Cuppa Joe- Making

Making a set

Whilst producing cuppa Jo I also helped to created a set for the film. I have always loved being creative and so i really enjoyed being involved in both the organisation and creative side of the project. the base of this set was made out of wood that i painted. the structure of the set was made mainly out of foam board and then painted. We used fake grass and moss to make the building look old. to make the rubbish piles we mainly used actually rubbish 

Cuppa Jo Producing

My role as the producer

After being the producer on a film project last year i have definitely decided its what i would like to do after leaving unversity, so im very pleased that im acting as the producer this term on our project cuppa jo.

so far i have created a small plan/ gantt chart looking at how my team should be progressing on the film this term. this is the first time im producing a stop motion film so i have had to include different things than i did last year on my my 2d project tea talk. i have made sure to include time for developing the idea and animating but have also included time for making sets and the puppet as these are obviously all important parts of a stop motion film

Second Year term 1

Cuppa Joe 

so I have not been posting much because of summer break but I'm now back at university and im  working on another short film. after working on "tea talk" I have decided that I definitely would like to pursue the job role of the producer further and see if this is something I would like to do as a career. I also decided that this term I wanted to work on a stop motion project, that is why I am now the producer on the short film "Cuppa Joe". 

this term for one our modules we were put into teams and given a client brief. my teams brief was 'sustainable campus' they wanted us to create a film that shows a way we can help make the campus more environmentally friendly. so we are now two weeks into the term and my team have come up with an idea that helps to promote the use of reusable coffee cups and normal coffee cups cannot be recycled. 

this film is about a student who with the stress of deadlines is drinking A LOT of coffee and keeps throwing away A LOT of coffee cups. after have little too no sleep he hallucinates and is taken to a rubbish underworld, where he comes face to face with a coffee monster. when he comes out of this hallucination he realises that buying a reusable coffee cup will mean he never has to face the evil monster again. 

this is a poster our designer has created to portray the film. the first Half will be live action and then when he is taken into the underworld it will be stop motion. it will then go back to live action when he wakes up. 

I really like this idea and I'm excited to see where it goes!

right now I have come up with a plan so we can start making our stop motion sets next week and I have already got someone to start making the puppet.

2d background

2d city environment sketches

tea project

my stuff


https://youtu.be/_oq0MCXbRZ8

background

2d background what I have completed sp far 

experimental

final experimental piece




https://youtu.be/PYC6wVVbQzI

tea project

finished tea project



here is a link to view my final tea video "tea talk" that me and my group created. I was unable to upload it onto here because the file was to big

https://youtu.be/T0KMu6gGXRI

Group project

First meeting

Once we were in our groups we started our meeting and discussed what type of roles there would be. I was assigned the role of Production Manager meaning I needed to make sure we were completing the work on time and working well together.This experience has shown me that I would like to pursue this in the future. After our meeting I asked everyone to come up with their own idea using whatever animation they liked to present at our next meeting.

Second meeting

From our presentations we decided that the best idea was Drews creature comfort style tea interviews, we felt it was a nice way to incorporate the people of Falmouth into our project. We  decided to create our film using 2d animation. We also discussed whether we should use  rotoscoped or live action footage however, even though we knew that rotoscoping was going to be a difficult task we decided that it would give us the best outcome. Once this meeting had finished we had given everyone there official roles in the group

We also decided that we were going to go out in groups of three to film the interviews as we wanted to make sure that people didn’t feel too crowded by all of us.  I asked everyone to interview at least five people asking these questions that we all decided on:

We made sure to interview a variety of people including; strangers (on and off campus), lecturers and students.

 Third meeting

From the interviews we created a live action edit, I tried to make sure that everyone had an input of what went into our video. We also decided to include two full bits of animation because I knew that I had some good animators that could able create these.

Carol also came up with some design ideas and colours schemes that we could use to start animating and Drew completed some test rotoscoping, from this we decided to include light and dark shades on the faces and hands however we decided just an outline for the body to keep it simple.

Overall we had 11 people in our video and two parts of animation. Moving forward we decided who was going to be animating what. Both Drew and I felt very confident rotoscoping; Drew took four people and I took 5 and 1 piece of animation, Jamie then took the other 2 as he felt his 2d skills weren’t that great but we wanted him to be able develop this.

My role

I started my rotoscoping as soon as I could as I knew it would be time consuming. Once I had practised rotoscoping doing it was fairly easy to complete them. I knew I needed to get some of them done straight away so we could start animating. One piece of rotoscoping I found difficult was “hippy nick”.  Although he didn’t move that much the animation we had designed had to go on top of the rotoscoping so I decided to draw the start of the animation myself and then pass it onto the animators (this is why the animation is on my show reel).

Whilst doing this I also created a presentation in order to show the client our development. I asked my group if I could have all of the designs and tests that had been completed I also asked drew for his original idea presentation. I put it all in a PowerPoint along with our live action edit.

I tried to make sure that everyone else in my group was following the schedule and collected everyone’s work at the end of each week to create a rough that we presented to the class.

We suffered a few setbacks when it came to communication however the animations were still finished on time, whilst still maintaining a professional level of quality.

I then made sure I had everyone’s completed work and created a rough edit that I could give to the editors. I made sure they knew what needed to be completed and asked them to show me the first draft in our following lesson. Once we had all agreed on the layout I asked our editors to produce the final edit compiled of all the sounds and videos in the correct place.

3d environment

final layout of scene

this is going to be the final layout of my 3d scene however I am still going to be adding more buidlings and objects into the background so it seems more like I town. I decided to choose this type of angle as

2d background

2d new idea


after working on my original 2d background idea I have now decided to change the layout as I am not happy with the perspective that my background was in. below you can see the new version of my design and I personally think that the perspective and layout of the image is much more appealing. I am still going to use the tree from my original image however I am now going to have to complete recolour this new design.

3d environment

modelling



after finishing to model all of my houses I have decided to also model some objects that can go in my scene to make it appear more lived in and realistic towns. the first think I created was an old cart I think this went really well however I struggled a lot to make the wheels and took a while to work out how to make them round.

the second object I modelled was a windmill as I really wanted to challenge my modelling skills. I think this looks really good and realistic and I'm really please with the way it turned out.

after

stop motion - motion studies

final puppet

after gluing my puppet together I decided that the best way to give the puppet was to wrap it in wool as I thought that this would be a good way to cover up the polymorph, foam and wire without making it so my puppet was unable to move. personally I think this looks really good and I tried to cover the puppet as neatly as I possibly could. however I came across two problems whilst covering this puppet. the first problem I found is that I was unable to cover the puppets paws in wool without it being unable to walk so I have decided not to cover them at all, I think this looks ok however I am going to ask my lecturer what she thinks in our next session. I have also found out that my dog is quite big. I had already planned for my dog to be the size of a great dane (compared to the puppet) however he might be slightly bigger than that.