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.

Week 6 - Inductions

Week six

A month in, and I feel I've learnt a lot. This week we had some more inductions and Photoshop, our lesson on Monday was cancelled, but in the afternoon we had a Photoshop inductions so all was well. Tuesday we had a visual language lesson all day which was rather enjoyable, on Tuesday we were given a new brief which is to do with environments, where we are asked to go and find either building or some form of interesting design and do some drawings of them, to improve our backgrounds and visual understanding. I'm excited to do more in this brief as I would love to improve my ability to draw backgrounds as I know it is quite a hard thing to be able to do. On Friday we were given our first PPP lesson which I enjoyed quite a lot, and another induction this one showing us how to use Adobe premiere.

Week 5 - Crystals and such

Week five

http://www.catherinevarga.com/wp-content/

uploads/2012/08/quartz-crystal-web1.j

During this week, we were given a new task. We were asked to randomly select a piece of paper, each piece of paper having an individual word on it, I was given the word crystal. Now I wasn't sure at first where to go with this, the brief asked us to do 24 drawings that represent this word then create 12 drawings from one of the images. I struggled a little to do the 24 drawings as there was a lot to do and frankly I ran out of ideas at some points but did power through. I also realised that crystal has a lot of meaning, it could be associated with magic, it can be associated with healing things, or Spiritual thing. From the 24 drawings I selected the wizard it may be predictable but I like the classics, from there I created 12 images each of the wizard and a crystal in different scenarios and poses. We worked on this more or less the entire week, and I did really enjoy it, the part that I struggled most with was when we had to create the storyboard. Whilst making the first storyboard, I realised that I didn't really know where I was going with it. This inevitably gave the story no real plot. Or that it had a plot but it didn't really know where it was going was is almost as if it was the beginning of a story not a whole story so taking this on board I decided to remake my storyboard and made another page where the wizards creates magic with the crystal. But then I realise that maybe I could incorporate both together via the first storyboard in the second storyboard and make a story from them that actually made sense. Now that I've created this storyboard I feel that it does make a lot more sense than the others and actually quite happy with it.

Review.

During the start of week 4, we had a peers review, this was regarding the story boards we had created. I found this to be a very interesting experience, It was good to hear the views other people had on my work. We put our work up around the classroom, and using post it notes, we wrote three things about each others work, two being positive one being constructive criticism. 

Here are some images of the reviews I was given on the work I did. I'm pleased with what people had to say about my work, and will take on board the criticisms I've been given.

 We also had a few more inductions, learning some basic skills in Photoshop.