Citizen Kane

https://www.amazon.com/postersdepeliculas-Citizen-Kane-Poster/dp/B000KA12JS

One of the most famous films every made. Created by the mind of the infamous Orson Welles, The same Orson Wells who narrated the War of The Worlds in 1938 that made people go into a frenzy.

Orson Welles was Directed, Screenwriter and the lead role in this film.

This film focuses around the mystery of Mr Kane, A Big figure in the Citizen Kane universe last word "Rosebud". We go back into Mr Kane life to find out what that means.


This film may be one of the best films in the entire world. But its quite the political drama, and I'm not that interested in political dramas. Its a very dialogue heavy films.

I think the most interesting thing about it was the controversy in the making of the film. Mainly around its Screenplay and how the film takes digs at William Randal Hearst, a big newspaper baron at the time, who is similar to the character Kane.

Here is an image I colourised while watching the movie

 http://wyw.su/pWGXyd?se_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&default_keyword=pauline-kael-essay

Entire Comic

Page 9 - Biography

We were told to do anything, so I grabbed a self portrait I drew earlier in the year and added it on a stick figure body with some moody lighting.

Tornado Man - Page 8

The Image of the Tornado Dissipating is actually a tornado forming backwards. Here is an image reference of that.

The window reflection was a last minute idea which I thought helped the panel. It did look a bit odd the way it was before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornadogenesis

Tornado Man - Page 7

I had to take a reference picture of myself running at a camera for this epic shot of Bad guy running at Tornado Man.
Here is the image in it full screenshot glory.

The Silhouette panel was actually different in the original panel. It was going to change angle every panel. I decided against it because of time, and I thing this new paneling is much better to look at.

Tornado Man - Page 6

I had to use a stock photo of a man holding a shotgun as an image reference for this shot,
I also decided to make a bullet trail to make the bullets have motion. also easier to see that the bullets don't actually hit the intended target.

Here I also added triangle panels cause I thought it looked cool. And you could say Tornado's are like triangles.

Tornado Man - Page 5

From this point on I decided to change the colour of the page to give it a more dusty look. Also this is where I started to make silhouettes a thing, because its saves time when drawing up these pages.

Tornado Man - Page 4

The Shotgun that features in the rest of the comic is a 1987 Trench Shotgun, A shotgun used in World War 2. I added this particular shotgun because this is a great gun in Call of Duty World at War. Small Reference I suppose.

https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/75/3627/wwi-us-winchester-model-1897-trench-shotgun

Tornado Man - Page 3

Characters Inspired by Adam West and James Marsden:

Adam West
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001842/

James Marsden
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Marsden

Line Art Page 7 - 8

Beasts of Burden

For a Fun Activity, we were tasked to make beasts of burden. I was a bit slow to actually turn them in into beasts of burdens so really I drew two aardvarks, Elf with a backpack and one communist pig.

Reflection

The Animation is finished. 

Time for reflection. The great thing about this was that i managed to finished this animation in a short amount of time because I got hit with Tonsillitis last week.

I think next time I want to have at least a few days to check over the footage to check for mistakes. which as of this blog, I have at least found 2 of them.

I will also not do a bird man again. Or for at least the time being anyway. Animating bird-legs, Beaks and capes take a while. I got lucky with the mouth movements as I found a reference to keep track of the mouth vowels. But Its very stressful.

I'm glad I sorted out my audio sounds in the very beginning cause it helped with timing.

Now that I have experience in 2D. I wouldn't mind doing it again. I may be faster at it this time and prepare myself for bad illnesses.

In the last class I got to witness some other animation.

My favorites were Max's, Emma's, Bella's and Thomas'. They all looked so smooth and polished.

 the movements of the characters especially were impressive. Its amazing what people can do in the same amount of time. Everyone else did good too.

TBAMM S3-17

The final shot. Not the last one I worked on but the final shot none the less.

Actually pretty easy to make, I use my front on walk animation for the first time in this animation. Luckily it didn't spread out when I merged it like the side walk.

I just added a smile to the cycle, and made the walk cycle zoom in.

TBAMM S3-15

Another quick and simple shot. The only thing I changed from the animatic was the eye position and I fixed the hands up.

TBAMM S3-13 / S3-16

Two close up shots. One of money, one of the purse.

The coin shot had to be redrawn as the money was roughly drawn. I also spaced out the coins so they fit the inside of the purse.

The Purse shot was easy, all I had to do was add the walk cycle to the shot.

TBAMM S3-11

Now this is an important shot. I had a massive problem with it and that was it was another lip sync shot. I originally planned what I though was a very cinematic camera angle.

As you can see, it a cool shot.

BUT

I was out of time, I wouldn't be able to sync the shot.

SO

I did a cheese

what I mean is, I did a classic anime zoom in to the eyes shot.

And it came out quite well. 

I added some blinks as well as a quick pan to the merchant who widens his eyes to the fact that the urchin may be coming back for a second time.

