February 2nd
I’ll start by acknowledging what needs to be done. Not only for this project, but based on what I need to improve according to my feedback for both Animation Studio and the 3D Assignments. I need to continue to improve my 3D skills, which, compared to my class mates, needs a lot of work. Especially when it comes to retopology, UV Mapping and Posing. This is especially necessary for when I have to create characters for a group project. As for my animation studio improvements – I need to work on my animation timing (In particular, I need to slow it down) and my use of forms, especially within perspective. I will also put into practice what I said I wanted to do in my personal reflection for Animation Studio by using my blog posts as day-to-day Journal entries.
Anyway – we’ll begin with what was learned a discussed in today’s lecture. The best way I can describe this brief is “Animation Studio Preparation with 3D execution”. So – storytelling, storyboarding, animatics, and then a 30 second long 3D film with Blender as the main tool.
We were also given an introduction to The Hero’s Story by Joseph Campbell, and given a very brief overlook of what it is. Having watched The Lord Of The Rings throughout January, I was amazed to find out a fair few haven’t seen it.
After this we got into a group of 5. In my case it was Me, Nicolle, Ellie, Robert and Dillan were given storytelling dice to come out with an original story. Our pack was the Pirate pack, so we got Captain, Storm, Scout, Spade, Mermaid/Siren, Seagull, Super Power and Sailor with a wooden leg. However, the superpower ended up breaking the rules a little bit, so we tried again and got the Helm (Ship’s steering wheel) instead.
(Above) Thank you Nicolle for this – as this is obviously not my handwriting.
We then brainstormed a little story: A storm happens and is caused by an evil, monstrous mermaid and her evil seagull. The helm breaks and the ship is wrecked on a desert island. The captain dies with it. The Young Sailor Boy (scout) ends up being trained to battle against the Mermaid with the Sailor with the wooden leg as his mentor. They eventually have their fight, in which they kill the mermaid with a spade, then wait to be rescued by another ship.
After this we were split into our actual groups – the 1s we will be working in for the next 3-4 months. I had a choice between 2 groups, and I chose based on a coin toss with another student. My Group consists of Me, Nicolle, Andrea, Ellen and Kaitlin. All of whom I had worked with in the previous semester through the Animation Studio Assignment. With this said, we began a new board. A new Brainstorming session. One that didn’t involved the Storytelling Dice, but followed the brief more closely.
February 3rd
We continued our concepts by trying to narrow down our stories, characters and ideas. We narrowed it down to either a piece of Popcorn escaping the Popcorn carton at the cinema, a toy in a claw machine trying to leave said-claw machine, and bowling pins trying to escape a bowling ball. After our introduction to World Of Animation with Yuan and our Film Studies class with Ryan, I decided to go to Cityside Cinema (10 minutes walk up the road from the Campus building) to see if I could find some claw machines to get reference material of. To say the least – it was a fruitful endeavour. Here are all of the photos that I took, then shared on the Discord Server that we set up:
It was after I showed these photos that the group decided to focus on the Claw Machines, due to the bright colours, fun shape designs, and of course, cute plush characters. On top of this, I submitted a few story ideas to hopefully get us started on narrative direction.
February 4th
I found a Tokyo Treat Box that I bought during the Pandemic, from which I kept the wrappers for reference. Mixed in are other Japanese sweet wrappers from a Christmas Present a friend gave me.
February 5th
I decided to share more images of wrappers from a Tokyo Treat Box, and also shared the work of Joanna Zhou – a Chinese illustrator whose work borrows greatly from Manga and Kawaii Design. Her Youtube channel and Instagram for the company Maqaroon has some great ideas.
February 6th
I purchased a copy of The Hero’s Story for Kindle to read. I also purchased The Illusion Of Life, which will hopefully be as useful for this Assignment as it will be for World Of Animation.
February 7th
Using ‘i’ to create keyframes, I decided to create my first bouncing ball in Blender (after creating it in 2D in the previous semester.)
February 8th
I decided to attempt the bouncing ball exercises in Blender using the approach presented to me and presenting it as different weights. Starting with the medium weight ball, then the tennis ball, then lastly the bowling ball.