The Final Evaluation
In this section, We'll be looking back at everything I've done over the course of this production and seeing if there was anything I could have done differently (and spoiler alert, the research section will probably have the most things I could have done differently due to certain inaccuracies that ended up slipping through the cracks), so without further ado, let's get started.
The First Steps (AKA. The Head Start Attempt)
I'll be honest, trying to get a head start on this project during the half term break didn't end up panning out as well as I'd hoped because I ended up almost missing out certain key steps in the project. (I.E: The proposal and even this entire website) This puts my FMP in the same boats as the music video and missing projects, which I also tried to get a head start on before those projects would officially start. This resulted in me having to reboot the research for the music video and after the missing project got cancelled, I had to switch gears once it became a lockdown project due to COVID-19 spiking once again, meaning I had to repurpose the character I made for the missing project (that being Detective Griswold) and instead work him into the lockdown project, or else the development I did before hand would have gone to waste.
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With this in mind, I'm not entirely sure I want to even try and get a head start anymore, but on the other hand these head starts may have played a small part in how I was able to do these projects on time, because technically speaking the head starts gave me slightly longer to do said projects. This is important because the grand majority of what I've done was animated projects created using a video game, so any extra time I could get was beneficial. Right now I'm still figuring out whether or not I still want to attempt any sort of head start next year, especially right now since I don't have the foresight of what the first unit of the next year is going to be. (because how can you attempt to get a head start when you don't even know what the next piece of work is going to be)
The Project Proposal
At first, working on this project proposal was a little bit difficult because I was trying to figure out how to fit three ideas into a few small paragraphs (because sticking with a single idea throughout was discouraged and I assumed there was no way I'd be able to do Super Sheep again because I've used the character too much this year), but once I was able to do a little bit of pre-emptive idea development, the proposal became slightly easier for me to make, especially when I got past the sections that required a word count. Due to my attempt at a head start however, I ended up having to make a separate word document just to evidence the work as I was doing it, because the idea was that after I'd picked what I wanted to do for this project, I would use that to decide the aesthetic of this very website, which helped me get into the spirit of the olden days.
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Next time I think I'll try and do some initial idea development first and then work on the proposal because once I'd decided on a vague idea of what I wanted to do I was able to hit the ground running. (thus allowing me to get to the context section faster)
The Context Section
Here, I decided to explain the context as to why I decided to make this a black and white cartoon rather than a full-colour cartoon. I do like how detailed I was able to get with this particular section (well except the part about my target audience because I forgot to actually pick one until I, but we'll get there when we get there) with examples of what I'm trying to capture with this project and even a little bit of comparison with how these old pieces of media would have been accessed back in the day vs how people access them nowadays, especially with the knowledge that a lot of old silent films used to have their soundtracks (which included sound effects performed via drums) done as the film was playing rather than pre-recording everything. (because the technology wouldn't exist yet) This would end up affecting the way people would come to view these old movies a century later, as nowadays much of the populist would likely find these movies a bit boring without the original soundtracks.
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Unfortunately for me however, I ended up making certain promises that never got to materialise in the end, the main example of this is where I state my intentions to look into things such as the fashion and broader culture of the 1920s and 30s in order to get further context as to why the cartoons were made the way they were, but then I never actually got to do that due to time restraints during the research phase. So in other words, parts of that section ended up becoming retroactive lies as time moved on and I continued working on the project.
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One particular struggle I've had was doing the section that delves into the target audience, mostly because I'm not really a huge fan of statistics (plus I'd rather just make things that I myself would want to see and simply hope and prey that others happen to enjoy my silly antics), but I do get that it's an important part of helping animation studios make money. (but if I were to get to that stage in a real setting, I'd probably let someone else take care of the market research while I just focus on making the animations)
The Research Section
For the research section, I really like the way I was able to go into lots of detail about the history of 2D and 3D animation (as well as Walt Disney specifically) because I got to talk about all the differences between the two mediums, from how the characters move to the way the background and camera tend to be handled and even the art style differences I.E: in a 2D movie, the animators can get away with having the characters hold a single pose for multiple frames at a time and they'll still look alive regardless (this is referred to as a moving hold) while in CG animated films, most of the time, you'd need to always keep the characters moving in every single frame, or else they'll look like statues, especially if you're going for a more realistic look. (of course you'll be able to get away with having the models stay completely still if your main character was a toy or even a garden gnome that becomes inanimate)
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When it came to practitioners however, things started to taper off a little bit. I was doing really well with Walt Disney because with him I was able to go into lots of detail about his background and how he gets erroneously credited as the guy who made the first cartoon with synchronised sound (it was actually Max Fleisher who made the first one), but just because he wasn't the first person to put sound into cartoons, he was the first to create a feature length animated picture in America (and only America) with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. (plus he did go on to make Disneyland, which would remain a popular tourist destination until COVID happened)
