Development Diary

Ongoing Research, Planning, Practical Progress, Update of SWOT & MOSCOW & Problem Solving

Character development

Pastor / Ross (#1)

I want to start off with my pastor character called Ross as he's probably going to be in every scene. This is just an initial board to create some sort of inspiration before I dive into more information for my character.

I took many characters into consideration to inspire my character, trying to put as much inspiration to help my character and then doing extensive research about the roles and how my character is.

I am going for a man that's overworked yet knows when he needs to take time for himself, he likes going places and although he loves church and his career sometimes getting away from it all is what he needs.

He's soft spoken and tends to worry a lot, he doesn't have many mental problems until Stephen comes into his world.

( Since the artstyle is going to just be mine, there's no stylization that's extremely referenced except cartoonish shapes that inspire my style. )

Moodboard for #1

Research development of Ross

Context for the character, I want him to have the role of a pastor. A Pastor is a religious role in a church, usually being in charge of Christian churches or congregation. There are used to help people worship. Since I have went to a church first hand and have met a pastor before, from my experience they are serious but are known to welcome new people to church and asking what their devotions and goals are. A pastor asked me what one thing I wanted when it came to changing the earth. They are here to open up your mind and let you in, although I wasn't the biggest fan of the church, the respect I have for pastor to be welcoming to many people and the way they are patient with people gives me many ideas that I could do with this kind of personality.

When researching more about pastors and their roles, I discovered Televangelism. This can create a parasocial relationship with the stalker. This creates a whole new background which I would like to input into the character.

Televangelism is a form of evangelism. Both fall under the idea of preaching with gospel with the sole intention of spreading around lessons of Jesus Christ, this is associated with Christian missions. This type of evangelism is something that the 2000's and onward use more often. It started more like radio for a while, around the 1900's but quickly as technology develops around 1930's it starts turning to TV and it gave a much more visual representation.

Giving my character a role in Televangelism can create a much bigger picture for the character's development with fame and being known by different devotees. The constant stress of backlash can get to him which could give me a reason of how the stalker's obsession starts. Since he starts watching the character's show to create closure for himself. This not only shows ways of mental health and how people can find coping mechanisms but also how it can become unhealthy when there's no one there to support you and if you're not truly honest about your feelings to others.

This wouldn't be noticeable for the televangelism character, I'm guessing he slowly feels a bit paranoid if he sees one of his church folk actually managing to be around him in a big city.

I would also like to expand on how on TV he'd be different, having a strong bold personality while being around public he'd try to blend in as much as he can, not being the most outgoing person after all.

Stephen / Stalker (#1)

The stalker character is going to be a very hard person to analyse and create a strong personality for. This gives me amazing opportunities to research about how I would love the character to act like.

I tried looking at 2000's styles super briefly, as although style is important, for an animation to do in a short time, I'd rather keep the outfit simple but still 2000's looking. I wanted a layered clothing look to show that he is a bit protective of himself.

He is tired of feeling like there's no escape, having very serious issues growing up, I wanted to make him look unwell and unkempt but still human enough to be walking around in public. He can't love himself, so he tries turning to God, looking at religion on TV, he starts getting obsessed. He is also a victim, I don't want to demonize him for everything.

Moodboard for #2

Research development of Stephen

As I started to research on Televangelism, I started to realise clear connections that can make my story more interesting and also fill in plot holes that bothered me when I went with this idea.

My character is a Stalker, he does go to therapy yet has a big problem with his self worth. His self worth gets so bad, his clear intent of fixing himself he talks to his therapist about it. Fortunately he does get help, finding ways of coping yet he manages to get himself involved with religion, since he's mentally unwell the only option is to watch religion on TV. He does progressively talk about problems he has with his therapist yet he cannot talk about his parasocial relationship with the pastor from the TV show, who is Ross.

