Storybeats for senior animation

Story Beats:

1. F.H. Cilley lies dead in a coffin.
2. Cilley walks happy-go-lucky down a sidewalk with his brother, who is clearly embarrassed to be seen with him. Passers by awkwardly stare.
3. Following the sight of the two brothers, people start gossiping to one another.
4. A man says that he knows that Cilley sleeps in a strange way.
5. Cilley lies in a bed with the foot raised up at an incline, he looks directly at the camera to explain why.
6. A woman says she knows he only eats orange food.
7. Cilley sits at his kitchen table surrounded by a feast of orange food, he again addresses the camera to explain why.
8. A man says he’s seen him wearing a pot on his head
9. Cilley and his brother stand on a street corner about to cross when two bricks fall from the sky and land on their heads. The brother falls, Cilley smiles to the camera and explains why he wears the pot.
10. A woman recalls the time Cilley waltzed after his mother’s funeral.
11. Cilley waltzes alone in a ball room, stunned onlookers in funeral attire watch.
12. A man says he knew cilley before he went crazy
13. Cilley is laying on a rug face down, having just fallen from a rocking chair. In reverse animation he falls up back into his seat. Suddenly he a cap and gown appear on him.
14. A younger Cilley stands on the side of a bridge looking up at it, he turns and smiles proudly to the camera.
15. Cilley labors away on bridge schematics while a zoom out reveals Cilley’s brother angrily tripping over a small model of a bridge.
16. A close up of Cilley’s brother reveals an angry expression and a change in background, he now holds the same expression while sitting at the funeral. People around him stare.
17. various close ups reveal people gossiping in hushed voices about Cilley’s death.
18. The people attending the funeral shuffle out one by one as a Frank gets lowered into the ground. Franks brother remains clutching the watch with a crazed expression.
19. A woman walking away from the funeral states that she feels bad for Frank. Her Patterned transitions into the background wall paper of the next scene.
20. Frank Cilley, sits awkwardly in front of the camera. He scratches his head and gives a quick smile.

Script for Narration of Senior Aniamtion project

The Eccentricities of F. H. Cilley

This is Frank H. Cilley. A dead man lies in a coffin. Throughout his life, Cilley’s odd behavior made him somewhat of a local celebrity in his hometown of Leominster, MassachusettsDelightfully eccentric or disturbingly unbalanced, it was of no consequence to Cilley what people thought of him. To his brother, Harold Cilley, Frank was considered an embarrassment and blemish upon the family name.

The eccentricities of F. H. Cilley were the subject of local gossip for years. After his death, it was never clear which would be more missed, the man or the spectacle.

His oddities were well documented by friends and family.

“He slept with the foot of his bed at an incline.”
“…As an experiment”
“He only ate orange food.”
“…Other colors lack nutrition”
“I often saw him wearing a pot on his head when he went out.”
“…A precaution against falling objects.”
“Upon returning from his mother’s funeral, he played a waltz.”
“…Goodbye, Mother.”
“I knew Frank as a young man, before he fell of his rocker.”

In fact, Frank Cilley was a very bright young man. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was an expert in bridge engineering. Frank’s passion, borderline obsession, for bridges, eventually led him to make his fortune. What Frank lacked in his ability to fit in with social norms, he more than made up for with his genius in bridge building. Harold always envied Frank for this.

Although the circumstances surrounding Frank’s death remain a mystery, the locals speculated that Harold had something to do with it.

“He couldn’t stand seeing his brother a success. It drove him mad, more mad than Frank!”

“Well I know why he did it, doesn’t everyone?”

“That Harold, he got what he had coming.”

By the last will and testament of Frank H. Cilley, his entire fortune and 70,000 dollar estate was given to his alma mater, and to his sole living relative, Harold Cilley, he bequeathed a small pocket watch, which once belonged to their father.

“Poor Frank, he was always a happy fellow. It’s a shame more of us can’t be like him.”

Synopsis for Senior Animation: The Eccentricities of F. H. Cilley

This animation is a brief narrative biography of the life and mysterious death of a crazy man, in small town, in the year 1906. The town’s people thought of him as a loveable oddball, but his brother saw him as an embarrassment. It briefly describes the crazy man’s life and his many “eccentricities.” And it concludes with his mysterious death, and the speculation that his brother had something to do with it.

The visual style of the piece is key, as the story is more a biography than anything else. I want to achieve a very decorative, overly-patterned look to the backgrounds, but also keep the character animation somewhat realistic and subtle. Interesting transitions will be used wherever I can fit them to keep it even more engaging for the audience.

These are preliminary background and character studies, although I'm pretty set on the look of Cilley. For the background I might to flatten it out even more, and maybe exaggerate the patterned look by making it look too big for the wall. That would make it stand out more. I also don't think Cilley would be much of a housekeeper so I want the wallpaper to look kind of gritty and old.

(patterns courtesy of Shawnna Lyons!)

Art Direction for Eccentricities...

This is the art direction for my senior animation. It's probably going to be done in flash or toonboom...I'm still throwing around the idea of stopmotion. Maybe stopmotion characters super imposed on 2D backgrounds?

Anyway the backgrounds are inspired by persian and medieval painting. I like the idea of trying to achieve an "overly patterned" flattened out set. I also have some examples of patterns I could use on there. A good friend, Shawnna Lyons (fibers major here at SCAD), gave me some digital patterns that she actually designed herself. They're incredible and will definitely fit in with the theme I'm going for.