TBAMM S3-07 /S3-09

Here is the Merchant looking at Rasper.

Let me tell youI super glad I didn't decide to give this guy lines as that would of taken too long. These shots gave me the ability to practice how to make an action without saying a line. Actions speak louder than words. I gave the Merchant a deliberate blank expression, to show that he doesn't really care at first about what Rasper has to say. Also adding a blink here and there really make the merchant seem more alive. Also I added a small mouth movement as an extra detail.

I now see why people prefer doing animations with no voice acting.

TBAMM S3-06 / S3-08

Here is the Rasper looking at the merchant shot.

Definitely next time I should invest in some rigging as making the mouth movement took forever.

S3-06 look rather stiff because of how much time I spent on animating the mouth.

S3-08 was a quick shot to make. The slight head turn and blinks make it.

TBAMM S3-05 / S3-12 / S3-14

Here is some visually similar shots. All of these shots included the previously drawn Rasper walk cycle. It also includes the merchant walk cycle.

Now i don't believe i've mentioned it before but when creating Raspers walk cycle, for some reason, I could not merge the walking layers as if i did, the entire character sort of spreads apart. So unlike what I did with the merchants walk cycle. Where I used a simple movement animation. I had to make the Rasper one frame by frame.

S3-14 was actually rather rushed as it was the last shot I had exported, so i'm not very happy with the way it turned out. Next time with walk cycles ill make sure to reverse the walk cycle properly.

TBAMM S2-13

For this shot. I kept in some the movement from the animatic to save time animating.

You can hardly notice it in the final cut.

My favourite part in this scene is the note taking. I made a decision for when Rasper starts writing on the note pad, that I should draw on the paper for when ever the pen lands. its quite effective in my opinion as it looks like he is writing something, rather than showing nothing.

This clip is also where i developed the merchants walk cycle.

TBAMM S2-06 / S2-12

These Rasper head turn shots are relatively the same. I had to create a walk cycle for a silhouette so that I could simulate that there was activity in the market. Also acts as a nice way to hide some animations. For Scene 2 shot 12, I use the silhouette to hide a head turn. Which turns out quite nicely.

TBAMM S2-04 / S2-05 / S2-10 / S2-11 / S2-17 / S2-18

The Bedroom Shots, Day and Night

These shot all have variety, but they all are located in the same area. That is why I've put them all in the same blog.

So what I did was add the already created walk cycle and then added an animation of Rasper getting on the bed.

The Tantrum scene was the funnest to animate. Also the one where he warps himself onto the floor was fun. The reason why I did the warp was because i didn't actually know how to get him off the bed, so why not use a smear.
Smears are one of my favorite things to do.

In premiere I adjusted the lighting in the scene to make the night time look darker (you can't see it in these uploaded vids.)

TBAMM - S2-03/ S2-09 / S2-16

Here is the mirror scene. These scenes were hard as they all required mouth movements and I had to sync the animations movements. I decided not to do the rigging way of mouth syncing either so I created it all frame by frame..

These shots are the first lip syncing shots too, so I learnt from these.

I created a new Toon Boon harmony folder with all the different mouth movements and copied the mouths to their respective vowel sounds.

Setting up Shop

Here is a little insight to how we filmed the animation.

To film our animation we set up, in upstage in one of the backrooms. We chose this location because it was one of the darker rooms. we needed the darkness.

Technical Difficulties were to be had

This was how lighting was achieved, we placed the Aladdin directly above our painted polystyrene set.  This was to create the spotlight effect. 

This is how the Tripod was set up. In a very odd way, because our set was so low and we had to make the camera "eye level" with the cut outs. I did take a while to get the leveling right but we got there. 

Here is a better visual of the set up.

So originally we had set up in the corner of the room, but we had to move because of space issues.

Also we had to maneuver around other teams, so we had wall set up around our "set".

Final Cut

Here is the Final Cut of the film in all of its pixelated glory.
Luckily we were able to show off this version of the film to everyone as the rendering of this film took forever. We had to originally hand in a less edited version to get it in on time, but luckily we were able to finished rendering the film. Thank you Traci!

With this cut we mixed the new visuals with the sound, add credits, fade of red to add more visual tension. Also blinks to make sharper cuts in the footage.

The one thing I wish is that I wasn't incredibly ill when it came to the filming side of it. As I do feel bad. But Thomas pulled through, he has done a wonderful job in footage and audio editing. Without his dedication I don't believe this project would have been completed with out him.

So In this blog, I would like to Thank him. He was great to work with, and 10 outta 10 I would work with him again.

What a guy.

If we had more time editing I thing we could of added a blood spatter effect after every stab.

Other than that, The animation worked out quite well. It was cool to do. If I were to do it next time I would try something more simpler I think.

Familiars from the old Animatic

These are the Familiars that are in the Animatic. All images are taken from some Magazines.