THE FINAL ANIMATION

THE FINAL ANIMATION

This is my final animation, overall, I am disappointed with it. I changed my idea, far too late in the day to make an animation I was happy with. The animation is far, far, too static, and has no real movement which was planned to begin with. It was no one's fault but my own. I had a solid, coherent idea to begin with, and Instead of sticking too it, I overthought it, and made everything far too complicated. The best thing about the animation, is the designs of the characters, which stayed consistent, however overall, there was nothing I was impressed with at all. Their was not enough time to research the sound effects and make any myself because of my own stupidity. If I had stuck to my idea to start with, then I would have had an animation I am happy with, however it is what it is, and I will have to deal with it. I had no animatic for this version, and all of my backgrounds were improvised because of my time constraints I set on myself. IN future I need to remember to time out what I want to do, and then stick to it, using research and all the pre production techniques I have learned since being at the college of Art. I am disappointed in myself because I know that I could have done better.

Character Turn Around and Change of Idea

Character turn around

This is the character turn around I came up with upon returning from MAF, I decided animating the character was becoming far too hard without one, so I decided to do one now, based on the design of "Red Turtle" the studio ghibli animation we saw at MAF. I loved the way the eyes looked in this animated feature, so I took some inspiration from that style to update my characters.

CHANGING IDEAS AGAIN!!!!

I have decided that with my time constraints, I have been too ambitious in what I wanted to achieve with my animation, therefore I decided to go back to my original idea, of having the 2 on the train. This does mean scrapping my backgrounds I have already done, however the animation is going far too quickly, therefore I want to change my idea again, back to what it originally was. This is going to be quite a challenge in the next 5 days to try and get the animation redone, I will try and use the animation I have already done and rework some of it so that I am not overworking myself. Below I am posting the first scene of my new animation. It is only 2 seconds so far, so I need to get working on more. The problem with this, is that it has no animatic or storyboard, so I am taking my old storyboard to try and time it out, I am scared however that this will mean it is far too rushed and wont work the way I want it to.

ANIMATIC AND THE START OF THE ANIMATION

This is the animatic for my animation, in this we see the storyboard come to life, without the detail, and just as a simple line map. I was going to do my animatic as a storyboard scanned in, but decided against it, because the storyboard I had done, did not show the correct amount of movement, and therefore the timing of the animation would be off. However, I have not yet done turn around of my character, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to draw over and over. Therefore I am going to start doing a turn around,

This is the start of my animation, now with a bus moving in. I am quite happy with how this turned out, especially the bus, however I feel as though this animation will be too quick, and I need to sort out the timing of where everything is going to go. As we are going to Manchester Animation festival next week, I feel as though some work is going to get unfinished, so I need to make a plan on where y animation is going to go when we get back.

ANIMATION - THE START OF AN ANIMATION

STARTING TO ANIMATE

Re-storyboard

To re - start this animation, I started drawing up some quick background ideas, which would set the basis for my final animation. As I have changed my idea, I needed to completely redo all the backgrounds and revamp the story. I know I shouldn't change my idea, as there is a long period of the time for this brief already gone, however I feel as though the animation will be stronger if I change this up, as the background is based on an area of where I used to live in Australia, therefore it was closer to me.



Background tests

When starting my backgrounds, I had to decide on the aesthetic of what I wanted the background to be, so I decided to draw up 2 different ones. 1 decided to go with 1 very clean, and 1 which was very sketchy. I knew I would be animating in sketchbook pro, and therefore I could choose which one to implement and when. Overall I was more impressed with the top one, as I believe the lighting in general was better, and went for the general feel that I was going for. The way the backgrounds were done, is using reference from google maps, as I cannot visit the area anymore, and also using the quick sketch and sketches on my storyboards for this animation. The 2nd one on this had a sort of fish eye effect, which I really enjoyed and therefore may go back and visit at a later date.

ANIMATION: RETURN OF THE CHARACTER

CHARACTER DESIGN AND STORYBOARD?

After messing around with backgrounds and character design some more, I decided it was about time to start storyboarding my animation. I knew generally how I wanted it to play out, and the type of shot I wanted to use, however I knew pulling them off was going to be hard, so having a storyboard would definitely help with this. 

