For our animation workshop, we were tasked with creating a simple 10 to 15 second long ident that represents either the Belfast School of Arts or the Foundation Course itself, the method of how we could animate the ident was up to us, though some recommendations were 2D, 3D or stop motion, we had to do a bit of pre planning though before we could work on the animation itself, this pre planning included making a storyboard detailing how our animation will play out as well as a rough animatic of our storyboard in action.

Storyboarding/Animatic

when it came to planning of the initial idea of what would play out in the animation, I mulled over many ideas on what i could do, some included featuring and presenting a few of the workshops that we had worked on throughout our year on the foundation course, while another would have been a more simple graphic animation that would show simply show the University logo, though these ideas either felt to restricting on what i could do as well as difficult given the time limit, as well as feeling rather bland and unappealing, which wouldn’t have made the ident fun the work through.

in the end I drew up a storyboard depicting a poker match in which the University logo would be on the winning card

with the storyboard drew up I began working on the animatic, I decided to keep the animatic simple, as I wanted to have as much time working on the animation as possible and getting use to the new adobe software I had recently picked up. (Due to the video file somehow being over 3GB I’ve had to post a link to animatic on YouTube)

https://youtu.be/MjgUw0l4lVM

Animation Method

For the animation itself I had decided upon doing classic 2D animation, as it is one of the main animation methods I find most appealing, as a decent spot for a beginner to work from, it allowed me to be able to work on my designing skills, such as character and set design, which I wish to master, as well as simply having a strong interest in this form of animation, I also didn’t have any specific 3D software to work with and i find stop motion animation to be too time consuming and specific to work with.

Assets

when it came to the animation, I had create all my assets on adobe photoshop, such as designing a character for the animation itself, as well as a few background assets that would set the scene, this is a small list of the specific assets I made for the animation.

Demon Character

Poker Chips

Playing Cards

Background Music- Tony Hawks Pro Skater Main Menu Music

Animating/Final Product

using adobe animate I set up my scenes and worked through each of them, as I did I had to alter various scenes from the initial storyboard/animatic, as I felt that they either didn’t add much to the animation itself, ran up time or simple took too long to animate given the length of time I had to work on it, in the end though I developed an adequate (yet more to be desired from) animation that I took in adobe after effects to place the background track I took off You Tube and rendered out the final product.

For a first time attempt at solo 2D frame by frame animation, I defiantly realised how difficult the task can be, however despite my amateur attempt i still feel it was a good experience, and now i only hope to improve my craft and develop not only a fluid ability to animate, but a stylised art style to go with my animation skills.