Voices (Part Uno!)

Given that I can't really start work on the film without a basic soundtrack, now's probably the time to get cracking on it. This is one of the trickiest parts of production for a lot of people on my course as it comes down to finding actors and sound designers. Fortunately with the work I've done producing indie records I know my way around a waveform, and given that the Hunter is a grumpy fucker like my good self I'll opt for the Mike Judge/Seth MacFarland/Trey Parker (etc) route and just do the voice myself. For the Duck however I was able to wrangle an old pal from my thespian days.
Yes, friends, I used to tread the boards like a veritable bard.
Well, not really. My old school used to throw me in every other play to be the token old fat dude, and the novelty of the process wore off very quickly. At least half the time though I'd be there amongst other fellows and fellates (no, wait...that means something else...what's the feminine form of 'fellows'? Why am I even typing this?) in a similar predicament, chief among them Tom Bower, a name I know at least five of you reading this will recognise from my not-even-cult webcomic 'Mitchells In England'. While the comic strip Tom was an unreliable, brain-damaged pothead, the real Tom was a pretty dependable, all-around, level-headed guy (when I was fourteen it made for delightfully clever subversion, trust me). Of course this has all changed, when I saw him for the first time in several years he had devolved into a degenerate pimp with duelling addictions for gambling and crack. But I was able to snap him out of his destructive (albeit decadent) stupor long enough to have him record dialogue for my Duck character.


Although the quality of sound is a little ropey from the camcorder footage, going through the actual soundtrack (that big sexy mic isn't just there to be big and sexy, y'know) it's clear he's absolutely nailed the character, even throwing in some extra embellishment and methods of delivery that give some of the limp bits of dialogue a shot in the arm. So next up, my dialogue, the dialogue for the Prospective Lay, a lengthy editing process and eventually the wonderful world of dope sheets. From what I can fathom, that last one isn't as fun as it sounds...

That weirdo sat in the corner doing his drawings...

Of late I find myself recalling a sequence in Charlie Kaufman's über-meta-headfuckfest 'Adaptation', in which Nick Cage as Kaufman frequents a greasy spoon to do research for the dull screenplay he's been commissioned to write, the vacuousness of his life openly pitied by the waitresses. Given that my apartment is filled with distractions (not to mention my ordinarily-chaste upstairs neighbours are nowadays rutting with such fervour as to suggest they've only just worked out what goes where) and my campus has been closed for easter save for a stuffy library, I've had to search out alternative working environments. It turns out that I seem to get the bulk of my work done in the one remaining café that isn't occupied by scores of braying teenage imbeciles - shielded as it is by a bookstore that surrounds it, a laudable chav filter.
While my project and my waistline have both benefited enormously (pretty much the whole film is storyboarded now and their paninis average out at under 400 calories) my concern is that my body has rejected the concept of routine. Earlier today, three weeks of constant inking and fitful nights caught up with me and the resulting exhaustion nearly drove me to babbling lunacy. I'm also wary that the visual of me in my little corner going through my production sheets isn't a million miles away from that of those smug pricks that bring their laptops into Starbucks.
I guess my point is that I'm looking forward to school starting again - and that's a sentence I never would have imagined myself typing. As fruit of my labours, here are some more storyboarded sequences that follow on from either of my proposed openings.
Here we see the Hunter and Duck meet for the first time.





After the cheeky little fucker's psyche-out, the two have a civil exchange over coffee and the duck embarks on a more calculated, protracted revenge - weaselling his way into some free room and board.










Flashing forward a month, one night has become several weeks and, despite the Hunter's efforts, this zombie duck isn't going anywhere.




What follows in the first draft of the script are four scenes that progress over the course of several months, with their relationship becoming more and more strained. Of the four I've decided to excise two for being overly-wordy and generally unnecessary. Those that remain will be posted in my subsequent entries. Yeah, I know, I'm a tease. I can't give you everything in one go! How would I know whether or not you'd call back?

