Final Project: Dialogue

For the final project for Animation Class, I decided to do what I have been dreaming of doing for seven years now: create a film based off of the video game Metroid Prime.  While making a film with the universe of Metroid and the character of Samus has been something I have wanted to do since I was a kid, it was not until recently when I had the thought that the structure of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" would be perfect for a Metroid movie.  So when it came to choosing my dialogue, it was my first thought to pull inspiration from that film.  I titled it "Once Upon a Time on Tallon IV" which is the name of the planet from Metroid Prime.

Where I was mostly focused on the animation, sound, timing, acting and drawing for the project, I decided to take the story element from something I was very familiar with.  Thus, I tweaked the dialogue from the opening scene of "Once Upon a Time in the West" to fit the Metroid Science Fiction Universe, where they would not have horses or a villain named Frank.  I also ended up using Leone's scene as a rough story board.  While I made a few changes in the shots to keep it fresh, original, and shorter, I ultimately used this opening sequence from the 1968 film as my Story Board.

I also pulled the gun shot sound effects from this scene, too, as I felt they were a great representation of the western tone.  Along with using Sergio Leone's spaghetti western for reference, I composed a script on Final Draft which I was able to send to Emily Cain who voiced Samus and also use as a more grounded reference for myself while I animated.

Once I had established the vision I wanted to go for, I began animating the dialogue segment.  

The dialogue was one of the most challenging moments to create, but also probably the most fun!  My girlfriend Emily, who was also featured in my rotoscope project, is always such a great actress to work with, so I was very excited when she agreed to do the voice of Samus for my project.  I have directed plays and short films in the past, so I have had experience working with many different actors and actresses, plus I am an actor myself, so I was interested to see how acting for animation would vary from the styles I am used to.  I ended up showing Emily the character, describing the scene and story, and giving her the dialogue over Thanksgiving break; I left the rest up to her own interpretation and creativity.  I let the dialogue inspire the character's body accents and movements, as opposed to the other way around.  I think this was the right choice since Emily's voice acting choices gave me some great character personality traits to build off of.  It was a bit of a struggle to add accents for a character who is famous for being stoic, and who is being featured in a very tense scene, but I think I ultimately made some good choices based off of the dialogue personality and rigging opportunities in her arms and facial expressions.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of animating Samus was her hair; I used frame by frame for it which got very difficult to keep up with, and I ended up keeping it mostly still for the final product as I never quite mastered making the hair movements seem natural.  The most fun part was animating her facial expressions; it took me a while to master the symbol functions on Adobe Animate, but once I did I had a blast changing the stare in her eyes to match the western influenced tension.

For the antagonist dialogue, I decided I would make a cameo and voice act those parts myself.  This is where I used some sound mixing from Garage Band, because no matter how hard I tried to get into character, nothing matched the villainous robotic voice I was looking for.  I ended up using a robot sound mixer to add an ambient space sound effect along with an effect which made my voice deeper and more robotic.  It was weird to hear at first on its own, but once I synced it with the visuals, I knew I finally found what I was looking for.  The accents on the robots were a bit of a challenge since I had spent so much time focusing on animating Samus.  The way I drew the robots made it challenging to keep the arm movements grounded.  It paid off seeing the sound mixing synced with the animation in the final product!

Once I had finished the dialogue, I went back and took my walk cycle for Samus in her famous Chozo Varia Suit and added a Morph Ball transformation to link the story telling:

  "After Samus looks up to see three enemy ships, she transforms into her famous morph ball suit to track them down, but in the process her Varia Suit malfunctions leaving her with nothing but her draw to finish off the enemies."

After adding some more effects and a classic Ennio Morricone Spaghetti Western Soundtrack, I was satisfied with my final project.

I was thrilled when I saw that "Once Upon a Time on Tallon IV" was an Award Nominee at the UTampa Black Box Film Festival.  I was especially honored when it won the Award for Best Sound Design; it was such an amazing day and I will never forget this first film festival experience!

I ended up having an amazing time in Animation Class!  It ended up being one of my favorite classes of the semester, and I always looked forward to Monday morning; it was a great way to start my freshman year.  Now that I have learned so much from this class, I will be sure to keep animation as a choice of medium fresh in my head when it comes to film ideas!  I hope to work on another project soon and I feel like I learned so much about film and animation in this class!  I am sad it is over, but I am so happy I got to take it when I did and I will never forget it!  And an especially big thank you to Professor Corrigan for a wonderful first semester in Animation!