Character Expressions

Standard grimace -

 Shock / Surprise - 

Smile / Happy -

Regulatory Bodies - BBFC

The British Board of Film Classification is an independent body which classifies films with age ratings according to their content.
It was formed in 1912 as 'The British Board of Film Censors' by various people in the film industry, who wanted to manage their own censorship, rather than the government. Their main office is located in Soho, London. They are a non-profit organisation, and fees are for covering costs only and in order to maintain it's independence, the BBFC is never supported by any parties from the film industry or the government.

When presented with a film, at least  two examiners must classify it with the published guidelines, this decision is then verified by a senior member. On occasion, the examiners may fail to come to an agreement, in this case more members of the board (and sometimes even the director and / or president) will decide.

It should be noted, however, that the BBFC doesn't technically have any legal power, the responsibility falls to local councils to decide who is suitable to view, though this minor technicality rarely affects the ratings issued, rendering it 'pretty-much' legally binding.

Various certificates are used by the BBFC to classify films - 

The 'U' rating stands for 'Universal', or 'Suitable for all'. Films under this classification may have infrequent use of very mild bad language and references to sexual behaviour, though the focus of the film would never be on these things. Any threat, danger or mild violence is resolved quickly and reassuringly.

'PG' stands for Parental Guidance. These films can include mild bad language and mild violence, though it should not contain any themes considered inappropriate for a child of 8 or over. An effort is made not to condone or encourage any questionable behaviour at this classification (eg. bullying, using weapons)

12 and 12A use the same standards for classification, though accompanied viewing can not be enforced in peoples homes, so the 12A classification exists only in cinemas. Where it does apply, it requires an adult to accompany any child under the age of twelve in the theatre. The 'f' word is passed at this rating, depending on the manner and frequency it is used. Moderate violence and sex references are allowed, but not in any degree of detail.

A 15 is a benchmark in the rating system as it permits the depiction of the following things

- Strong violence

- Frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***').

- Portrayals of sexual activity

- Strong verbal references to sex

- Sexual nudity

- Brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence

- Discriminatory language or behaviour

- Drug taking

The importance of the 18 rating is that, under it, no themes are prohibited. In addition, there is no limit to the amount of strong language that can be used. 

Drafting Miles, before digitisation

Action / Model Sheets

Character Summary and Influences

Keywords:

Personality - 

Calm, Quiet, Thoughtful, Inquisitive, Melancholy,

Visual - 

Smart, Clean, Small, Weak, Thin, Baggy clothing - too big for body shape.

I like the clean elements of Faith's visual styling, i want to incorporate some of this in 

I really like Altair's hooded image, this could play

a part in Miles' story.

The character of August Rush (Evan Taylor) played by Freddie Highmore, is about the size and shape of the character i have in mind for Miles.

I need to communicate Miles' blindness. Eli is an inspiring blind character who doesn't let his disability stop him in his quest.

The eyes will be a vital part of conveying Miles' blindness. Cassandra Craft from DC Comics has very plain grey eyes.

Design and Target Audience

Turtles.

The design and look of these cartoon turtles varies by their animation type and intended demographic.

Octonauts

This turtle is generally round and soft, featuring plain colour and design he is a simple character.

Octonauts is aimed at young children so this character is definitely appropriate, they can easily understand what this turtle is.

Pokemon

Squirtle is a turtle from the Pokemon franchise, he is more detailed than the Octonaut, and has a distinctly anime style with his cute eyes. The target audience would be from roughly 10 or over so it fits with regard to the increase in detail from the last one.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

These turtles are what they say on the tin - teenage. Far more complex, tall and full of attitude they are pitched at young male teens. Mild violence is the name of the game here.

Adventure Time

Quirky but unusually simple, this turtle uses different earthy colours. It's appropriately targeted at young teens due to it's odd and funny aesthetic. 

Idea Feedback / Selection

After sharing ideas and receiving feedback from the group, it became apparent that 'Trace' was the most appealing.

It was regarded as the most original of the three, and after some excellent suggestions from Chris, i have a go idea where to go with it! 

My childrens TV Series - 'Glom in Orbit' received decent feedback but isn't very original.

Shogun Down was relatively popular in the group due to it's potential for nice visuals and character development. Although it's wouldn't be easy to make.

The Idea i'm choosing is Trace.

Character design sheets

Ideas and Themes

Animation Flowchart

Animation Processes

The creation of DOT;

Using a Nokia mobile phone and a microscope to magnify the camera. 9mm Dot has 50 replacements and is stuck to a wire so she is able to be changed at every new position with ease. As the style of animation was stop motion, for every frame they would move the phone along and change the model of Dot to get the illusion of running. They designed the model of Dot on sheets of paper, then using a 3D printer, they printed every position of Dot they needed, which the 3D modeller creates. The 3D model is then attached to thin wire and then painted. They created a background, laid out across a table, the camera is mounted above the set which moves below the camera. They use After Effects software to digitally remove any hands or wire.