Case Study #2: Anthropermorfis...Anthrapomorphi...Anthro-pamerphis...Making Animals Act All Human-Like...

One of the greatest freedoms inherent in my aforementioned first love, Ren & Stimpy, was Kricfalusi's ability to caricature and anthropomorphise beyond identifiability. If you didn't know that Ren was a dog (or, more specifically, an 'Asthma-Hound' chihuahua) and Stimpy was a cat - an obvious pairing of species that goes back centuries - it would take an extremely lateral-thinking mind to guess it from their appearance.
Ren's long, distinctly un-chihuahuaian ears might have one lean toward assuming he's some type of emaciated rabbit, or his signature 'W'-shaped mouth at times resembled a proboscis (the show itself referred to him as resembling a mosquito on several occasions). Stimpy, well, Jesus wept, if you honestly thought 'cat' when you saw him for the first time, you should seek psychiatric care. Interestingly, most other animals in the show aren't as disproportionately exaggerated. The deadpan Mr. Horse, though humanistic, was very obviously a horse, even without the name there was no ambiguity there.

Bob Clampett's 1946 Daffy, alongside Chuck Jones's 1953 Daffy...

A more logical case study to pursue would be the greatest animated duck in creation, Daffy (to hell with Donald, the hoarse, lisping bitch). My logic being that, well, my antagonist is also a duck. Ah, my deep and multi-faceted mind.
When you look at the evolution of Daffy (and we're stopping with the late 50s, if anyone brings up the horror of Loonatics Unleashed I will piss-slap them) there is a tremendous change, not just to his design but his character as well. On a DVD commentary for Bob Clampett's 1946 short 'The Great Piggy-Bank Robbery', John K. in his capacity as cartoon historian acknowledges the character was initially 'daffy' as the moniker suggests, evolving into a far more subdued, crankier, 'jerk' character. Where Mr. K and I differ is our preferred variation - while he prefers the abrasive, off-the-wall Daffy of the earlier 1930s and 40s shorts, I'm more a fan of the calmer, calculating one of the 50s, if for no other reason than that's the one I was exposed to more often as a young'un. Obviously of the two of us, John K. knows his shit more than I do given age and experience (in fact, why are you even reading this? Go read his blog right now!) and his taste is doubtless attributed to the freedom the loonier Daffy allows in terms of just how crazy the animation gets.

Stills from Clampett's 'The Great Piggy-Bank Robbery' (1946) - a decidedly daffier Daffy

He alludes to on the commentary (and points out in a blog entry) Clampett's propensity for throwing in dirty jokes, such as having Daffy's beak morph into a sideways pudenda for occasional frames that, within the deluge of the consistently wild drawings, the naked eye is unable to register. The character design is not limited to a strict model sheet, with proportions constantly altering - this is perhaps the most notable derivation in Kricfalusi's own work, and to me one of the most endearing.
By going to the other extreme, we can observe the later 'grown-up' Daffy in the 1953 masterpiece (in no uncertain terms) 'Duck Amuck'. This cartoon is a character study in itself, with Daffy the only actor to appear until the oft-plagiarised ending. Growing increasingly frustrated as the cartoon's animator headfucks him constantly, we see the full gamut of emotion and acting in Chuck Jones's incarnation of Daffy. It is a very different beast to Bob Clampett's - even when he loses his rag completely it is with a kind of disciplined lunacy, (comparitively) conforming to a proportioned design.

