Sound recording

Well I wasn't expecting to find sound recording so difficult, I spent a a few hours in town trying to record some background crowds but I was overwhelmed with how much sounds the microphone picked up. I went into the studios at uni and managed to isolate myself so I could get some good footstep noises, felt like a fool doing it but the result wasn't too bad. I think I'm going to ask certain shops to allow me record some interior noises. In an ideal world if I could go into a casino and record the interior noises that would be ideal for my animatic. I have also asked my flatmates to hopefully provide some grunting noises and some other general foley to help out. I think I will end up using a little bit of online sourced sounds but as long as I have a few sounds I have recorded myself, the overall animatic will be successful.

Animatic Audio Lessons

Being taught about sound effects for an animatic has made me realise just how much difference sound can make. Even just walking down the street I have never realised theres so much going on. Also practicing with the microphone has made me realise that background noise can drive me up the wall. Nevertheless sound editing is fun but now I know a lot of effort needs to be put in to produce a realistic and effective result. Lets see how things go.

Character Sheet

Managed to finally sort out my final character sheet. I've drawn him from four angles to give a 3D perspective.

Sounds

Starting to think about sounds for the animatic. I need to convey emotions and environment through them. As environments go I need to find background noises for a casino interior. If I refer back to my treatment it may help me out. I need dice to record and also need to somehow figure out how to record animals celebrating. This is going to be fun. 

Storyboard Feedback

Just had some positive feedback for my rough storyboard, although there are a few tweaks that need to made. Predominantly on the ending, as currently the character leaves without knowing he has won. But as I want the story to be funny I am changing the ending so that the animals celebrate, he realises and all the characters celebrate together. I'd like it to be a happy ending. As the overall message is the classic 'if at first you don't succeed, try, try again".

Stop Motion Potential Character

Thought I would play about with some plasticine and had a go at making my characters face. Just wanted to see what he would look like if I were to make the animation in a stop motion technique.

 This is the result. After asking people's opinion the overall feedback is that people prefer the colour and eye of the left hand face but the mouth of the other face.
I think thats a fair result and wouldn't take too much adapting to improve it.

Final Character Design

I decided to develop the shape, and use a simple face design as I think it represent the age of the character I want. He is designed to look like a big, successful business man who is wealthy and well dressed.

I am going to develop this further by drawing side angles to give a three dimension perception of the character.

Character Development

I have narrowed my character design to these two basic design which I am going to develop further.

Very very rough storyboard

This is my really rough storyboard for my animation, it' all sketched out in pencil and has no durations or annotations yet. As the character is still undecided the shapes are quite vague.  Basically the story involves the character aiming for the number six. After many attempts using various lucky charms eventually he gets it. But he's already given up and turned away.

Feedback from group

After presenting my rough storyboard to my class, I have now got some really good ideas to improve it. I'm going to make the humour elements even more ironic and stupid as I think it will make it funnier. Overall the opinions of my group were possitive, so now I'm happier about it all! 

Very rough Character Designs

These are my very rough original character designs I created on paper a while ago. I have experimented with a few hair styles as the the character's head will be the main focus within the animation. The body may not be shown as a whole, nevertheless I am designing a full character. Next I will draw up a few ideas on the computer and then focus on drawing them at different angles to create a 3D body.