Making of project

I was highly anticipating what I would come up with for my making of project after I was set my brief, as it was very open therefore I could focus on my own skills and abilities whilst producing a making of video to go along with it. I decided that I wanted to produce an animation of some sort, and a 2D digital animation as that is what I am most interested in, but I had no idea what to base it on, but after re-watching The Ricky Gervais show, a show which consists entirely of podcasts staring Karl Pilkington, Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais, which have later been animated, I became inspired to produce an animation for an already existing audio product which lacks any visuals of any sort.

The Ricky Gervais Show

I first wanted to animate another Ricky Gervais podcast which had not been animated by that show, trying my best to imitate their style. However I later decided that I wanted to make this more personal to me, by creating everything for the animation (bar the audio) from the ground-up, and choosing an audio source which is more personal to me, as well as establishing my own style in the animation. After a while of deciding what source of audio to use, I eventually decided upon using a BBC Radio 4 sketch from the show ‘Mitchell and Webb Sound’ due to my love of the work from David Mitchell and Robert Webb, and the fact that they consist of comedic sketches (which is the genre that I am enticed by the most), with nothing more than their voices and the occasional sound effect. 

That Mitchell and Webb Sound Series One CD

These comedians are best known for their character’s from ‘Peep Show’ and ‘That Mitchell and Webb look’. As there are a lot of existing sketches from this show, I asked a Peep Show fanpage on Facebook for advice on what sketch to use, and the majority of votes opted for the cash register shop sketch.

My Facebook Post in 'Peep Show Quotes'

The original audio file is linked below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_KlckKFFc0&t=60s

I carried out further research to see if this idea has been done before, and I found a few examples that I used as inspirations, my favourites have been listed below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vVG8GI2INw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eahA3dB-eqQ&t=41s

For the animation, I wanted the character designs to resemble the actors, so I originally planned to use my designs of them which I created for my Simpsons celebrity caricatures page, however I felt I wasn’t experienced enough with animation to successfully animate in a similar style to the Simpsons, so I instead decided to redesign them in a similar style to the much more simplistic style of the Ricky Gervais show. 

My Mark and Jez from Peep Show Simpsons caricatures

Early designs in the 'Ricky Gervais Show' style

Near final designs

Final Designs

After the designers were finalised, I drew them in a full 360 view, in order to provide a base for each angle when it comes to animating later, and I also drew many different mouths for certain distinct vocal noises for each of the characters to create a more realistic lip syncing effect (more on that later), I drew a separate set of mouth for both characters as I believe it adds a lot to their character, and I can make it easier to add their little unique quirks in. Many specific facial expressions were also drawn for later use.

3D Turnarounds for both characters

Different Mouths for both characters

The next step was to illustrate the setting, which was the cash register shop. My main concern with this aspect was that I wanted the background to seem feasible, by not having aspects and areas of the shop popping from nowhere, hence the reason why I gave the location a full geographical map, as well as some exterior shots which were never used in the animation itself. I also drew the background in the same style that I utilised on the characters, but had everything including the objects consist entirely of different shades of blue, thus in theory causing the characters to stand out more, which I believe worked relatively well. 

Exterior of the Cash Register Shop, with my own personally designed logo

To add to the humour of the piece, I sprinkled a few references to some of the cartoons and shows which inspired this animation, including Rick and Morty, Peep show, Mitchell and Webb Look and the Ricky Gervais show.

'The Ricky Gervais Show' Karl Pilkington reference

'Peep Show' Super Hans reference

'Rick and Morty' Hungry for Apples? reference

After that was finalised, I then got to work roughly planning the shots and character directions via storyboarding. Great consideration was taken in how to position each of the shots so that it obeys the setting which I previously mapped out. Also using my knowledge of cinematography, I made sure each shot is as appealing as possible, via obeying techniques such as the rule of thirds. Although for the most part these sketches in the storyboards almost perfectly resemble the outcome, Many of these shots were drastically altered in the production phase, for reasons that I will address later on. On these story boards, I included an outline of the movements which I wanted a character to perform, and well as specifying any camera movements or zooms.

Example of Storyboard (1)

Example of Storyboard (2)

Now that I had all the preparation work done, it was finally time to start animating! The programs I primarily used for this were Serif Draw Plus x8, and Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. This is the process that I went through to produce this animation -

Step one – designing the set.