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While I'm proud of the detail I put into Walt's section, it did end up taking a fair bit of time to complete, so I couldn't quite put in the same level of detail for any of the other practitioners I chose to delve into, and in the case of Chuck Jones I even managed to get the timeline of events and the release of one of his Wile E. Coyote cartoons wrong. That'll teach me for assuming I knew enough about these people to full deep dives based entirely on memory. (luckily I wouldn't make this same mistake with the likes of P.I.X.A.R) This also meant that the CGI section (where I delve a little bit into the history of CGI as an art from and its origins as a special effects tool) wasn't as detailed as I would have liked it to be, but I did manage to discuss some of the neat little quirks and specifics of the entire medium, I.E: the fact that all parts of a character need to be accounted for during the animation process in order to avoid having said character clipping through the environment, them-self and/or other characters and objects within the scene, but I'd say my favourite fact I stumbled upon happened while I was randomly watching the trailer for Toy Story 3 and happened to spot a slightly different version of the scene where the jack in the box screams out "NEW TOYS!" The reason I like this fact so much is because while it might seem quite minute in the grand scheme of things, it highlights how much easier it is for a computer animated film to change than a 2D animated feature, because if you ended up changing your mind on a certain aspect of a given shot then you would have to basically re-construct the entire shot from scratch and make sure that you make all the changes you want to make this time. As you can imagine, this would be a lot of work for the animators and artists involved for something that might not even be set in stone. In CGI meanwhile, making changes to a scene is as easy as going into the scene file and then tweaking whatever elements need changing (I.E: Lighting, prop placements, character animations to an extent), this is way easier to do than re-constructing the entire scene every time you want to change minor elements. (which can waste a lot of time if you're not careful)
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Luckily, I had the idea to create an expand upon the research back when we were still working on our alternative weeks, although due to us suddenly going back to full time face to face learning, I only ended up amending Chuck Jones' section to make it more accurate and cover one of his other famous cartoons which star Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd. The main reason I chose to talk about a part of the Hunting Trilogy of cartoons is because it would allow me to discuss how Chuck Jones uses humour in situations that involve dialogue. (thus allowing me to cover both variations of Chuck's style of humour in the end) I'd say the revised edition of Chuck Jones' section is quite a big improvement over the original because I actually went ahead and did a little bit of fact checking before diving right into things. (and I did some fact checking while I was doing the section to make sure I don't get everything wrong like last time)
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Although the animation research would have been just one single part of the research process, as originally I had planned to do things like a section on Stop-Motion animation, a section where I delve into the historical context of the 1920s in general so that I could find out why the cartoons were made the way they were in context of the time period (which would have included a look into things such as the fashion, economics and even musical stylings of that time), but unfortunately those goals wouldn't end up being as feasible as I'd hoped. (perhaps if I'd had the entire year to work on this project then maybe I could have done those sections)
We Interrupt This Program To Bring You Our (Potential) Last Project Management Update
Well just because we've reached the end game doesn't mean we shouldn't check up on this thing. So far, I think I'm on track to finish the entire project with a good week to spare (which is nice, even if the video games helped speed things up), but of course, that's only if I keep up the pace I'm currently on.
We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Program: Still On The Research Section
One of my absolute favourite things I did during this phase was actually recreating that famous camera spin from The Lion King in Dreams because while talking about some of the differences between CGI and 2D is nice, it's a lot better when I can actually show the differences myself by re-creating a scene in a different medium than the one it was a part of originally, in this case I recreated the camera spin to show how much easier it is to do similar shots in computer animation when compared to 2D animation plus it also counts as a good bit of experimentation on the side.
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Next time I do something like this, I'd make sure that I give every single thing I look into a similar amount of detail, that way I don't end up in a situation where one aspect of my research would end up getting more time and effort put into it than everything else (like what happened with Walt Disney during this project) and I could have done way more fact checking to avoid making the same mistake I did with Chuck Jones and end up accidentally covering a 90s cartoon when I meant to cover a 50s cartoon. (I'll admit, that one's on me for not doing my due diligence)
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Another thing I could do is that I could actually try showing more of the differences via recreations of famous scenes because re-doing The Lion King shot was quite an easy task because 1. I've already got a base I can use so animating it won't take very long (depending on the scene of course), and 2. I can talk about the differences between different mediums in context of what I'm doing as well as in the broad sense, which may even help me figure out some potential technical difficulties BEFORE I get started on animating my project, thus giving me a little bit of foresight in the process, that way I don't end up writing in elements that I end up having to cut due to technical faults I didn't see coming like I did with the horse in this cartoon.
The Experimentation
The main bit of experimentation I did for this project was seeing whether or not it would be worth adding in a green screen joke into my FMP. The joke would have likely involved sending the characters beyond the boundaries of their own reality and into a full colour universe (whether said universe would have been Minecraft or our universe would I'd need to decide during the scripting phase due to the extra commitment that comes with using a green screen) for about a second or two and then they would have gone back home immediately.
