Adaptation A - Submission

I'm going to continue working on the remaining scene over the weekend just to please myself, and fine tune the animation further as there are certain elements that I'm not satisfied with, in particular, that missing scene, and also the timing of everything, but, there are also pluses that I will take away from this project. I'm happy that I got to try out some new plugins in Photoshop and After Effects, particularly in Photoshop as I feel like It's drastically improved the way in which I can now work.

Adaptation A - Opening Crawl

I feel like this was the obvious choice for an opening, but I went with it anyway. Didn't take too long to render thankfully, and it marks the first time I've used particle effects in any meaningful way. They're particularly useful here.

Adaptation A - Ships, Sabers and Office Workers

Just finishing up the last bits of art whilst the Star Wars opening crawl renders in after effects. I am enjoying this process, despite it feeling like a mad rush. Though, I have never used the lasso tool quite this much before. 

Adaptation A - Qui-Gon-Jinn

As it stands, I've just got the big man himself, George Lucas, to finish. And then I'll be moving on to the backgrounds (which will - again - be quite simple). 

Adaptation A - "Foamy-Wans"

Rounding off the third from last "character" needed for this project, I've mocked up a simplified "Foamy-Wan" and put them side by side with their larger counterpart.

Adaptation A - Separated Clone Trooper, with Rifle

Here's an updated version of the clone trooper showing the separation needed in order to animate certain parts of the character. I've also included a simple mockup of a rifle as the infographic calls for it at one point.

Adaptation A - Clone Trooper

Here's the Clone Trooper, His arms are on separate layers in order to movie them in after effects. Next is his rifle, and then the environments. A lot of work, but I'm determined to get it done!

Adaptation A - Final Designs for Obi-Wan

With these designs I took a look at the direction the art for the project was going in, with regards to the ship posted previously, and realized that there could be a clashing of art styles if I continued in the direction I was going in. As such, these reflect an updated vision, maintaining a simplified look, losing the lines and looking far more graphical, which is what I hoped for.

Adaptation A - Jedi Interceptor back view

Here's the rear view of the interceptor, just toying with gradients in the second image to see if that adds a little more depth to things. Overall though I think I'm happy with the second image the most. Next, I'll be moving on to the LAAT troop transport and then the characters and backgrounds. 

Adaptation A - Jedi Interceptor

In-keeping with the simple aesthetic that I seek to use. I've limited the colours used on the Jedi Interceptor, whilst remaining impactful. As this will just be seen in a flyover shot from top down, I just need to create the back view.

My intention is to have a trail of light following the craft as it flies past, reminiscent of the opening scene of Akira, just to make it a bit more interesting to look at.

Adaptation A - Developing an art style

This weekend has all been about determining what sort of aesthetic I want to use in my infographic. As such I've tested out a few different simple styles based off of the influence map, in accordance with what assets I actually need.

As it stands I need Obi-Wan, A clone trooper, George Lucas and most of Qui-Gon-Jinn as they feature prominently in the infographic.

I decided to go with a sort of simplified 'chibi' style in the end as I knew that I wanted everything to be kind of cutesy, whilst also being graphical and simple.

Below is a mockup in illustrator (which I've elected to use this project, having never used it an awful lot before)

Now it's all together, I'm starting to feel a little better about my chances. The voiceover is ready and awaiting the art. I'm currently watching a slew of lynda tutorials on after effects and illustrator, so already this project has benefited me. Time to get the rest done! 

Adaptation A - Logo Development

Following on from the previous post, I decided I wanted to implement to 'two suns' motif into the logo design, if only to give me the opportunity to make the design a little more interesting, a little less like floating text.

Here's a selection anyway. I've chosen the color of the suns based on their colors in the film. I'm quite fond of #6 because it reminds me of old spaghetti western posters.

Adaptation A - Logo Ideation

Obviously, there's a lot about this subject that's already defined aesthetically, so, I've decided to utilize this to my advantage by pulling from various sources attributed to the art design of Star Wars itself. For-instance, In a few examples here I've used "Trajan" which is the font that was used to denote the 'episode' in each film.

I've also gone back to the original 1977 poster and reclaimed one of the first logo's associated with Star Wars as I enjoy it far more than the current typeface used for the series. Having said that, I've also explored that option also.

I'm quite happy with #3, #9 & #10. And I think eventually, I'll go for #10.

Adaptation A - Roughed out storyboard

Although not required, I felt like I needed to get a handle on what exactly I wanted to happen in the infographic, and plotting it out like this helped a lot. Informing me of what assets I needed to create as well as giving me a place to explore the visual architecture of the piece.

Adaptation A - Updated influence map

Looking at the previous post regarding the aesthetic I wanted to utilize for the infographic, I realized that while Noma Bar's style looks great as still images, that style wouldn't have lent itself to form an interesting infographic.

I've since found other more complementary forms of visual reference that I believe will complement the material nicely. As such, I'll be working on the art assets I need to complete the infographic, this weekend.
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Included in this influence map are images from Noma Bar, Kurzgesagt & Marc Murera.

