Collaboration: Initial Idea Sketches - Star Wars: A Crack Shot

- Polly

Collaboration: Research - Acting for Animators; Comedy

Whilst reading acting for animators, I found a section on comedy that explains: what comedy is, why we find it funny, who professionals looked to. Here are some notes I made, it mentions a few times about Charlie Chaplin especially the Little Tramp so below the notes is Chaplin video. - Paris

Comedy

"... the animator should know wat creates laughter - why d things appeal to people as being funny?" (Disney, 1935)

If what you're doing is funny, you don't have to be funny doing it. (Charlie Chaplin).

There is only one way of making comedy richer - and paradoxically, funnier - and that is by making it more serious. (Walter Kerr; The Silent Clowns - 1975).

• Comedy is the celebration of life, thats’ the reason we will laugh more in a group of people than on our own. Laughter is our way of saying to one another, “I'm still alive. You still alive? Great! We are both still alive!” 
• Charlie Chaplin is the person to study if you want to understand how comedy works. 
• Comedy is directly related to drama, in fact comedy is dependent on drama, comedy is drama steroids. Drama has to do with the most potential, and comedy has to do with its limitations. Comedy is about limitations. 
• The ultimate limitation is life, everyone knows life is finite no exceptions, so when people laugh at jokes they acknowledge to each other they’re still alive. 
• Comedy is drama exaggerated, heightened and enriched. 
• The big challenge for actors and animators who want to be funny is this: in order to be funny, you must be truthful. If you try to be funny, I guarantee that you will not be funny. This is what is wrong with so many animated feature films that contain “gags”. 
• Comedy is not like hanging ornaments on the Christmas tree. It's the stuff of life, and it needs to merge organically from the situation in order to work. 
• We laugh at what we identify with. We are all - for better or for worse - caught up in this thing called life, and we have to do the best we can with it. When our best efforts to bellyflop, it is funny. 
• Animation is a better medium for comedy, you can get cars to crash harder, toss characters from great heights, even have them get shot through with a shot gun pellet - and still survive. 
• Farce - a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude characterisation and ludicrously improbable situations. (Slapstick). 
• Farce is about mechanics, mechanical things gone wrong, timing, and the element of surprise.

Collaboration: Research - Acting for Animators

Since we have our first acting class Monday I decided to start reading Acting for Animators by Ed Hooks (Third Edition) which talks about how we use acting in animations, here are some notes I made. - Paris

Seven Essential Acting Principles

1. Thinking tends to lead to conclusions and emotions tends to lead to action. (“The mind is the pilot” - Disney, 1935 - when it comes to characters) emotion feels like they exist independently from thought unless we make a conscious effort to analyse it. Emotions begin and ends with the thinking brain - “I think therefore I am” - René Descartes, 1637. 
2. We humans empathise only with emotion. Your job as a character animator is to create in the audience a sense of empathy with your character. 
3. Theatrical reality it's not the same as regular reality. 
4. Acting is doing; acting is also reacting. 
5. Your character should play action until something happens to make him play a different action. (Obstacle). 
6. Scenes begin in the middle not at the beginning. 
7. A scene is a negotiation. Negotiations you have to be able to win or lose, there are three types of conflict when it comes to negotiation: self, environment or situation. 

• Every scenes needs conflict, objective and obstacle for it to be theatrical. 
• Emotion - An automatic value response. Our emotions depend on how much we value something and the mental associations we hold. 
• Empathy - Feeling into. Empathy is we feel into the same thing as a character. Psychotic people cannot empathise which is what makes them psychopaths, they could kill a family at dinner then finish their dinner with no remorse because they cannot feel into anything. 
• Sympathise - Feeling for. Sympathy is we feel for our character, but we don’t want an audience to sympathise for our character for too long as they will emotionally disconnect with our character. Human nature is survival so when a character wallows too long in negatives and can’t get it together they pursue death over life and we are hardwired to respond negatively to that behaviour. 
• Anticipation is different for actors than it is animators. For animators it means to anticipate a movement like a baseball player throwing a ball. For actors it's an error to anticipate something before it actually happens, i.e. answering a phone before it rings.

Insight Perspectives and Suggestions

• Acting is more about what is underneath the words. When we have a thought, it is not the word that emerges first; it is head and eye movement, shoulder and neck movement. 
• The higher the power centre, the quicker the rhythm of the character. Anxiety is a high and heady power center. Confidence, on the other hand, manifest itself in a feeling of weight, a low power centre. 
• Goofy’s power centre was underneath his feet, pushing him straight up. When he walked it was as if he was on bedsprings because he was moving forward by the power center was pushing up. 
• Our sense of sight is a lot more powerful than our sense of hearing so what you show is going to count for more than what you tell it. 
• Do not put a gesture and with every word. The impulse to communicate comes from within and just gestures are a primary a form of expression as words are. Think of them as a form of truth telling for a character. Get inside and connect with his feelings and let that be the motivation for gesture. 
• Psychological gestures are gesture we do that we don’t realise we do like fiddling with a ring or bring a hand to the mouth a lot whilst talking etc. 
• Humans often contradictory messages. It is normal but unconscious behaviour for the words to say one thing and our body to say another.

Collaboration: Deleted Scenes Ideas Mindmap

After talking with Alan Tuesday, we realised we were going in the wrong direction with the task given so I've made a new mind map of my ideas and we've decided we are going to base our skits on deleted scenes instead of bloopers and outtakes.

