The Flip books.

At the beginning of the year we made some really fun little flip books, that experimented with some of the principles of animation. I really enjoyed making these,  and enjoyed experimenting with different characters. 

I found that making these where a really good way to begin animation, and really helped me settle into the rhythm of making animation. 

Evaluation of Animate it.

To begin this evaluation, I’d like to talk about my ability to organise my time, or lack of it. For this project I feel I didn’t do a very good job of managing how much time I had to create this animation, I feel that I have rushed it more than I would have liked too. I would have liked to add sound and to add colour to the final animation, but I ran out of time and now the animation is in black, white and grey, without sound. I found the process of making the animation to be very enjoyable, I particularly enjoyed using the computers to create the animation, especially using the cintiq’s, as I’d never used one properly before, and found using them to be much easier than I was expecting. I found that at first I was stuck between which of the topics to choose, but I thought lateness would be a good topic, as I have a lot of experience in that department.  I made the decision that I didn’t want the typical being late for school, an appointment or work etc.. So I went with the idea of it being late in the morning.

I’m relatively happy with the animation, I feel that the animated yawn I’ve created is the best part as I feel it has a lot of movement and humour. I wanted the yawn to be the most prominent part of the animation but didn’t want it to be overly theatrical, as I wanted it to be a much more natural movement keeping the emphasis while still maintaining the yawns prominence with in the animation, and feel that is what I have achieved. I felt that it would really capture the point of how tired the character was. I also feel I have paid attention to detail, as I have hidden some iconic posters into the background of the animation, and am happy with the rooms. I am also relatively happy with the way I have shown the development of time, I feel I’ve incorporated the moments where the time is needed to be seen, but I’m not happy with the way I executed it, I feel I could have done better In the animating process.

Looking back I would have maybe done more research into how to properly animate the quick changes needed to show the time on the clock changing. I would also have liked to learn more about how to properly add colour to the animation, as I am not 100% sure how to do it yet. I would have liked to add sound to really make the animation pop a little more, for example having the sound of the character actually yawning, or the sounds of the clicks of the mouse and typing on to the keyboard.  On reflection I would also have liked to be more detailed and prepared in my storyboard work, before committing myself to the animation process, and will endeavour to do this in future preparation.

Group Critique

We recently got to view each others take on the animate project, and the give and receive constructive criticism. I really enjoyed this, I found that hearing other people opinions on my animation to be really helpful, as I now know how I can better myself with my animation in the future. A lot of the advise I was given was to slow my animations down, as a lot happened in a very short amount of time, and people would like to see more of the backgrounds and character its self. Personally I agree with their advise and plan to keep that in mind in future animations. 
I also found seeing other peoples take on the brief was really interesting, I enjoyed seeing how other members of the class had different styles and ideas. 

Animate some inspiration.

I took inspiration for the character design for my animate it project from the popular animated tv show Miraculous ladybug. I love the designs on the show and took inspiration from one of the main protagonists Adrian Agreste. I wanted a similar style for my character, even if my animation is in 2D and not in 3D animation. I liked the way this characters hair fly's outwards, and wanted my character to have a similar look to it. I also liked his relatively basic design, and wanted the same for my own character, I did want my character to seam older and much more tiered and to have a much more refined square jaw.

Humpty Dumpty.

I feel that I need to put more information into making the humpty dumpty board, as I didn't really explain much about how the whole process of making the story board went. I began by choosing a nursery rhyme, and after being torn between several rhymes I finally decided to go in the direction of Humpty dumpty, but instead of having a traditional egg, I wanted it to be more character based, and to have the rhyme be centred around a couple braking up. I think that going with something a little different might be an interesting turn on a classic story. I feel that this did work, even if the plot was a little lacking. I decided to create the storyboard out of silhouettes, I wanted to add some form of mystery as too what the characters actually look like.   

I took inspiration to create this storyboards from an animation I found, the animation added really life silhouette of people with animation incorporated into it. The backgrounds are drawn in, we're as real people are featured as the silhouettes.

I love the use of real life and animation, and the serial atmosphere of this animation. 

There's even a behind the scenes explaining how the animation has been made. I found this really interesting, to see how the whole story had been created, really inspired me. 

Each Image from the Animatic.

I thought I'd upload zomed in images of the storyboard that gives a chance to actually see the story bored instead of seeing a quick flash of it in the animatic.

Creating the animation

Creating the animation.

