It is done!!

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REFLECTION

This project had it’s challenges, which could be attributed to the fact it was a lot of firsts for me. The first lip sync, the first acting animation, and the first animation I’ve done with two characters, especially interacting. I think my inexperience shows, and I still have issues with consistency. I think looking back, I could’ve added my dynamic movement, the girl, despite my effort, is still a bit static. I also know there are many messy parts within the animation, especially near the end. An example is the part where I didn’t erase the lines of Cardan’s tunic when his hand overlapped it. I intend to go back and colour it for my portfolio, so I’ll make changes at that point.

In general, I think this module went well, it pushed me to manage my time better, properly schedule time for my projects, and while I had a lot of issues, it was generally a very fun assignment that I think exemplifies my progress as an animator. My goal from here is to improve on the fundamentals like timing, squash and stretch, etc, and I also want to personally improve on volume consistency and cleaner lines.

Part of my struggle was definitely drawing outside of a style that I’m comfortable in. I haven’t practiced that skill much before, so I struggled a lot initially. It’s something I’d like to practice more in. While there are a lot of faults in my animation and references, my knowledge and understanding of animation and the 2D pipeline has expanded a lot this semester and I think it shows in the final work. I’m excited for future studying and improving even more at hand drawn 2D animation.

Since Clip Studio Paint doesn’t allow audio scrubbing, I started by going through and very meticulously timing the animation using quickly drawn stick figures, essentially. I wanted to map out the audio and major movement prior to roughing out the animation more definitively so I had an idea of the flow.

Then I started drawing out the characters. I struggled to stay stylistically consistent during this part, I realise this could be attributed to not practicing enough in the style before animating, I think an expression sheet, a full reference of the head angles, and a proper reference sheet would’ve helped me with that a lot. I also recognise that I was very swamped with the vertical slice project at the point, and barely had time to sleep. I think I’ve made massive improvements with time management, but there’s still some work to do in that area.

I knew with the time I had to animate that I’d only get a cleaned up, lined animation, no background or colouring. My intention is to submit the cleaned up animation and then finish it for my portfolio.

Here are the various stages the animation went through.

It was when I began lining that Alec gave me the feedback that Jude (the girl) need to move a bit more. So I took his feedback and added a subtle jump when he says ‘sure I do’ as per what I was told to do. I also added an eyeroll at the end of the animation so she wasn’t so static.

I think I could’ve still added more movement to Jude, and smoothed out more for Cardan, but I’m happy with my progress on this animation so far.

For this assignment, I knew I wanted to try animating in a style that was a bit more cartoony than my usual style. This is to show more style diversity in my portfolio, which is super important for trying to find placement.

It took me a while to find an audio I liked, initially I was debating between 2 songs,

I wanted to a part from the second verse of Hayloft II by Mother Mother or the bridge from Hell’s Coming With Me by Poor Man’s Poison. Eventually I settled on this audio from 10 Things I Hate About You.

I edited it down to exactly 11 seconds.

The next thing for me was to determine how I wanted to draw. I decided to not base it off of an existing studio’s style mostly due to a wish of developing my own more cartoony look, and also because I know myself well enough that I would never complete the assignment in time due to taking my time studying the style of both drawing and animation of whichever studio I chose. It’s a plan of mine for over the summer to practice animating in different styles so I can dedicate the proper amount of time to studying.

So, the next step was deciding on a style, so I ended up sketching two characters out. I have to admit, after listening to the audio, I decided to take inspiration from a book called The Cruel Prince, so the two main characters’ appearances are based off of the protagonists Jude and Cardan.

I wanted to get used drawing in this style, so I sketched more and made small adjustments to the designs because I wanted them to be pretty simple so I could focus on the actual animation rather than worrying about consistency. I wanted to focus on it more so I could practice things more intentionally in this animation. Specifically, I wanted to practice overlap, easing and overshooting and settle.

I’ve never done an acting animation before, so I took the opportunity to watch some videos on lip sync, acting in animation and in general paid greater attention to shows that inspire me.

These two videos were the most helpful to me. I found their advice insightful, since I’ve never done lip sync before. Especially Toniko Pantoja’s advice on not drawing every single vowel or consonant, it’s definitely an easy thing to fall in to doing, so I’ll try to be conscious of it during my own animation.

I then took animation reference for the part I thought I’d struggle with the most. (Spoiler, it was and it shows).

The Video (I want to forget this exists of me)