11 second final animation

11 Second Club Project Report

At the beginning of the second year, we had two projects set for the group to work on from the start until near the end of term. One of these was projects was to animate characters to a sound clip provided by the 11 second club website, taken from a film or television program. We would then have a month to complete an animation, providing we intended to use the current month’s sound clip.
I chose to animate the sound clip for November, taken from the film “Trains, Planes and Automobiles”. The dialogue in the clip was-

Speaker 1: You stole it!
Speaker2 : I thought (Speaker 1: I-) you put it there!
Speaker 1: ...Why would I put it there?!
Speaker 1: Kindness?
Speaker 2: ...Kindness?! You stole it! He stole it!

The dialogue between the two was a heated argument, with most of the anger directed by speaker 1 to speaker 2. They’re also arguing over something that was apparently taken by speaker 2, so the scenario is a confrontation. For the animation to make sense the stolen object would have to be alluded to visually as the clip is probably referring to something set up previously.

I ran through a few scenarios involving something being stolen, such as two archaeologists arguing over the theft of an artefact or two roosters arguing over an egg. The second scenario made more sense to me as the problem I had with creating scenarios was the line “why would I put it there?” meaning it had to be something that the first character didn’t want to either give away or keep themselves meaning the archaeology didn’t work. I didn’t like the second scenario because i felt using roosters (or lizards and foxes as were the other designs) was sort of bland.
Talking to a friend, he mentioned that part of the background sounds like the crackling of a flame or like a vehicle moving and I thought of the Greek myth where Prometheus took fire from the Gods to give to humanity, and decided that that would be a great scenario to use.

I started looking at old classical statues of Zeus and Prometheus to get a rough idea of how they’d look. My main problem is designing Zeus is I didn’t want to end up with a version like in Disney’s Hercules, but because of the fact that almost all the statues of Zeus share a similar look it was hard to know how to develop that without losing what makes the character recognisable. I ended up varying the guy’s hair and beard but kept the general muscular appearance to suit the angry sound to speaker 1’s voice, making Zeus appear more as a bully (not that he isn’t in myth). Prometheus was easier because he’s less well known, so I went with a skinny, shorter design to Zeus to suit the whinier voice of Speaker 2.

One thing I noticed with the sound clips while creating the dope sheets is that presumably the sound clip is taken from a comedy because of the large pauses for speaker 1’s reactions. I planned for the scene changes to occur during these points, and decided that I’d keep the character animation still at that point to act like a beat panel.

Because of the flame sound in the background I needed to set the scene before the voice clip started up, so I had humans bowing around a large bonfire. Although I’m quite pleased with the finished effect of the flame without having to rotoscope it, making it take up about 2 extra seconds crippled the amount of time I had left to complete the character animation so it feels like unnecessary filler taking up the time I should have spent on the character animation.

With the animation, one of my biggest bug bears was trying to get things to move in arcs to look more natural. Zeus raising his arm to put his hand over his face originally had a much more exaggerated movement that went completely out of frame for a bit but because of the amount of frames allowed for that movement I had to scale it back to keep it to the right timing.

One of the things I’ve been criticised of before is animating too much at the same time, so I made a point of keeping both characters moving only when they’re speaking, so the focus is on them. I did have P moving in the last shot trying to get up from the floor, but I realised that if Z was moving in the centre of the shot and the eagle was moving off to the side, having movement in the opposite corner would make it too busy.

I think the most obvious and damning thing about the final animation is that it simply isn’t finished. I would put illness down to this in part but more likely it is terrible, terrible time management on my part. I started this project far too late in to the term with characters that were more complicated to animate than something simpler.
The flame animation took far too much time and should have really been completed more towards the end of the project. Focussing on secondary animation with the characters before all of the rough movements were mapped out means that only parts of it ended up being inked as I didn’t have the time to plan and test the movements beforehand. I would try to complete the secondary animation on some of the shots before the primary animation of others had been done.
For me, the movement of the characters seems very rapid and like there should be more holds but as I can’t change the length of the sound file I think the transition between shots meant that the movements looked rapid. Keeping the characters to the correct proportions and trying to indicate weight without a full body was very difficult for me.



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So that's the projects done. I'm certainly not happy about my 11 second but the experimental made those two weeks of dope sheeting all worth it.

Experimental Animation

Because Moodle is being (in the politest terms possible) massively crap this is the only version of the finished experimental project that I can upload.

