Animation Crit Presentation

Art of Presentation

'The Conceited Fountain Pen' Complete(-ish)

Here is the most complete  (and most likely final) version of 'The Conceited Fountain Pen'. All the sounds and transitions have been put in place, although there is a chance I may change the music track for something else in the next twenty four hours. It works to an extent, but I feel it may be too cheerful and optimistic for the tone of the animation. Apart from that, the animation is pretty much complete. Hurrah! 

The sounds I used throughout the animation were all created for this purpose, which involved a ton of scribbling on bits of cardboard just to get the right sound. I also created movement sounds for the Fountain Pen by rattling Lego bricks, and I attempted to create a laugh-like noise by clicking a Biro. This faux-foley experience was actually a ton of fun and it made a nice change to just drawing, drawing, drawing!

'The Conceited Fountain Pen' Progress 17/4/12

The most complete version yet! This version features the ten second line exercise, the monitor's reveal and the final closing boil. All that needs to be added is the next half of the 'chase sequence' and the Fountain Pen's turn to see the monitor, as well as a title boil and credits. Corrections will be added once everything else is complete.

'The Conceited Fountain Pen' Progress 12/4/12

I've added the Fountain Pen's jump to the animation, as well as the Crayon's written trail. I've also added a small snippet of the 'chase sequence' between the two objects, just to see if the concept would work out as I imagined.
Just a quick explanation regarding the writing the two objects leave behind them. The Fountain Pen, being the conceited character, leaves a calligraphic trail of various Latin terms. The Crayon, being the opposite, leaves a mis-spelled, poorly drawn trail. The words the Crayon leaves are simple words which have been converted into Pig Latin, a simple language game that involves taking the first consonant or consonant cluster of a word, placing it at the end and adding -ay, for example, Friend would be Iendfray. I decided to use Pig Latin for the Crayon as it couldn't be further away from actual Latin, making it perfect for the Crayon.

'The Conceited Fountain Pen' Progress 10/4/12

Here is the current progress of my animation. I've got roughly twenty second here, although there is a lot of incomplete parts which I've yet to include, which would take the animation up to around 32 seconds. I've also removed a few frames in Premiere Pro to speed up and smoothen a lot of the animation, such as the Fountain Pen stretching before it leaves the shot. I've also used Premiere Pro to extend the duration of a few frames at parts of the animation that I wish to extend. These spaces will be filled with hand drawn frames when I come to tidying up the animation once everything has been put together.

'The Conceited Fountain Pen' Progress 4/4/12

This is the first ten seconds of animation for 'The Conceited Fountain Pen'. It seems to be going quite smoothly, although there are some noticeable issues already. First of all, its all a little too quick, and I feel I should add a few frames after each key pose both to slow it down and to emphasise the actions. Also, the Fountain Pen in the first 36 frames is way too big, so I will need to redraw these frames to make sure it  fits better in the 16:9 ratio, luckily though, these are only six frames looped and reversed, so this can be rectified easily.

Animation Exercises: Conceited Walk Cycle

Animation Exercises: Walk Cycle One

Animation: Completed Storyboard

Animation: Storyboard Progress

Character Design: Fountain Pen Colour Tests

Using one of my early silhouettes, I drafted up some quick colour ideas for the Fountain Pen. Let me know what works and what doesn't (even if none of it works at all!)

Animation Online Greenlight Review: Part One

I've uploaded this a bit early, but I was going to upload an updated script etc. anyway, so I figured it'd be a good idea to upload it as the first half of my OGR.
The Conceited Fountain Pen OGR Part One

The Conceited Fountain Pen Version Two: Step Outline

The basic story has changed considerably since I had a conversation with Phil yesterday. Its changed to something radically different from what I first had in mind, but that makes it all the more exciting! The story feels a lot more quirky and charming than it previously did, and these qualities should hopefully make the final animation that little bit more appealing.