A parasocial relationship is known more as an online term, yet it basically states someone's complete interest in one person. A one sided relationship and it's very damaging as the other person is unaware of everything. Having a one sided relationship with a celebrity or TV star and obsessing over them like you're close is a great example. This happens a lot all the time, especially in the 2000's with many real life cases had happened showing clear obsession and stalking towards young to old celebrities that were famous at the time. There are very mild to extreme cases of people having relationships with celebrities. For example, a mild case would be Stalker Sarah, as she manages to take many pictures of her with celebrities. More extreme cases were to do with murder rather than stalking which is super devastating, e.g. Christina Grimme Case. Obviously, I will take into consideration that this topic is heavy and can get serious but I'd like to present it only as fiction and more of a way to show how mental health is serious and can decline without help.

This is why I would love to artistically explore this with my character Stephen, having many inspirations from other pieces influence the character like a new series called 'baby reindeer'. Many interviews with the creator, Richard Gadd can express how stalking can affect people both parties.

Stephen is a character I want to make stereotypically like a stalker but with proper research and real elements of real life to actually capture this creepiness.

TB CHOI

TB Choi is a professional and talented artist, known for her character designs, concepts and composition layouts. She has worked on so many things that are popular in media, from Spider-verse to Valorant. A whole mix of games, shows and film. She specializes in anatomy, so her art looks flawless when she draws poses.

She has an artstation (@TB Choi) and posts her behind scene art and personal art. She writes many books, has online classes to help beginners grow and progress with art.

Both are works for valorant, she did a full reference sheet for a character and then experimented with different expressions for the other

www.artstation.com/tbchoi

TB choi's layouts are super clear because showing your work neat and presentable can help others understand the character design and how it should be animated or modelled. She understands the basic fundamentals of a character reference sheet.

I like that she has a complete turn around for the characters so it is easier for animators to view characters at different angles. I enjoy her expressive yet still poses as well, showing a bit of personality to make sure people understand the character's overall mood.

When experimenting with colours, she makes sure that they're all next to each other and makes them all presentable on a new page. This is a really good way as it shows the difference in designs making it easier to choose and develop if she wants to make more versions.

character designs for Quick Stalk FMP

(Open this google slide incase you cannot see the writing/pictures.)

I finished the designs with the colour palettes but needed to do some turn arounds that would help with animating. Turn arounds are essential as they help with keeping a character's appearances consistent.

Final design and evaluation

The final design of my characters are great for my animation. The first character on the left is Ross, a Televangelist who preaches, he has good intention and allows any follower into his church. The one on the right being Stephen has a corrupt view on social interaction and love, spiraling out of control when he finally feels loved by Ross.

Ross has a great blue scheme with his outfit and his fluffy brown hair that makes him look more joyful yet still professional for church setting. He wears clothes that I've modified from original church clothing for bishops and pastors.

Stephen is a gloomy character, he has long greasy hair and large eyes with eyebags. He doesn't take care of himself well, that's why his hair is a bit everywhere

I think that my designs are strong to subtlety portray the opposites of each other, one is heavily religious whilst the other is less neat and unkempt, not caring too much about religion yet still holding onto it like a pendant. To explore their personality more, I took inspiration from many artists and TB Choi, because showing a characters expressions not only help when animating but also give the audience a basic run down of how this character would emote. I also added a palette, I feel like having a palette for colours helps to easily colour frames for animation, as reference sheets like this with turn arounds would be used when animating. Overall, all of my positives are that I did do proper research on context for the characters, their emotion and what they're inspired by.

Although I did great, If I had to do things a little bit differently next time, I'd focus on outfits more. Since it was such a tight schedule, I didn't exactly focus on it much. The outfits are fine but perhaps if I put more effort into researching and to also look at more 2000's outfits that were trending at the time, I could've shown more development with the character. I think that I could've done better turn arounds and also put the silhoutte of the character, I really want people to see the character in different point of views and also present it like how TB Choi does. I'd also prefer having more cleaner lines and maybe work on my anatomy a bit more as I feel like I'm slightly rusty at it.

In conclusion It's good for my first attempt at properly laying out the characters, I learnt to do turn arounds through Jackie and TB Choi, I think it's great I took from the artists I looked at. It's also good I made sure to have different laid out expressions that the character would do.

