Final Tweaks

Today I finished the audio piece for the project. There wasn't much to change - Alistair thought the music near the end needed to be more bombastic rather than fading out so I extended it in the last section and added timpani drums to make it more dramatic as Olly crossed the finish line and received his winner's medal.

Internet Whispers Final by cianronayne

Sooundtrack

I have completed a more finished draft of the music for the animation. I decided I didn't want percussion only to drive the music so I went for flutes, string, celesta and French Horns to add to the music. Again, I wanted to keep the music classical and orchestral so stayed away from any sounds that sounded synthesized.

The music can be heard here:

Test1 by cianronayne

Audio Design

This is a screenshot of freesound.org, a great resource for free sounds on the internet. This will be useful for finding diving sounds etc - within the time frame, making foley sounds for the project is impractical and too time consuming so this is a better option.













In class today, I started researching sound effects for the animation. http://www.freesound.org/ is a great resource for sound effects so I looked there first. I'm not planning on having too many sound effects for the animation but some would be very effective such as a water splash for the diving scene or a dog yelping for when the kid lifts the dog above his head. I also have a collection of BBC sounds that a lecturer gave me last year which is a great resource as well. I will most likely use Final Cut or After Effects to put the animation, sound effects and music together.

Soundtrack Design

This is a screenshot of Logic 8, the software I use to make the soundtrack. Tracks are structured to being in different instruments as the song progresses. This helps the music sound less repetitive.











Today I had a rough draft of the music done. I decided to use all percussion for now. This blends with the style and the location of the animation. Because a lot of it is set in ancient times, I didn't want the music to have too much of a modern feel and have electronic instruments.

I used Logic Pro to put the track together. Logic has a handy feature where you can drop a movie in to the programme and you can time your music to the film. In this case I used the animatic for a rough guide on the timing. There are 3 stages to the animation - where the kid is running out of the house to begin his run, the race section and then the finish on the podium. Because of that I wanted to do three musical sections that go with each part and designed the music around this.

In previous projects I have made my visuals match the audio so that it would be easier to mix the two. For example, I would cut scenes together to match the beat of the music. However, with this project because I am working with someone else's timing it has been a challenge to design music in time with the animatic. I'm not entirely happy with my first soundtrack so I'm going to change it to suit the timing more. I've also found that the animatic is evolving and changing slightly every week. This is a useful challenge to design music around as it is similar to the workplace environment where project work is constantly evolving.

You can hear the track here:

Internet Whispers by cianronayne

Research

For class today, Alan had asked everyone to have visual research done for the project. I researched locations - the ancient sites of the Greek Olympics, ancient Greek art like you'd see on their pottery, the Statue of Zeus - which was one of the seven wonders of the world, Asterix at the Olympics for its cartoonish art style and Donkey Kong Country Returns which has an art style that I've always really liked. We uploaded our individual research folders onto the group's google docs shared folder.

This is research on the famous cartoon Asterix at the Olympics. The stadium and podium could be a good visual reference point for the artists.













This is research done on Ancient Greek clay paintings, mostly depicting the Olympic Games. The colour scheme here is very evocative of Ancient Greek and it would be interesting to involve it somehow in the art design.













This is the statue of Zeus - one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was at the foot of Mount Olympus where the Olympic challengers would face off against each other. It's a good visual reference for Zeus and it could also be a location in the animation.













These are pictures of the Olympic Grounds in Athens and depictions of what the events would have looked like. The grounds of Mount Olympus and the stadia can be seen in the bottom right picture.













These are more pictures depicting the Ancient Greek Olympics. Again the grounds are shown. These are the modern day grounds as opposed to the more ancient re-imaginings in the pictures above.













These are stills from the game Donkey Kong Country Returns. There's a really great art style in the level Sunset Shore. The mix of reds, oranges, yellows and silhouettes looks amazing and is very evocative of a sunset in the evening. It's an art style well worth considering for the animation as it incorporates the colour schemes of the Ancient Greek pottery above.

Concept Brainstorming and Script

On Friday 11th November, we received the Internet Whispers project from Alistair and we began to come up with concepts and ideas based on the 2012 Olympics. I suggested a gods theme as the Olympics were initially set up to honour Zeus and the gods at Mount Olympus. This was carried over to the final idea. The final idea was mixed with Alan's idea to use the theme of a kid's imagination and we had our final concept in place on Monday 14th.

When we had our final idea in place, we began to write the script. We came up with most of the plot outline as a group and then Jason and I worked together to get a basic script on screen. Jason then filled out the rest of the script and completed the final script on Friday 18th.

Roles and Duties

On Friday 11th November we had a meeting with Alistair on our new group animation project - Internet Whispers, based on the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. In this class we were to decide on our roles within the group. Originally the groups chosen were unbalanced so we swapped the group members around to make the teams stronger. In this group I chose to help Jason with the script writing and volunteered to be assistant project manager but my main duty is post production - basically putting in the sound effects and music after the animation is done.

Jason is the main script writer. Once we had our idea in place he wrote it up on screen and I added some input on it as he was writing it.
As Assistant Project Manager, my main duties are to write the group blog and to be backup to Alan if he was to miss a day or two in college.
As post-production, I work closely with the animatic to write the music, choose the sound effects and help set the scene of what's happening on screen. For example, for a race setting I'll need to design exciting music