Making of South Park;

Firstly they start with a script, they then turn each action of the character into a visual image, for each character they design they create a turn around which is the side, front and back image of the character. To enable different poses for the characters they create a puppet for each so they are able to move limbs and facial features instead of drawing out every expression. The newly created characters are then sent to a lip sync apartment, who bring in the audio and lip sync the characters. This is then followed on by the process of the animation where an animatic is created with audio.

Making of Peppa Pig

Peppa Pig is a 2D hand drawn kids animation, Phil Davis the animator attended an animation course at Middlesex University along with other creators. He eventually took over and began teaching others about animation. He created some of the animation used in Peppa Pig today which he took to a company to pitch his ideas which they liked and wanted to take further action and create a kids animation programme. It started off with a 3 minute script and storyboard which they pitched to a broadcaster. The original Peppa Pig looked a lot more like George at the time because of size. They decided to include a family along with Peppa because at the time there wasn't a huge range of animations showing family life for families with young children. They decided on a family of four; Peppa, George, Mummy Pig and Daddy Pig. They used a computer called 'The Quantel Paintbox' which was a dedicated computer graphics workstation.

Characters and Shapes

Mike Wazowski: Fun friendly, round

Sully: Strong dependable, rectangular

Randal: devious and evil, Triangular

Mario: Fun round friendly        Wreck-it Ralph: strong dependable     Don Paolo: Angular devious.

Spongebob: rectangular, dependable, reliable

Pikachu: Round friendly playful.

Jafar: angular, mean evil, triangle based

This is a breakdown of some basic character shapes

Character Design

Character design is the combination of physical traits and narrative.

The narrative or storyline defines personality, gives context (genre, location setting) and therefore has to feed into the look and design of the character.

The face is the primary channel through which characters express emotion, this is why many animated characters have large heads.

Also, much can be communicated through posture and body language, this allows for personality traits to be identifiable in silhouette form.

Solarski states that how a character carries their physical weight can tell us about their personality, which body part they lead with is important -
Heroes generally lead with their chest

Lazy or more relaxed characters often lead with their pelvis / lower half

Intelligent characters might lead with their head

and subservient ones, their knees.


Cuddy:
Power and dominance revolves around expanding and taking up space, conversely, weakness becomes smaller.

Cartoon Character Analysis

Animation Comparison

Making of Dot

Dot is made simply using a Nokia mobile phone camera and microscope that is attached to the lens. They then create 9mm figures using a 3D printing technique for each position the character needs to be in. They place the figure under the camera and take a photo for each frame. They then combine all of the photos into a video, add music and sound effects.

Making of Peppa Pig

Peppa Pig was created using a program called CellAction 2D. This program allows them to efficiently produce episode after episode in a simple and cost effective way. They work in 4 teams and each team produces an episode all at different stages so they get one a week.

Making of South Park

Originally, South Park was brought to life with paper cut outs and stop motion techniques. But this method was just to time consuming and labour intensive. While retaining the cut out style, they use a largely computer based animation system. They have over 300 processors and use a program called 'Mia' which is at the cutting edge of animating.

Walk Cycle - final video

This animation was made by manipulating a preset bear puppet in After Effects.
First we moved all the anchor points of the limbs to the appropriate placed on the body, we then parented the limbs to the body using the pikwip tool. After that begins the slightly lengthier process of keyframing the rotation of each limb in a series of frames to slowly build the walk cycle.

This is a demonstration of a standard cartoon walk cycle

Animation Products Research

Film

The Triplettes of Belleville

Released: 2003

Production Company: Canal+ / Les Armatures

Director: Sylvain Chomet

Animation Type: Full Traditional

Demographic: Anyone above 13 due to PG-13 rating

Purpose: To entertain and induce a sense of nostalgia 

This film is among my favourites mainly due to it's surreal and charming characters.

It uses very little dialogue throughout the film, instead conveying emotion beautifully through movement and facial expression. It's a highly stylised film, and one which i intend to watch again.

Short

Room on the Broom

Released: 2012

Production Company: Magic Light Pictures

Director: Max Lang, Jan Lachauer

Animation Type: Stop frame / cgi

Demographic: Children

Purpose: Light entertainment for kids

I like the individual personalities of the animal characters, and they ways they each interact with the witch.

TV Series

The Simpsons

Released: 1989

Production Company: Gracie Films / 20th Century Fox Television

Director: Mike B. Anderson

Animation Type: Full traditional

Demographic: Teens - Adults

Purpose: Escapism, entertainment

Widely regarded as one of the best animated series of all time, The Simpsons has been running for 24 years. It's something i can always put on to pass the time.

Web Series

Salad Fingers

Released: 2004

Produced & Directed by: David Firth

Animation Type: Flash

Demographic: Internet using teens - adults

Purpose: Light entertainment, something a bit different

Upon my first viewing of Salad Fingers, i remember feeling both uncomfortable and bewildered by the freaky green man and his 'touchy-feely' tendencies. The series soared in popularity in 2005 and is now one of the most viewed web animation series ever. 

