Lecture on Sound Design With Jan Meinema

A few weeks ago, we had a visit from Jan Meinema, a Senior Lecturer at Bath Spa University. He spoke to us about sound design and some of the animations he had worked on, and I found it all to be very informative. I can see a lot of what he taught me coming in useful for future animation projects, especially as some of the tips he gave were simple yet effective.

I've always known that sound design can greatly improve an animation piece, but I never realised just how much of an impact it can have if carried out correctly. Jan taught us about different recording equipment and how they were used, and that you should try to get as close to the filter as you could when recording and maintain this distance so that you don't hear the reflection of the space you are recording in. especially if the characters the sound will be applied to aren't in a similar environment.

Another thing that I took away from this lecture, was how sound design can be used to create perspective. Sound doesn't necessarily have to 'follow' the entire scene, but you can 'zoom' into a character or a specific area of a set by using sound. For instance, having an extreme wide shot of a scene yet still being able to hear a conversation between two people in the very distance, zooms in on the characters and can draw your focus onto them, whilst still establishing setting.
An example that Jan showed us that helps demonstrates how perspective can be established was actually a short film I had researched in my first year for a candle reference. Now that I have been shown it in a different light, it has made me appreciate it a whole lot more.

Once Upon a Candle - The Animation Workshop

The way the sound was recorded/edited for when the candle is inside the drawer, differs from when he is sat on the desk top to help create a sense of space. There is a particularly good example when you hear the candle from outside of the drawer at 3:22, as the sound is more muffled to portray that he is sat inside. 

When I haven't wanted to use a music track to accompany an animation in the past, I have always turned to using ambient sounds to enhance the viewing experience, but what I never really thought about was that you don't always have to use sound effects for things you can see in the scene. Instead, if you use sound effects that are stereotypical for that particular setting you can help imply that that is where the animation is taking place. For example, hearing farmyard animals can help indicate you are on a farm, even if there aren't any in the shot. 

Titles Lecture With Martin

Yesterday we had a short lecture with Martin about making titles and compositing in After Effects. He showed us a quick example of a title sequence he had made using Photoshop layers and images and how we could import these compositions into After Effects and animate them. I already was aware of this as well as a lot of what Martin was showing us, but I did learn a few things which would definitely had benefitted me had I been made aware of this earlier.

The first thing I wasn't aware of is that you could pre-comp some components so that when you use masks and animate, say, the position of the components, the mask won't move with the position change, but will instead stay stationary. This would have been a huge help when I was making my info graphic for CoP for instance, as I was animating the mask path in order for text to emerge from behind it, but at least I know now for future reference.

I was aware of the animator function on text on after effects, but I had never had a need to use it before so it was nice to see the different ways in which it could be used. I also wasn't aware that you could use two animators on the same component and use this method to have thing exceed the 100% offset, which could be helpful for creating secondary action or implementing other principles of animation.

Pitch Perfect: Pitching Our Company

As Joe finished the website and showreel, he was able to slot his work into the presentation that I had shared with everyone to work on, and the slides have since been altered and as a result look much cleaner and better laid out. 

Final Presentation Slides

Prior to presenting, we discussed who would talk about what and we thought that it made sense to talk about the work you had worked on and the area we were going to specialise in within the company. So I was in charge of talking about social media and the pages I had set up, were as Emma was going to introduce the company, Joe would talk about the website and finances and Ciara the business cards and how we were going to approach clients.

I feel the presentation went well and I think it definitely helped that we discussed roles before hand, as it meant we didn't trip up or interrupt each other. I also feel it was a success due to the lengths of research we had gone into in terms of competition and finances, and we really considered all aspects of our brand and how we were going to present ourselves and get our work out there.

The only concern that was mentioned was with our title logo, and how some of the stray pixels could be misinterpreted as accented letters, which may be a slight issue with international clients if we ever worked with any. It is something we would definitely reconsider if we are going to pursue our company further.

Pitch Perfect: Preparing For Our Presentation

As we had all completed the tasks we had been assigned, we were now in a position where we could drag and drop our work into a presentation. The only thing that we had to consider in more detail were the finances. Joe, Emma and myself (Ciara was unable to attend our meeting, but still contributed over messages) sat down and researched further into the costs we would need to get started. We were already aware of how much the rent for the studio was going to cost as well as things like software licences as we had made note of these previously, but things like business insurance and optional equipment we quickly looked up. We even went on GoCompare to try and get a more accurate business insurance quote, but at the end of the form it said they would be in contact with us at a later time regarding a quote which wasn't particularly helpful at the time. In the end we just took an average number as an estimate from our Google searches. 

GoCompare Enquiry

I put all of our costs into a spreadsheet so we could clearly see the amounts we would need to be earning/what it is was we would be spending, and used Mike's 'Cost of Living' spreadsheet as a guide for working out tax, as I personally had no idea how to do this or what we would get taxed on, and because of this I included two total expenses figures, one with tax and one without. 