This was the basic storyboard which I mapped out for my animation. With this, I tried to explore the vibrancy of the colour in the character's hair, and play around with different shots which would make my animation interesting. I really liked the way this storyboard turned out, and I would love to say that I kept to this however..

The problems occurred...

My own worst enemy, is myself, as I overthink things, and therefore have a tendency to change my idea. I like the concept of my idea, however, I wanted to change my designs and the setting of the animation from a train, to a bus, and the characters to be younger looking do they were easier to draw. I thoroughly believe in my original idea, however, I feel as though the animation might be stronger if it has a more simplistic art style.

This is the new direction I want to take my characters. I have made them look younger, I have given them faces for more emotion, whilst still maintaining the minimalist detail in their appearance. I feel as though this will make the animation far easier to animate. I will now re- storyboard my animation going into the weekend, and then produce an animatic of it so that I can start the animation itself.

ANIMATION: THE CHARACTER DESIGN STRIKES BACK

ANIMATION PROGRESS:

 This is how my characters for my animation have started out. I knew from the start I would need both a boy and a girl, so I decided to do a quick sketchbook character sheet of both of them. Both of them have quite similar styles and were just I grey scale for the purposes of the what I wanted to achieve, which was a general shape and feel for the characters, although I feel as though they are a little too complex for what I ultimately want to achieve with this.

Backgrounds

As well as these, I also wanted to consider some backgrounds for my animation, which I did by looking at the inside of a train carriage online, finding a few reference sources, and experimenting with digital colour on these images.

I think what I like about this background, is the similarities between this and the original image I came up with when I first started my animation, I like the lighting and general feel of this background as I feel it fits the style I am going for. What I also tried to do, is put own the opacity of the brushes I was using, so as to make the colours a little less vibrant. This was purposeful, as I could then make the characters be the main focus of the scene, rather than have a super detailed vibrant background taking away the focus of the viewer. I will continue to focus on these backgrounds as I continue to develop this animation,

ANIMATION: A NEW BRIEF

AN ANIMATION TASK

Thoughts on this new task

Although I am busy at work on visual language with the 24 drawings brief, I immediately started working on ideas for the new animation task we have been set. Which is a 10-15 second animation portraying a word of choice from a list. Immediately my eyes were drawn to love, longing and fear of the words, as all 3 I could relate to.

As soon as I thought of longing, I thought of someone longing after someone after seeing them for the first time, and longing to talk to them. And I had an idea immediately to base the entire animation around the idea of sitting on a train, because that is somewhere this situation would arise, and it also a setting I am familiar with and could easily experience myself. My idea in my head was so strong that I dropped everything I was doing to start working on initial sketches and doing research into train carriages and different styles which would make the situation work.

My idea

The idea that I had, is a guy sitting on a train, and seeing a girl, who smiles at him, and blushes,  the girl then leaves the train leaving the guy reaching after her in a longing pose. The way I envisioned this, was on the London underground, where the seats face each other, therefore making the idea work. This would also mean that the area would be quite crowded and therefore I want to have a definitive feature on each of the characters, at the moment I am thinking of having the hair of the main 2 characters be a significantly different colour which would make them stand out to the crowd, this will probably end up being either pink or blue.

Potential Problems

Even before starting any designs for this animation, it does feel very complex already, however I feel as this it is a solid concept, capable of showing the emotion I want, so I want to challenge myself and see if I can pull it off.

The Final Storyboard

The Final Storyboard

When it came to the final storyboard, I experimented both in digital and hand drawn for the final one. However, I decided to just keep to hand drawn, as I was much more comfortable with this.




The images show my final storyboard itself. Overall I was very happy with the way my storyboard turned out, in my opinion, it portrays the story I was trying to tell, whilst also putting a twist on to the classic nursery rhyme of 'Baa Baa Black Sheep'.

What I did well:

In my opinion, which was supported by my peers in a critical analysis, what went well most of all, was the shading. The darkness of the storyboard set the tone of the story which enhanced it in a new light and made it feel much more sinister. A note from my peers also said that my range of shots was good, meaning that the cinematography displayed in the storyboard was executed well. I also enjoyed the usage of shadow I displayed with this.

Things to improve:

What I feel I could improve with this storyboard, is having more frames in there to show the motion of each character's movements, I think if I put the storyboard into an animatic it may look very jumpy therefore in future, I will make sure to include all the motions of my characters in my final storyboard, just to make it more "animated" per say.

