The Lost Book

Making of...

Throughout the Lost Book project, the team creating the animation posted behind-the-scenes information about how the series was made. Bloggers were:

• Animators and co-directors Helen Jackson and Adam Brewster (from Show Them Pictures, known in 2009 as Binary Fable)
• Composers Alexis Bennett, Michael Ferguson and Blair Mowat (commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra).

Browse this section for all the "Making of..." posts, or take a look at particular topics:

Animation | Camera | Character | Computer model | Lighting | Music | Production design | Rendering | Sound design | Storyboards | Textures | Voice acting

Disembodied

Written by Helen Jackson.

Did you wonder how we got this shot in episode 6? With live-action, the actor would have had to be somewhat contorted to enable the camera to be positioned where her head should be.

It's easier when your character is a computer model - you can simply cut off her hands!

Mwahahaha...

Flat pack

Written by Helen Jackson.

Thought this might interest you. You know that we've been economising on our character models - to create a new character we re-use an existing body so that we only need to create a new head (see Demi Remi). You also know that our characters are coloured using "texture maps" - 2D image files that are wrapped around the 3D computer models (see Aileen unwrapped). So, you've probably figured out that we didn't create an entirely new character model when we needed to show Aileen's Mum in episode 6. The two characters have a very strong family resemblance...

...because the computer models are identical. All the differences are in the texture maps:

Aileen's Mum looks very good for her age! We would have given her wrinkles, but she's only seen from behind or with her face in shade so there was no point.

Colours

Written by Helen Jackson.

Do you notice the colours when you're watching a film?

You might not, but someone's thought carefully about them. Not just the colour of costumes, props and sets, but the colour of the light and the overall colour balance of each shot.

Colours are used to give an atmosphere and to reflect mood. They can relate to characters. The overall colour will change throughout - there may be a colour arc that relates to the story arc or to a character's arc. Pixar create "colour scripts" for each film - Lou Romano has posted a lot of his art for Up (warning, spoilers - be careful if you haven't yet seen the film) including first pass colour scripts for Act I and a full colour script.

Now, in The Lost Book we had a different challenge. We didn't know what the story would be, or who the characters would be, or what their stories would be. It meant we couldn't plan colours or sketch a colour script. But, we still wanted to use colour as best we could.

In the first episode we set up some simple contrasts of colour and light. Dark colours and red were used when the book was stolen. Light colours, especially yellow, and bright light were used when Aileen was in a safe place. Tiny elements of purple/lilac were used to relate to the crime - the tag left on the lectern was purple and the bus set in the final shot, when Aileen discovers that all online copies of the book have also been stolen, features lilac as well as yellow.

We could build on this in episode 2. When Aileen's talking to Kyle, she's in a good place (yellows/light) but we're not sure about Kyle (black). In the bookshop, someone bad has got at the books, so we're using dark colours, reds and oranges.

By episode 3 we had a baddie - Otto Dafé. His name, with the reference to burning, fitted beautifully with the colour scheme we'd chosen for bad things, so we dressed him in black and made sure oranges and reds surrounded him. Even in episode 4, when he's in the airport (a space we've made light and bright and full of greens - Kyle's colour and another indication of a safe place) we darken the Otto shots by half-filling the screen with a black mobile phone, and adding orange/red tones in Otto's books and in the seating in the background.

By episode 4 we also knew that Grazp Pharmaceuticals was responsible for the theft... so it turned out that their corporate colour was purple/lilac. This colour scheme segued into episode 5 where purples and blacks were used throughout – it wasn’t just the darkness that made this the darkest episode, everything about the tones used showed that the characters were in a tight spot.

But, we had a problem. Otto was no longer a bad guy, so his signature colours of red and orange couldn’t be used, and the link between him and those colours previously suddenly didn’t work so well. There wasn’t anything we could do about this, apart from reconceptualise orange/red as the colour range that meant books were in trouble.

The final episode showed a marked change in atmosphere. The scenes at the Sheep Heid Inn that frame the episode use bright light, yellows and greens. Both Aileen and Kyle are there, they’re safe and happy, no books are in danger. We used reds and purples in the early flashbacks, but gradually worked back through to yellows and greens as the mood lightened and the crime was solved.

Looking at all the stills, there’s quite a pleasing colour arc and the colours worked well to reflect the mood. But, Otto’s transition from baddie to goodie was very hard to handle!

Books everywhere

Written by Helen Jackson.

Books are something of a theme in episode 6. To celebrate the Lost Book being found and returned we wanted lots of books. We have two scenes set in libraries and a big bookshelf in the Sheep Heid Inn. We managed to resist the temptation to make all the books individual (I'd have really enjoying thinking up appropriate titles!) and instead decided to go for matching bindings in a few colours. Here's how we made them...

First up, we created a book model in the computer. In fact, there are two versions: open book and closed book.

