MAKING Of THE SUITOR ye HAT ISCONTENTS INTRODUCTION SOUNDSCAPE PRE-PRODUCTION ‘Story / Storyboarding Animatic Concept Art Research PRODUCTION The Steam Tr Set Design ‘The Characters Pre-viz POST-PRODUCTION sited BackgroundsINTRODUCTION The Suitor is the result of a second-year animation project named ‘Transcription’. The purpose of Transcription was to transcribe a piece, such as a poem, a written passage or a track of music into a short animation or concept. The short was created in a ten week timeframe, which although limited, allowed the story and visuals to develop. The focus on this project was decided early on in the process - the story. The main objective was to convey the situation that two characters have been dropped into and the way it is resolved. This document details the ‘Making Of’ The Suitor from Pre-Production to the Final Editing.THE SOUNDSCAPE The short is based on the transcription of Aaron Copland’s classical music piece ‘Hoe-Down’ which he created by referencing a selection of past Irish Folk songs. It was produced for the ballet ‘Rodeo’ in 1942. Using this short soundtrack in an animation was to apply it to something entirely different from what it was originally created for, this allowed me to interepret it and construct a story from the pace, feel and lenth of the music. After much thought, this led me to ‘The Suitor’. The theme resonated an American ‘Wild West’ f not only from it’s title ‘Hoe-Down’ but also from the instruments and mood, which could be described as jolly yet reckless. The theme had similarties with Elmer Bernstein's famous score for ‘The Magnificent Seven’. Aaron Copland (1900 - 1990)PRE-PRODUCTION The first stage of the process was pre-production, however, before the art and storyboarding could begin, the narrative needed to be refined and a full plot needed to be resolved, After many plays of Copland’s music, the initial idea was grounde “A pair of honeymooning suitcases are separated at a derelict Train Station. The male, left on the platform, has to reunite himself with his partner, who has been placed on the train, ready to depart.” Although, quite a vague description, this gave room for the plot to evolve and for the action to be decided. The story soon evolved further, giving it more of a context as an animation, the final ‘angle’ and aim was decided. “The suitcase comes to life and through a series of escalating and exaggerated movements, referencing early filmic actors such as Buster Keaton and Harold Wilson, finally reaches the train and is reunited with the female.”Storyboarding The next stage of the production was to storyboard the chosen story into a set of rough panels, this would allow the story to be refined in more detail and a crucial help to the animating process later in the project. Storyboarding was a lengthy process, however, by the end, the story was much more vivid and the action was starting to come together. The storyboard is on the following pages. The final story was almost exactly the same as each storyboard panel, as this was the main guide to the editing and animating The storyboard frames were not only compiled into a set of images, but also used in an animatic, to visualise the action even further. This Animatic had the frames edited to Copland’s sound piece at the same pace as the planned animationMB ie NMS 1 7F its ‘ei om Storyboards Part OneAnimatic The animatic was edited in Premiere Pro and created using a mixture of hand-drawn images and Tablet-drawn frames in Adobe Photoshop. It can be seen here: http://www youtube.com/watch?v=tFpUY|gy enerCONCEPT : SILVERTON STATION Silverton Station is where a lot of the action takes place in the animation. The train station is a isolated and dilapidated stop, for the passing train, where the baggage is to be loaded. The concept was important to decide the feel and colour, pallete of the environment, and something which was continued through into the 3D world.CONCEPT : THE STREAM TRAIN — _ 3 The Steam Train is a vital prop in the animation, both for the narrative and the environment visuals. This concept was used to decide the colour pallete of the train. Later in the document, it is possible to see that the colour choices in this piece were continued in the final model and animation. The sky, environment and props also all reflect the final piece.Concept : The Desert The animation would need ; % environment design as well as prop and characters. This concept was to decide the style of the backgrounds and the level of detail | was going to portray in the environment. a The colour pallete would be very soft and desaturated, giving a hazey, bright and almost dreamlike desert.CHARACTER INFLUENCE MAP | ENVIRONMENT INFLUENCE MAP The character's influences included The environment’s influeces are a selection of silent film actors such classic western films mixed with as Buster Keaton, as well as some a stylised, cartoon asthetic more modern inanimatejobjects given such asLooney Toons lifeProduction At this stage, Pre-production had given me enough planning and a good idea on the style of my animation. The animatic and storyboarding had allowed me to plan out the scenes and the props that would be needed to fill it. The next section will cover the production techniques used, including work-in-progress shots of the environments, characters and Steam Train The main software used in the Production and Post-Production stage were the following: 5 2 Autodesk Maya 2011 Photoshop CS5 After Effects CS5_-—_- Premire Pro CSS. Scene creation, Animation, Concept Painting, Compositing render ayers Video Editing Rendering Texture Painting, Adiiag puseefiects Video Exporting Creating Backgrounds wlerging painting backgrounds Creating documentsThe Steam Train The Steam Train was crucial to the story, and as a result, is featured in many shots throughout the animation. The train was one of the first objects to be created, as it would need to be detailed, meaning it would take quite a long time to build The following pages show the progress that the train took as well as some final wireframe shots. The train was also used in a small demoreel showing a turnaround with wireframes.Set Building Although limited to one main environment, building of the sets still took a lot of planning and thought to create. The animation takes part it one long environment, panning from the desert with an overlooking water-tower, through the isolated train station, the railshed and onto the plains where the Train departs towards Over the next pages, the set building process is shown for each scene and portion of the environment, with brief annotations and descriptions. This includes textures, which were a huge focus of this stage.Train Approach Shot The opening shot is of the Train approaching. The most challenging parts of this shot, like many others, was the a large terrain and environment surroundings. The Water-tower was a main feature, it was built with the colour pallete in mind. It used one 2048x2048 sized texture. Another feature of this shot was the foliage, it was a simple mesh with a simple shader on, animated to blow 7 in the wind. Although it was low- detail, it added the required effect of making the world more believable.View of scene in Autodesk MayaLayout of the scene ae persp (defaultRenderLayer)The Track The Terrain ‘ a ‘The WatertowerTrolley Push Shot This set was built to be limited to 2 small selection shots. As seen in the following image, the scene consisted of a long station wall with a selection of props included. This set was reused in future shots, especially one where the suitcase jumps up onto a rope. The most time-consuming part of creating this set was the texturing Everything was handpainted, including the floor and backwall planks. A bump map was applied to this using a wooden image baseaes © These are a selection of the props which populated the scene and helped add to the feel and style of the world.