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.