Next, the book needed a texture map. We unwrapped the model to get a flat, 2D image and added the binding, endpapers, page edges and title page (1). Finally, some gold lettering on the spine was needed - a simple black and white image allows us to specify where the gold should be added (2).

And, there you have it. Books everywhere!

A jug of Pimms (or two)

Written by Helen Jackson.

Fun times! The last recording session with our voice actors Cora Bissett and Sean Biggerstaff was on Sunday. For once, Cora didn't have to do a million mad voices - she was simply (and beautifully) Aileen Adler.

Sean, on the other paw, had the challenge of putting a voice to the thoughts of Watson. "Urbane gentleman spy" was an option for a while... and led inevitably to "Bond, Sean Bond" and much hilarity. The final voice is neither of those, but is a glorious big voice for a small but important dog. You'll have to wait until Friday to hear it.

L-R: Helen Jackson, Adam Brewster, Cora Bissett, Sean Biggerstaff and Stephen Gilmour

At lunch afterwards it emerged that Sean is a great fan of Pimms, so we celebrated with a jug or two of Pimms and lemonade. It's appropriate, then, that the popular vote has decided that Pimms is the drink of choice for Aileen and Kyle (thanks Kiwi for the suggestion, and thanks DJ for letting us know the Sheep Heid Inn can "rustle up a fantastic classic Pimms No 1".)

We also have a decision for a book to feature in the last episode - it will then be BookCrossed in the Sheep Heid, so if you're in Duddingston this coming weekend you might want to pop in and see if you can pick it up. The winning suggestion is another one of Kiwi's, seconded by Treehugger - The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle. Watson's grabbed it already; it's one of his favourites.

The good, but slightly sad, news is that you've now made all the decisions needed for us to finish the final episode of The Lost Book. Instead of a story poll, I've resurrected our character popularity survey. Who's your favourite character? Vote now in the sidebar poll to the right.

Watson uncovers the evil plan

Written by Helen Jackson.

Thought you might like to see a (jaggy!) draft of Watson finding evidence of Grazp's "project rejuvenation" - a rack of water-filled test-tubes with a note from the lab and the marketing department's mock-up of a sales brochure.

The last tweaks to the animation, textures and lighting have been made and this shot is ready to be set off to render.

While the computers are working on the rendering, we'll be going through to Glasgow tomorrow to record the voice track with voice actors Cora Bissett and Sean Biggerstaff and sound designer Stephen Gilmour. It's all coming together nicely!

Last music recording

Written by Helen Jackson.

An exciting but sad day yesterday - our final music recording session for The Lost Book. Composer Alexis Bennett (left, discussing the music with viola player Kathryn Jourdan) travelled up to Edinburgh on Thursday evening, finishing off the music on the train. A new set of players assembled on Friday morning. Two exhilarating hours later, the recording was done. We had new players because our regulars were in another recording studio - the SCO is recording Mozart’s Symphonies 29, 31, 32, 35 and 36 with the great Sir Charles Mackerras this week. You can follow their progress on their blog - it's a fascinating glimpse of how the orchestra works.

So, we were delighted to welcome Mike Bennett on the trumpet (left), Mark Bailey on the cello (middle) and Kathryn Jourdan on the viola (right). The recording was done by three students from the University of Edinburgh's MSc Sound Design course - Gav Fort (top photo right), Liam Webster (bottom right) and Simon Herron. Thanks everyone for a great session and some fabulous music! We have some video taken at the session which we'll post next week sometime.

First rendered frames

Written by Helen Jackson.

The render farm has finished our first shot of episode 6 - Aileen and Lyn in the dojo:

Hurrah! The music recording session is tomorrow morning - various drafts have been coming through from Alexis Bennett all day. It's all getting very exciting!

Episode 6 - animation rough

Written by Helen Jackson.

The animation rough for episode 6 is finished and handed over to sound designer Stephen and composer Alexis. Three cheers!

The rough still has our scratch track for the voices - we don't record Cora and Sean until Sunday. The timings of all the action are finalised - although, we do still have quite a lot of finishing off to do: all the 2D graphics/animation (pub sign, newspapers/magazines, text message), the character movement in the Sheep Heid Inn and some of the smaller movements in the cleaning/dominoes shot and the Watson laser beams shot.

By the way, we're using the Aileen character model for Aileen's mum at the moment. The fully-rendered version will be an older version of Aileen, with grey hair and different clothes.

Aileen learns kung fu

Written by Helen Jackson.

I grabbed the "Aileen training to be in Invisible Inc." shot, because I knew it would be entertaining to work on. I used the mostly-but-not-entirely spurious justification that I am Binary Fable's martial arts expert.

(Judo classes. Aged five.)

Then I spent a lot of time on YouTube. I've said it before and I'll say it again, YouTube is a brilliant source of reference video, particularly for anything that would be too exhausting to act out myself. Here are a few screen captures from the resulting routine:

(It was great fun to animate!)

