Today I have recording the script in the college studio, to then implant into the storyboard to finish off the animatic sequence. With the help of my friend and classmate Tom Gill he showed me how to setup the Marantz, a device used to capture quality voice recordings

After separating the storyboard images up in photoshop I now had what I needed in order to create an animatic in flash, it's similar to creating storyboards, except this is the point where you can put the images on  a timeline to give yourself a sense of timing and pacing. Sound can also be used to get a gist of the atmosphere and tone trying to be conveyed.

Although I hadn't re-recorded my sound clips yet I was able to use the clips I was going to use from YouTube as a guide on the timing of the shots. I believe what I have now will be very close to the finished animatic.

A BEARS' REBELLION 

**:Script:**

-The camera pans up the foot of a bed to reveal a toddler sleeping in bed next to his teddy bear.

-Next the camera then has a close shot of the two momentarily. It then zooms in to a blank motionless bear.

-The bear then burst to life in a furious rage and punches the kid in the face!

" Get away from me! you smell like cream crackers and poop!"

-We now get a full body shot of the bear as he shakes his fist and goes off on a random rant.

" The Easter bunny isn't real!, neither is the tooth fairy, or true love or Hanna Montanna!"

-Our camera now snaps to a behind over the shoulder view of the bear pointing at the kid and continues his rant. Next the camera focus' on the paintings on the wall

"look! your finger paintings are awful! I'm sorry! but your 5 and you can't be expected to be a good artist yet! oh wait... there is that so called modern art!"

-The bear then hangs over behind the kid as he continues the rant, the camera zooms in on the kids mouth portraying a horrified expression as the bear comes out of focus.

"And Hey, If you don't want to wear your seat belt that's fine but I can't guarantee anything, uncle
Jerome might hit a wall going 95, you never know it might happen? want to rethink about that seat belt?"

-The bear grasps the kids face as the camera zooms in on the two, the next scene has the kid in the background at a distance as the bear turns away to face the camera.

"lets get something straight! your birthday is 1 day! not 2 or 3 or a weekend! "ONE" day! For you the day I graced your home was the most important day of your life... but for me... it was Tuesday!!!"

-Lastly we have one last close up as the bear opens his eyes slowly in disgust. It the shows the bear peering over the bed to give his last words just before he falls flat on the floor on his back, staring in relief at the camera.

"oh! and 1 last thing! when you grow up! don't marry your colleage slash uni romance! trust me! if there's anyhting you take away from this rant,  it's that! and if you do, you better find a person you can cheat with who can keep a secret and won't get to clingly... 

*whispers*

If your out there... call me!"

Here are the sources which I will be taking my sound clips from, some of the material used is considered adult material, therefore I will be changing some words, phrases and subject matter not only to make it age appropriate but because these group of actors are American some content will be changed so that the dialogue is more reflective of the UK as well.

The gentlemen's rants are a series of videos created by JLE (http://www.jleproductions.com) a production company that specialises in commercials, advertsing and independant film making situated in Los Angele's. These video's portray a group of your typical american males complaining on the everyday on goings within society but try to give a humorous angle to it.

I selected these videos to take excerpts from because of the content and style of the videos, they have very minimalist approach to them as there are no props for the actor to interact with in most cases, and no background as so not to draw your attention away from what's being said. This method is something I'd like to incorporate within my own work, especially given the fact that this module is based primarily on lip synching and I wouldn't want anything to be drawn away from that. 

After some thought I decided to somewhat change my initial idea. Although it can be considered a bit late, I still haven't produced my animatic yet so I needn't commit to anything. The changes are to the location and subject matter, I've decided to drop the idea of the psychologist and instead have a dynamic between the Bear and the kid instead, therefore the location has changed to the kids bedroom. Below is the story board sequence, I'm entitling it, A Bears Rebellion  :

The scene starts with the Bear and the boy in bed. The bear suddenly gains consciousness and goes on a tangent to the kid about random issues he has with the living situations.

The bear continues the rant switching from one random topic to the next. The kid is speechless and in shock, he doesn't know what to do.

The bear turns in disgust, and pauses to reflect, he makes one last comment before collapsing to motionlessness ending with a smug troll face.

Setting and planning:

With the concept established I gathered some images that I could use as a reference for the environment.