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I ended up having to do 3 separate streams in 3 different pieces of software (because I felt that green screening footage of Dreams with other Dreams footage would have been pointless, so instead I did the background using Minecraft) because with a PS4, streams can only happen for the games and software, and I can only use one game/piece of software at a time. (thus meaning I can't change software without cutting the stream first)
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Even though I ultimately decided to drop the green screen humour in the end for the sake of saving time that could be better spent cleaning the animation ready for release, I do think there is potential for a little bit of green screen humour in the future. Maybe the next project I decide to work on could incorporate some green screen humour. (but we'll have to wait and see when I get there)
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The only real improvement I can think of for this step is that I could have done way more experiments in order to try and figure out some of the potential technical difficulties so that they don't crop up during the actual animation process because by the time I would have got there, I will have figured out how to fix and/or avoid said issues. (whether it be cutting out the elements before hand or even coming up with workarounds)
Idea Development: Round 2
The reason I ended up doing a second round of idea development for this project was in part because I randomly decided to look at a lamppost that's outside my house and I ended up thinking to myself "hmmmm, what if that lamppost just disappeared one day?" So after that revelation I ended up doing a second round of idea development where it was between a plane flight that goes wrong (which was the original idea in the first place) and the new lamppost idea, I ended up deciding that the lamppost idea had more potential than the bi-plane idea. (plus if I did the lamppost idea I wouldn't risk getting sued by Disney for stealing the concept of "Plane Crazy", because like I've said before, Disney still owns the copyright to their 93 year old cartoon mouse and all of his adventures) The main reason I think this is because I wanted the cartoon to be five minutes long because I wasn't sure I could pull off a 10 minute production. (even though the final cartoon ended up being almost six minutes in length) and I wasn't sure if I could actually come up with 5 minutes worth of funny material within the limited space of a single bi-plane. (because even I have my limits when it comes to creativity)
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The only improvement I can think of is that I could have developed a few more ideas for potential stories that I could tell, that way I end up with more than two choices at the end. This is in case I didn't end up liking either idea, but luckily I was able to get a decent story out of the lamppost idea, so it worked out well in the end. (because apparently light sources are conceptually malleable)
The Character Designing Process
I quite enjoyed designing the characters for this project (all two of them if you don't count the horse) because I got to draw up what the characters would look like before I created the 3D models in Dreams for the PlayStation 4, which is important because I don't really want to make up the 3D design as I go along. (even if Dreams' sculpt tools make 3D models easy to edit if I don't like something about it) Despite this however, I did end up having to rush the design of the main character, which I named Ruff Bup because I needed to save the file halfway through due to my parents needing to take care of some fitness and business nonsense first, so I called the temp file "Bup" (which is a reference to a Super Mario 64 meme where the face texture of the Toads in Peach's Castle is shown on screen while a voice clip from Mario Kart 64 is edited to sound like he's saying "Bup"), and the name stuck.
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Speaking of Ruff Bup, I originally wanted him to just be an anthropomorphic dog, but when I went to draw his ears, they ended up looking more like an ant's antenna, so as a result I just decided to make him a combination of an ant and a dog instead so that he would theoretically stand out from every other character from back in the 20s, which is good because I can avoid getting sued by Disney despite the similar dumbbell design. (which I only applied because a lot of characters back then used to look like that) When it comes to Rick P. Rison (originally known as Rick [WE CAN'T LEGALLY SHOW HIS ORIGINAL SURNAME DUE TO RACISM] before I had to change it thanks to racism getting in the way), in order to differentiate him from Ruff Bup (since both characters have the same body type), I decided that the best logical step would be to make him into a raccoon (since raccoons are known for stealing stuff from peoples rubbish bins and I'd already decided the character would be a criminal beforehand) and to give his head more of an oval shape rather than a perfect circle, that way the two characters could have distinct silhouettes from one another. (which is also why I gave Rick a different shaped tail based on Tanooki Mario from the Mario series) For the horse, which I designed after the script was already written, I decided to try and base it off of the four legged horses seen in old Disney cartoons (particularly the one from 1929's "The Barn Dance"), but since I decided to do it from memory instead of using a reference image, I don't think it came out quite right. (although the reason I never used a reference image was because I didn't want to steal Disney's look)
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If I were to make something like this next time, I'd want to actually create multiple designs for all of the characters so that I can pick which one I think is the best rather than creating what I like to call "one-shot" character designs (which is where I make a single design for the characters and then leave it there, examples of this practice include all the Captain Cartridge characters and Elfix the Elf), but the trouble is I can never seem to reach the character design phase early enough to do more than one design per character (except for the character of Petra Pop-star, Skulldrix and the Drawgaxes from the Colypsia Website, those ended up being the lucky ones that time), but other than that I'd say I did quite well in this section. (certainly better than the research, that's for sure)
The Script
When it came to the script, while I was able to format it quite well and I even got to debut a trick I learned from the internet that I never got to use when working on the lock-down project (because back there, I had to nix the original script due to time constraints, only to then re-constitute the original story into text that existed below the images instead), but a particular issue I keep running into when writing any script for a project is that often times I never think to make a second draft (like, ever), so I just end up animating the first thing I write (which while it might work for projects like this one where I only have a few weeks, it isn't usually the done thing when making movies, TV shows or video games), so I already know that the main improvement here is to learn to start doing multiple drafts in order to perfect the story rather than continuing on to the story-boarding phase right after I finish the first draft. The reason scripts usually go through the process of constantly being re-written is because doing so can give the writers and directors a chance to discuss different elements that they could change about the story, whether it be cutting out a particular scene or even changing the roles of some of the characters. (which could potentially lead to the story ending up in a completely different place than it started off in)
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When writing the script, I tried to keep to the principal of one page per minute, which come to think of it, makes the fact that this cartoon ended up being six minutes kind of baffling (but then again, I did end up making a couple of changes during the storyboard and animation phases, so perhaps the changes ended up adding to the run time), but overall I do like how the whole thing turned out because much like with Super Sheep in Convention F-3 from last year, I was able to convey the whole story without a single word of dialogue once again, although this time the reason for the characters remaining silent for the most part is because I was trying to capture the style of the old "silent" films of last century, but the fact that it also meant I didn't have to risk interrupting my dad while he's working from home is a benefit.
