On this project, I am working with Depi, a fellow animator. We decided to take up the NHS breast cancer for black women brief to work on, because both of our styles and approaches lead towards more mature audiences, as well as presented challenge to create something daring, but approachable and thought-provoking.
On the briefing day, we were provided with an hour-long testimony recording from a couple of black women who survived breast cancer. Our project required 50-60 seconds of content for the final animation so we needed to settle on a well-working narrative with sound leading it.
From the beginning, we started with a workshop that encouraged us to do flash brainstorming for ideas for the project. We highlighted the most important messages we wanted to work on for this project. It being: cancer not being deadly anymore, acknowledgement of taboos surrounding the cancers in general, encouragement to speak up.
On this project, I chose to work with Despina Markaki, my fellow coursemate and animator. My choice to work on NHS prepared brief was cemented by the chosen audience. My goal was to create animation for a more mature audience, as well as explore the possible ways of approaching this specific demographic, it being black women.
After our very first briefing from the client, we set off to explore different perspectives that we could take with our project. We were provided with a lengthy audio-recorded interview from incredible black women who shared their experiences with breast cancer.
Through careful consideration, workshopping together, we came up with main concepts that we as a group want to explore throughout this animation: Taboos surrounding the cancers in the black community, fear and support and encouragement between women.
Despi came up with a spot-on audio cut that portrayed the message as a conversation between two beliefs, women speaking out about their journeys as well as others trying to stop them.
Our goal was to both acknowledge the taboos and encourage women to confront the fear, not hide from it.
Through our visual research, we explored possible approaches. At the start more focusing on the colour palette and exploring possible shape and line languages that we could use. From the start, we were keen on using a more limited palette, pinks, browns, pastels.
The goal of the visuals was to look soft, approachable, feminine, as well as positive and encouraging.
We started by listening and exploring audio possibilities. After a couple of days of experimentation, we settled on Despi’s cut – audio highlighting testimonies as well as acknowledging the taboos that cancers have in the black community.
We settled on an audio cut that portrays a form of a conversation between two sides: survivors and scared/unwilling to acknowledge. The project’s storyboard shows that. We settled do surrealistic, dynamic line and shape play for this project, so the simple and clear shape was on the main priorities list.
At the beginning of development Despi and I were working more separately on the concepts and approaches, evolving on a few basic norms, such as themes that we wanted to cover and the structure of the film. The visual language, as well as flow, was up to us to introduce concepts and discuss them together at it.
Interim 1
When we had our first interim with the client, we had to present the ideas and development we reached in the past two weeks that we had after the briefing. We presented our ideas, chosen audio cut and visual guide.
our visual guide was constructed from a few concept art pieces in which we explored possible visual approaches in different scenes. The initial idea was to use different visual styles to portray different messages said in the video.
Our presentation was welcomed with high interest, and our idea was green-lit with minor critiques such as pacing and more explorative composition for shots.
After the presentation, we gave a critique look through our project and worked more on the development of cohesive visual language that we both could use to create more cohesive styles as well as views.
Desition was reached to work with a limited palette, where I took initiative to design it. I settle on a more pastel colour approach, still putting priority on skin colour variety, but accompanying with yellow, pink and blue hues.
I knew that composition in SPEAK UP was going to be a priority. So when we moved on to creating a storyboard, I tried to monitor my composition and negative space.
Another bullet point in my mind was regarding transitions. My vision of the piece was flowing, with no hard cuts, but animated dynamic transitions or fades from one scene to another.
By working on separate storyboards with the came contextual thread we had an opportunity to pick and choose compositions and scenes to include from both of our storyboards to create the ultimate one.
With characters, my goal was to differentiate them, from poses to body types and hair, to the hue of the skin. The main intent was to make them distinctive and diverse range. A big inspiration for designs came from none other but women in the recording themselves. We, of course, haven’t met the real women that shared their experiences, but we tried to imagine what kind of character would suit the message told and portray the character the best.
After deciding our personal scenes to focus further developement on, the next stage was animatic.
Animatic like every step before was separated for both Despi and me to work on. After the storyboard was done, we chose our respective scenes to work on from now on.
Animatic provided an opportunity to analyse the timing of the actions as well as timing with the sound. It was the first look into what could relatively be our final project.
I encountered a bit of trouble trying to animate my scene’s morphing lines. I experienced a few mishaps with animation flow and direction, but eventually, I settled on the composition that reads and flows much better.
Interim 2
For the second consultation with the client, we had to have prepared animatic and proof of concept – 5-10s fully rendered animation segment. We chose to do the first scene, the very beginning because in it two characters are interacting and Despi and I decided to split the scene and work together on the same segment but animate different women. Although we encountered a bit of systematic failure. While Despi cant access toon boom on her home computer, she would usually go to the LCC to use computers and work. But the day when we planned to go work together, LCC was put in an emergency because of the flooding and we lost time. So the first pass of scene 1 is partially made in Adobe Animate and composited in After Effects.
The interim itself went great. The client was happy with the progress so far, the colours and character designs weren’t put up for debate, and the audio was still working.
We got just a couple suggestions for using more dynamic camera angles and how to change the timing a bit to make the visuals and sound flow more cohesively.
Working on the final
Getting back from winter break was a bit hectic. We both took some time off to enjoy holidays more than working on slowly but surely approaching the deadline. We decided to spend all possible time in computer labs, from 11am to sometimes 8pm to try and finish it for Interim 3. Throughout working relentlessly day in and day out together, it was tiring as well as liberating. Working on a group project with the partner next to you is a real advantage. It helps with immediate feedback and bouncing ideas and their generation. Because our project’s scenes were so tightly knit together between my animation and Despi’s, immediate back and forth was amazing to have and speed up our production so much.
Interim 3
So, we didn’t manage to finish our full animation to present it as finished. But to be honest? No one did. Everyone brought their works in progress which made me feel a bit better inside.
Interim 3 went well. Clients were satisfied with our process. while we were presenting we highlighted different parts of unfinished animation, acknowledged that they are not finished yet, and showed through concept what it will look like. We enclosed a comparison between Animatic and animation so far.
After the interim, we had a sound design workshop. I had throughout discussion with Jesicca Marlowe about possible audio editing. And she suggested quite a few directions that I could take with the animation. Sadly, I was really busy with animating the final thing that audio was left for the last minute.
The final outcome.
After an intense couple of weeks of working together animating, I am proud that we could accomplish this with a relatively tight deadline.
I had quite a few struggles with navigating files and workspace at the beginning of rendering, but as time passed, I’ve grown to recognise each other’s naming and saving patterns.
While working on the final animation, Despi and I made a conscious decision to work together in the same space as much as possible. It helped immensely with immediate response or help in the field where another had more experience.
I am proud of us for taking time and changing the scene’s idea to fit the voice better, sometimes reanimating the whole scene for it to come out as best as we can make it.