Starting the planning and refinement of the short film

I start on the actual story with these characters. I decide here what I want to continue with and if there's any major changes that I go with if something isn't working out. In this area there is a lot of thumbnail, background and storyboard work that I refine.

Using the story mountain layout

To create a storyboard, the first step right now is to create a tiny script like piece of writing that I can use to reference with the storyboard.

'QUICK STALK' (ver 1)

I called it quick stalk. This is because the animation is going to be fast paced and have a lot of quick stalking involved.

Exposition:

Stephen watching tv whilst holding his cross, there is only little details of him seen. (His eyes and hands mostly)
Ross seen on the TV

Conflict and Rising action

Ross at church, being a pastor, there is no sign of Stephen yet
It switches to Ross being at different areas, sometimes changing clothes
We start slowly seeing Stephen at places Ross would be whilst it flickers to him staring at the TV

Climax

It gets worse with Stephen even talking and being near to Ross
It instead end here with a cliff hanger with Stephen playing the organ whilst Ross walks in (the organ would

Since this is a short animation I wanted to quickly summarise the quick story, showing how stalking can feel like a short obsession for the stalker, as they're just ill and do not mean for real harm. Stalking and obsession is like a drug for them, making it a parallel to when people say a 'quick smoke'.

The animation ending off in a cliff hanger helps me with presenting it as short but also having enough time to finish this.

Thumbnails

I start doing thumbnails on what some scenes would look like, I did these super quick and also refined some to experiment with how I would want scenes to look like. I used some of these to help me storyboard as well.

This is a thumbnail of Stephen stalking Ross. Thought of persepctive and scary views.

This is Stephen talking to his therapist.

This is a first attempt at a background, It wasn't bad for my first attempt because it has a clear view of the church and I used a picture for reference that I took.

This one I tried to fully render to see what kind of style I wanted for the animation, I thought the background having this sponge/brush texture looked nice. The only problem I have is the composition, because it doesn't have a consistent perspective view which I think I need to work on.

This was a thumbnail that I worked on with colours, this is to practice what I want the atmosphere to look like and also an idea for the story.

Storyboarding

This is where I do a starter animatic, this is to see if I like it, experiment with compositions and perspective. A run down of how I want the story to look like.

Storyboard.mp4

The whole animatic was made in an hour, I wanted to do this quick and I would've done it more efficiently if I planned this a bit better.

It starts like the initial story mountain, with everything just conceptualized around it. I used some thumbnails that I had to map out the story as well.

I did this whole storyboard in Toon squid, it helped me layout everything I needed and also allowed me to add videos without it completely corrupting.

The actual storyboard is paced well, it shows each action very easily but in my opinion it did not bring enough attention to Stephen's feelings and was more showing how Stephen was just incredibly creepy. Although I want that creepiness factor, I don't want to water down Stephen's actions as just bad but diving deeper into his mind and why he does it.

I also thought that it could be a lot of work doing this many scenes in the amount of weeks I have left. This is why I decided to try keep it under one minute. I am planning to immediately animate this in procreate dreams and allow myself to change it if there's a problem.

Changing animation program

As I started cleaning the incredibly rough storyboard on Procreate Dreams, I realised that I'm going to change animation programs. Since there's only two weeks left, Procreate dreams just didn't have enough with its UI as it was limited. To animate on here, I would need more time. But since Toonsquid has more access to better things. I had to fortunately switch to this instead. Toonsquid was in my other programs to use anyways and I noticed that importing songs or sound wouldn't work on Procreate Dreams, this resulted in me choosing the decision that would benefit me more.

There is still a part of Procreate dreams in the animation, I kept this in as it was a simple scene that I wouldn't be able to animate again because it was a hand that had very hard movements which would waste time doing it again.

The UI of procreate dreams is very similar to Procreate, I choose to animate most scenes in just procreate and combining it together.

The main problem was the lack of features that are ESSENTIAL for animating, especially 2D. The way there isn't a lasso tool, transform tool managed to affect my work a lot, making it a super struggle to animate just a part of it.

Updated SWOT and MOSCOW

Mid-project SWOT and MOSCOW, to reflect and show where I'm at.