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One day I do hope to create an animation with voice acting (for college that is, I already made at least one cartoon with voice acting in my personal time via the Captain Cartridge remake), but that will all depend on whether or not my dad ends up back at the office by the time I actually get to that point in September, not to mention there'll be that drama series we'll all be working on as a class at some point (which will mean I may need to work in live action at least once more), but if all goes to plan and things go back to normal, I may be able to make a cartoon with dialogue (and by extension, voice acting) some time in the future.
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Another thing I should mention was the fact that I technically started writing this script slightly later than I'd originally anticipated I would due to how I was too busy getting the design for Rick done as well as doing a little bit of reflection on the whole design process (and the reason I ended up in that particular position was that my parents were doing things on the computer while I was designing Ruff Bup), hopefully I can avoid starting these things late because that could have lead to some very disastrous consequences down the road if I wasn't careful. (but I ended up getting lucky because I was using word the whole time, so even if things didn't go as planned I could still work on it during the alternating weeks)
The Storyboards
The storyboards weren't quite as tedious as they usually tend to get until around the very end due to how I was working on doing a single batch per day instead of grinding out multiple storyboard batches in a single day like I did with Super Sheep and Captain Cartridge. While I enjoyed doing the one batch per day method, I figured this wouldn't be a viable strategy for very long, as near the end I decided to go back to creating multiple boards in a single day, and it was there that the entire process ended up becoming tedious again. (it's funny how the less tedious method is a little bit riskier to pull off than the more tedious but safer one, but hey, that's life sometimes)
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Overall, I do like how the storyboards turned out, even if I ended up going off script at times for the sake of giving the story a slightly faster pace because by this point, I was beginning to feel like I could cut a few minor parts from the story due to how unnecessary they ended up being in the grand scheme of things (I.E: Rick going back into the driver's seat at some point only to come back out immediately once he sees our heroes on his tail), but overall I think this ended up being for the best, I don't want to make a cartoon that ends up meandering due to pointless filler.
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If I had to come up with any improvements for this particular part, I would say that I'd like to find a way to make the quality of the art up to the same standards as my regular character art (or even better if I can manage) without taking a ton of time because then it'll be even clearer as to what's supposed to be happening in any given panel, meaning I won't have to clear it up as often as I do now, and the boards themselves will be on a more professional standard. The reason for this is because despite the throw-away nature of the storyboards, I usually don't change too much between the script and the storyboards (at least not yet anyway), so perhaps it might be worth me learning a few tricks to improve my storyboard art without taking too much extra time, at least for a little while.
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One thing I really liked was that I could use the script as a point of reference for how much of the story I've yet to do because I was able to get on with the storyboards and highlight the parts of the script I managed to cover once I was done for the day, thus giving me a frame of reference as to how much I had left to do, which sped things up considerably because I wasn't constantly having to remember where I was up to as much.
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To be honest, I thought that I would end up creating as many storyboards as I did for Captain Cartridge and Friends in Operation Compact Disc, but instead I ended up creating the most storyboard batches that I've ever done for a single project (the grand total ended up being 16 batches), I can't wait to see how long this record ends up lasting, my money's on it lasting until the next project.