Video tests

Trying desperately to get the animations to show up, I've made 4 WIP's of the current progress of the 11 second club project.

The animatic, with the most basic movments planned. The final shot of the storyboard that I hadn't decided on ended up being used as I liked the idea of the third party being next to the confrontation rather than in the distance as I'd previously planned.


The first attempt, I was originally going to rotoscope the flames which would have probably been ten times easier, but instead I drew them out using a few beginning frames as reference. Turns out flames are very hard to do.


The second vid. Slightly more detailed in the actions.

The third WIP has more detail in the movement of the characters. I removed the red lines for this version so the blue lines would be more obvious and changed the gesture of P's from both hands to only the one because I thought it looked more natural.


Fourth Wip and not far from when I start inking. The lip sync was added before the eye movements as I wanted the mouthes to be as exaggerated as possible without relying on the eyebrows for the expression too much. It's hard to lip sync mouth movements like "ay" when that expression normally appears as a happy mouth shape, so I had to twist some of them to look angrier.

The Rough Work

Designs for the Eagle have been done. It isn't meant to do much body wise apart from react to Z's rant at the end, so all the movement is in the face and head.

The Warhol-print was just for some colourful fun.

Most of the Eagle's reactions are drawn here for reference in the animation. I will probably have to do one for Z and P rather than trying to guess what the face will look like.

Design wise, it's just a big eagle. Not much more to it than that.

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Okay, I have tried repeatedly (last time was about the eighth) but I cannot get videos to upload on to my profile with the current internet, either with blogger or youtube. If I can find a connection good enough to get some up I have some WIP's to upload, but until then it's a no go.

Who stole it?

After trying to finish the arduosly boring task of filling in the dope sheets for the experimental animation, I've started to jot down some rough character sketches ready for the 11 second club project.

I had a few ideas for the project. One involved two archeologists arguing over the removal of an artifact after the former had put it back in it's rightful place, except that didn't make any sense with the "Why would I put it there " part. Another was either two foxes/lizards or two roosters with a stolen egg, which made slightly more sense as they wouldn't have a reason to leave an egg there. They all ended with the offending eggs parent (being a lot larger than the main characters) showing up at the "He stole it!" part.




I didn't really feel the ideas were that good, feeling more average than anything and as three of them were the same scenario with different characters I wanted something different.

Thinking of an example where someone would be angry at somebody else for stealing, and also why there would be a crackling sound in the background, I remembered the old legend of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and thought it would be a good scenario if he was completely unaware of how bad an idea that was.

So I've stuck with that idea! Here are some of the designs for Zeus, although I've put it as Z in my storyboards to save typing his and Prometheus' names out over and over.

Also, yes, there is a vampire Zeus and Left4Dead Bill Zeus. Don't ask.

(No designs for P as of yet as they aren't scanned.)

Here are the storyboards. The idea is that in the establishing shot, the humans are worshipping the great big fire, which is meant to be the crackling sound in the background of the sound file.


Most of the shots are static to make it easier on myself animation wise, but this means that the facial expressions need to be suitably deformed.


The backgrounds are noticably sparse. I'm slightly confused by the amount of detail we're meant to put into the animation, so the layout design is something I'll need to look out later. As the characters are so static they aren't moving around the area that much, so its more for setting the scene than anything.

Here the final shot is not inked as I'm sort of stuck with it. Either Z is shaking his fists in the distance at the "He stole it!" line, with confused people in the foreground, or he is addressing a large eagle relating to the legend. I've got two issues with these- if its the former, then Z is no longer the focus and the scale of whatever structure the two are observing from has to be large enough to be impressive but enough so that Z is still visible. If the latter, although the two characters are the focus I'm worried the appearance of the Eagle would come out of left-field for some people.

Until I can test the scenes with an animatic I can't decide between the two currently. The storyboard will be revised gradually in case I need to modify the movements to be more exaggerated.

While I do have an animatic it is extreeeeeeemely rough, barely even stick figures. Uploading it with my current internet is proving almost impossible, so when it's improved I'll load a copy on to youtube and post here.

Quick Test

Here's a tester lip sync of the sound file for the 11 second club. Just going on what I'd written down on the dope sheet in terms of the sound meant that the lip sync seems very flat and emotionless, so I need to add more notes to the sheet.

Change of Emotion

Here's the final version of the change in emotion. I can't remember how I came to this mildly immature idea, but I stuck with it ayway. Should probably do something easier next time (I feel I've said that a lot).