To the left is typically the kind of chair you may find in a stereotypical psychiatric office environment and may be used as a base for my own design. Below is the typical setup and arrangement of the session in progress, small details such as the notepad in the psychiatrists hand and even his posture will be taken note of.

with a basic environment in once I wanted to focus on the design of the character. Keeping the theme of bears as central fol point I've come up with various designs and sketches. Some of these take into account that some children may decide to destroy their possessions and so a few designs are amalgamations of various toys and objects

 

The image to the left has some facial expressions and an early design of a bare who looks like he's been through the ropes, he sports an eye patch because he potential has an eye missing and has stitches to suggest he's been patched up a few times.

I created an alternate head here on the right, the ear looks like it's been chewed off, perhaps by a household pet such as a dog, also it has scuff marks. to the right of the image is the beginnings workings of a figuring type body.

After watching some films with my sister I re-evaluated  my idea, we watched Toy story together, and I noticed giving voices to inanimate objects such as toys was also a good idea to go for. To further develop the idea from creature comforts and bipedal creatures I decided that the type of object I'd like to focus on was off a stuffed animal. Doing this I could create a character who's similar in appearance to a creature comfort character and embody the idea of an object as well.

This is an idea that has been done in many various media's, but due to its nature none more that light family fun or humour. The character of Ted comes to mind, from the creators of family guy a cartoon notorious for its adult take on humour through stereotype exploits.

Ted I find to be interesting because it gives a lighthearted view on how a dynamic between a person and his childhood toy might play out, in someway it could even be viewed as a sequel to Toy story. which brings me back to another character, Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear. Like Ted he's a teddy bear and a mean one at that. His character comes from the negative experiences he's had with humans. Where Teds has been somewhat enjoyable Lotso's hasn't been. And it's this experience I want to capture in lip-syncing, the dynamic between Toy or object and person, so I thought what better way to do this than have my setting based in a psychiatrists office?

I thought it would quite amusing to see a stuffed animal have his views expressed to an audience, possibly in a scene where he talks to himself. So this was the premise I now will have to develop a character and a script to accompany him.

For one of our first modules DV2900 we'll be looking at lip sync animation, and learning how to implement it into our own animations. The title of this animation is called 'Talking Point' and deals exclusively with 2D digital animation and how to sync audio tracks with animated sequences.

The animation we are to produce requires us to be self taught so i have been researching on various methods on how this technique can be achieved. Starting first of all with a chart which shows the various shapes the mouth makes to produce certain sounds. These shapes are the back bone to all speech and having this chart will come to good use when animating:

With these shapes established, I then went on to find as many tutorials and video sources that would suit my needs.A video by an animator on youtube by the name of Tastyflash put up a basic tutorial on how to lip sync it's very informative and straight to the point



                                

another very informative youtuber is Draw with Jazza, he's produced at least two videos stretching just over an hour in length combined talking on the subject of lip synching;

on top of the various video resources available on the net we will also be getting tutored in class on the subject also.

With the methods and techniques of lip synching available to me I now wanted to start to come up with an Idea. Our teacher advised we create mood boards to aid us in direction, usually slapstick comedy was a very popular take on the module.

HISHEdotcom has a plethora of videos wereby he using lipsynching to a very great level, his animations usuaully involve a humorous take on how a usually new movie should have ended, focusing on a movies shortcomings and bloopers to create some great comedy, also he's branched out a select few of the character featured into a mini-series known as Super Cafe! Here's a look at an episode featuring Super Mario:

Another well known and successful animator is James Lee, he's been around for about four years but started out on one of Adobe Flashes' most well-known websites Newgrounds. What I like about his work is that he seems to create new artistic styles all the time, this is evident in his flash work, all are unique and stand out from each other. There's barely in crossover between his shorts and each animation is it's own, here's a few samples of his work.

and finally to elaborate on his varied and unique styles is this piece named "24 Animations in 24 Hours" being just that whereby he and an associate create an amazing 24 flash animations in a supposed 24 hour window.

So after weighing up my options I decided that  a creature comforts approach would be  good way to go, this way aside from creating the scenario and characters I actually wouldn't need a script as my script would come from the voices of everyday people. This would entail me recording a person or group of people talking, as to the subject matter or what group of people I am unsure yet.