The Asset and Shot Lists
I'll be honest, while I understand the importance of doing these particular lists and despite how easy I find making them to be, I still found that this part was rather boring. This mainly holds true with the shot list because there, all I'm really doing is listing off what shot types I'm going to use even though I feel like the storyboards would do a fine enough job conveying that information on their own (although since these storyboards aren't of a very high quality, my claims might be a little sketchy) but with the asset list, I feel as if it's a little more important because it can tell me what assets I'll need to get (or in this case, make on my PS4) in order to make the actual cartoon, thus saving me from having to remember with my brain. (that way I can use it for more important decisions such as whether or not to cut the horse from the cartoon to begin with)
The Asset Production
Ok, here is where I really start to get into my element, because the fact that I was using a PS4 game to make everything made this part a bit of a breeze in certain places (mainly with modelling stuff because of the game's sculpt tools), one of my favourite parts of producing the assets is the sheer variety of activities I got to do while making all of them, from composing the music and sound effects to sculpting new models and even modifying existing assets I'd made previously. (this mainly applies to the truck I originally made for the music video project earlier this year, which I modified to fit in with the black and white art style I was going for in this particular cartoon) This cartoon actually marks the first time I made every single asset for a proper production of mine (no, the tension building exercise doesn't count because it was only an exercise), from the characters and props to the sound effects and music. I'm actually quite proud of this particular fact, because for every other project I'd made up until now, I used other people's assets for things such as props, music and sound effects. In fact, the first time I'd even done an original soundtrack was for Captain Cartridge and Friends in Operation Compact Disc. (which was the remake I did after I'd finished my Final Major Project last year due to the original not being up to snuff)
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Speaking of the music, while I wouldn't say it's exactly a masterpiece (since I'm still relatively new to composing my own soundtracks), I would say it is a slight improvement over what I did for Captain Cartridge, as there was a little bit more emphasis placed on the melody this time around than there was with Cartridge where a good chunk of the tracks were mostly drum and bass. Speaking of the melody, I actually managed to come up with a whole two melodies for this project instead of just one (although technically, Rick's melody is more of a bassline) like I did with Cartridge. I felt this was necessary because unlike in Captain Cartridge where everyone was working on the same team, here there's a protagonist and an antagonist (those being Ruff Bup and Rick P. Rison respectively) that are working towards opposing goals, thus meaning I'd need two different melodies for whenever each character would appear on the screen. (because usually in movies and TV shows, the hero and the villain will have different themes that emphasise their presence on screen)
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As for the actual characters, making them was quite easy because I've been doing this since the very beginning with Super Sheep in Convention F-3 (plus it was one of the main things I'd been attempting in my personal time besides making an entire Super Sheep game during the Early Access days when I used Dreams for little more than background making and the odd bit of voice acting), the only thing I did that was new was that I created alternate ball hands, which itself was an easy task since all I had to do was make a sphere and then have it so that a key frame switches the hand for the sphere and I was good to go. It also helps that technically I only really had to model one character (that being Ruff Bup), as I was able to modify the model I made for Ruff Bup in order to make Rick P. Rison's model due to their similar body type (basically for Rick, I changed the antenna to ears, made the head more of an oval shape and then retextured the body and shorts to look more like a prisoner uniform), so that right there is a massive time save if I ever experienced one. Another thing I did for both characters was that I made it so that their ears could be moved around due to how I made the ears separate models that I would rig so that they were attached to the top of the character's heads unlike Super Sheep and friends where their ears were just a part of the head model. (I might want to go back and modify those models to make the ears movable too in case I decide to use the characters again)
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Overall I would say the only two things I really need to improve upon are saving versions of assets before making any decisions that could permanently break them because if I did that then maybe I wouldn't have had to give the horse the axe in the end and I could have dealt with the challenges of animating my first proper quadruped character (although come to think of it, maybe I'll be ready next time), I also feel as if I need to brush up on my composing skills so that I don't end up reusing the exact same melodies over and over again (and by that I mean using them in an obviously lazy sense rather than as leitmotifs, because leitmotifs can be used to enhance a characters presence on screen), but other than that everything went swimmingly for me this time around. I even got to do what I did with Super Sheep where I would end up making a couple of assets while I was animating the cartoon due to how I can use all of Dreams PS4/5's tools without actually leaving the scene I was working on. (so theoretically, I could make all of the assets while animating if I so wanted, but that would be too risky, even for a guy like me who's been gambling his chances by using video games to animate in the first place)
The Animation
This was actually my favourite part of the whole production, because now that I'd finally finished all the prep work, I was able to actually put my plan into action.
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I will admit that beforehand, things were a little bit touch and go for a while due to how we were suddenly changing back to full time face to face learning, because despite what I've been doing throughout the year, the college STILL haven't bought any PS4s or PS5s. This might be for one of two reasons, either they don't know that I've been using a PS4 this whole time (which is highly unlikely because of how often I've been emphasising the fact I've been using video games throughout the academic year) or maybe they're waiting for PS5's to become easier to get and they're waiting on the PS5 upgrade (which according to an apparent "leak" on 4Chan, is going to be called "Dreams +". If this is true I can simply start using that name when referring to the PS5 version) that's rumoured to be happening around July. (meaning we'll more than likely have to wait until 2023 when I'm long gone before the college will embrace gaming as a form of education in a way that's actually engaging because of how the PS5 shortage might last well into 2022)
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Where was I before that little tangent? oh yes, I got quite lucky because the teachers were actually willing to let me animate at my house because doing that is the equivalent of going out of college to do filming for live action productions (so although I was prepared to do what I did with the music video project and simply animate it during my time off college, this ended up being a much better option) so I guess me using video games to make my FMP last year really did do something after all, it just happens that what it did was make it easier for me to do the same thing this year. But then again, this might have always been the case for 2D and 3D animations, so it's a bit up in the air at the moment.
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Now that it had been sanctioned for me to animate my entire project from my house, I was really able to hit the ground running, just as long as I sent the tutors links to my streams so that they could see that I was actually doing things and not just twiddling my thumbs, because I felt that just saying I was doing things without any cold hard proof wouldn't fly.