My final thoughts on this storyboard are generally positive, it seemed to be well received by my peers, and the use of shadow, and the coherency of the story were shown well.

The Tale of the Storyboards

Storyboards

The task of the storyboard, was to think of a nursery rhyme, and present it, as a storyboard, with matching visuals for the rhyme itself. There was no limitations to how we presented this, in terms of style or tone, we were given a free reign on most things. Therefore I chose to do Baa Baa black sheep, with a twist. In my opinion it would have been too obvious to just go with the classic tale of baa baa black sheep without updating it, and giving it my own personal twist. So I decided to take a more dark and sinister approach with it, almost like a horror movie, whilst still staying true to the rhyme. To start this I searched up the rhyme, and started to make some initial sketches as to where I wanted the storyboard to go. I started with sketches of the sheep, trying to figure out how I would make a small innocent little sheep look sinister.

This is the original concept that I came up with. this had 3 images of a sheep, a long with a quick sketch of a character that would be talking to the sheep in the setting.

Along the lines, I thought about making the sheep some sort of black market dealer, with, stereotypically in movies, are usually smoking, sitting behind a desk, in a large warehouse, so I decided to give these features to the sheep, in some sort of anthropomorphist way which would make the sheep a little bit more human.

After deciding on my general story, the next step was to decide on how the story would look visually. The best way to do this, was to draw it out roughly using post it notes and then put it up on the wall so that I could see where each drawing would go in terms of the animation. Having now drawn out all of the post it notes, I can start drawing up my storyboard in full. I plan to do this digitally, however I will decide which looks better at the time with a few simple tests. I also know that I want to make use of shadow to make the scene more sinister and dark than the original nursery rhyme.

Side Post - The idea change behind the 24 frame Animation

My Original Idea

The original Idea I had for "strike a pose", (the 24 frame animation which shows an object moving from one place, to another) was to make an egg fall over and hatch out a little chick, or at least have the implication of this.

This is the original behind frame map for the 24 frame animation where I was deciding where the key frames should go. However, I quickly decided against this idea, as I wasn't too sure of where everything should go and I wasn't passionate about the idea at all, it was only an idea because I had to make it an idea, which personally I hate doing, so I decided to move on to something a little closer to my interests.

This was the idea for my 2nd attempt at the 24 frame animation, It showed a character, Batman, jumping from one rooftop to the other. I was more passionate idea, as character design is something I love, and making characters move is something I am eager to learn. My concern for this, was the timing, and the complexity of the character moving and jumping as my first lone animation. Therefore I decided to zoom into the animation and make it a walk cycle instead.

This was what became of the Batman walk cycle, which would eventually change, but I was pleased with this idea, as it was simple, and drawing Batman over and over was no challenge, however the problem arose when I added in a head turn and over complicated everything again, therefore the idea changed again.

The idea then changed to a walk cycle of Link from the Legend of Zelda series. I really enjoyed this idea, and I was happy with the drawing overall, however this was too complex as well as it would involve a lot of components moving, and for my first proper animation I decided to again change the idea, however I would like to return to this idea in the future and try it again. It was becoming ever closer to the brief deadline however so I decided to go for something super simple. Which evolved into the final animation which is shown and explained on the previous post.

Week 2: Flipbooks and the 2 Second Animation

Week 2 had a much more hands on approach to work, after the general admin work of week 1. Week 2 started the first taste in to the world and working of animation. This week had us looking at movement in animation. In particular, the principle of squash and stretch, this principle involves the exaggerated constricting and stretching of an object when it is animated to bring the object to life.

Task 1: The Flipbook

The brief of the flipbook task, was to make 3 (using what we had learned about the principle of squash and stretch) flipbooks. One, with a ball bouncing up and down in place, the next, bouncing up and down, but arcing off to the side and bouncing away, and the third, to create one of our own, based on the principle of squash and stretch. The one I chose to do is a small cat like character bouncing up and down, after a few failed attempts at other things. It took a few attempts at the first one too, with the original bounce, due to me overcomplicating things for myself, so I restarted and was able to manage all 3.