Stills from Jones's 'Duck Amuck' (1953) - a not-so-'looney' toon, but brilliant in its subtlety

While some may consider this restricting, it has always struck me that by reigning in the levels of visual absurdity a notch there is less of a likelihood that the audience will be lost. Unless you're an animation devotee like John K. - or if you have a short, infantile attention span like myself - too many convoluted, rapid-fire visual gags can get overwhelming.
To me, the genius of Chuck Jones's take on the Looney Tunes ensemble is the subtlety of the acting. Tiny eye expressions, little sniffs, grimaces, twitches, gesticulations and so on - all done so brilliantly and naturalistically that they are almost subliminal. The look on Daffy's face when he reaches his breaking point is so reserved, yet completely expresses that oh-so-relatable, end-of-one's-tether, borderline psychosis. You know in that look that you're in the eye of the storm, and that very soon the shit will hit the fan. Who here hasn't had a coworker who just fuckin' lost it one day? I imagine it happens with some frequency in the animation industry.
But we don't just see Daffy as an illogical psycho. At several points toward the start of the film he's in good spirits, and these more jovial moments are just as superbly portrayed with the same degree of subtlety. It's the constant poking, prodding and general antagonising on the part of the faceless pencil/paintbrush wielder that incrementally drives him to the edge.
So how is this relatable to my film? Well, apart from the duck connection (I have gleaned an awful lot of research in regards to lip-synching a beak, although I'll try not to throw in those Clampett-esque mouth vaginas) I think that by having two extremes represented by a single character may help with working out what my own visual approach may be. My lack of strict artistic knowledge would see me veer toward the free, unrestricted, loose style, while my amateur status as an animator may automatically restrict what I can do in the time provided, so my character acting may simply wind up as subtle by proxy. We shall see...

Storyboard Outta My Frickin' Mind...

Now that I've refined my script, filtering out the wordy passages and unnecessary scenes, it's time to put together a proper storyboard. I've put this off for a while now because I wanted to wait until the script was properly done and dusted. Given the restructuring of the story and dialogue with each draft, I would have needed to do a completely different storyboard each time, and frankly my wrists don't have the stamina. I'm gonna have to bulk them up if I want to make a career out of animation, but for the sake of civility I won't go into methods.
Anyway...
I'll start from the start, which is just good chronological sense. This first sequence details the initial fate of the Duck, blasted by the Hunter, and his subsequent discovery.
As I'm still at odds as to how the 'zombification' of the Duck will come about, I have done two separate storyboards for this first sequence. The one above is a far longer scenario in which the Duck's corpse is discovered by the creepy Kid, taken to his house and stitched up, then struck by lightning through an open window. The one below has the Duck simply struck by lightning when he washes up on the shore.
I far prefer the former version of events because I really like the design of the kid, and it also explains the stitched-up, falling apart look of the Duck's design (with the latter, more succinct scene I guess we're to assume he was able to do it himself).
So in some way or other, we now have a zombie duck. What happens next? Well, unless you read the concept art post and already know, stay tuned, hombres!

Granting Life to Napkin Doodles

For my pitch presentation back in November I threw together a very basic, scribbled animatic. This is essentially a preview of what the visuals will look like in the finished film, timed to dialogue. In some cases, like with a proper studio production, the animatic will be put together from pencil tests and set to the finished soundtrack so it ends up as a fair representation of what the cartoon will wind up as. In my case, it was cobbled together using scanned napkin drawings with me reading the dialogue in my monotone dirge of a voice (for the Duck I sped it up a bit, for the Hunter I slowed it down a bit - what a genius). Although it was rushed, the two scenes I included in the pitch presentation got the point across when coupled with the concept art. Given that it's been over a month since I started this journal and I haven't really included much by way of dialogue, I figured it'd make sense to put those sequences up on here. So look, you looky-loos:


This scene is better represented visually in one of the concept art stills. I imagine it will be one of the easier sequences to animate as it's basically just a back and forth between the two characters with the duck remaining prone and inanimate (a word that truly is an animator's friend) throughout.