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As for the animation process, it ended up taking around six days for me to complete the main bulk of the animation, which is weird because last year, it took me about nine days for me to complete the main bulk of the animation. Keep in mind, that's not including the clean up phase (which we'll get into later) where I go back and improve on what I've done in order to get it up to a standard where it's good enough to be released. I'm not entirely sure why this animation didn't take as long to make, perhaps it could be because there were less characters involved than there were with Super Sheep in Convention F-3 because there, I had Super Sheep, The Night Pig, Hugo as well as two guest characters in the form of Seb the drummer and Horatio the ex musician from Dreams' story mode, "Art's Dream", in this project meanwhile, there was only Ruff Bup and Rick P. Rison. At the same time, it could also be because I have a little bit more experience going into this one. Either way, I still had my doubts as to whether on not I was even able to do this (much like everything I've done this past year), but like always, I managed to pull through and get this thing done before the two weeks was done on my project management chart. (maybe I should stop doubting myself and just go for whatever crazy idea comes to mind next, but on that same token, not doubting my abilities was what led to Captain Cartridge in the Rubbish Skinubbish, and that's no good)
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I'd say the biggest thing I need to improve upon is actually doing climbing animations, as doing those ended up being a bigger challenge than I originally thought they would be, the fact I ended up changing many of the climbing motions into jumps is indicative of this. (not to mention that the one I did end up keeping doesn't look very good) The other big thing I need to work on is not having characters clip through objects as much, because even after I'd spent a little bit of time trying to fix the clipping (or at the very least, negating it as much as possible), there still ended up being moments where you could clearly see the characters clipping through objects. For example, when Rick gets out of his truck and climbs to the top, you can see his leg clip into the truck for a couple of frames.
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I'm quite glad I was able to improve on my transitions from non-cycled animations to cycled animations because thanks to the way I put all the instances of the various cycles (I.E: Running) into the characters animation timelines rather than their individual microchips, I was able to pinpoint what the last keyframe of the cycle would be when I trimmed the cycle timeline, not only allowing me to transition out of the cycle with greater ease, but now the cycle would end at the exact same point each time (which saved me quite a bit of guess work), so this will absolutely be my new method of dealing with cycles in the future.
The Editing Phase
Overall, while it was a little bit more of a challenge than the music video due to how I was doing more than just cutting a few delays since I felt like I would need to have fades at the beginning and end of the cartoon so that it wouldn't start or end abruptly (even though I could have done that with text displayers in Dreams PS4/5), it was still quite a breeze for me to do since all of the sound effects and music were already added while I was animating the entire project. (because Dreams lets me do that and it was much easier this way)
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I don't really have any proper improvements I would make to this part other than maybe taking a little bit more time to catch certain editing issues I didn't realise until after I'd already released the cartoon to the world, but that's mostly due to the simplicity of the task at hand rather than any actual skill.
The Feedback Stage
While I was gathering feedback from friends and tutors alike, I ended up learning that Rick's original surname is very similar to that of a racial slur used against black people (which is no good because then the racism might supersede the wordplay I wanted to go for, thus ruining my reputation before I've even had a chance to start production on any major motion pictures), so knowing this I decided to come up with alternative names for the character, only for one of my friends to suggest I put it to a poll.
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I'll admit that I had a bit of trouble fumbling around with Survey Monkey for the first time, but luckily I had a friend to guide me through the process, and after a small while, the name Rick P. Rison ended up winning in the polls. I quite like the name "Rick P. Rison" because now instead of the wordplay being about what species he is (which I feel could easily be determined just by looking at him), the wordplay can serve to emphasise the fact that he's a prisoner who escaped jail (although you can probably expect the other alternate names to crop up somewhere), if I ever do decide to use Survey Monkey in the future I'll probably use it for stuff like this, that way I get to keep the creative freedoms while still listening to what my audience want to see, thus giving me the best of both worlds, because I still get to make something I can be proud of due to all the creative freedom while also using potential audience feedback in order to help make it the best version of itself that it can be.
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Luckily, implementing Rick's new name was quite simple due to the mostly silent nature of this cartoon, because if any of the characters were to have said Rick's original full name before I found out about the potential racism, I would have to re-record those instances in order to replace them with Rick's new name and then I'd have to re-do the lip syncing in those parts in order to have the lips match the new dialogue and then it would be a whole mess of work and we wouldn't be here right now. (mainly because if the new dialogue was performed slightly differently from the original, I would likely have to re-animate certain parts all over again just so that the animation and the dialogue could feel naturally integrated once more)
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Another factor that led to the feedback stages being quite simple was that the other main issue that got brought up was that the chase scene didn't have a very varied background (consisting of only trees and the road), so in order to remedy this I simply had to take some of the tree emitters and replace the trees with other objects such as lampposts and even the odd building. In fact, while I was thinking about varying the background I got the idea to have mountains in the background that would only appear in the second part of the chase (thus implying that Rick lived somewhere in the mountains), I'd say this actually improves the story because now Rick actually has somewhere he needed to get that lamppost to, thus giving the audience a more specific idea as to what the stakes are.