Music Video

On Melancholy Hill - Gorillaz

Released: 2010

Animation Type: Mixed 

Purpose: To continue the Narrative story of the band

One of my favourite songs of all time, On Melancholy Hill tells the story of a pivotal moment in the lives of the animated band. It's interesting to see the progression of the characters through animation since their creation in 1998

Advert

For the Journey - Lloyds Bank

Released: 2007

Animation type: CGI

Purpose: To promote Lloyds Bank

Demographic: People looking to change banks

Although the banks name has been somewhat tarnished of late, the advert remains a charming watch - with music that will stick in your head. 

Pixar Animation

'Audacibus Annue Coeptis'

Ascent to my bold undertakings - Virgil, Aeneid IX

In 1979 Ed Catmull  left the New York Institute of Technology and was hired to work at Lucasfilm as part of 'The Graphics Group', which, unbeknownst to him, would serve as the foundations for the building of the animation behemoth we know today as Pixar.

The team was tasked with the research and development of items on Director George Lucas' 'wishlist': A Digital non-linear film editing system, a digital sound editing system and a digital film printer. 

During this period Catmull and the team worked on a prototype for an Application Programming Interface known as RenderMan.

 3 years later, they started working on special effects sequences with Industrial Light & Magic, at which point a man named John Lasseter was asked to join. John worked on the beginnings of 'The Adventures of André & Wally B', which in 1984 became the first short animation film created by the humble team of 40. It was praised for it's innovations in character complexity, motion blur and texturing.

In 1986, in a radical turn of events, newly resigned Apple founder Steve Jobs purchased the computer division of Industrial Light & Magic for $10 million, 5 of which, for technology rights, the other half - into the company as capital. Catmull became president of the newly formed corperation, along side Jobs as chairman.
 In August the same year, Lasseter made his directorial debut unveiling Luxo Jr, becoming the first CGI film to be nominated for an Academy Award and the origin of the iconic Pixar lamp.
Pixar continued to break ground in the animation world, when in 1988 they released Tin Toy, which became the first Computer Animation to receive the Best Animated Short Film Academy Award. A true milestone for a medium in it's infancy. The film gained much attention from Disney, who offered Lasseter a Directorial position at their studios, however, he opted to stay with Pixar and Jobs approved the production of another short.


In 1989 Lasseter released Knick Knack, one of the last animations that he would produce during Pixars independent years.



The film received great critical acclaim, dubbed by The Independant "a four minute masterpiece".
Pixar took a break from short films after this, to pursue commercials and generate more income.
In this year they also released the first commercial version of RenderMan, which went on to become an industry-wide standard for CGI rendering.


There's no doubting Pixars creative genius. It has produced some of the most successful and popular animations ever, and shows no signs of stopping. One of the secrets to it's success is described by it's president Catmull as "Collective Creativity". He argues that some companies "don't understand creativity". The following are the principles Pixar operates with:
1. "Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone. (they've even gone so far as to design their buildings to "maximise inadvertent encounters")
2. It must be safe for everyone to offer ideas. (via email etc)
3. "Stay close to innovative ideas in academia" (through publishing research)

In Pixar, power is entrusted to those who are at the forefront of the creative process (Lasseter for example).
In conjunction with the principles, this system gives it an immense 'support structure', and has been applied to the technical side of the company as well.

Pixar has had some wildly successful films - In terms of critical reception, 'Toy Story', it's first film partnered with Disney and the first film ever to be entirely computer generated, was the most successful. It has received 100% on Rotton Tomatoes, 92/100 on Metacritic and currently sits at 111 on IMDB's Top 250 films of all time. Since then it has gone on to produce other hits such as Finding Nemo, Cars and Monsters Inc.

But Pixar are no strangers to advertisement and commercials -

Throughout their history they have done promotional work for various companies, and one of the most recent and successful of those is the 'Toy Story of Terror' promo. This was made to promote TV giant Sky's new fibre broadband service, and Disney / Pixars latest animation - Toy Story of Terror. It features everyone's favourite Toy Story characters!

At the very core of Pixar's technological might is their Supercomputer or Renderfarm.
It's a data centre full of humming servers, it would be considered one of the top 25 supercomputers in the world should it be tested. At the time of the production of Monsters University, the 2000 computers have combined, more than 24,000 cores all running their software 'RenderMan' This is the beating heart of the movie's tech, and it is speculated that Pixar Animation Studios has more computer power than any other American organisation except NASA.

Although, according to Supervising Technical Director Sanjay Bakshi - It still takes 29 hours to render a single frame of Monsters University. This is due to the highly complex textures and movement simulations. For example, sully has 5 times the individual hairs on his fur than in the first film, giving him a coat comprised of around 5.5 million hairs.
One of the major recent breakthroughs in Pixar's production technique is 'Global Illumination'. It is a lighting system designed for maximum realism, meaning that all sources of light in the scene are accurately simulated, bouncing around the scene countless times casting realistic shadows. This is one of the main reasons the Renderfarm had to be upgraded for Monsters University.

All in all, if you used one computer to do the job of rendering Pixars latest export - Monsters University, it would take about 10,000 years to finish rendering!