This sequence is a bit more complicated, and again to get a better sense of how it'll look there's a concept still for it. While the animatic here re-uses a lot of the same drawings, the storyboard (which I'll start posting soon) has a lot of cartoon 'acting' in the facial expressions - the Hunter getting more appalled, the Prospective Lay alternating between dim and affronted, and the Duck laying it on thick with surreptitious leers and feigned hurt. Very little of that is evidenced here, again it's more a means of representing the dialogue (also, when I made the animatic I was still entertaining the possibility of animating the film in 3D CGI).
What I've confirmed with the animatic is that I definitely won't be doing the voice of the Duck. The voice on these clips bugs the hell out of me and my shitty acting takes a lot of the humour out of the dialogue. I have an old college friend in mind with whom I acted in a number of godawful school plays. Having talked to him about it recently he seems game, and knock wood we'll get some time soon to record it. The sooner I get the dialogue recorded, the sooner I can get cracking on the all-too intimidating dope sheets. More importantly, hearing me chatting up my own sister (who, while visiting, graciously did the Prospective Lay voice for the animatic) is all a bit too White Stripes for my liking.

Case Study #1: The Greatest Show on Earth!

I figured that to help shape an impression of where I'm coming from, I'd include in this blog case studies of numerous visual and stylistic influences on my work. So here's the first one. Hooray! As I'm sure you are all aware, YouTube is an invaluable resource for incredibly rare footage, shows you can't buy or watch, hard-to-find interviews, concerts etc. At least, it would be if those fuckin' narcs didn't constantly delete videos because of copyright infringement. In all honesty, how much damage could having a crappily-compressed YouTube video online do to DVD sales or HDTV viewing figures?

But I digress in that interminable way I often do. I had put online a video that got deleted as it's comprised entirely of clips from The Ren & Stimpy Show, the genius creation of contemporary animator John Kricfalusi, with me babbling about how great it was. I think that message frankly needs to be heard still, especially in this era of Loonatics Unleased, 6Teen and all manner of other uninspired dross. This was done as part of my MA course, as an ungraded exercise in putting together a presentation on our creative influences for the sake of getting comfortable with the concept. I decided to do it in a kind of documentary style so I could cram as many points and visual gags as I could.

Painting by Bill Wray, the show's distinctly nifty background artist

If I were to actually post a blog entry as to why Ren & Stimpy was the best thing to happen in animation since the Looney Tunes, it'd be the length of a goddamn novel. So I'll spare you all and stick with the 6 minute summary. My regret with the vid is that I sort of dismiss John K's ill-fated revival 'Adult Party Cartoon' as an afterthought at the end. This is mainly because I consider the two shows to be entirely separate beasts, and 'Adult Party' is laudable in its own right. I may very well give it an entry later on as a separate case study. Adding to the absurdity of Viacom ordering that the presentation be removed, when it was up I got a ton of feedback from people who had never seen the show - or had forgotten it - that had decided to go buy the DVDs after seeing this. So by having it up I was making the company money. Anyway... Have a look (wmv format)

As an addenda, back when this was on YouTube I was frequently asked why my voice was so affected. Unfortunately I really do speak in one of those not-quite-anything hybrid accents. Sorry folks.

Cabin Fever (Part Two)

An update on my doomed venture to put together a classy-looking set, contradicting the rough crudity of my concept art. With the foundations and walls already established, I've been working on a whole bunch of silly little details to make it all feel like a home. Out of context these images just look like (rather amateurish) interior design ideas, which I guess they kind of are. What I like about the work done with the textures is the bleak, dated look of the interior. The overall impression is that it was possibly inherited, with no refurbishment efforts made. I think with some more work I can explain an awful lot about the hunter's character simply by the despondency of his surroundings. Hopefully I'll be able to retain this sense if and when I decide to convert it to a less photorealistic, 'cartooney' look.

While this kind of visual style fits into numerous facets of the design and animation world, I don't really think my film is amongst them. Still, it's all learning...

A Retrospective at 23? That's Kinda Dumb...