I've decided to animate using Photoshop, personally usually I would rather use flash to create an animation, but I have used Photoshop before, and we recently had inductions into how to use the program so I was a little more confident with it. I found that using the timeline is simple but I do know that using animate is simpler. I've decided not too colour the animation in, due to the close deadline. I've made the decision to use shading, and too only shade the character as he is the key part of the animation. I want too make the shading change with each image, so that it gives the animation more movement.

10-15 Seconds - 2

The Animatic

So we've arrived at the animatic, It should be around twelve seconds long as I hoped, but that's just the animatic, whitest making the actual animation the time might change. I found making the animatic to be a rather rewarding experience, this is due to being able to see the concept but actually getting to see it move. The movement made it feel more real almost. I am real please with how its turned out. Creating it was much easier than I had anticipated.

10-15 seconds - 1

Ten to 15 second Animation

I've chosen the topic of lateness to create my animation, so far this animation has been going rather well, I've created a very basic storyboard on paper and then digitally I've made some miner adjustments and refined the drawing a little.

Comparing the two you can definitely see the difference in the boards.

As you can see the storyboards greatly improved after creating them digitally. Next I will be creating an animatic to go along with the storyboards. I hope that the animatic will show that the storyboard will last for around 12 seconds.

The basic idea behind the story is that it is Late in the morning, and this young man is up late working, as time goes by he gets sleepier and sleepier, until he is abruptly woken up by his 6 am alarm.

AfterMaf

After coming home from maf, I spent more time working on my animation and have pretty much finished 15 seconds all I need to add now the background and the shading and then I will be done, I may add sound but in the meantime I'm not sure as we don't have that much time left to finish it as it is due in on the 28th. I would like to be able too, but I am pushing it for time, and feel that it is unlikely I will be able to reach this goal. 

Set Series Sequence.

Set Series Sequence.

I feel that it is necessary me to elaborate a little more on the set series sequence project.  I found this project to be rather difficult. Drawing the 24 images I didn't find to hard, but creating the 12 from that 24, became a bit of a challenge. I found that putting the wizard into different interesting scenarios was quite the challenge after a bit. A wizard can be over done, I know, but I felt I wanted to stay with more of a classical theme, as magic goes hand in hand with crystals a lot of the time. 

After this came the making of the storyboards, and my word did I find that hard to do. Usual I enjoy making a storyboard, but this one I did not. I began by making a basic fantasy shop design, and went with that. My biggest mistake with this brief was not thinking my ideas through. After I'd created and finished the board, I looked it over, and frankly it didn't have much plot, and no ending to it, this made me ask for a second opinion, and a third and then a forth, I think you get the picture. After asking my classmates and some of my tutors, I came to the rounding conclusion, that It need to be changed. This led me to make an entirely new board, this one had plot yes, but was short, and frankly lacked a little something. Now this got me thinking, why not incorporate both boards into one. So that's what I've done, and I'm actually relatively happy with it, I mean its not the best thing in the world but its much better than it was. It had a larger plot, granted its not the best, but it had more than before, and I found that people seamed to understand the concept of the idea more.

I think I've learnt a lot from this brief, mainly think things through before diving in blind.

Week 8 - MAF

Week eight


This has been quite an interesting week, at the beginning of the year we were told about a thing called the Manchester animation Festival (MAF for short), during this week we went to it. We where there for three days as the festival lasted three days and found the experience very enjoyable, we got to see a few early previewed films for example the red turtle and Ethel and Ernest. And were also shown the screening of Clash of the Titans the classic animated film that has inspired millions. My favourite part of the whole festival was Ethel and Ernest I really enjoyed watching the making of it and I enjoyed watching the film itself and cried like a baby all the way through. The animation was nicely done, and the character designs where amazing. I also enjoyed watching some of the student made films, as each film showed a lot of dedication had gone into making them. One of my favourite short films even if it was in a student film was called Mr Medila, I found it to be extremely funny well made enjoyable. The whole audience was in hysterics while watching it and frankly I completely agree with them it was very funny. 

Week 7 - Animation.

Week seven

We began the week with animation skills, We were given the brief animate it, which require us to create a 10 to 15 seconds long animation . We where given a selection of topics to do with the animation, I chose lateness as mine. I began thinking of storyboard ideas on the day , and did a few initial sketches of some ideas, rough ones that didn't really have much of a storyline to them. After discussing with my tutors and he looked over my work, and he agreed that one of the storyboards seemed to have more of a plot and like the idea. So taking on board I decided to go further with it and created a refined storyboard. From there I've created an animatic which is a form of putting the storyboard into a video format to see if it will work as an animation, and to get the right timing. Luckily it did and I have begun creating the animation now. 

The last two images here are the storyboards I decided to go with.