Episode 6 - animatic

Written by Helen Jackson.

We've got a draft script, a set of storyboards, and an animatic so you can start to see how episode 6 will work.

First up, congratulations (and thanks!) to the people whose story ideas made it into the episode: Meg, for Kyle and Aileen’s date and for Aileen’s article; IndiaJones and Lulu for Watson’s evidence-gathering; Bookaddictus for Beryl’s arrest; Tom for Aileen joining Invisible Inc.; and Headlong for Aileen’s Mum getting released.

The animatic is very rough: storyboard sketches put together with a scratch track (a recording of the script as read by Adam and me). What it does for us is allows us to plan the timings of each sequence. This is a much slower episode than episode 5: although a lot of stories are included, they're being recollected calmly. It takes the pace down from the frenetic activity of the rescue scene, so that we're ready to leave the characters at the end.

We're still discussing which library Otto is working in and what Professor Remi is doing (we snuck her story in on a magazine cover!) so there are some details that need to be finalised.

In the meantime, we're working on the animation. We need to have all the animation finished by Wednesday morning so that we can hand a "rough" over to composer Alexis Bennett. It's a pleasure to welcome Alexis back to the project - he wrote the music for episode 1 way back in January.

Lunch and storyboards

Written by Helen Jackson.

We really did have lunch at the Sheep Heid Inn, Duddingston. Many thanks to D.J., who didn't just give us lunch but made us welcome, gave us a tour, a history lesson, and an introduction to the sheep heid that gives the pub its name (well, the 19th century copy - made when the original, presented by James VI, was sold).

The photos here show the sign and the BookCrossing shelf in the main bar area.

Adam and I have been talking about storyboards for the last several days, but today is the day they need to be finished. We have a script roughed out - I'll post it later - and, of course, we know which stories need to be included.

Episode 6 is very different to normal, because it will be told using voiceover narration rather than dialogue. We normally record the actors before we start animation - typically we'd have had a recording session this week - so that we can match the animation to the dialogue. But, that's not needed with voiceover so we won't be going into the recording studio until the end of next week.

What this means is that we'll be using a "scratch" voice track as we work. A scratch track is a rough recording we make ourselves, so that we have a guide to timings. It's very rough - you'll hear it on the animatic.

It also means that we can continue to tweak the script for a little longer than usual...

Composer's blog - recording

Written by Michael Ferguson.

After working intensely on the score for a couple of days, there is nothing more thrilling than hearing the musicians bringing the music to life in the recording session. As I have mentioned previously, I generally map out my initial musical ideas for the episode on a computer, and like Blair and Alexis, I produce a computer synthesised demo soundtrack in order to give Helen, Adam and Stephen a good idea of how the final recorded music would sound.

It is always my primary concern, however, to compose music that will sound good with the live musicians. Working on a computer can sometimes be a bit misleading, and one has to be careful to write music that is actually playable by real players!

The practicalities of the recording process were also at the forefront of my mind when I was composing. With modern multi-track recording techniques (like those used by Liam and the crew in the studios at Edinburgh University), it is possible to add extra parts to the musical texture in a process called ‘overdubbing’. In this technique, a musician can make a recording on top of the material they have just played, which is then played back simultaneously with the original recording, giving the effect of two musicians playing. Having a relatively small number of players to perform the score, this technique was useful in allowing me to include parts that I couldn’t have included otherwise. It was particularly useful in creating a slightly ‘denser’ sound at some important moments.

This being said, as I was composing my music, I made a conscious effort to keep the need for overdubs in the recording session to an absolute minimum. There are a couple of reasons behind my doing this: the sound created by the ensemble of musicians playing ‘live’ in the studio together is generally much tighter and more musically homogenous than that created by numerous overdubs, as the musicians can respond and tune to each other’s playing in real-time, and they gain an immediate sense of their ‘role’ in musical texture. Another reason is that the overdub process tends to significantly slow pace of the recording process. This can frustrate musicians and sound engineers alike, which obviously does not have a positive effect on the end result! In many ways, composing in a way that avoids heavy overdubbing added significantly to the challenge, and certainly contributed to a test of compositional ‘craft’, which can be no bad thing.

Composer's blog - Mickey Mousing

Written by Michael Ferguson.

The action in the second half of episode 5 moves very quickly, with the added twist of the revelation that Otto is not evil, but is actually the brother of Lyn, and one half of Invisible Inc. It was important that the music provided effective underscore to the succession of different underlying emotions and tensions in the scene, and at the same time moved seamlessly through the sequence in a way that made musical sense.

At certain points in the action, I felt that it was appropriate to mirror physical movements on screen with musical gestures in the soundtrack (sometimes called “Mickey-Mousing”). Examples of this can be heard accompanying the shot where Lynn is abseiling down the building, and where she swings on the rope through the window towards the end of the episode.

