During the first blackboard call we continued working on our presentations. Since Timmy had personal issues going on he wasn’t able to do his part of the presentation or send his animation so I edited mine and Rory’s parts together to show Alec in the second blackboard call. We couldn’t show the looping linked animation during the presentation because of this either, and the part where I explained the story of our world wasn’t included either because it was meant to go along with the group linked animation. Alec was very understanding of our group’s situation and he said it was okay for him to show what we have so far.
The groups showed Alec, Aodhan, Sarah and Patricia the presentations we have been working on, and when it came to our one Alec said that our presentation needs to have more image references like with the animals, and they understand we were planning on having the story included but circumstances got in the way. They also said to include character concepts and storyboards since those were lacking in our presentation.
With regards to the animation itself, Alec looked over our animations which were shown in the presentation individually and gave us feedback since the last time he saw our animations. For my animation he said that it reads better since Echo is peeking her head out for longer and Bob’s trunk is getting bigger when it hits the camera, and said that the animation is looking really good.
Once the presentations were finished Alec was wondering whether we have any questions for our deadline for everything on the 17th December, and when asked whether we need to put text in the portfolio he said to only do short annotations and that no other text is required. When asked what to include in the portfolio he said to include every single piece of work we have done over the semester, and advised that we organise it into weekly themes, like “week 3 composition work” or “week 6 character design” depending on what we were doing for each week. I asked him about whether our presentations need to be put in our portfolio and he said it’s not necessary to add the presentation to the portfolio, but we can add the looping video to the portfolio if we wanted to.
In preparation for Week 13 of our submissions deadline, we were tasked with finishing our animations, weekly reflective blog, team assessment form and portfolio blog post for the 17th December.
Since the lineart for my animation is complete, I wanted to get started on colouring as soon as possible but I knew I needed to complete my updated references for the animal hybrid characters I am using in the animation before I even attempt colouring. My updated references are shown below:
I am a lot more satisfied with these references and will be using their colour palettes for my animation and I believe they would work well in the final animation.
Once I finished colouring I also added the static sound effect to mine to complete my animation. My finished animation is 233 frames according to my timeline in 30 frames per second with the animation mainly on 2s. My finished animation, using pose to pose, is shown below:
I am immensely proud of what I have accomplished for my animation as I love how everything turned out. I believe the colours of the characters don’t clash with the background colours or the lab desk and plant, and while I am proud of the animation itself my only qualms with the animation is that I wish I had more time to work on it as there’s not enough time to add shading to it. I admittedly expected this, but I am still a bit disappointed I never got to include it. Regardless, with or without shading, I’m still pretty proud of what I have created after utilising what I have learned from all these weeks in this semester, and while some parts of the animation were quite tedious, namely the lineart, I do believe that the end result is worth the trouble I went through to make it as best as I could make it, and hope I’ve done a good if not great job. The group animation edit is shown below:
I am also extremely proud of what this group has accomplished over the semester and I believe our CCTV security footage idea worked wonderfully here, and I also believe each of our animations transition well into each other.
After finishing my animation I went into the assignments section in blackboard to make sure I was on track with what I needed to do, and I happened to see a submission requirement for the weekly blog of a team assessment form we had to do for everyone we’ve worked with over the past 12 weeks which I was unaware of until seeing it. I spread the word to the others in case they never realised it either and I began working on the team assessment form. I’m very thankful I kept a thorough record of who exactly I was working with each week as this made writing about everyone I was with a lot easier, as well as having the group chat where I was able to find information I never mentioned in my blog. I am also very fortunate to only have 2 other members I need to talk about for half of the weeks of the semester as my permanent group was formed in Week 5, and I know we’re the smallest group with only 3 members.
The weekly blog, which I’m currently doing, and the portfolio post are the last things I need to do before the deadline, and I’m hoping both of these meet the standards and expectations for when they get marked and I’m hoping that the lecturers marking my work are proud of what I have accomplished this semester as I know I’m definitely proud of myself through how much time and effort I put into doing my best for this course.
Before finishing the semester, Alec recommended that we start looking up and learning a bit about the 3D software Maya before the second semester starts as we’re not back until the 25th January and it would be good to have a bit of insight before using it to animate next semester.
Overall, I have to say thank you to my lecturers for helping us come a long way since the beginning of the semester and giving us great tips and feedback each week, and I have already learned so much from the course so far and I’m looking forward to learning more in the next semester. I’m sure I’m definitely not the only one who appreciates all you have done with us so far and eager to see what comes next in the course.
References Of The Week
This is the static sound effect I used for my animation. Since it is quite loud, I decided to lower the volume in my actual animation.
The elephant and kangaroo images are what I used as references for Bob the Kangaroolephant’s colours as I have his colour palette go from more of a greyish brown to light brown to a darker brown to represent the transition between the elephant parts (greyish brown) to the kangaroo parts (darker brown) with the light brown bringing them together.
The snake plant image is what I used as a reference where I based the colour palette of the plant in my animation off of by using the green leaves with darker green stripes and I think the plant turned out pretty good in my animation and doesn’t clash with the other colours present in it.