Practical Skills
First Concept sketches of Character "Cupti"
The first sketches of Cupti were less stylized to the rubber hose generation of cartoons. This is because the hands are far too real and the shapes are very separated. This is why I spent a lot of time looking over other characters that were made in the 1930's. I tried different styles of eyes as you can see. There was one thing I knew, a cup isn't very interesting, so expressions needed to be very big to get them across because rubber hose is very expressive and exaggerated. This is why the eyes are big and the mouth is big in both sketches.
First Draft Screenplay​
Table Top
Title Screen
Old Fashioned style title card reads:
“Table Top Produced and Animated by
George Squires”
With the Characters at the side of the screen
Screen Fades to black
Opens on a black and white live action scene
The scene pans over an old fashioned table
The camera focuses on various objects on the table
The camera pans over to a mug
The mug has a cartoon appearance unlike the other objects
The camera then cuts to a close up on the mug
The mug called ‘Cupit’ wakes up, the close up shows his features appearing
Cupti is visually confused and slowly stands
You can see him coming to terms with himself and his reality
Cupti explores the tables environment
He is exited to see everything at first and is impressed by it
He begins to get tired of the environment and is bored
The montage ends with him sitting on the edge of the table
Cupti mopes around saddened by his lonesomeness
He then walks past some Salt and Pepper Shakers
One of them is animated and comes to life behind him
Cupti realises that behind him there is another living thing
He is first shocked but quickly gets excited about a new friend
He begins to realise the salt shaker is a simple innocent life form
A montage of the two exploring together to show time passing
After a while they reach the edge of the table
The salt shaker appears like it wants to jump to explore the environment
Cupti looks annoyed that the salt shaker would leave him
Cupti is waiting and sees someone struggling off the edge of the table
Cupti helps salt shaker get up the side of the table and sees that it is injured
Leaking salt out of a broken piece of itself
After a dramatic scene of salt shaker passing away
Cupti is left with a dead salt shaker in his arms
While he is alone he walks back to where he awoke
Cupti goes back to sleep
An end title card reads ‘Fin’
Storyboard
These drawings I did before producing anything else, from artists that work on animated feature films, for example Hayao Miyazaki, the lead artist of Studio Ghibli. He draws a story board before even writing a full story because he prefers to tailor the story around the visuals of the art. This is more or less what I did. I wrote the basic story and then as I was drawing the story board, I changed elements of the story to make it wrap up nicer and have a story that you could derive meaning from. In the scene where shaker falls from the edge, he originally just went away to explore off the edge of the world. This however leads to too much in between for me to fill, Cupti would've just waited there. This is where I changed the story and even added the clock, which reveals to be the source of their life. This is when I made the decision to update the screenplay I wrote with the new narrative.
‘Table Top’
Title Screen
Old Fashioned style title card fades in and reads:
“Table Top Produced and Animated by
Beans & Co”
With the Characters at the side of the screen
Screen Fades to black
Opens on a black and white live action scene
The camera pulls away from a wall clock
The clock pendulum swings and the clock chimes at 10
The camera cuts and then pans the lengths of the table
The camera pans over to a mug
The mug has a cartoon appearance unlike the other objects
The camera then cuts to a close up on the mug
The mug called ‘Cupit’ wakes up, the close up shows his features appearing
Cupti is visually confused and slowly stands
You can see him coming to terms with himself and his reality
Cupti explores the tables environment
He is exited to see everything at first and is impressed by it
He begins to get tired of the environment and is bored
The montage ends with him sitting on the edge of the table
Cupti mopes around saddened by his lonesomeness
He then walks past some Salt and Pepper Shakers
One of them is animated and comes to life behind him
Cupti realises that behind him there is another living thing
He is first shocked but quickly gets excited about a new friend
He begins to realise the pepper shaker is a simple innocent life form
A montage of the two exploring together to show time passing
After a while they reach the edge of the table
The pepper shaker appears like it wants to explore the environment beyond the boundaries of the table
Cupti looks annoyed that Shaker would leave him and holds him back
The struggle leads to Cupti loosing grip on Shaker and he falls from the edge
Cupti sees Shaker crack and goes to console him
After a dramatic scene of Shaker passing away
Cupti is left with Shaker in his arms, a tear streaming from his eye
While he does, the wall clock chimes 12
Cupti & Shaker are shown, in their regular forms without animation
The clock was what gave them to life
An end title card reads ‘Fin’
The set up I will be using for my FMP is a mixture usage of Glide Rail and solo Tripod filming. The glide rail requires two separate tripods to film. This is because with one the camera will tilt when it reaches one side or the other, making an unsatisfying glide. I would need a smooth panning shot in the opening of my FMP so a smooth glide would be important to bringing you into the world. I used this technique when creating my practice shots and they look just how I would want them bar the props in the scene.
