Month: January 2022

I feel as though my skills in all areas throughout this module have improved and I have learned new things along the way that have helped make me more confident in the animating process. Character design was my favourite part of the module as I learned so many new things about how to use basic shapes to create a character. I also tried different exercises that I have never done before, which improved my skills and confidence immensely. I also enjoyed animating with forms. This is something new to me as I had never animated with such detail before, and before this module I had never used Krita. I now love using the software and used it to complete most of my final animation.

I found creating storyboards more difficult than I thought I would. It took me a while to create to my final storyboard as I had to make many changes such as taking out unnecessary panels and changing other ones to make the scene flow better. Through the feedback I received on each draft, I feel as though I have learned a great deal about storyboards and will find it much easier to create one in the future.

Working in a team with people I have never met was something I was scared about before starting the module. However, I found it extremely enjoyable throughout the semester. I was able to meet lots of different people with different styles and ideas and found it very useful when creating my animation as there was always someone who could help me solve any problem I was having. It was also great to hear constructive criticism from so many different minds as it made me a better artist.

If I were to start the module again, I would spread my work out more and do some every day rather than spending a whole day doing nothing then the next cramming in all of my work. I was ill during November; therefore, I fell behind and always felt I was a bit behind everyone else in my group and found myself cramming frequently. At the start of the semester, I was much better at time management, and I would like to have continued that throughout the module.

I think I need to do more background designs in the future to improve my animation practice. I focused more on other designs than background designs as I have drawn many landscapes in the past. When it came to drawing backgrounds in my final animation, I felt a little out of practice, so I would want to practice different scenery more. I would also spend less time on storyboards as I often made each panel a little too detailed, therefore, it took me longer than it should have to change it when receiving feedback.

I feel as though when doing topics I was already familiar with, I would focus on them less and practice other aspects of the module more. Looking back, I would have liked to have the same attitude about everything that was covered and try out everything as if I have never done it before. When I had that attitude, such as when learning about colour or designing characters for the first time, it made the work much more fun.

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I am very proud of my final animation. I felt a little short on time near then end, however, I finished it with enough time to make corrections where needed, which was the most important thing to me. To create the headmistress’s poses, I made the poses myself in the mirror and watched how my arm and hand moved and was then able to create that same movement on screen. I am also happy with the movement of the zombie. Watching the walking dead zombie school definitely helped me achieve this.

Animating with more than two people in the shot was definitely challenging. I much preferred animating the first two shots, however, I am happy I included the final two shots as it made me practice something I wasn’t comfortable with.

In my first final animation draft, I had music playing, as well as the other sound clips I received from freesound.org. However, I felt as though it took away from the sound effects a little, so in my final animation I took out the music audio.

Like Cloe and Eimear, I included Cloe’s portrait of the headmaster in my animation in the background of shot one. I love her design and feel like it brings our scenes together.

Draft before tones and backgrounds:

Final Animation:

Shot 1:

Shot 2:

Shot 3:

Shot 4:

So far, I have completed 2 shots of my animation, both being 4 seconds each. Shot 1 took me longer than expected to finish as at that point I was still getting used to using Krita. Shot 2 took me around the same length of time to complete (around 2 days from start to finish) as I was much more familiar with the software yet there is much more movement in this shot. I added colour to shot one, however, I am going to change my scene to mostly grayscale with the eyes and magic of the characters being in colour as I feel as though it will highlight the ‘good vs evil’ element in the animation more. To complete my animation, after Christmas I plan on watching the walking dead zombie school videos again as they will help me greatly when animating the zombies in the rest of my scene.

 

This week our homework was to prepare a short presentation on our animation/blog progress. Last week during my one to one feedback tutorial with Sarah, she told me to include my storyboards and my progress with my animatic. I talked about my first storyboard versus my final storyboard and the feedback I was given to improve each draft, and the improvements Sarah gave me for my animatic. I find presentations very difficult, even recording them, so I feel as though I could have talked a little more about some of my other work and the inspirations behind my designs. However, I think the topics I did talk about were well explained and I showed how far I have come with my work. We were told that our animatics worked well together and we have good understanding of timing which was amazing to hear.

