During the first blackboard call we showed our lecturers and Patricia who joined us again our blogs containing what we were working on for the week. I showed mine to Aodhan, Sarah and Patricia since Alec wasn’t here, and I explained to them about fixing the desk and using lines for the elephant trunk to make things easier for the in-betweens, as well as using a reference for the floor. They still said the perspective of the desk looks a bit off which is a shame because I thought I had actually fixed it, though they did say it’s definitely an improvement over the original animatic where it was very noticeably off.
They asked whether I used a reference for the desk and I said about using the box for my Wacom tablet as I couldn’t find any good references for it on google, and they said the perspective angle looks off for the desk partially because it doesn’t match the perspective of the floor. I said I used a reference for the floor but that I wasn’t sure whether it looked right and that when doing it, it reminded me of a wall rather than a floor even though I used the floor reference where the floor size gets smaller the closer it gets to the wall. Aodhan said about using the perspective tool in photoshop to help me with perspective for both these things, and I’ll try and find a Krita equivalent. He also said about having Echo peek out from behind the desk so there’s more stuff going on so that there’s multiple different things going on, and to lower the horizon line for more breathing room with the animation. This was very solid advice and I know what to work on to improve my animation.
During the second blackboard call Patricia left, and Alec returned. He gave us a presentation on how to properly write our reflective blogs which was very useful, and also what to include for the final overall reflective post such as how I found semester, what I learned, reflection on semester and module as a whole and include all the work I have done throughout the semester in the post including weekly exercises. We were then divided into groups for a peer review of our blogs using the criteria Alec showed in his presentation. The peer assessment wasn’t just about seeing how well the other blogs matched the criteria, but seeing what those blogs have done which we can implement within our own and what we’ve learned from looking at those blogs. For example, after looking through the blogs for each week I realised I needed to add more references to mine and look at more tutorial videos as those were the areas lacking in my own posts that were thriving in other people’s blog posts.
I was in a group with Nicole Thompson, Samantha Savage, Tori Gray and Una MacIver. As we were still looking through the blogs and only being about halfway through, Aodhan joined the group and asked us what we think of each other’s blogs. Once he realised we hadn’t looked at them all yet he asked us whether we learned anything from looking at them and we told him what we learned. After this he asked if we had any more questions, and I asked whether our work would be marked harshly. Aodhan said we had to learn to be a student as it’s a new experience for us since university life is still relatively new to us so we’re not being marked harshly for the first semester. He also added that they expect us to make mistakes and to “fail fast and fail often” and that if something doesn’t work that’s fine we just have to change it, and another important thing was to not expect everything to be perfect and all that matters is we need to know how to improve things, moreso like “I did this wrong, what do I need changed, how did I fix it”. He said to not expect to get anything perfect the first time, and made the analogy that like people like scriptwriters would change things, like the script in this case, as they’re filming, and said that it is important to essentially understand “why” you’re changing stuff and not changing it randomly.
Once Aodhan left the group and we finished looking at everyone’s blogs, we gave each other our feedback on them.
Una said for mine:
“Really great balance between text and images of work – Good character design references – Maybe more references for character poses – References and guides saved and shown on blog – Needs to evaluate what you would change/improve upon for work in earlier post but in recent posts this is done really well!! – Very well laid out blog; neat and easy to navigate.”
Tori said for mine:
“Writing is very good and extensive! But maybe add some more photographs and experiments to balance text and image a bit more. But overall really really well done.”
Samantha said for mine:
“Cute Pandalotl xD – You’re really good at explaining what all happens each week – Lots of great description/analysis of your work – Nice layout – I like the way you include ‘References of the week’ – Lots of solid character designs – Well thought out You have lots of really good in-depth analysis for all of your work and lots of great references!”
Nicole said for mine:
“Chloe, I like the self assessment parts and your reference of the week section. Nice way to transaction into the references. I also like the descriptions of what happened during class of each week.”
Overall I’m quite pleased with this feedback as I was initially worried about the peer assessment in case I was doing anything majorly wrong, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought and the things I need to fix, like adding in more references and explaining myself better in the earlier weeks, are relatively minor things.
In preparation for Week 11 of “One to One Feedback Tutorials & Animating 2D Effects” we were assigned the task of making sure our blogs are up to date before showing them to him, as well as fixing anything we feel is necessary after the peer assessment of the blogs. We were also told to keep working on the animation, and I used this week to power through as much as I can of it to try and have a good amount of work to show Alec on my Thursday session.
This is the comparison between the rough animation of last week and the fleshed out completed sketch animation with all the in-betweens I just finished recently:
*EPILEPSY WARNING! BRIGHT FLASHING STATIC
I am disappointed I never had the chance to apply some of the feedback I had received because of how long it took for me to complete the sketch animation as I was intending to create and add an updated background with the lower horizon line and fixed floor perspective as well as other issues like fixing the perspective of the desk and adding a small tweak to the plant to make it longer so Echo’s feet are shown to be behind the plant. Unfortunately since I had just finished the animation recently I had no time to even properly begin these modifications so I just had to stick with the same background as last time.
On a more positive note, with the animation itself I am very proud of it, for starters I updated the animation to include Echo’s head peering out from behind the desk and retreating again just as Bob starts appearing in front of the camera, as well as making some minor adjustments since last time like having the blinking “Record” icon still appear when the camera is just white noise and fixing the white noise static so that it is relatively more pleasing to look at. I did this by rearranging the order of the three white noise static frames to be “1 2 3 2 1 2 3 2 1…” rather than “1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3…” as the transition from the 3rd drawing back to the 1st one is quite jarring and was part of the reason it hurt to look at, and I also spaced out the white noise frames to be on 2s rather than 1s and I think those two factors helped improve the white noise for me. Another more nitpicky aspect I would like to add to my animation would be to have the white noise fading in for a bit with Bob still being visible before the screen turns completely to white noise as I feel it could add a subtle but real difference to the animation as the white noise doesn’t suddenly appear but appears gradually.
The run cycle for Echo, while taking quite a while to do due to the fact Echo is performing different actions while running (arms moving behind her, ducking behind desk) which made it more complicated to animate smoothly and cohesively, actually turned out quite well in my opinion and I was pleasantly surprised and proud of the result. The reference I used was extremely helpful in getting the key poses and I filled in my own in-betweens due to the image I used not having them, but I think they turned out pretty decent at the very least and I love how Echo running and performing actions turned out as they look relatively smooth and gradual and not sudden and jerky movements. Another extremely important thing to note was that I was at first struggling to differentiate between the legs, and as soon as I started labelling the front and back leg as “F” and “B” respectively, it was a real lifesaver and I was no longer squinting at the screen for several minutes trying to figure out what leg I was supposed to be animating according to the reference.
When drawing the trunk around the guidelines I had put in place last time, I thought it would be a good idea to draw on a new layer and that ended up being a lifesaver too as when erasing bits of the trunk I wouldn’t erase any other part of the head as it isn’t affected due to being on a different layer.
References Of The Week:
Earlier in the week when I was intending to fix everything perspective related in my animation, I was trying to find a Krita alternative for the photoshop perspective tool and found this video. It was very informative and useful as I never realised all these tools existed in Krita and think they can be used to help me.
The run cycle image I used as a reference was inherently useful for me as it breaks down the main poses involved in a run cycle and as a result I knew how to draw Echo’s legs in each pose and how height can increase or decrease while running like the image shows.