SWOT

Strengths:

I still have a clear understanding of what I'm capable of, especially researching about context for character design and illustration. I am a very speedy person, having most work done easily after being a bit behind. My art is presented very well throughout my work and I'm good at analysing or annotating my works. I have good experience with writing long explanations and I also have a lot of determination to keep working on my project lately which in the past I would've been horrible at.

Weaknesses:

I still have problems with audio, I would like to still expand on that area if I have time. I still sometimes lack on showing my progress and areas of my work can be very confusing if I don't keep track on what I do. I do problem solve but I also have a habit of not documenting around it.

Opportunities:

There are many tutorials around audio and how it works, it's okay to not be good at it as I can write about the experiences that are harder for me. I still have a lot of access to the internet's range of audio and sound effects that I can use and credit.

Threats:

The bus can sometimes be late or extremely early, this can stop me from getting to college. If my project is made in computer programs, It can be hard for me to access it at home. I also get sick sometimes stopping me from progressing.

MOSCOW

Must have:

At least a Storyboard with some movement, this whole project must have the animation part in it. I also think that there should be audio, sound effects.

Should have:

A fully coloured animation, this includes characters and other objects. Also coloured backgrounds.

Could have:

Could have more length to the animation and voice acting.

Won't have:

No game, or anything hinting at a game. I decided to keep this solely focused on the film aspect as the context of characters made more sense for a film rather than a film made for a game.

Continuing with research and refining areas

Naveen Selvanathan

Naveen is a very talented artist who creates backgrounds and character designs for his job's movie/film/show. He's a visual artist that worked in Spider-verse, Hotel Transylvania and Puss In Boots.

I wanted to analyse his compositions in his work first as they show so much story. I choose his own personal work, as they are easy to understand and to apply for my own work.

Home | Art of Naveen SelvanathanDigital illustration, Visual development, Digital painting, Digital art, Naveen Selvanathan's art

www.artstation.com/naveenselvanathan

Naveen's personal work is so eye-pleasing as you can tell his work is flawless. His composition and perspective with sceneries are so good, as they capture the story telling of his work easily. It also makes you curious to see what's after one piece. I enjoy his paint strokes, he's not afraid to risk his painting to make it feel real, the way he uses colours that compliment each other is amazing. Especially his contrast between the bright yellow clothes and then her pet who is dark and has blue lights reflecting. Like I've said, Naveen obviously knows what he's going to make the center point.

The middle piece of art work has a big light source coming from the trees, this creates a dramatic scene which looks very majestic with the way he presents the characters standing in the light. He does a lot of characters that are usually presented as simple or as a silhouette, this creates more attention around the atmosphere and background. This is a good composition as it shines light on the character with the tiger as well, making it want the audience/viewer look at the strong silhouette who is higher that the other characters, almost signifying how this character is the light of people's lives.

This piece has a lot of contrast between the foreground and background, you can see the blue sky ready to set into a dark moody colour whilst the buildings in the back luminate the area. The focus point is the fight between the tiger and man with fire, with the flame being bright for another focus point. The background with the buildings are also not hidden by either characters meaning you can see the environment they're in and also to appreciate the large scenery.

In the end his compositions are astonishing, I would like to experiment myself when it comes to compositions but having Naveen's professional work in mind if needed for help. His painty style is also something I really enjoy, I can see it be implimented in the movies he's worked on as well.

Showing emotion through artistic expression - Spider man across the Spider-verse

Spider-man : Across the Spider-verse is a long two hour film released in the summer of 23. It impacted a lot of people with it's representation and animation style.

There is a scene that I'm inspired by where Gwen Stacey, one of the spider-men, talks to her Dad who is a police officer, yet her Dad not knowing that she is Spiderman takes off her mask and her Dad still willing to shoot her. This creates a large tension point in the side story of this movie being an incredibly impactful scene especially for those that struggle with parental issues.

The main part was the emotion shown through the backgrounds. The parts where Gwen and her Dad stand next to each other, the comparison of the colours, making Gwen stand in the red doomed atmosphere, not only painting her as a villian but the betrayal and anger she feels when seeing the clear opposing sides of each other and the blue tones of her Dad showing her he believes he's in the right and ignoring his feelings of this even being his daughter.

