like to add to this as time goes on and I have produced even more work that I think represents the style of work that I would like to produce in the future. Alot of my work is quite atmospheric – I this could be good for the horror/serious genre of illustration.

ANIMATION SECTION –

In my actual portfolio there are a few more images and the layout is much better but due to having to submit a pdf file, I decided to just include some of the images on my blog. I have included set design, character design, storyboard design and animation stills – these are the type of jobs I would like to go into – I wanted to include all of them to hopefully show diversity.

Potential Opportunities –

This is a list of local opportunities based near Hereford which I could get involved with, which could potentially help to get my work out there and noticed.

Pussy Pads –

Useful Contacts –

This is a useful list of potential companies I would be interested in working with/ collaborating with in the future. I shall add to this list as and when I see companies which I think could be interesting –

Graphicmama – https://graphicmama.com/custom-work?service=custom-drawing-or-illustration –

this company specialise in custom work and character design which is something I am very interested in for a potential future career.

Design Garden – https://www.designgarden.co/services –

they create logos, custom illustration, portrait illustration and much more – I would be interesting in maybe collaborating with them if possible. They also create animations for people which is something I want to look into going forward with my career.

Folio Illustration Agency – https://folioart.co.uk/ –

‘The Showcase is where we present some of the most exciting new talent we’ve discovered, and let their work speak for itself. It is a place where newly established artists, illustrators, typographers and studios can display their work, their skills and their ambition, and show us what the next generation of graphic art and design has in store.’

^ I think that this one would be a good contact to have as it would give potential clients access to you work easily and would put your name out to a wider audience. They are also based in London, which may also give me good links to the illustration/animation industry.

WONKY Films – https://wonkyfilms.com/ –

^ WONKY Films is a company I would be interested in working with in the future. For illustration, they work with character designers (something I am very serious about taking forward) and accept lots of different styles of art, so I may be able to fit in with the company. For animation, they cover 2D and stop motion animation (which again, I am strongly considering as a career).

Studio AKA – https://www.studioaka.co.uk/ –

Studio aka is an animation company which I would really like to work for in the future. They are well known company who have animation many amazing films. Being a part of this company would give me a really good step in the animation industry and may take me further in my career.

Nobrow press https://nobrow.net/about-nobrow/ –

‘Nobrow burst into existence in late 2008 as the joint creative endeavour of two friends and ex-St Martin’s alumni: Sam Arthur and Alex Spiro. Since its inception Nobrow Ltd. has sought to make great design, ground-breaking art and narrative, luscious production values and environmental consciousness central to its mission. We have striven both to bring fresh, young talent to wider audiences, as well as to remind the world of the great talents that have been producing stunning work for many years. We have sought to bring new stories to life, as well as to revive well-worn yarns for new generations of people. We have played with concepts, narratives, genres, formats, printing methods, production processes and design in ways that have come to redefine the standards of quality in visual publishing the world over. We have also, thankfully, picked up some awards and accolades along the way.
Most of all, over the last 8 years, we have been privileged enough to work with some of the best international artists, storytellers, and designers, and for that we are most grateful! We have also benefitted from having the world’s best fans, followers and adherents and to them we pledge to never disappoint, and to keep delivering the very best in visual publishing, in whatever format, in whichever medium and to whichever point on the globe.’

Anorak Magazine https://anorakmagazine.com/ –

Anorak is a well known company which produces children’s books. This would be a really useful contact to have.

Competitions –

This is my collection of potential competitions, specifically for illustrators – these are the ones I think sound most interesting and could potentially get my work noticed.

https://www.templarillustratorcomp.co.uk/

https://www.panmacmillan.com/macmillanprize

https://www.thersa.org/action-and-research/rsa-projects/design/student-design-awards – even though the deadline for this one has closed, they run it every year so I thought this could be a good potential competition to enter in the future.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/company/work-with-us/student-design-award/student-design-award.html – this one was interesting as the winning prize is a work placement for the company – this would be a really good opportunity.

My Mailer – Professional Practice –

We were set a brief which was to create a mailer which would be sent to people/ companies in order to give them an indication as to what your work entails. These are cheap to produce on a large scale also. Lisa Hassell is an illustrator who overlooked the project and gave u helpful tips on how to create a good mailer. This was a fun brief which allowed us to completely express our own styles through each piece of work.

For my mailer, I decided I would like to make tote bags with a design of a woman on (one of my favourite designs from a previous project). I also wanted to create a range of badges which would like nicely to the bags.

After sending my work to Lisa for her to look over, she gave me some very helpful feedback which I then went away and applied to my work. She advised me to play around with contrasting colours and gave me an idea of which designs were the strongest, meaning they would be the best ones to take forward.