If I were the shameless sort, I'd use this particular blog entry to plug my musical altar-ego, Struwwelpeter. But that's not what this is about. There's a time and a place for Struwwelpeter, whose latest album 'Agnosticaust' is a veritable feast for the ears - but that time isn't now. And the place isn't here - maybe I'll start a seperate blog for Struwwelpeter (t-shirts along with other related merchandise and accesories available to buy online) but that's a project for another day.
*Cough* Buy my crappy records *Ahem*
On a completely different note, I thought I'd talk about two Struwwelpeter (add me on Myspace!) music videos I made to pass my BA and promote the records, which really are delightful. For some reason I felt compelled to do a variety of music videos for my final major project, rather than just one which probably would have sufficed. As it turned out I did six, handing in four, two of which were done with CGI animation.
We are all of us wiser with the gift of retrospect, and I can't help but feel that if I had just focused my energies on one video it could have been a far more impressive affair. That being said, I remain quite proud of those I ended up producing, for all of their flaws. It's when you can identify where you've gone before that teaches you the most - in these cases there's one issue that dwarfs all others: camerawork.
The coolest thing to me (and I'm sure to other newbs...noobs? whatever) about working in a CG environment is the ability to effortlessly change POVs, angles and perspective, more so even than with an actual camera. When you have a moving shot, like a pan or a pull-back, it accentuates the amount of effort that went into modelling the set and characters.
Having taken this into consideration, I made a fatal mistake as a consequence of rendering every shot out separately - there isn't a solitary moment in either video where the camera stays still. Not only is this piss-irritating, it detracts from the characters and subdues the impact of shots that would otherwise be quite impressive.

In the video below, 'Facial Mel', there are three zoom-outs that I was fairly proud of, but because the visuals that come before and after each one indulge in needless camera motion, the brevity of these three shots dissipates almost completely. They're still kinda cool, but they could have stood out so much more if I'd had the foresight to exercise some restraint elsewhere.

Struwwelpeter: "Facial Mel" Music Video

I feel I should mention at this point that when I refer to my own work in a flattering way I'm really applauding the capabilities of the software I use (Cinema 4D, if that's of any interest).
While 'Facial Mel' is perhaps more bright and bustling, 'Let Slip' is the more thought-through video of the two. For whatever symbolism that can be read into 'Facial Mel' (there was none consciously intended) there isn't a lot that happens. Robot wakes up, robot rolls along a walkway into a colloseum-type thing, robot gets nutted by a mirror and some windy shit goes down. In 'Let Slip' there are a couple of isolated scenes in which events occur, however minimal they may be. In one scene, the main rabbit is in a position to help another rabbit in need. Instead he walks away. I like that bit a lot because, as crude as it may be, it was the first time I'd created a personality for a character - the animation is minimal but you still get the idea that this rabbit is a bit of a self-serving dick.

Struwwelpeter: "Let Slip (Remix)" Music Video

The modelling is extremely basic and was originally going to be embellished until my tutor encourage me to stay with the more stylised, geometric look. I'm glad he did as this ended up resulting in the rabbit's face being the eventual album cover, an image that's sold more high-quality merchandise than any of my other designs.
I think if you were to take away the textures, the visuals for both videos would be on a par with the Dire Straits 1981 music video for 'Money For Nothing'. A goal of mine for this MA is to develop character designing skills beyond simply arranging shapes. Another is to refine the realism of their movement, because basically at the moment I'm just, as my current tutor fondly phrases it, 'moving shit about'.
With the creepy, trippy remix (courtesy of my favourite lesbian in the world, Alison Eire) of the song and the bleak, faux papier-mache visuals, this video got a lot of feedback from Solent University's more 'artsy' crowd when it was showcased. I don't really like to lend my work any kind of relevance or weight, it was just a case of me trying to create something cute and silly and winding up with something creepy and indulgent. I really wish I'd opted for a different ending rather than the final live-action shot of the rabbit, which frankly veers into pretentious territory. It may be with that self-awareness and desire to distance myself from the arthouse world that I've made this current film I'm working on so ridiculous. When I try to explain to people "Well, it's about a duck who's a zombie..." they look at me like I'm not only making it up on the spot, but also like I'm a little bit retarded. After a while it starts to dawn on me that they might be onto something...