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The next step after that was to give the animation a nice clean up, this mainly manifested itself with changing some of the 2D images so that they looked a lot better (since I actually had the time to fix them up a bit), it was slightly difficult due to how I was technically still working in a 3D space, but I was able to use a cube and surface snapping in order to make it work. One inconsistency that managed to slip through the cracks however was that sometimes Rick's stripes would sometimes change position ever so slightly, but I ended up being too busy fixing everything else to get around to it before release. (so now this animation has a slight blemish that'll stick with it for the rest of time) This means that next time I decide to make a cartoon using Dreams and then add in a 2D section, I'd need to work on making the characters more consistent between each frame.
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The final little bit of clean up I did was finally managing to fix an issue with Rick's window jump that's been plaguing the toon for ages. The issue I'm talking about is when Rick jumps over the window in the beginning, it didn't quite move as smoothly as everything else because Rick was doing each pose of the animation for a longer period of time than he would for all his other animations. Luckily I was able to fix this issue at the last minute by simply messing with the keyframes around that area until the issue sorted itself out (turns out all I needed to do was make the keyframes slightly smaller), I'm quite glad I was able to fix this issue before release because now Rick moves in a more consistent manner. This feedback implementation did end up meaning I would need to re-edit the whole cartoon in share-factory twice (because I didn't want to release a now dated version of the cartoon), but since the editing was so simple even a rock could do it, it wasn't a very big deal.
So How Was Making This Project?
I'll admit, things were a little bit shaky at the start because of how I tried to get a head start on the project, but once I was told what I needed to do for this project and after I finished off that pesky project proposal, I was able to get myself into a little bit of a flow and make up for the time I spent trying to make this a blog post instead of an entire website.
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I quite enjoyed getting to talk about why I ended up choosing the black and white aesthetic because I got to use it as a jumping off point to talk a little bit about "silent" movies in general and even the fact that the sound effects and music would have been performed live in those days rather than pre-recorded and the consequences it ended up having a century later (because a lot of "silent" flicks that get re-released these days tend to have a stock soundtrack attached to it without any regard for the old sound design, thus creating a perception where most people would consider these movies boring, but then I ended up having to talk about audience statistics. That part wasn't really my favourite because while there were a couple of opportunities for me to discuss how this affects the creative side (mainly with how animated movies will include adult jokes so that the parents in the room can also enjoy the film with their kids), I still ended up almost dying of boredom in this part due to the various statistics I ended up looking into (so in other words, while I do understand that this part is important for helping studios make money, if I could avoid this part entirely, I probably would), although it did end up giving me a little bit of insight as to why more adults are watching animated movies these days (what with the currently chaotic state of society at the moment), thus giving me a base line for my target audience. (which ended up being those around the 25-34 age bracket but I still want children to be able to watch and enjoy it too)
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Once that little bit was done, it was finally time for me to start work on the research, which I did enjoy doing because I got to look more into the creative side of the animation industry rather than the statistical side. (so already it was infinity better) As such I was able to talk about things such as the history of 2D animation and Computer Generated animation as well as some of the practitioners who were/are well known for making movies within those mediums. With this in mind, what I ended up being able to do in the end was just a mere fraction of what I originally wanted to do in the end, as I wanted to look into things such as the fashion and culture of the 1920s and 1930s, the medium of Stop Motion animation and some of the practitioners that are know for using that medium for telling stories and even the history of live action silent films too, the reason I ended up in this situation was likely because I spent too much time looking into Walt Disney specifically, because once I realised how little time I gave myself for this part I had to forgo much of what I wanted to do in order to prioritise the actual animation research, and as if that wasn't bad enough, I ended up messing up with the section on Chuck Jones by implying that the golden age extended into the 1960s (despite how a lot of cartoons carried a more limited animation style back in the 60s when compared to the 40s and to an extent, the 50s) and analysing a 90s cartoon instead of a 40s cartoon. (I'll admit, that was all on me for not doing my due diligence thanks to how over confident I was that I knew enough about what I was talking about to give an accurate timeline of events) Luckily, I was able to make a little bit of time to amend this via a research expansion pack I made to prepare for when I would be in college unable to animate back when we were doing alternating weeks, but other than that, I like how detailed I was able to get with everything I was able to do research on because of how passionate I am about the medium I'm discussing, which is always a plus when doing research for a project because when you're passionate about something, you usually try and give it your all. With that said however, I learned a valuable lesson about doing my diligence and always fact checking everything no matter how knowledgable I think I might be about a subject so that I can hopefully avoid a situation similar to what happened with Chuck Jones. I also like how I was able to do a little bit of my own research via a recreation of a scene from the original Lion King (AKA: The good one) as well as a questionnaire about old cartoons in order to gauge how knowledgeable my audience is comes to that particular subject matter (and I've got to say people did end up getting quite a few questions right, but that's because I did the questionnaire on my fellow media students so it's to be expected to a degree), that way I would know how deep I could go with the references to older cartoons even though the entire thing is a homage regardless and there weren't that many references anyway.