There are more scenes where Gwen and her dad express emotions with each other and whereas this one is more calm and blotchy. It showing their confused, upset and guilty feelings be splattered around the room.

Changing up the story

Reworking and refining the animatic is an important step to go forward with this animation. I wanted to expand on what I could do to make it efficient and easier to work on.

I start looking at other artists again to improve in certain areas. I also started looking at media to do with films as well, I thought my original storyboard was not inspired enough by other things.

I changed the storyboard near the end as I wanted to create more feeling into this animation more like how Spider-verse does with the crazy and ecstatic lines that flick around during sad and intense scenes and big paint strokes that linger and move slowly.

I wanted to do that in my own way with a concept version, this dark colour surrounding Stephen representing his repression of emotions and how it will start mentally affecting him. Doing this by making it surround him is a way of showing how he's in his own world and there's so much that's going on. I want the blotches of paint to be intimidating and malicious, making it seem like it's all his fault because of his bad condition.

I want a colour that expresses Stephen's hate, the hate that he represses for himself yet also the clear strong love he has for Ross that is super one sided and wrong. This being why he hates himself...

Definitely Inspired by the scene with Gwen Stacy and her feelings when it comes to confrontation of her dad, it's so emotional because of how the water colour correlates to the soft spot feeling that Gwen has for her dad and that inner child bleeding through. I got inspired by the way Spider-verse presents feelings through art, as Naveen has worked on Spider-verse before, I had gotten reminded of this very expressive scene.

Final storyboard/animatic

FMP1.mp4

The final animation is like the first animatic but I added new scenes and also cut out a lot of the original due to time and my own sanity as I didn't have enough time to make this animation.

The new story mountain now is :

'QUICK STALK' (ver 2)

Still being called Quick Stalk.

Exposition:

Stephen watching tv while the channels switch between different versions of Ross in the media

Conflict and Rising action

Stephen visits the church of Ross, he gets attached very easily and he clings onto his faith

Climax

The stalking happens and each frame gets bad and worse
Stalking Ross at a coffee shop
Stalking Ross at early morning and finding his routine
Stalking and watching Ross sleep

Falling Action

It switches to Stephen having a conversation with his therapist

Resolution

It's obvious he's getting help but he still has the underlying urge of obsession

I took out the cliffhanger, as it's obvious it ends in a very negative light.

Background work

When it came to backgrounds, I started to conceptualize what I would want to do for each scene, these were for the first animatic where you would've seen the inside of the church more often during the animation. These are my first drawings that I made and were more of a practice to me, I really disliked these as I didn't understand the basics of backgrounds and I knew I needed to learn so I could make pieces like Naveen.

The church entrance, details are noticeable from the bricks and stained glass. There are bushes surrounding the church that are a bit notceable. The church doesn't have any kind of buildings behind it or trees, making this area seem very much in the middle of nowhere.

The background doesn't make sense for characters to be walking and I was confused when even using it for my storyboard.

This is an inside of a church which I also referenced from just like the other church background. The palette was supposed to be super heartwarming and nice to look at. I made the stained glass the wrong colour compared to the other picture. I also just didn't enjoy the anatomy of this church, with it having a large door on the side.

This was meant for a scene that I scrapped from the final animatic where Ross is preaching from this lecter.

Redoing backgrounds for the animation

My first two attempts I went into full detail about were not satisfying my needs, so I start making backgrounds after I've experimented and went through tutorials.

Understanding perspective

I first looked through this tutorial seeing what steps are necessary for backgrounds. This is already giving a big run down for artists that struggle with this area.

They talk about how everything is broke down in different components, this helps with the understanding of it.

The first thing they suggest is doing real life studies, which I have done before this video when painting landscapes during my key research.

They talk about the breakdown of the backgrounds and how each objects will have vanishing points, how a background will have a horizon line and the necessary breakdown of shapes in backgrounds.

Ethan Becker also gives a good run down on backgrounds, I took some of his advice as it was really good for beginners as well. He also suggested that breaking down images and understanding their own points can help with making more backgrounds.