Cabin Fever (Part One)

Part of CGI's major appeal as a viable prospective option is the freedom it can grant with the construction of sets. A huge money-saver when put up against stop-motion which would warrant an actual physical construction, and far more likely to look satisfying over my shambolic, proportionless 2D drawings (see 'Concept Art'). Even if I decide to use traditional/digital 'cel' animation for the characters, a single set built in a CG environment can allow for multiple angles and camera/lighting effects without requiring a buttload of drawings that would probably look pretty ropey anyway.
The first step in putting the cabin (where the bulk of the action takes place) together is mapping out a basic layout that can work with the script. So for example, if a character emerges from a certain room, it needs to be adjacent to the primary setting of the scene. After a number of read-throughs of the script, I came up with this illegible drivel:

With some fine-tuning I worked out a better-proportioned scale layout, then used that as the foundation for my set.To give it a kind of rustic look, I lined the walls (save for the kitchen which will be tiled) with rows of parallel boards, each at a slight slant.
I then scoured a handful of free stock-image galleries and created about 100 different wood textures from photographs of fences and the like. I applied these to each board and presto! A needlessly photorealistic set of walls! It took a while, but my life is incredibly vacuous. What else was I gonna do? Go out and socialise? Bwahaha...
My major concern is that the fancy-dancy visuals may not be necessary, or may even be distracting. If there's a scene being played out that relies on crucial dialogue, you don't want the audience drooling over the hyper-realism of the background details.

Final Fantasy: Very pretty but ultimately pointless...

Here's a pretty obvious reference - I remember being astounded by the look of that Final Fantasy film. I can't remember one goddamn thing about what the hell happened in it, though. On one hand, just because you can do something photorealistic doesn't necessarily mean you should. On the other, why the hell not? For now, at least. With the assumption being that the textures and effects can or will be altered later, I think it'd be a good idea to soldier on with the rest of the set as I have done so far. If nothing else, it will teach me more about modelling, and the more mistakes I can learn from, the better. Plus, it passes the time and is genuinely fun once you get into it, working on textures, mapping them in, all that geeky shit. In fact, I think my next entry should be about just how professional things like textures and lighting effects can make films look (in lieu of any decent knowledge of animation) and how easy it is to get caught up in them.

Trial & Error...Mostly Error

I've been carrying out some tests as to what type of animation will best suit my duck movie. While I'm quite fond of the visuals created for the concept art, the idea of doing a whole film using traditional, hand-drawn (or even digitally drawn) animation is more than a little intimidating. So I decided to see if the characters work using 3D CGI, and after piecing together a basic model for the duck...well, I'm not really any further along in making my mind up.

There's something notoriously tricky about converting a still drawing to 3D. That old Simpsons episode where they do a CG Homer is a prime example of that, even though his character design is dependent on fairly basic geometry there's something not quite right about seeing those characters as anything other than drawings.

Perhaps a better example would be the action figures. South Park's characters are as basic as you get in terms of design and still the 3D figures have a slightly disproportioned, 'unofficial' quality. Believe it or not, all the figures in the still above are officially licensed toys, not ripoffs.

While I've done my best to replicate the proportions of the 2D design (working from a front view and profile view, lined up so the proportions match up, which is pretty hard when you know nothing about this type of thing), there's that unplaceable absence of character in the 3D translation.

Although that being said, it is early days and this is my first attempt at a character model. Doubtless better textures and some fine-tuning will help. Obvious flaws to work through are the mismatched and improperly-mapped fur textures, as well as the woefully modelled wing and beak. So I won't rule this out just yet, but will reassess the situation once I've added enough detail and just made the whole thing look less, well, rubbish.