These were some of the developments I created after taking Lisa’s advice. I played around with colour (which is something I never thought worked with my style, but was pleasantly surprised) – I also tried a few other designs which I thought might work well, both from the previous project mentioned. Overall, I really liked how these turned out.

I chose my favourite designs for both the bags and the badges. I also designed an A5 sheet of stickers which nicely link to the theme also. I would probably play around with the colours of the stickers to see if brighter colours could work for them also.

PINTEREST BOARDS I MADE TO GET INSPIRATION FOR THIS PROJECT – https://www.pinterest.co.uk/sapphireefox/mailer-inspiration/

Feedback – professional practice –

THIS SPACE IS SPECIFICALLY FOR MY FEEDBACK FORMS FROM FORMATIVE AND SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENTS THROUGHOUT SECOND YEAR – HOWEVER DUE TO ISOLATION I AM UNABLE TO ACCESS THESE – I SHALL UPDATE ONCE I AM ABLE TO HAVE THEM

I was told this is okay by tutor ^

ALSO HAND OUTS FROM TUTORIALS AND THE HANDBOOK WILL GO HERE BUT DUE TO LOCKDOWN I ALSO DONT HAVE ACCESS TO THESE

Animatics; how to…

Before this project I had no idea what animatics were and how to create them. I looked on YouTube to try and find some ‘how to’ tutorials. I found these really interesting and I can now understand why they are useful and necessary to animation. From my research I have found out that animatics are the stage after storyboards where the animation/film is drawn out in rough in order to see how and if the animation/film would work. This saves time and money before trying to film as you can see if a certain movement or scene is actually going to work.

The whole point of an animatic is to basically add sound/dialogue to a ‘storyboard’ in order to emphasise emotion of the characters and the overall mood of the settings. For my animations – LRRH will consist of spoken language between the two main characters and also will have an instrumental soundtrack to add to the intensity of emotion for each scene. My penguin animation will consist of no spoken language, however including a subtle instrumental soundtrack in order to show the emotions within the animation. Taking these into account, my animatics will include these properties, making it easier when it comes to animating.

This style of animatic would be really useful for my Red Riding Hood animation. This particular animatic includes paring spoken language with images, which is important for figuring out this will fit with the animation. For Little Red Riding hood, this would be important as its going to include the two main characters conversing during the animation. Emphasising where the dialogue would be is important as you can get a feel for what the mood of that specific scene will be. I also think this would be a helpful way of creating an animatic as it focuses on using colour to portray the particular atmosphere of that section. This on uses darker colours to show darkness – could mean that part of the animation has negative emotions attached to it – For Little Red Riding Hood, using dark colours will help to show the overriding sinister and scary feelings within the scenes. For example, as she is first walking through the woods, the atmosphere is light and innocent (don’t use much dark shading), however, the middle section of the animation has a more sinister feeling as the girl is scared and in danger (after the wolf encounter, walking to and through the house, and in the bedroom – will use a lot of dark shading and shadows to show these emotions)

I particularly liked this one as the drawings are very simple and focuses on if the movements would work in the final animation. This would be a very quick and efficient way of creating an animatic. I would like to try this style of animatics when creating my own. For example, when creating my penguin animatic the use of outlines will make sure that no detail merges into each other – (the final animation will consist a lot of similar colours as they are in the Antarctic). Having the simple frames and drawings will allow the animatic to clearly show the baby penguins emotions which will make it easier to figure out what emotions go where, within the song. The song, making it very clear as to what the overall atmosphere of the animation is – instead of using shading/colour like the previous animatic.

I thought this animatic would be a good inspiration for my penguin animation. This animatic concentrates of how the animation would fit with the specific soundtrack they have chosen. (my penguin animation will have a sound track over it instead of spoken language). Having music over the animatic shows the emotions that the animation will show at particular parts of the chosen song. Even though I wouldn’t want my penguin animation to have lyrics within the sound track (so its more like the snowman), the different moods of the song will correlate with the emotions going on in the animation. Eg, when the baby penguin is excited to meet new penguins, the music will be upbeat and hoppy. However, when he gets left out and bullied, the music will become slower and deeper to emphasise his sadness. This along with the close ups of the penguins face (showing his emotion), having the soundtrack match this will add greater emotion to the animation. Having this in the animatic will help the animators know how to portray the atmosphere of each scene.

Due to lockdown I don’t have the correct facilities to create my own animatic, however in the future I would like to try. I would defiantly follow the above videos when making my own animatic, as I think they are a good representation of how to make an animatic.