My Presentation:

Group Presentation:

group presentation – YouTube

Throughout the week, our group had a final meeting to talk about the colour schemes in our animation. The only ones who could attend were Cloe, Jasmin, and I, however, we were able to get much work done. Each of us sent in photos of inspirations for colour palettes and I used adobe colour to create them. Jasmin originally used Jude Law as a reference for her design of the headmaster in human form, so I used him as a reference for the headmaster’s skin tone. I then used Zendaya for Fern’s skin tone, however, we then decided we wanted her skin to be a little warmer and darker, so I ended up using Leigh Anne Pinnock as inspiration. I also wanted the headmistress’s skin to be very cool toned and pale, yet still realistic, so I used Aurora as a reference for her skin and Yzma for her clothes. Cloe created a document with the characters’ ‘magic’ colours and Jasmin sent us the exterior and interior images. I then created a word document of all the colour palettes from everyone’s references.

Link:

Colour Palettes

References:

A while ago, we had an idea of including ourselves in our animation as background characters. It was very fun to see everyone in our animation world with our different styles! I tried my best to keep my character as similar to Fern as possible by using the same colours and uniform as everyone else, yet I still wanted to add some personal touches, such as boots instead of school shoes and highlights throughout my hair. Eimear is going to include us into her section of the animation.

My Design:

Cloe, Jasmin and Mark’s Designs:

 

 

This week, I had a one to one feedback tutorial with Sarah where we talked about my progress so far with by blog and animatic. I finished putting my animatic together for this session using Premier Pro. Sarah gave me some very useful advice on my animatic, both how to make it better, and how to animate different shots when it came to doing my animation. As for my animatic, the only thing I had to change was the timing of the zombie pushing the headmistress down the stairs as it was too slow. To create more of a shock factor for the viewer, I had to speed up the crashing down slightly.  My animation also turned out to be quite long at 15 seconds, so I took out a couple of frames to take out a camera angle change, making it around 2 seconds shorter.

Animatic Draft 2 (after crash down change):

Animatic Draft 3:

Sarah was happy with how my blog was progressing. I was told to add reference pictures when I was talking about inspirations for characters and to talk more about principals when animating. I have since went back and added these areas to my posts and am happy with the work I have done for every post.

I was also told to do limited animation for the last shot of my animation, where Fern casts the spell against the zombies. There are many people in this shot and if it was too detailed, it would take too long to animate and would be too busy on the screen for the viewer.

This week’s lecture was on animating 2D effects, such as smoke, water, and explosions. I found learning about explosions and flats the most helpful as it gave me tips and ideas on how to end my animation with the spell. I learned to use only around 5 frames for the spell and to have some anticipation before it occurs. I plan on using white star shapes for the spell and have them fill the screen to then transition from white to black. I began the animating process this week by drawing the outline of Fern on Photoshop for shot 1. As I am now used to drawing her, it did not take me long to get her features correct. I am going to export this image to Krita where I will begin animating next week.

This week, I finished the final draft of my storyboard and completed drawings for a rough animatic. After receiving more feedback on my storyboards, I decided to take more panels out. Now, instead of Fern standing up to the headmistress, she remains scared and backs out of frame before the zombie attacks the headmistress. The close up of both Fern’s and the headmaster’s hand was also taken out. At first, I was worried about these changes as the beginning of my animation now conveys a different emotion than we had originally planned. However, I am now happy with the decision as I feel as though the karma that the headmistress receives by being touched by the zombies now works better. Instead of her being scared of Fern, she is still angry and mischievous, meaning that she deserved what was coming to her.

To get the right look for the zombies, I used behind the scenes videos of The Walking Dead’s zombie school where people audition and learn how to play the zombies throughout season 4 of the show. This was extremely helpful to see their movements, even for drawing a panel on my storyboard as I found it extremely difficult to draw a realistic full upper body of a zombie from just images.

Reference Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIHVKm5MMe0

Final Storyboard:

As for my animatic, I have now completed shots 1 and 2 and have finished all rough drawings for the rest of the animatic. However, as I had not used Premier Pro for a while before this, I had to familiarise myself again with the software, and did not leave myself enough time to complete the full animatic. Also, as my storyboard had some changes this week, I started a drawing that was then deleted from my storyboard, leaving even less time for the rest of my animatic. I am happy with how the first 2 shots look and plan on putting the rest of the drawings together this week so I can receive some feedback on timing, so I can start animating soon.

Finished Animatic Shots:

Other Drawings:

Deleted Drawing:

In class this week, Alec gave my group some advice on referencing for our animations. Up until now, we had been mostly taking images from Pinterest or Google Images or videos from YouTube. To get the right movement, he told us to film ourselves doing the actions we require for our scenes. For the shot where the headmistress is pushed down the stairs, I asked Cloe and Jasmin to act it out for me on the stairs on campus.

Reference Videos:

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IMG_2745