Expenses Spreadsheet

As Joe was working on the website and showreel, I took charge of making the initial slides for our presentation. I made sure to keep the style consistent throughout the slides and with our logo and brand so it would look more professional. 

Initial Presentation Slides

Pitch Perfect: Deciding on a Studio Location

As a group we had to decide where we want to be based, whether this be in the UK or abroad. We were all happy to stick to the UK - though we briefly discussed Ireland as there's a tax break there at the moment - but we thought it would be best to research studio spaces that were available to us and for what price before we decided on a location.

We discussed different cities we'd be happy working/living in, such as London and Manchester, and looked on websites such as Gumtree and various property websites for potential studios in these areas. We found that a lot of the studios were very expensive and the cheaper, more affordable places weren't suitable for us. We were hoping to find a studio that was reasonably sized that would have space for desks and all of our equipment, but a lot of what we found were open plan office/desk space rather than studios, or they were just too small for four of us to work in.

Few Examples of Websites Looked at / Search Results

In the end we decided on Duke Studios in Leeds. We found that the prices were reasonable for everything they were offering with their 12 month contract, studio space. We emailed them asking for an estimated price for a 4 people studio and they replied with (-), which would definitely be ideal, especially as we like the look of the space.

Studio Spaces Available at Duke - Email from Duke Studios

We also thought that the location was ideal, as Animation in Leeds is beginning to grow. Not only this but it is easy to travel to and from, so we could easily attend festivals in nearby cities such as Manchester so we can network. 

Brand Me: Refining my Social Media

Ever since that it has been suggested to me that I should change my font on my channel art, I really don't like the 'O' in my username, so I have taken the advice and changed the font that I use.

Considering Fonts

I scrolled through all of the fonts that were available to me on Photoshop, and I didn't really like any of them, so I searched through a website called Dafont.com, to see if anything stood out to me. I didn't want anything too quirky, though I wanted it to be rather simple. Here I have tried out different fonts alongside my logo. I was looking at the thickness of the text and the letter spacing and in the end I opted for 'Giraffe' because I thought it wasn't too ordinary, yet was clean and worked better than my old font. 

Then came the task of remaking my art, and getting the positioning of the components correct so that they sat nicely on my sites. Making the Tumblr background was particularly annoying as the preview of the theme isn't the same as what is shown on your page. Though it took way longer that initially expected, I think the re-work was definitely worth it. 

New Channel Art

I have since removed the standing character of myself from the channel art. Despite being fond of the piece, I felt that the drawing that I produced for Onform was a better choice, as it was cleaner and much less pixelated when blown up to a different size as I had drawn it using vectors. I still have my original portrait though however, and shall continue to show the piece on my blogs. 

Regarding the "LaurensAnimations" in my YouTube URL/Username, there isn't anything I can do about that at this moment. In order for me to make a custom URL I now need to have 100 subscribers, and I had set up my old URL when this wasn't the case and when I used the account for my Art Foundation work. The "LaurensAnimations" doesn't seem to show up usually when you search for my name, instead the link is a bunch of random letters, but it will still work as it is still associated with my account. As I can't add "Laurenimations" to my URL, I'm going to make sure to tag all of my videos with this, so that you should still be able to find my work if you search for it. 

Pitch Perfect: Setting up Social Media

Now we had decided upon a logo, I was able to make a start on setting up our social media pages. The first thing I did was set up an email that I could use to set up or pages, and that we could all use as a company. From here I was able to set up an Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and Facebook Page.

Initial Pages

I made sure to keep the channel art and colour schemes consistent throughout, as well as things like company descriptions, though these changed slightly depending on the website and character limit. I plan to upload a showreel when we have one put together, and potentially a few pieces of work so we have something to show on our pages.

Pitch Perfect: Logo Designing

In our last meeting we assigned each other roles, this included what we would do for the company and the work we need to complete for setting up our company and presentation. My title is Marketing Manager, and I shall be taking charge of social media and making sure our work gets out there, so my first task is to make our sites. In order to for me to do this, we had to decide on a logo and the colours/style we were going to brand ourselves with. Emma was left in charge of creating the logo, but asked for a few quick sketches of what we all had in mind, so she could take the best elements from our designs and make a refined, final logo.

My Initial Designs

I started by looking at different pockets and tried to keep the designs simple, so the final coloured product would look clean and professional. I also looked briefly at having a character sitting in the pocket as I thought this would help get across that we were a fun company.

Emma's Refined Designs

Emma produced a series of designs based on our ideas and input, but in the end we decided we wanted to go for a simple pocket design, and try to incorporate the pixels into the design. Joe created some tests with example fonts and colour which we all really liked, and in the end went for the design that Joe had come up with.

Joe's Designs

I personally thought it was a good decision to go with Joe's designs, as I like the simplicity of them and they look much more professional than what we had previously come up with. I also like the decision to stick with the one colour gradient - we had opted for the green/blue - as it doesn't over complicate the design, and it makes it easier to brand ourselves this way.