- Paris

Collaboration: Initial ideas - Harry Potter

- Polly

Collaboration: Research and Ideas

After a 1:1 with Alan, our ideas have shifted from adding lots to the existing films, to making fun of the stuff already there. Perhaps mocking the writing and/or things that are never explained. For example, wouldn't the Triwizard Tournament have been incredibly boring to watch?

We have been looking at the youtube channel CinemaSins as they analyse all of the problems and unanswered questions in almost every movie, helping us develop ideas for our final animated short. 

- Polly

Collaboration: Avatar Storyboard Idea

These are some quick sketches for a two-part skit involving Mo'at and Jake Sully from Avatar.

- Ruth

Collaboration: Avatar Skit Ideas

After talking with Alan we have realised that our ideas were adding onto the existing films to create the jokes, so after some re-planning, we are coming up with bloopers/tropes that are more based on that film as not to pull away from the project brief, we will be taking inspiration from videos such as CinemaSins found on You-Tube.

CinemaSins: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYUQQgogVeQY8cMQamhHJcg

-Ruth

Collaboration: David Attenborough Skit Influence Idea

For one of our +7 more films to make deleted scenes and outtakes of, we've chose David Attenborough narrated documentaries. Because we'd have to dress Moom up to look like an animal like in the documentaries we though't it'd be funny for the intentional idea to be Attenborough to narrate people dressed like animals. Below is a good example of what we're going for but a lot shorter.

- Paris

Collaboration: James Bond Skit Ideas

-Ruth

Collaboration: Titanic Character Research Sheets

From Polly's research on comedy, we know comedy is a sense of "false violation" and because the film is based on a true, tragic story, we do not want to violate (even falsely) any of the characters that really did die. James Cameron (director) created Jack, Rose, Cal, Lovejoy and Ruth for the purpose of his film. They were not real people even though there may have been people on the ship that may share the same name; so out of respect we are only going to mock the fictional characters. The American actress who plays old Rose, (Gloria Stuart born 1910) was not a passenger on the Titanic and would have been 4 years old the year the Titanic sank, not the age Rose is portrayed to be by Kate Winslet.

Reading Tom Bancroft's book 'Creating Characters with Personality' says that when you design a character you need to know them in your mind and your design needs to reflect the personality traits, so below I have made two character research sheets. We know what sort of art direction we want and we are going to start translating live action characters into animation to fit our art direction.

- Paris

Collaboration: Research - Comedy

Collaboration: James Bond Research and Ideas

- Paris

Collaboration: Harry Potter Research

- Paris

Collabortaion: Harry Potter Skit Ideas (Across 8 Films)

- Paris

 

Collaboration: Titanic Skit Ideas

- Paris

Collaboration: Titanic Film Research

After Ruth's research on camera and composition techniques and Polly's research on art directions and 2.5D, I decided to take a look at behind the scenes making of and actual deleted scenes from Titanic, James Bond and Harry Potter see if I could get some idea influences there. This will help me as the CG Modeller making the sets if I can actually see the original ones, this will also be essential when making thumbnails and concept art as a group. - Paris

Collaboration: Deleted Scenes or Bloopers of....? Mind Map 1

Collaboration: Current influences - Monster's Inc Blooper Reel

Collaboration: Mood Board - Art Direction

If possible, we would like to head in this slightly vintage cartoon style for our animated short. When moving forward we need to experiment to see if this will work with the pre-made rigged character we have received. - Polly

Collaboration: Pre-Existing Comical Animations / Videos

- Ruth

Collaboration: Research - Film & Photography Composition Techniques

- Ruth

Collaboration: Research - 2.5D

- Polly

Collaboration: Mood Board 1 - Aesthetic

This first mood board is comprised of different art styles that could be easily translated into 2.5D (our current style goal). Whilst our idea is still very much in the early development stages this is inspiring us to take our project in a direction challenging us all. - Polly

Collaboration: Our Animation Statement

We chose an evelope at random that would decide what our comedy animation would be...

Deleted scenes or outtakes from...

• Titanic
• James Bond
• Harry Potter
• And 7 more films of our choice!!!

Our animation will be between 30 seconds and 2 minutes long.

Collaboration: Final Ident

Graphics By Ruth. Animated by Paris.

Not sure if we are going to have a silent ident but the movements looked like they should be accompanied by a cartoony sound so we posted a version where it did. Silent version below.

Collaboration: (Paris) More Ident Ideas 5 and 6

Our final ident was a close choice between 5 and 6 but we chose 5 to render and finalise.

Collaboration: Paris's Ident Ideas 2 - 4

In photoshop I took a logo idea and experimented with it in the 3D workspace.

After effects: Bulge Effect

Because people are called Lemons whenever they do something silly or clumsy I thought it'd be humorous to have lemons rolling and going up the back of each other knocking over the 3.

Collaboration: Ident Idea 1

Ident Idea 1 from 3 Lemon Productions on Vimeo.

Just experimenting on how the logo can be simply brought to life, with just a small amount of animating.

Collaboration: Favicon

- Ruth

Collaboration: Designing the Logo

Above is the development of our Logo "3 Lemon Productions" this was the first task we worked on together starting this project.

Hello and welcome!

Welcome from us 3 Lemons! You have stumbled upon our student production blog where you will find our step by step progress in making an awesome 3d animation!

Below are links to our individual blogs showing our first-year work and any other work we do individually for the rest of the course!

Paris - http://parisanimationarts.blogspot.co.uk/

Polly - http://pollygwinnettcaa.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth - http://ruthcann.blogspot.co.uk/