Act One

Scene One

A Fountain Pen is seen standing in shot, looking off into the distance. A small, stubby Crayon hops into shot and looks up at the Fountain Pen.

Scene Two

Shot from above, displaying the two writing instruments as simple dots, defined primarily by the trails they leave. The Crayon introduces itself, through way of a poorly scrawled smiley face. The Fountain Pen is unimpressed by this introduction, and proceeds to move away from the Crayon, leaving a calligraphic trail behind it.

Act Two

Scene Three

The Crayon pursues the Fountain Pen, leaving a broken, messy trail behind it, directly contrasting the highly refined and calligraphic trail of the Fountain Pen. The pursuit intensifies, with the Fountain Pen’s strokes becoming more flourished and elaborate, both as an attempt to out-write the Crayon and as a way of displaying its superiority. The Crayon follows closely behind, persevering, completely oblivious to the Fountain Pen’s conceited distaste for the Crayon.

Scene Four

The Crayon, still desperately trying to keep up, eventually wears its tip down to a stub, causing it to stumble and fall. The Fountain Pen turns around, noticing the fallen Crayon, and walks towards it. Leaning over as if to help the Crayon up, the Fountain Pen bursts out laughing, gloating and prancing around.

Act Three

Scene Five

The Fountain Pen, still gloating, turns suddenly in reaction to a hefty clicking noise behind it. Looking upwards, it reels back in horror and faints at the sight of something out of shot.

Scene Six

The horrifying sight is revealed to be a word processor, technology that has superseded the Fountain Pen considerably. The words “The End” are typed across the screen as the scene closes.

Animation: Hand Drawn Bowling Ball

This is my first attempt at animating a bowling ball falling to the floor. I chose to animate this on two's, as it slowed the pace down and still kept the animation at a second long. The animation isn't brilliant (for example, I feel the ball should hang a little more before it falls and on the slight bounce when it hits the ground) but its a step in the right direction.

Animation: Hand Drawn Bouncing Ball

This is my first attempt at animating the bouncing ball by hand. It works in theory, but there is a lot to be changed in order for it to really flow. Notably, the ball needs to hang and stretch more when leading into bounces and on the third bounce there are too few frames, making the animation very abrupt. Still, for a first attempt, its not too shabby.

The Conceited Fountain Pen Screenplay: Version One

This is my first screenplay for The Conceited Fountain Pen. Although it initially appears that there are many characters, the different items of stationary are mainly there to establish the setting. The story focuses mainly on the Fountain Pen and Biro characters, and the other characters are very, very minor.
The Conceited Fountain Pen Screenplay Version One

Expression Silhouettes

In response to Kadeem and Phil's comments on my previous silhouettes, I decided to flip the fountain pen around and focus on using the nib as the head.

I've been treating the nib in this experiments as the centre of expression, attempting to squeeze as much personality out of it as possible.
Although we're meant to be avoiding adding facial features in order to push the expressive nature of our characters, elements of the nib lend themselves nicely to these features. Notably, the breather hole in the centre acting as somewhat of an eye.
With this in mind, I developed a series of expressive silhouettes, initially sketching them out by hand and then filling them in using Photoshop. Only now have I realised the true power of using a silhouette to convey a specific tone or personality. They've amplified the expressive nature of my initial sketches significantly and allowed me to see what aspects are more effective at conveying a certain expression than others.

My Initial Sketches

The shapes created were influenced both by the stereotypical, medieval court jester appearance and the simple, yet expressive movements of the character Earthworm Jim, as well as referencing Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation book.
I'm very happy with how these turned out (although 'frightened' and 'unhappy' definitely could do with a fair amount of refinement) and it has provided me with a fresh set of thoughts and ideas around how I can bring this fountain pen to life.
Before I came across Kadeem and Phil's suggestion, I had developed a few expressive sketches using the lid as somewhat of a mouth.

