Animated Design & Illustration

Self-portrait gif warm-up task

Ten Animated Gifs

I first wrote down all of the words that I came up with relating to the lockdown, sketching out my initial concepts.

Final List
1. Paranoia
2. Masks
3. Houseplant
4. Sun
5. Boredom
6. Bike
7. TV
8. Music
9. Online
10. Pubs

Paranoia - 2 Frames

Masks - 3 Frames

Houseplant - 5 Frames

Sun - 6 Frames

Boredom - 8 Frames

Bike  - 9 Frames

TV - 10 Frames

Music - 12 Frames

Online  - 15 Frames

Pubs  - 20 Frames

Title Sequence

I have chosen to make my title sequence for a supernatural horror as I think I'll be able to include a lot more of my own personality into this genre. 

My initial ideas for the movie ranged from a beast that lived in the sewers, to mysterious figures haunting an apartment.

After going through several different ideas and concepts, I settled on focusing on the unexplained aspect of supernatural horror as it is the one I find the most intriguing. 

Plot

The focus of the movie I'm making the title sequence for is of an unsettling taxidermy animals that are on display in an old home that the protagonist is renting. The main animal I want to focus on is a crow.

The main premise focuses on the unknown, leaving the viewer unsure of whether the crow is actually possessed, cursed, or it's simply all a creation of the main characters imagination.

I want to focus on conveying the fear of unknown by creating a nightmare-like environment within my animation. I think that the sounds and music I decide to include also play a large role in addition to the illustrated aspect.

Research & Inspiration

Godless

I really like the choice of lighting used for the Godless title sequence as it helps create the mood for the show and adds further movement to what might've been a quite static piece without it.

The simple music helps create excitement for the show and builds tension.

Dexter

Title sequence for the TV show Dexter.

Animated version of the original, created by Ty Mattson, inspired particularly by the work of Saul Bass.

Inside No. 9

I really like the simplicity of the opening to the television show Inside No. 9 and the music helps convey the unusual and quirky nature of the show in such a short time frame.

Dimensions & Design 

When considering on what aspect ratio to use for my title sequence, I decided on using 4:3 as I want my animation to have a dated and classic feel to it. I think this would fit well with the setting being in an old house and give a more claustrophobic feel which adds to the tension.

The Shining, 1980

Nosferatu, 1922

When researching the look of classic horror movies, I found that a lot of them used desaturated colours along with a specific palette that restricted the use of certain colours. The most common and highly featured colour is black, which can be used to create shadow and mystery by not fully showing whats in the scene.

Music & Sound

When initially looking for music to accompany my animation, I thought of Radiohead as their songs are often dark while having a unique unsettling nature. Despite this, I decided against using the song Treefingers from their album Kid A as I felt it didn't fit the concept I ended up going with and was more suited to the sewer idea I originally had.

Scene Ideas

Initial Storyboard & Ideas

Refined Storyboard

​First Test

Animating Flight

I researched videos of crows flying toward the camera to use as reference. The one shown above is what I used as reference in the animation shown beside it to get an idea for the movement of the bird. The reference video showed the crow moving slightly off camera rather than directly towards it like I wanted so I redrew each frame, changing the position of the crow to be directly facing forward.

Animating The Elevator

I used this video as a reference for how I wanted the gate/door of the elevator to look.

Since I wanted the lift to appear old, I made the frames of the lift closing irregular as the gate wouldn't close smoothly and instead be stiff in some places.

​Using Keyframes

I used keyframes to create the motion of the elevator going down as well as the names going up in time with it. 

Animating A Falling Feather

In order to make the movement of the feather falling as realistic and accurate as possible, I found a video to use as reference.

Refining

After completing my animation, I went back to each frame and cleaned them up, making edits to improve the illustrations.

Audio

Sound Effects

I mainly used sounds from Freesound, a collaborative database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds, as well as my own and edited them in Audacity.

Door

For the creaking of the door, I took two different segments from the same audio I found of Freesound as realistically the sound of a door opening should differ from that of it closing.

Light

I combined the buzzing sound of an incandescent light bulb found on Freesound with the flick of a light switch that I recorded myself. 

​Melting

I found it difficult to find audio to accompany the melting animation, but was able to find audio of icicles melting that I thought worked well for what I needed and clipped the audio.

​Crows

I needed two different clips for the crow, one with a singular screech and another with a collective group. The first clip included a dog and crow interacting with each other and found the call of the crow the most fitting out of all the audio I listened through as it had a taunting nature. I clipped a specific part of the bird to use.
For the second clip, I took a segment and amplified the audio to make the murder of crows sound more threatening and aggressive.

​Typewriter

In order to get the timing to match up with the letters appearing on screen, I shortened down the clip and made the spacing between each press of the key equal.

​Elevator

For the elevator, I took three separate audios and combined them together. From the first audio, I took the elevator ding, which merged well with the similar tones used in the song at the beginning of the animation, as I think it adds a sense of dread and doom to the finality of the title sequence.

The second audio clip was the main clip for the lift, I just shortened it to fit the length of time I wanted to spend on the actors credits. 

​The final clip was used to emphasise the elevator stopping as it reaches it's final destination, inserting it within the main lift audio.

Music

For the music in the title sequence, I chose to go with Roddy by Djo as I like the atmosphere regular songs can make when edited in a creepy manner. I also think that the lyrics of the sections I chose fit well with the unsettling narrative when used in this context.

I used the program Audacity to edit audio and learnt the basics of making a song more scary from the video shown above. This helped me find a starting ground for editing the song and I was able to experiment more from there.

Using the graphic equalizer, I reduced the base of the song and amplified the treble to give a tinny effect, making the song sound as though it was playing through an old speaker.

By adding an echo and reverb effect to the music, I was able to make it sound as though the audio was playing in a large empty room, much like how it would sound in the building the animation is set.

I changed the overall pitch of the song to be lower, but to add to the effect of the animals melting around the crow I used a Sliding Stretch effect to warp the music in time with the animation. This helped connect the music with the animation and further emphasised the eerie nature of it.

​Editing Together

I used Windows' default Video Editor to add the audio and music to the animation, doing so separately in order to make it easier to view and edit.

For the music, I had the first section fade out into the mass off crows then had the second section fade in as the elevator starts to move down. I chose to not have that section of the music fade out and instead just stop abruptly at the same time the elevator did.

Completed Title Sequence