Adaptation A - Finished Script

I'll be sending this off to the voiceover artist that I'm working with, tonight. Just posting this here for posterity, I'm glad this is at a stage where I can send if off now :) 

You’ve seen the message boards raging about Jar Jar Binks. You’ve heard the poor dialogue by George Lucas? You’ve seen the endless marketing. The Star Wars prequels, or Pee-Tee’s for short, have been with us now for a decade and have both divided fans and critics alike with each new instalment.

These are 10 facts about The Prequel Trilogy that each fans and critic should know before they turn to the dark side…

Did you know that episodes 1,2 & 3 actually broke records? Packing a staggering amount of VFX shots in each installment of the trilogy, culminating in 2151 shots. 1,269 of which were fully animated.

That’s a lot of dead Gungans.

Some of those shots may have included a clone trooper or two, but did you know that none of them were actors?  

Every clone trooper in Revenge of the Sith is a creation of CGI. No clone costumes or helmets were manufactured for filming...

If you thought that was enough, consider that the only shot in Phantom Menace to not feature any CGI, is a vent expelling toxic, Dioxis gas.

Of course, it couldn’t be a top 10 list without mentioning Jar-Jar Binks.

Now, Before you draw your lightsabers and blaster pistols, it’s because he was the first ever fully digital main character in cinema history...despite being perhaps the most...hated film character in cinema history.

Some fans even feel like the Prequel Trilogy contains too much CGI in general. In actuality more practical miniature models were created for any one of the Star Wars prequel films than were made for the entire combined original trilogy. That’s an impressive amount of...Senate chambers and .

Talking about chambers...Sets were planned to be built only as high as the tops of the actors' heads and computer graphics filled in the rest. But Liam Neeson was so tall that he cost the set crew an extra $150,000 in construction.

But that’s not the only peculiarity brought on by the actors. Ewan McGregor made lightsaber noises whilst duelling.

George Lucas corrected this in post production.

In Revenge of the Sith, in some of the final shots during the birth scene, the infant Luke and Leia are portrayed by animatronic puppets. As these puppets were operated by Ewan McGregor, the cast referred to them as “Foamy-Wan Kenobi”.

The unreleased and uncut version of Revenge of the Sith had a running time of 4 hours, this would have dramatically increased the amount of snacks needed for an all day marathon of the series. Now creeping up to 18 hours.

Speaking of misplaced time.

In the excitement leading up to the release of The Phantom Menace, It's estimated that 2.2 million full-time employees skipped work to attend screenings, resulting in $293 million in lost productivity. So many workers announced plans to skip work to watch the movie that many companies shut down on the opening day.

So there you have it, the Top 10 Facts about The Prequel trilogy. Obscure enough to impress, without giving away your secret love of all things Star Wars.

@Alan Adaptation A - Revised facts and expanded script

Taking the advice on the previous post regarding Adaptation A, I've reordered the facts and replaced the long-winded one, whilst also making additions to improve the flow of the infographic. I'll be allowing a little bit of freedom on the recordings to keep it sounding natural for the voiceover artist.

I've also been thinking about the way in which the infographic will be constructed and I think, over this weekend I will be roughly storyboarding it out just to get a sense of what I want the finished article to look like. As I want to keep the tone light, I've considered the fact that there is a definite structure to a "Top 10..." video, so for the most part the language will be dry, and the humor may come from things happening visually. This, I feel, is an important part in keeping people engaged depending on the context.

If this is looking good I'll send it over to the voiceover artist and focus on plotting out the visuals.

Adaptation A - Chosen Facts

The selection process for these facts was actually quite difficult, as I didn't want to select facts that were too obscure, or unimportant to the casual observer. So I went for a selection of anecdotal stories, for humor, and facts about the production of the film trilogy. Going by previous conversations with Alan, I've tried to take a step back from 'fanboyism' and present a detached selection of facts, so that I don't come off as overly defensive and therefore biased in the infographic.

I'll be typing up the script tomorrow as I've got a voice over artist lined up, and hopefully over the weekend I'll be able to get some animation tests completed in after effects.

Adaptation A - Art Influence and Possible Facts

Whilst assembling the facts I want to include in the info graphic I became aware that I also needed to settle the question on what the thing will actually look like. Fortunately, an artist sprang to mind who I've followed on and off since being at UCA - Noma Bar. - a graphic artist that seeks to convey a huge amount of meaning into as simple a display as possible. As such his designs are often striking, whilst being deceptively simple.

I feel like the ethos could be applied to infographics with great results. Below is a small selection of his work for reference.

Adaptation A: 10 Ideas for an Infographic

The top 10 facts about...

1. Fans of the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy

2. Hipsters

3. Your Local Band Scene

4. Running a blog

5. Diabetes

6. Men

7. Working in a cinema

8. Living with your Partner

9. Boardgames

10. H.P Lovecraft

So I'm in-between going for something of a more irreverent flavor, as opposed to being a straight up - bosh here's ten boring facts about something - So some of these are intended to contain inaccurate facts played for laughs. But there are a couple here that I could do a lot with in a serious manor and still generate a bit of comedy. So, here's the ten ideas. I could go literally anywhere with this sentence, but for me, it has to be personal in order to be interesting.