Spiracle- audiobook in a card
Week 1
In the pre-production phase, we arranged ourselves into teams, in which I served as the role of the producer. After receiving the brief , I assigned roles for the pitch with spiracle the following week . Our story initially came from one audiobook, 50 sounds by Polly Barton. I organised a team meeting and assigned roles for our first version of animatic using the sound . I worked on the character design concept for the characters, whilst Yasin and janis worked on thumb-nailing and storyboarding the animatic, dogus on sound effect and assisting input into the storyboard and Aimee on backgrounds for the "real world" scenes. below are my initial character designs. we also sat down and mood boarded visuals the style requested by the clients. I made school of life amongst other animations as style recommendations which were inputted in Janis's moodboard.
Male Designs
Woman Leaving store
Female designs
WEEK 2
After the client feedback received about including the bookseller and making the audiobook in a card experience more personalised. I thought there would be no better way of understanding the process than doing some field research and physically going to one of the bookstores. I was lucky enough to find the audiobooks in one of the most beautiful looking bookstores in London libreria. I emailed the bookstore and fortunately came int0 contact with Lloyd and Erica (seen below) who helped answer my questions and allowed me to take pictures in the store (despite having a no phones policy shh). The references allow me to come up with a new idea for the intro and outro. Seen below as version one .This still did not feel like enough as the clients feedback was including multiple audios to show the selection of audiobook options they had . This man that there needed to be a narrative in place . Although we initially debated amongst ourselves as a team for the need of a narrative I thought it would be best show my vision through an animatic and finding two additional audio samples together. I thought a love story told through audio samples would allow the transition to flow well out of the story . This would emphasis the Christmas gift giving aspect of the product and transition well into the outside world section . My self and Yasin discussed the story beats and Yasin (0ur thumbnail artist) thumnailed the composition and helped come up with very creative transitions between the scenes. ( thumbnails seen below ). The other two audio's I chose were love leda by Mark Hyatt and ti amo by Hanne Orstavik to flow well with 50 sounds by polly barton
Images taken by me of library (Wednesday)
Animatic V2
Animatic v2 put together by me on premier pro, Inside audiobook by Janis
Animatic V3
Animatic v3 with audio and soundtrack (piano and audiobooks ) put together by me on premier pro. thumbnails by yasin, inside audiobook section by Janis
The same Friday we went to visit Libreria as a team assisted by Janis and Yasin . the goal was to take some more references and potential record ambient music for the book store. (Yasin recorded the Audio whilst myself and Janis took more references ) I Also tried to imitate a conversation with the bookseller to potentially put into the soundtrack
Videos taken by janis . Myself directing the audio and sound audio by Yasin
WEEK 3
After having the pleasure of meeting Lloyd and Erica , and having the advantage of being the character designer , I thought that Lloyd would be the perfect customer prototype for audiobook in a card . Lloyd manages his own audio podcast and has specialised areas in bookstore to read and listen to audio books and podcasts . During this week through Janis composited the Final animatic in time for the half-point work in progress check with Spiracle .
Audiobook buyer turnaround without shading
Animation and design by me , background by Aimee
Audiobook buyer turnaround with shading
Animation and design by me , background by Aimee
Animation and design by me
Producing and Scheduling
Throughout the project I have been in charge of the scheduling and planning of the roles and responsibilities of my team mates as well as planning a few of the followup meetings and catchups across the weeks to make sure we are on schedule . I create a dope sheet style schedule as seen below with time stamps to clarify which tasks are assigned to each team mates and to try as closely as possible to even out everyones responsibilities given their skills and their personal/professional availability in mind.
WEEKS 4+5
After the presentation, the clients gave us very positive feedback about our work and suggested some minor adjustments to make . This meant we could move on to production. We all collectively worked on keyframe animating and cleaning up our own work to be composited by Janis. Below are the animations that I worked on doing my own colouring and key framing. The background were kept white to make it simpler for composting
WEEKS 6
Additional audio - in order to avoid copy right violations , my original paino song of choice - somewhere in between by Jacob lavalle. needed an original music composition. Luckily very talented musician and pianist Olmo Cuaron was able to assist us with music composition. We sat together and discussed the theme and flow of the ad and the narrative we wish to include. He created his magic with the little direction form myself . Also with sound and not included in the final film was audio recording done in radio room. Aimee Thomas as the bookshop keeper and jais as the buyer . We unfortunately had technical difficulty recording the Audi files.
"method acting" to get here you go ...