He did a very cool and quick way of learning, by using google maps and studying the perspective of it, placing points on where the viewpoints would go.

He also suggested looking at different shows and analyse their ink strokes since line weight can matter depending on the media you're looking at.

These tutorials did help me with understanding what horizon line/ eye level and the point of view points.

To practice, I did take advice when it came to using the tool that helps lay out the horizon lines of a scene and where some viewpoints would be located.

I tried to understand how to use these, by experimenting with different ways I could lay it out. I choose this way, as I could tell the ground was more obvious and I wanted a very large scene where you could see the church and the entrance. This compared to the first thumbnail/background, it's way more laid out with it's view, you can tell the angle even through the drawing grid.

This scene was the original gate scene background but I decided to revamp the idea and also play around with the perspective. The church is tall and bright on the outside, I wanted the stained glass to be simplified to gradients and I wanted the actual church shape to be presentable to give more context of the place and environment.

I prefer this rather than the bunch of first backgrounds I did, this is because I actually understood the breakdown of the shapes in the picture. I started simple instead of immediately rushing into making it look like a background. You can clearly see the improvement of understanding the horizon line and the use of view points. I wanted the style to also match the faded watercolor background I tried to mimic the first time and didn't do the greatest job at. But this attempt really shined through the other attempts.

Starting on the animation

Here's where I take my storyboard and start animating the scenes. Throughout I get an audience's perspective and also show my animation timelapses and what I struggled with.

The start of the animation

The animation all comes from the storyboard, here I start on the sections of the film where Stephen focuses on the TV that displays Ross and the church where Ross works at.

ROSS ON TV

Untitled_Artwork.mp4

The intro starts with a TV screen and it flashes a bunch of images of Ross, this is supposed to show each show and appearance of him that's aired on television that Stephen has complied into. Stephen is watching this all on his 2000's inspired TV that I drew in procreate, the TV is a png image with other pngs put on top of the TV.

All of the images are just scrapped pieces that I didn't like so any piece that I drew, I made sure it had some use by reusing it in a minor part of the film. I added a glitch effect in procreate which made the TV look like it was glitching and bugging out, creating this very creepy feeling at the start.

BREAKDOWN OF STEPHEN LOOKING DOWN

Untitled_Artwork.mp4

Line art - For all the animation parts, I always did it in this order. Having the storyboard sketch as a guideline then drawing over it on a different layer. Creating the first frame and then the last so the animation in-between is easier to do. I did line art and then cleaned it up here.

Untitled_Artwork.mp4

Colouring stage - Once that's finished, I start colouring each frame individually which is a very tiring process but needed so it doesn't look unfinished.

Background - This is the background I made for this scene, to match the perspective point of the character.

Untitled_Artwork.mp4

Assembling together - Finally I added both of the parts together to get the final animation scene of Stephen looking down. This not only made it look finished but also made the character look like they're in their world, if I kept it plain here it would look odd.

STEPHEN GRIPPING THE CROSS

Dream 6.mp4

This is the only animation scene I animated in Procreate Dreams. I kept this in due to the complexity of the hands and I also liked how it turned out.

Though, next time I would try using my own hand as a reference instead of planning it all out myself, as using a reference would've helped me get the accuracy of animating a moving/closing hand.

Stalking scenes

These scenes happening at the start but they focus more around the middle. These scenes have less animation and more visual approach to them, they also get shown to be on screen super quick, which gives the animation its name.

COFFEE SHOP SCENE

This is the first attempt that I gave to everyone. I wanted some advice on this piece as something felt off, best way to problem solve is through audience feedback.

Untitled_Artwork.mp4

This after where I changed things, like the laughing and I changed how quick each character moves.

A lot of people were giving me good feedback with the camera angles and the dramatic contrast between the characters that I made.

I also agree with this, I think I did good with this area. The contrast of light and dark shows how Stephen perceives himself as well. Overall I think I did great with this area.

The feedback I got was a lot around the movement of the characters, this was great advice that I then changed afterwards. It's a good observation, it's good to have more exaggerated feelings in animation as that helps people understand a character and get more engaged in a story.

