Making blog

I finished the first draft of the animation (without sound, to be added later), and sent to my supervisor and the team on Little Inventors to receive some feedback on what to add or change to make it better! So far everyone loves the animation, I will just need to make an opening scene with the title of the invention and an "ending credit scene", as well as include an extra shot that shows how the diver gets down to the tank of the submarine. I hope Taryn will like the final animation that will be finished soon!

I finally got to meet the inventor of the " Soumarin qui Sauve les Animaux", Taryn! The whole call was lovely, and I was very glad that Taryn liked the illustration of her submarine I had prepared to show her! I asked some questions regarding the functionality of her submarine, such as how the animals would be helped once they entered the tank, and made some additions/changes to the initial illustration to fit the inventor's desires! The new illustration has these added features, with the characters of the drivers and divers as well as a beluga whale instead of an orca as per request.  The next step is to draw the illustrations for the scenes of the animations and animate them.

The final aspect of this project was adding titles and sound effects. I found lots of free sound effects to add to the animation and I created a fun and bubbly title effect

Here I created various corals, fish, jelly fish and a turtle that are all revealed now that the ocean is healthy and oxygenated again from the coral beds. These healthy corals fade on and the turtle and fish swim by. In order for the turtle fins to animate, I needed to create the pieces separately, animate and put back together.

Here I needed to create the ocean floor again, and showcase the corals falling.  I needed to create very wide images for the ocean floor, because the camera was moving to the left panning the background.

I designed the interior of the boat, that is revealed once a coral is to be released. I needed to create many separate images, because of all the animation. I layered this behind the main boat, and then created an effect that causes the main boat to become transparent in the middle, revealing what is inside of it.

Here I created the close up of the loud speaker sounding an alarm because of the low oxygen levels in the ocean. I needed to create the loud speaker to be separate from the rest of the boat, in order to animate it.

In order to showcase the low oxygen levels in the water, Kavira had come up with the idea of a flashing light and loud speaker that measures oxygen in the water and then sounds an alarm. I made this shot a close up and decided to use a heart beat monitor to act as the oxygen measuring system, since oxygen is the lifeblood of the ocean, figured it would be a good idea. I needed to make the red and green lights separately in order to switch between the two.

I created a 3D particle effect in order to help showcase the underwater look. These resemble floating debris underwater, just like in real life. This was layered in any of the scenes that appear under the water, to help give a feeling of believability. You can see them in the images as those little circular gray blurry pieces spread throughout, under the water.

I designed the Ocean Saver Boat to appear similar to the original version Kavira designed. And anything that is animated, needs to be made as a separate image in order to be animated individually. In this case, the solar panels move a bit and the Canadian flag moves in the wind.

In the first scene, the camera appears underwater and moves panning to the left showcasing the ocean floor. The images need to be very wide, in order for the camera movement to capture everything. Each layer of depth is made separately so that imagery closer in the foreground can move faster, and things further in the background move slower.

I've been watching the BBC for more fish movement inspiration! What caught my attention was the Mola Mola, the largest bony fish, it looks really cool so I wanted to have it in the animation. A big friendly fish swimming near the scrub-a-bub-bub I think really elevates the atmosphere. Animating fishes swimming across the screen is really satisfying, I can't wait to see the pieces all together.

I love Taryn's invention with how eye-catching it is in its design with bold colours and the idea of saving animal life in the ocean! I drew an initial concept illustration of what the submarine would look like based on Taryn's drawing. I loved illustrating the orca in the thank of the submarine! Changes and/or updates on the final illustration of the submarine to be animated will be made after calling Taryn and asking for her input on how she would like her invention to be made.

In the last couple of weeks of April, after working through the storyboard and getting all my assets ready, I was finally able to start animating! The process always takes longer than you expect, but the results of seeing the still images moving and adding in sound in order to make the animation really brings it all together. I was able to finish up the animation and was waiting for any feedback to get the last details polished up, in order to share the best animation for the Ozonator possible. I've included some stills from the current animation (nothing is set in stone yet), it really shows the difference between the process work and what it looks like when it is coming together! Hopefully everyone enjoys the final version coming soon!

Early/mid April, I was working on storyboarding the idea for the animation, to make the Ozonator shine. I was able to ask my mentor for feed back in order to ensure the animation would have a nice flow and the invention was explained well. After editing the storyboard, I was able to get started on making the assets. Essentially, just cleaning up the rough work from the storyboard/concept art to get them ready for animating! I've included the storyboard to show the basic storyline.

I had the great pleasure of having a meeting with Diya, the inventor behind the Ozonator, at the end of March. I was so happy to hear what she is up to and know that she is staying creative. I was happy to be able to show her some of my previous works so she has an idea of what I can make - and how her invention would be brought to life. I also had some concept art ready  based on Diya's original drawing to prepare for animating, as well as getting a better understanding of how exactly the Ozonator works.

I started animating some scenes this week! This clip shows the scene where the water bottle gets melted into a plastic blob.

I was inspired by the animation style from Studio Ghibli and I want to incorporate that in this animation. This time instead of using sticky notes to plan the storyboard, I decided to come up with a general movement for the entire animation and continue adding to that. I think this will make the animation more fluid and spontaneous. The camera will be panning down when the animation starts and as we continue down at the bottom of the ocean, we will see fish life. This will continue until we see the Scrub-a-bub-bub, from there we’ll zoom into the mechanics. At this stage, it’s important that the colours are analogous so the animation looks coherent throughout. So, back to the drawing board for me!

I had a lot of fun doing designs and tweaking them when Summer and I had our chat. We agreed to add a solar panel and a smiley face in the exterior. I love how Summer incorporated old toothbrushes on her invention, its one of the features that stood out to me. Another thing  I considered was the colours, I wanted to make sure that it blended in with the rest of the oceans so fishes wont consider it a threat.

I made some colour studies of a few scenes! This helps me decide which colours to use and what they look like together in the animation.