Early Expression Concepts

This idea only works in conjunction with expression that comes from the clip (acting as an arm) and the bend and stretch of the rest of the fountain pen (i.e. it's stance). This came from my early commitment to the idea of using the nib as feet, which, whilst its still an idea I'm fond of, is not necessarily the right choice in regards to establishing the character of the fountain pen.

A Few Fountain Pen Silhouettes

Just some quick silhouettes to help myself emphasise the Fountain Pen's existing shape and provide it with a personality.

Influence: Day of the Tentacle

Whilst sketching out some basic ideas of how the Fountain Pen could effectively convey movement and emotion, I constantly kept thinking of how they managed to tackle a similar task in the 1993 LucasArts adventure game, Day of the Tentacle. 

Day of the Tentacle features, well, a tentacle that turns evil once it has consumed some contaminated water. Whilst the Purple Tentacle isn't an anthropomorphised object, it does have a physical construction that does lead it to move in a way similar to that of a person competing in a sack race, hopping along as opposed to walking or rolling along. This movement is a potential option of how the Fountain Pen in my animation can move around, being a basic, cylindrical shape. I even managed to find a walk cycle of the Purple Tentacle!

The Purple Tentacle also manages to convey a variety of emotions, through the manipulation of the three circles upon it. Whilst it could be argued that, yes, it clearly has a mouth etc, whilst the Fountain Pen does not, the facial features are not noticeably apparent and they do come from the manipulation of a generic shape. The circles aren't recognisable as facial features immediately, only when they shift shape does the character come to life. This isn't a new technique, we've all seen it in classic Disney movies, but as a child raised on old point-and-click adventure games, this is certainly the example that first springs to my mind.
In regards to my Fountain Pen, I've began to manipulate certain aspects of its construction in order to provide it with some character, for example, using the lip of the lid as somewhat of a mouth, the ring connecting the clip to the lid as an eyebrow (much like that of the Purple Tentacle and Grommit from Wallace and Grommit) and the clip as a single arm, as well as splitting the nib and treating each half as an individual foot. This is shaping up to be an interesting unit and I look forward to making this Fountain Pen come to life!

Some Slightly More Detailed Story Thoughts

I want to get the story down as soon as possible so that I can move on to the design side of things, so here are a few story ideas that I've come up with.
They all appear to follow ideas of 'getting they're just deserts', with the Fountain Pen ultimately meeting its maker as a result of its conceited personality.

-The Fountain Pen is the latest addition to an author's stationary collection. The current inhabitants of the desk pop up out of a drawer to welcome their new neighbour. The Fountain Pen swaggers around the desk, showing off its extravagant, gilded construction and looking down on the other items of stationary. Deeply engrossed in its condescending introduction to its neighbours, it fails to notice the large pool of ink forming beneath it. Shocked and embarrassed by this unsightly scene, the Fountain Pen faints and rolls off of the desk, to the bemusement of the other stationary.

-The Fountain Pen is seen to be working out, using crayons as dumbbells and flexing its muscles to the other stationary. Whilst showing off to the other stationary, a shadow forms above the desk. The other items of stationary scatter and hide, the Fountain Pen still posing away, totally oblivious. A hand reaches down and picks up the Fountain Pen, proceeding to take the pen apart and replace the cartridge. The Fountain Pen is placed back on the desk, shaking in fear and rocking from side to side.

-The Fountain Pen is introduced to his new neighbours. It lords over the other stationary, making statements on its own quality in comparison to that of the others. Specifically, the Fountain Pen ridicules the ragged appearance of the other stationary, all of which have been used, abused and chewed to pieces in the long time they've been in this desk. A person sits at the desk, as the other stationary scatters back inside the drawer. The Fountain Pen makes a point to be lying directly in view of the person, knowing it'll be the writing implement of choice. This pride is soon shattered though, as the person proceeds to chew, throw, drop, tap, drum and otherwise abuse the Fountain Pen, much to its horror. The Fountain Pen is thrown in the drawer, joining the other, long forgotten and seriously abused items of stationary.