With most shots (with the exceptions mainly being extreme close ups), the composition consists of a backdrop and a foreground. The foreground is where the focus is meant to be centred, and often has the character and their movements animated within it. This is animated on Serif Draw Plus against a green or blue backdrop (depending on whether or not Rob’s green shirt is within frame), which is then Chroma keyed out in the editing software after the animated segment is completed and placed against that scene’s backdrop, this allowed me to animate the characters freely without fear of them interfering with the background and also allowed me to alter the background easily later if need be, such as blurring the background to give more of a cinematic look. All assets are positioned and drawn accordingly, and sometimes another layer is added on top of the other two, particularly in ‘over the shoulder’ shots. The characters are also designed so that each body part that later require individual movement in the animation are separate assets, so they can be easily moved and rotated.

An example of an 'Over the Shoulder' shot which utilised a background, in-between and foreground layer

Step Two – Keyframing the characters.

Using my storyboards, I then keyframe each movement by specifying key positions for the characters and objects and then having the program fill in the gaps, trying to sync it to the expressions via timing as best as I can to bring as much life as possible to the characters. The motion paths are also altered depending on the context, for example if there is a drastic facial expression change, the fast in and slow out is often required (also often using the squash and stretch principal to emphasise movements), and if there is a more natural movement, a slow in, slow out path is used. Sometimes the shape of a head, body part or facial feature needs drastically altering, most commonly when a character turns his head, in cases such as these, the assets are quickly keyed to a position and/or size with resembles the upcoming change, and then I would add a second long pause in the animation before cutting to the altered state of the character and naturally continuing the movement established in the previous keyframes, which is all trimmed down during the edit, making the drastic change in shape appear more smooth, natural and invisible. This is the same process that I utilised on my animation for my A Level Graphics final piece ‘Ipkiss and Ivor’ (a link to which can be found below).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-57rnYBgY1M

Screenshot of the keyframing process, making a walk cycle for David Mitchell

Step Three – Lip Syncing.

A long process is later carried out in order to produce a successful lip sync animation. This was an improved method from what I originally used in my ‘Ipkiss and Ivor’ animation, where I simply altered the shape and size of mouth within the keyframes, to very unsuccessful results in my opinion. Instead, I decided to capture the each shot a numerus times, each captured with different mouths on the characters, and then placing them accordingly in my editing software when that mouth shape is required for the vocal noise produced in the audio. After the initial animation is completed with the stock mouth, I will make a list of all the syllables or unique mouths required in that shot and then map the mouths one by one onto each individual keyframe and capture them. The result is much more believable, if a bit of a tedious process.

Step Four – piecing it together

After repeating this process with every other shot, the final step is piecing each scene together in accordance to the audio. These steps are repeated for every single shot until the animation is complete.

A screenshot of the editing process

A lot of consideration was taken into how I would prevent the humour present in the original piece from becoming diluted due to the addition of a visual aspect. For example, if I were to simply animate Mitchell walking up to the saxophone as he mistakes it for a Cash register (as was originally depicted in my storyboards), the joke would have been lost, as the audience would be expecting it, hence why it worked as purely an audio piece. I resolved this by having extreme close ups of a sequence of cash registers being opened, but one of them being the saxophone, but is only revealed to be so as the noise is made and the camera pans out, making the surprise and joke stay intact. This editing style was inspired by the amazing way director Edgar Wright uses visual humour in his work. This technique was used numerous other times in the piece, such as when Mitchell backs away to reveal the robber standing behind him. 

Link to example of Edgar Write's visual comedy - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FOzD4Sfgag

Link to final animation -

https://vimeo.com/201221354

Link to Making of documentary - 

https://vimeo.com/201186673

Overall, I am VERY satisfied with my final piece, and though it took a long time to produce, I enjoyed making it thoroughly. Due to time constraints, I was only able to animate a 2-minute sketch, but this has inspired me to continue with this technique and improve my skills further. If I were to have more time, I would definitely be interested into fleshing this out into a full series like the Ricky Gervais Show, as I have already been getting requests from Mitchell and Webb fans to do so.

For the making of video itself, I wanted to show clips of the videos where my inspirations mainly came from, show how the programs that were used to produce the animation are used, and show the development of the piece itself. To make it my own, I dubbed over it with my own voice.