LO2 - Release and consent form

LO1 - Task 2, Finding a Voice Actor

To begin my search I started by putting an add onto the South Yorkshire Filmmakers' network on Facebook:

VOICE ACTOR WANTED!
I'm looking for a voice actor to narrate the children's animation I am creating for college. There will be no pay and will just be something for you to add to your portfolio. Private message me if you are interested and I can offer further information.

It was only a few hours later that I received a reply from Robert Lee, of whom I decided upon using for my animation. Here are screenshots of our correspondence:

Here is the link Robert Lee sent to the previous voice acting word he'd done:
School of Inner Healing and Deliverance- Network Church Sheffield from Friday Films on Vimeo.


I had my voice actor Robert Lee in on the 27th of September, here are some pictures of him in the recording studio:

LO1 - Task 2, Production plan

LO1 - Task 2, Production schedules

Week one

Week two

Week three

Week four

Week five

Week six

Week seven

Week eight

Week nine

Week ten

Week eleven

Week twelve

Week thirteen

Week fourteen

Week fifteen

Week sixteen

Week seventeen

Week eighteen

Week nineteen

Week twenty

Week twenty-one

LO1 - Task 2, Set designs

These are a selection of pictures of my sets either being created or in a finished form:

I chose to use coloured paper in order to create my animation as it gave a much more professional appearance and the bold colours are reminiscent of children's cartoons such as The Powerpuff girls and The Grim adventures of Billy and Mandy. The simplistic style is incredibly easy to understand for the younger audience I am targeting, as well as being able to near effortlessly show the character's emotions through their face.

I followed the storyboard as accurately as possible, which required me to make several different drawings of eyes at different stages of being open in order to show the animation of the girl waking up. I struggled deciding how many were necessary to make the action look authentic.

I chose to set my animation at night, which usually carries conventions of the horror genre, but because of the simplistic, cartoon style it makes the setting much more approachable for children. 

It was much harder to add in the smaller detail of the storyboard such as the flowers and grass due to the materials I was using, but I believe the more simplistic set I ended up designing does in no way detract from the overall meaning. In fact, by taking away these elements, the set emphasises the importance of The Girl, the stars and the moon within the scene. 

The image above shows the completed set and the image below shows the set including the character models I blu-tacked on during the animation process.

By using different textures in my animation- such as green tissue to build up the forest- it creates a necessary visual element of spectacle and also allows for more detail during scenes in which I pan in closer to the set. I feel that using various textures truly evolved my work. As seen in the comparison between this particular storyboard and set design, the tissue of the trees offers a more realistic feel to the setting due to the transparency, as well as a stronger sense of depth. 

I used the storyboard here especially to focus on perspective and make the village look semi-realistic in a much more basic way. The yellowed windows connoted the cosy warmth of a village, whereas the white light denoted in the Inn distinguished it from the other buildings. I further highlighted this distinction during the editing process.

Above is an image taken midway through the process of creating this set, showing the variety of textures and colours I used and the way I built each layer up in order to create the finished product. This scene probably required the most effort to make as I employed several different materials and smaller details such as the edition of candles on the walls, floor and desk. I designed it as elaborately as possible as I wanted the Inn to feel lived in, and for it to seem that each picture and carpet carried a story with it. 

Midway through the animation I came up with the idea of cutting out multiple star shapes and adding blu-tack to the back of them so they were reusable throughout scene changes. Stars are a very important aspect of my animation so I wanted to make sure they were visible in the majority of the sets. Their constant presence connotes hope throughout the animation, and guides her towards her home. 

I used differently textured paper in order to add spectacle and included brighter colours that would easily intrigue younger viewers. Instead of incorporating the swirls of purple within the original storyboard, I showed them more as block colours to create the appearance of barks of the wood being multi-coloured instead of veins of tones running through the tree. The light and fluffy clouds beneath 'The Giant' created a particularly mesmerising environment and enforced the fantasy genre as it is unusual.