Composer's blog - Otto's theme

Written by Michael Ferguson.

By now, various musical themes have been well established in The Lost Book series, and I know that Alexis, Blair and myself have had lots of fun re-working and exploring each other’s thematic material over the course of the different episodes! I felt a responsibility to keep the themes alive in episode 5, and I knew that there was still plenty of scope for exploring the material in order to create something new.

In episode 3, I attempted to establish a sinister theme for Otto Dafé, which is heard when Aileen first mentions his name in Copper Beeches Café (as he simultaneously walks past the table), and is then continued and reinforced in the credit sequence. I decided that, as Otto is a central figure in episode 5, it would be a good idea to continue to associate this musical material with the character. Fragments of the original ‘Otto Theme’ can therefore be heard at the beginning of episode 5, where Otto is hiding in the cupboard, and in a more explicitly recognisable variation as Otto bursts out of the vent towards Aileen and Prof. Remi later on in the sequence.

Have a listen to an audio clip of the theme as it was originally presented in episode 3, and the new variation as it appears in episode 5, when Otto bursts from the vent. See if you can hear the thematic relationship between the extracts.

• Listen to Otto theme - original (episode 3)
• Listen to Otto theme - variation (episode 5)

Composer's blog - a good ‘standalone’ trio

Written by Michael Ferguson.

After a gap of two months since writing the music for episode 3, I was very excited to be returning to compose the score for episode 5. As soon as I read the script, I knew that the episode was going to be action-packed! The animatic and animation rough gave me a very good idea of how the story would be paced, and I realised straight away that my musical accompaniment would need to complement this pacing, and help drive the action forward towards the energetic final sequences.

In my score for episode 3, I had chosen to write music for flute, viola and cello, and I decided that using this combination of instruments again in episode 5 would allow the same flexibility in range, texture and musical timbre. I find that these instruments make a particularly good ‘standalone’ trio, as each instrument can naturally and comfortably occupy a different pitch range and musical function within a texture; something that is a common feature of musical ensembles. The cello’s range, for example, enables it to comfortably provide the low bass foundation of the trio’s sound, while the viola can comfortably occupy the middle and upper ranges, and the flute is most comfortable in the highest and brightest portion of the sound. Of course, the fact that these instruments are played by SCO musicians means that this basic pitch relationship can abandoned if need be, as these virtuosic players are used to playing in the most extreme ranges of their instruments!

[Editor's note: more from Michael throughout this week.]

Lighting in the dark

Written by Helen Jackson.

We've talked before about how we light a scene - and make sure that there's enough light on our characters. But, episode 5 is quite different. Everything apart from the first scene is set in the dark. So, how do we light that?!

Let's break down the lighting used in the second scene, when Otto is hiding in the cupboard. There's no window in the cupboard and the light isn't on, so the only light is coming from the corridor via the glazed fanlight above the door, and sneaking through around the edges of the door. We need to be able to see what's going on - but we also need to see that it's dark.

First up, we put lights into the corridor (1). Then some smaller points of light around Otto (2). Finally, two lights deeper in the cupboard to create some highlights (3).

And, one finishing touch. Beryl Potts's henchpeople are running past outside, so you'd expect the light at the edges of the door to be blocked as they pass. We added and animated blocks that are people-sized (if not entirely people shaped - they're the strange pink things) so that the light round the door changes as the henchpeople run by.

Hey presto - you can see what's going on in the dark! (Just.)

Settling new scores

Written by Adam Brewster.

We are rather pushed for time this week, but here's a taster of the fabulous music Michael Ferguson has written for episode five. I took the camcorder along to yesterday's recording session where we had Jane Atkins (viola), Janet Larsson (flute) and David Watkin (cello) upping the ante and bringing the action packed score to life. It was intense - as you can see from the concentration on the faces of Liam Webster and team in the control room. The composer's smile says it all, though. It was a great session and we are really looking forward to getting the final mix into this episode. Well done team.

Music recording tomorrow

Written by Helen Jackson.

I love this bit! Composer Michael Ferguson has just sent across a computer-generated version of the music for episode 5. It sounds amazing. There's musical wizardry going on that ties together all the previous Lost Book themes yet makes something new. We're hoping Michael will have time later this week to blog about his work.

The recording session is tomorrow morning. Michael has chosen to work with viola, flute and cello (as he did in episode 3). Our players are Jane Atkins on the viola, flautist Janet Larsson and - for the first time - David Watkin on the cello.

David is Principal Cello at the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Few other musicians have achieved prominence at the highest level in both ‘period instrument’ and ‘modern’ worlds: he is Principal Cello of the English Baroque Soloists and Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, and was Principal Cello of the Philharmonia for five years and of Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment before joining the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. For more, read David's biography.