OTHER STALKING SCENES

Untitled_Artwork 2.mov

For this scene, I didn't do a lot of animation. I did a quick scene where his eye's are staring at Ross while he walks his dog. This was just to give a very creepy view of how he cannot see Stephen. Again, another light and dark situation.

Untitled_Artwork.mov

For this scene I used the technique of the view points again and used it as an advantage to create a very scary looming over type perspective. This was a bit of a hassle though as I had to alter the colouring afterwards since, I put the wrong colour on top of the art instead of a dark black.

Therapy ending

This is near the end, I explain why I did some certain things but most of these scenes were explained before.

THERAPIST SCENE

There's not much to say other than it was a quick scene, I didn't add a background as I wanted the therapy room to feel dull to him. Like it didn't matter and the only thing that does is his obsession with Ross.

The therapist was easy to draw, I just drew someone that had no eyes or nose, no defining features except a mouth and the appearance of a therapist. This is to make her a threat more than any source of help towards Stephen.

BURST OF EMOTION

This scene was based off the scene in Spider-verse and the whole movie's amazing depictions of emotions through strokes.

I really didn't care much for what this scene looked like, in this time-lapse you can see me scribble most of it. This was to give off the rush and adrenaline of doing something bad and loving in a bad way. Red is love but the fact it's dark shows a lot about how his love is now obsession and malicious.

Untitled_Artwork.MP4

Sound and final effects

Asking for feedback with type of music and sound for the film, implementing it into my short film and finishing it off with effects. Listing what I used throughout too. This all contributing to my final product.

Asking feedback around choice of audio and way of presenting it

To help me with my audio, I did a small survey as this is what I should've done for my other things to get a different perspective before I go full out.

I decided from all of this feedback to do sound effects and music with other artist's music.

I couldn't go through with dialogue as I couldn't cramp that part into the schedule so I went with just sound effects and music.

I had to choose other's music because I did not have enough time and skill to learn how to make an original song. Although I did want to try this area of skill, It was more beneficial to add non-copyright music than wasting time on making something rushed or bad. I also had to do non-copyright music as I cannot download and use someone's published song that is copyrighted for my use.

Finding the audio

The audio was hard to find. I made a small playlist saving audios that gave me similar vibes from what I originally wanted the video to have before I realised the complexity of using an artist song without getting copyrighting involved. I tried looking for a non-copyrighted song and added whatever I found into the playlist and I eventually did find one. Which was https://youtu.be/taAxpw03dgM?feature=shared .

In Video star, I start using it in my video. I thought I could pitch it down a bit. This added a bit more creepiness so near the end I wanted it to turn even more creepy so I pitched it really low which made the end feel monstrous.

Adding audio and sound effects

Layout of the audio editing.

Free audio assets on KineMaster.

I decided to refrain from doing my own voice recordings for sound effects, as the first time I did them I disliked them. But It was just the very short time frame that I had for this animation and project so I went on kinemaster for the sound effects and made sure to add the music I altered earlier.

I added a bunch of sound effects, some loud and some incredibly faint, I also fiddled around with the Envelope, an envelope helps how a sound changes over time. My envelope mixing focused heavily on the amplitude of the audio.

I also changed the actual song itself, near the end where we see the red blotches of Stephen's mind, I wanted to visualise that through audio. I added voice effects of the certain part of audio near the end to create a distorted effect, also layering that part over each other with different voice changers to see if I could create this distorted eerie feeling near the end which I think worked.

Final visual effects on the animation

Finally, now we're making the final adjustments, I already did the panning when I finished the animation and I fixed the panning in the editing stage as you could see the white empty background in scenes like the empty black void which made it seem not really scary. So I fixed many minor mistakes then I decided to add final touches of distortion, this was done by blurring a copy the animation and layering it on top, lowering the opacity to create this bloomed look. Then I added some chromatic aberration to the animation especially near the end, making it super eerie. I also added slight tuber lance to it to make it seem sketchy.

This was the final touch, all the audio was added and all of the sound effects. I did this all in Videostar to finish my project. The animation is now done.

Digital support

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