It's set in 1906, so the clothes and architecture will definitely have a victorian/post-victorian feel.

And overall I want a "muddy victorian color scheme" for the backgrounds and characters.

Pitch Poster for Senior Animation

This was my original pitch poster for my senior animation, "The Eccentricities of F.H. Cilley" During critique it was noted that it didn't convey enough story telling. Also the bridge motif was a little to obscure. The text wasn't readable, and his purple tie stood out too much.
I'm really happy with the way my revised poster came out. I changed the color of the background some. Muted down the tie. Took out the bridge theme all together, and tried to incorporate some story telling by placing him in a living room setting with old, victorian pictures on the walls. Lastly, I found some great text that I had to painstakingly photoshop cut out from an old newspaper ad from the early 1900s.

"Tell Me a Story" (trailer?)

This is the first part of my final for digital cel. It's part of a three and half minute short, which I'll be finishing up this summer.

The Full Audio

I was trying to come up with a story idea for my final animation in this class, but was having trouble. I thought it would be so much easier if someone could just tell me a story. So I decided to do just that! My plan was to get some sound equipment and walk around Savannah asking people to tell me a story...any story that they could come up with.

After finally managing to get the equipment from the cage, I ventured out into Savannah to interview people. All told, I got about forty different stories from people...some good, some not so good. Next I listened to each recording and wrote down various sentences I thought were interesting. I printed these pages, cut out each sentence and pieced together the most interesting and cohesive story I could come up with.

After that, I went back to the individual audio clips and used adobe sound booth and piece them together into one seamless story. This is the final audio file I came up with.

All together this is about three and half minutes, clearly I underestimated the time it would take to animate all this. Anyway I cut out certain parts to shorten the animation time, but it's difficult. Eventually I would like to animate the entire piece. I think it's a really unique and interesting idea that I came up with. I'm proud of it and eventually, perhaps over this summer, I plan on animating the entire bit.

Inspiring Animated Works

Estoria do Gato e da Lua

This is a great example of the kind of animation you can achieve by playing with black and white/negative and positive space.


The Bear That Wasn't

This incorporates that true graphic design feel I'm trying to go for...


I Met The Walrus

Really amazing animation set to audio. The animation flows as the dialogue happens, but everything is completely unique and unexpected. This is a really inspiring work for my animation.

Background Design

For my background designs I thought it would be interesting to keep everything in black and white only. This would allow me to really play with the positive/negative space while I animate. And again, the animation is very experimental, things morph and change, so I think the black and white really suites it and allows for some interesting transitions.

Character Design for final animation

My animation is tough to come up with character designs for. Most of the characters are more graphic design images than anything else. Like I said, the animation is sort of experimental and everything morphs into something else. This is an example of a character that morphed out the word "man."

Stationary Walk Cycle

This is a character I quickly made up, but I thought he turned out really great. This fat old Victorian dude was actually fun to animate too.

Animated jump with a clown character

For this assignment we were given a character and had to make it jump. I'm happy with the animation on this one.

Hannah Montana can jump!

We had to make our own character jump. I made the greatest pop star on earth jump, that's right, Hannah Montana.

Wally the green monster shares a peice of advice...

So the assignment was to find a piece of audio and create an animated lipsynch. Assuming everyone would choose Christian Bail (The Batman) flipping out, I opted for a hometown hero, Matt Damon. In this clip from "Good Will Hunting," Will offers a bit of advice. I thought it would be especially funny to pair the thick Bostonian accent with the Red Sox mascot, Wally the Green Monster....Listen up, kids...

Walk Cycle Rotoscope

Class assignment, rotoscope a walk cycle.

DANCE! ...an excercize in rotoscoping

Walk cycles are overrated.


I filmed my friend, Tia's, super sweet dance moves and rotoscoped over the footage. Things I've learned: Rotoscoping gets really old, really fast. Haha!

A fitting self portrait?

Stylized cubist-ish- simpl

...would a cartoon animator animate in live action?

...Animating

Alright, the quarter is quickly winding down and I'm starting to feel the crunch. Animating for my "Tell Me a Story" idea is definitely going slower than I expected (but I should have learned by now, what animation doesn't?).

On top of this final I'm swamped with work for my other two classes. For time's sake, I decided to cut down some of the narration...originally I had three minutes and thirty seconds worth, I shaved off a good 45 seconds and I think it actually ended up making the story seem a little bit more cohesive. I also decided to not make backgrounds, or at least detailed ones. I'm pretty much going to leave it as ambiguous space. I think this enhances the effects of the many morphs the character goes through as the story changes, it also helps me out the time factor.

All in all the animation is going, going slow, but going. I have the time this week to sit down and really get working on it, should be fun!

I guess I'm overdue for a post here, hm? Apparently I'm really terrible at blogging, but that's not to say I haven't been working. I've actually made some progress with my final for this class.

My idea is sort of experimental I guess. I was sitting around one day trying to come up with an idea and I figured, "hell, I'll just ask people to tell me a story." I then developed that into a serious concept where I would walk around Savannah and ask people to tell me a short 30 second to 2 minute story. Then I would pick through all the stories I got and use their sentences to create one somewhat cohesive story.

So I had a friend help me out with renting some audio equipment and I did just that. It was actually pretty fun, people thought it was a cool idea for the most part and only a few folks looked at me like I was some crazy art school kid and declined to help.

The real fun part was editing all the stories together...It's quite the strange story, I can tell you that. The really really fun part will be animating it. I've already started with some of the characters.