Using the sketch I had drawn for a title card of the animation , I decided to scan it with the college scanner and redraw over it with Animate to give it a clean look. From what I learned with Disney animation in prior research, this wouldn’t be what they would do in the 1930′s obviously because they didn’t have that technology. I’ve thought it over myself if I should really be drawing in Animate at all because to keep closest to the original style, you should probably use their tools for creating the animation as well. This was something I read by one of the main animators for the game “Cuphead” they had thought about the same thing, they drew all the frames by hand but coloured the drawings and touched them up digitally. They managed to copy the rubber hose aesthetic well through this however he mentioned how the whole studio wished they just did it all digitally because it would have saved time and money. This made me think, as a single person making a very fluid style as an armature, it would help to keep to the style but also give myself an advantage with digitally animating.
In this recreation I’m drawing over the sketch and it feels like its working well and giving me the visual outcome I had hoped for. There is much more I’d like to do with this as it will serve as a visual opening and I want it to really show off what I’m trying to do. To do this I think back to the tutorials I watched for rubber hose where they mentioned adding filters that have film grain, similar to a 1930s camera would have. Maybe some slight editing to make it look jumpy and shaky so that it appears as though it’s being played as a physical strip film off a projector of sorts.
This is the final title card.
Intro for Table Top
I have been working on this little intro for the animation. The inspiration clearly comes from old cartoon openings. It isn’t as old fashioned looking because obviously I still want there to be quality in the work I’m doing, If its a blur then there would be no point in me paying attention to the details. This is one big thing I have found while creating things for my animation. It might even be a new direction that I’ve decided to make for it. I don’t want to create it with strong filters and old effects just to make it believably old, I’d rather have a high quality parody of the 1930s style and keep a high quality appearance. This is a bit of a contrast to my earlier context video I made where I showed videos of old animations that are blurry and darkened and barley visible. This is because I want to actually have polish and professionalism in what I make, trying to use the best of the resources I have. This will be especially important when it comes to lighting my live action scene. This is because the lighting will change the mood and atmosphere entirely. I will explore and test different lighting to see which works best and brings out the mood of the animation I’m going for. And what I’m thinking at the moment is a vignette style lighting where the focus of the live action scene is light up but the surroundings are dark. However I might find It works better with more vibrant lighting. I used a faded vignette for the background of the title card in this intro and I feel it really brought out the characters and worked well for the world they’re in, which is why I think it would work in live action. Also the Dust and Scratches I’ve used I feel is really helping with the aesthetic of the video. I’m not sure if I’ll be using it throughout the live action but I will try different versions and maybe ask friends what they think.
I recorded my live action footage in my living room and it proved to be a very long process, trying different angles and different speeds in which to move the camera. I took about three hours total recording and setting up the area. The lighting practice proved invaluable. I recorded in colour and that is helpful because I’ve been able to mess with an adjustment layer to find what black and white settings work best for the footage. I’ve also decided that the dust and scratches that were on the teaser look good on the live action footage so I will probably use it in the film. I also realised that some scene work better as still and I have made some of them stills just so it has the least possible movement.
As I am doing animation and now that I have finished the tracking scenes, It helps keep me motivated to update a final cut project to see how it looks. In this Premier Pro file, I have compiled all the parts I want in my animation. I have an adjustment layer for colour. It makes the colour of the movie and animation both grey scale and I can alter the adjustment layer to make the colour suit how I want it to look. I have also imported a dust and scratch overlay and music (royalty free) that comes from a similar period in time to the animation style. It keeps me motivated to keep this updated because now that I am animating, I find drawing over and over can strain your motivation, but knowing that I get to see the latest scene instantly put into my final project lets me know that everything helps bring the project closer to the idea that I have for it.
At the moment I’ve struggled with keeping to the “Principles of Animation” that I talked about in earlier posts. However I find the more I practically use them, the more relevant they become and the easier it becomes to animate with realism over all. I have been trying to use the “Arching Motions” where ever possible. This is because it helps bring off the illusion the character is in a real 3D space and not just flat. Recently I realized that just making eyes swing in an arch when looking from left to right can bring so much more life to the characters. What worries me most, is that as I animate and get better acquainted with using the principles I will find that my animations I did for earlier scenes will not be consistent and will lack the quality of more experienced scenes. This is why I have tasked myself with watching the “12 Principles of Animation” video by Alan Becker, anytime that I feel I can’t bring “realism” into a scene.
One principle of animation that I haven’t used in previous animations is proving to add so much more “realism” to movement of animation which is meant to be important for rubber hose. This principle is slow ins and outs. Here in this picture at the top you can see how the arms are quite far apart, despite being one frame away from each other (using the onion skin tool). This is because in a single movement of speed, there will be a gaining of speed and a release, therefore during the middle of a sequence of frames, it will be at its fastest, therefore there will be more space between each frame. Here in the picture I am in the direct middle of a sequence of frames. At either end of the sequence of movement, it will be much slower and therefore require more frames closer together to give a realistic slow to the movement.
As shown here, you can see this is the beginning of the arms motion, and therefore there are many more frames closer together to show the gaining of speed. This is because when you have a organic object, its movement will appear lifeless if there is a linear path of speed. Much like a car, cars can’t go from 0 - 60 in 0.001 seconds.