What I could have done better:

All in all I think the flipbooks went well, however there was obvious and somewhat simple mistakes which led to restarting a couple of times, and changing ideas for the third one. Often what was happening was I was squashing the objects down, however I was not stretching them back up again, so it always felt like their was a frame missing from what should have been a fluid animation, I also struggled to properly flip the books which probably didn't help.

Task 2: The 2 Second Animation

We were taught about the use of traditional animation, and how to pull this off, and were given a task to make a traditional animation using a pendulum swing, just to test the ropes of how to make this look fluid and with proper physics. We were then given the brief to make a 2 second animation, with an object going from one place to another, within the 16:9 window which would make the animation compatible with a regular screen view. With my general interest being in character's. I just to do a character running and jumping, however, this caused me a lot of problems. I was struggling to keep the same proportions from one frame to another and I was overall unhappy with how it was turning out, which brought about the first change of idea. I decided to do a small egg character falling down and hatching, but after a while I felt this idea was uncreative, and I wanted to push myself more, which led to the 2nd change in idea. From here I decided to go back to the idea of a character running, but zooming in on the top half of a character to make it easier on myself, however again, I was struggling to keep the proportions from frame to frame. With the hand in coming ever closer, and having changed my idea 3 times over, I decided I needed to make it simpler, and bring it right down to the simplest possible thing, so I changed the idea to a small circular robot, which would launch up and fall down, I wanted to show a lot of emotion in his face, so that even though the idea was very simple, it would at least show some technique. The idea worked, and the animation came out fluid and simple, however there was definite problems. which I would definitely change given the opportunity.

What I could have done better, and what followed:

I could have added in more realism to the robot, and had his antenna on his head move with the movement of his body, which would have added some extra depth to the animation. Overall, I am unhappy with what I produced, I could have made something more complex. and the idea was far too simple. I am now working on a new one in my own time with a character walk cycle, although I met the brief to begin with, I, myself am unhappy with how simple and overall unimpressive the idea is, and how it was pulled off. I am hoping the character walk cycle will work out better for me.

Week 1: Introduction and the Principles of Animation

Week 1

Week 1 had no animating per say,  we were given an overview of the course, with some small tasks here and there, but the main takeaway I got from the week, was the principles of animation, as well as being shown some animations from the past years to give an idea of what I can achieve by working hard for the next 3 years.

Principles of Animation

1. Squash and Stretch

This is exaggerating the bounce of an object to make it more alive, the best example is using a bouncing ball, the way it squashes down and stretches with making contact with another object.

2. Anticipation

This is the communication of what is about to happen, and the thought process of the movement that goes into an action. This is the stage that sets up the action of a certain character or object and how it is about to move.

3. Staging

This is "setting the stage" like in theatre, when you are setting about the general mood of a scene or a specific character by communicating the idea through imagery to the audience

4. Straight ahead and Pose to Pose

Straight ahead animation is animation frame by frame from scratch without the use of key frames. Usually a spontaneous action which cant be mapped out, such as smoke dissipating or very exaggerated movement.

Pose to Pose is mapping out the key frames first, in order to better relate the idea of a scene through specific action,

5. Follow through and overlapping action

This essentially is the way an object or character moves after the main action has taken place. To make the action seem more believable, in that the body should not stop moving after an action has taken place.

6. Slow out - Slow in

This is the reaction of the human body of slowing down and accelerating for certain actions , this is affected buy the amount of frames in an animation, with less frames in a faster actions, and more frames for a slower action.

7. Arcs

Most actions in animation will follow an arcing  motion

8.Secondary Actions

A secondary action is an action which supports the primary action, basically an action which follows on from the main action to make the first action more realistic or exaggerated.

9. Timing

Timing, in my opinion, is the most important principle of animation, the timing of an animation could make or break a successful movement and it determines when and how the animation is going to fit together. It is helpful to use references from real life to help with the timing of an animation.

10.Exaggeration

Exaggeration is another important principle in my opinion, exaggeration is a property of animation which you often cant get in real life, making the animation bigger, faster, with broader actions, to make the animation more imposing and more visually interesting for the audience.

11. Solid drawing

It is important in any art form to make the drawings solid, this will give more life to the animation by making it clear to the audience what is being animated.

12. Appeal

The basis of any animation depends on whether the animation is visually appealing. The animation has to have colours relating to the subject matter and appealing characters which will hold the audience's attention.