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After I finished up on the research, I was able to finally start working on the actual cartoon after a quick bit of experimentation to test the possibility of including green screen humour in my cartoon (it ended up being too much hassle for it to be worth including a single green screen joke), things went quite smoothly during this part, as I've been doing this for about two years at this point so of course it's expected that things would go smoother and smoother with each project I do, but there were a few moments during production where things did go slightly wrong, these were mainly with the horse that I ended up having to cut. The reason for this is because the horse ended up taking much longer for me to make than I originally anticipated and once I attached the Ruff Bup model to the horse's back (which happened after I'd already animated the horse running), it ended up breaking the rig entirely due to how the top part of the horse's back would no longer move with the rest of his body. What I think happened there was that due to Ruff Bup's model also having multiple connector joints, it must have broken the connector that allowed the horse's back to move around with the rest of its body. This has taught me that I should at the very least make sure to save a version of each asset before I make a major decision. That way, if any of my changes happen to break the asset, I can at the very least go back to the other version and continue working on it from there. (because the only other version of the horse asset that I saved happened to be when only half its face was done, and there was no way I was going back and doing all of that work again) I also had a little bit of trouble animating much of the climbing due to how I tried to give the characters believable climbing poses and ended up realising how difficult that was going to be, so for the most part I ended up cutting or changing all of the climbing animations for either a jump or simply nothing at all, so while I do have a little bit of experience under my belt, I've still got a long way to go before I can call myself a proper master of the medium. (luckily, I've got at least one more year left to try and improve it)
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For the feedback, I'd say this stage ended up saving me a lot of headache in the future (especially if twitter specifically were to find out about this cartoon 10 years from now) due to how my friends were able to teach me about how Rick's original surname (which I'm not going to say to avoid racism) is actually a racial slur (even if the actual slur is spelt slightly differently, it's still pronounced the same way regardless), so I'm quite thankful for that little tip. Luckily all I had to do was change a couple of text displayers so that they said "Rick Rison" or "Rick P. Rison", this ease of implementation also carried over to all the other pieces of feedback, as people seemed to like this project for the most part whenever I showed the early versions, but from the reaction I got from showing my tutors the final version, they seem to like that version as well.
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So overall, it was a fun project for me to make, but as I've learned over the course of production, I've still got a lot to learn when it comes to animating characters doing more complicated actions. Hopefully I'll be able to use next year to work on those more complex elements, but for now It's time to gather feedback on the release version.
We Interrupt This Program To Bring You Our Final Project Management Update
Ok, so I only have this week left until I reach the official deadline (which means THIS might just be the closest I'll ever cut it when it comes to making projects in time for the deadline), with this in mind, I decided to add in a purple section in order to account for the possibility of having to do things during the re-submission period, the reason it's purple is because I figured it would help denote that this is the re-submission period. Oh, and one other minor note, I found out that I wasn't the only person who though to use video games last year, as someone somewhere in the college managed to animate a fight scene using a video game. (not sure what game though, but this technically means I'm not the first person to use gaming in an educational setting)
We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Program
Right now, I'm just waiting for feedback while I'm working from home because I've developed a cold and can't come into college. Earlier I'd accidently put in version 2, but luckily I was able to correct this before class could get started. (although that might have been the wrong move, as so far no one's responded with any feedback on my cartoon, so while I was waiting I've been looking over and seeing how I could further improve the written work) So while I was adding on things and making minor improvements to the written work, I did end up getting a single bit of feedback from a friend who said they really liked the way the characters arms stuck out while they were in the fighting cloud, hopefully once I get back into college I can get everyone else to give their feedback too.
An Update On The Feedback
So I was able to actually come back into college and get more people to give me feedback on my project, everyone really seems to love it. One person actually suggested that I could have established why Rick wants to steal the lamppost a little bit more. Looking back I can see where he's coming from, maybe I could have also included an extra bit where a world record organisation could give Rick a prize that says "first criminal to steal something that's nailed down" and then do the crowd bit afterwards (thus giving the audience a bit more context as to why a raccoon would want to steal a lamppost), luckily for me, the fact I accidently put version 2 up earlier didn't end up being an issue in the end, as everyone was able to find the correct version no problem. Now that I've got all this brilliant feedback I can wrap up the evaluation phase.
Did I Achieve What I Was Aiming For?
Overall, I'd say I managed to pull off what I was aiming for because I was able to create a black and white cartoon that hearkens back to the black and white age of animation. I was able to pull this off by looking into what makes these old cartoons the way they are and even why the animators would have done what they did. I then applied that research into a feasible action plan and then get to work creating the animation using a video game much like what I did last year when the FMP was officially cancelled. (because I had the means to do this)
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I'm quite proud of this short because of the way I was able to tell the story using only visual humour despite later finding out that I could have done voice acting after all as long as my Dad wasn't in a meeting (much like I did with Captain Cartridge after the FMP was finished), but either way I'm glad I was able to do visual humour again because I feel was able to improve upon what I did with Super Sheep and Captain Cartridge thanks to having gained an extra year of experience in the animation field. Hopefully I'll be able to get to the point where I can do P.I.X.A.R level animation someday, as well as doing a little bit of 2D animation on the side. (because eventually I also hope to bring 2D animated movies back into the mainstream) But for now I think it's time I wrapped this project up.
See you next year.