Before starting this semester, I knew absolutely nothing about animation. I have always had an interest in it, but I didn’t know any of the theory behind it and had never actually tried to animate anything. However, now I have created an animation, which although it isn’t perfect, is impressive to me as my first attempt at a proper one.

I think that my grasp on perspective has definitely improved as I was previously absolutely clueless on how to work with it, and frame things correctly. The parts of my animation that worked well in my opinion were the backgrounds, the colours, and the staging of the scenes. I’m impressed by the backgrounds I created for the animation, as I had believed I hated working on them before this and usually left them out or made them very simple. However, I enjoyed creating them and I’m quite proud of them.

There are a few areas I think I still need to improve in. Colour theory is something I’ve never really considered before this semester, as I usually just picked colours, I thought looked nice for my art. Now that I have learnt more about it, I would like to continue practising so I can use it effectively in the future. I also think that I need to practice inbetweening and cushioning with my animations, as I feel like some parts are still very jumpy and may need extra frames to make it smoother. I also don’t completely understand what should be a keyframe and what shouldn’t, so I will study and practice this more.

I think my animation process needs revising as I drew out two roughs, one in less detail, and one with more before lining my art. This was effective but very time consuming, which was not good when I was already pushed for time. I think I also need to split things up between layers, for example, the necklace and hair should have their own layer, so I can add more accurate secondary action without erasing my line art.

Creative teamwork was an issue for me at the beginning, as I am not very comfortable talking to people I don’t know and am not used to teamwork. My groups had their ups and downs; however, my last group was an absolutely amazing experience, and I have found that I actually enjoy certain aspects of teamwork. I have learnt that I need to communicate more, as at the beginning I only communicated when necessary due to anxiety, although later I began interacting and it improved things immensely.

In conclusion, I know what I need to spend time practising and the areas that I have almost no knowledge of. I absolutely need to work on my time management, although a lot of the issues this semester were caused by personal issues that I couldn’t control. I do think that with everything considered, I managed to create something impressive despite my lack of experience.

 

Finished Animation

Animatic

I took out a scene from the animatic, of Amka coming back through the portal. I did this because it was a very short clip, that required me to animate another walk cycle and her coming out of the portal. It also required another background to be made, of the portal. I just did not have enough time to be able to do all of that. Additionally, I don’t think it was really necessary, as the background, the colour palettes and the previous parts of the animation will show that she is no longer in the spirit world.

I’m not very experienced in background or level design and have very little knowledge of perspective aside from trying to make things look correct to my eyes. However, I tried to make some interesting backgrounds for my animation, although I can definitely see some issues with it now that I’m looking back at it.

Our group had agreed towards the start of this task that the overworld would be more of a dark colour palette, so I was trying to keep the colours more muted and dull than I usually would. I also had a look at the main colours used in Manny’s animatic so that I could try and keep mostly in theme with the background colours that the rest of my group had used for the overworld, so mine wouldn’t make it look like a completely different place.

Background 1

Background 2

Background 3

References for background 3

We had to make a little presentation about what we had done of our animation so far, to show our progress to the rest of the class and learn more about the other group’s animations as well.

This is my part of the presentation for the Spirit Sky Fish group.

This is the whole presentation for my group.

I decided to create a digital version of my storyboard, as well as clean it up a little bit, as the sketchbook first draft was very messy and rough. This one is still a little sketchy but it has more detail and it’s easier to make out than the first one, as well as including descriptions of the shots.

Animatic

Animatics are sequences of frames or shots, that are used to see how effective the pacing of the storyboard and scene is. It also allows you to see if something won’t work, or if a character needs to do something else instead. This is the first attempt at an animatic for my scene in the overall animation, to help me figure out the timings and spacing needed in the actual animation. It’s VERY rough and sketchy, but I will clean it up and add more detail to it as I continue refining and changing it. It’s still missing some things, like backgrounds that have been thought out and drawn properly, and small details. However, it serves its purpose of allowing me to figure out how I want to transition between frames from my storyboard, and how the character moves, and where they need to be at what times. I did communicate a lot with my group so that we could figure out the transitions between Jorja’s scene and mine.

I actually found it quite fun to do, although I had to take a while to think about how to continue it at some points. I’ve never attempted anything like this or tried to animate at all, so this was a new experience. I used Krita’s animating platform to make the animatic and even though my only experience with it was in class the other week, I found it quite easy to navigate and use. Although I haven’t attempted to use any complex features.

Overall Animatic

Manny had taken the storyboards that were finished and started to put them together so that we could see if the transitions worked and that it flows well. The music and sound effects that were added were also done by them, and the music that is used in the video was suggested by Charlie. Some of the animatics are still missing, but they’ll be added as they’re finished.

Storyboards are a way of visualizing the scene you’re working on, planning out the narrative of it, and how the characters or transitions need to work. Last time we had split up the animation plotline into different sections last time and gave everyone part of the animation to work on. This week we were working on the storyboards for our sections of the animation project. This is the first iteration of my storyboard, it is very rough and sketchy as it was just me trying to get my ideas onto the page in a clear way, and figure out how the camera and characters would move from scene to scene. Next time I come back to this, I will draw it up in more detail digitally, and add notes on the movements, so it’s clearer and more professional-looking.

I decided to put all of the flour sack related work in one post, instead of it being spread out.

We had to make an animation of a flour sack, so before going straight into this, I decided to sketch a few quick flour sacks to try and get a good understanding of it’s ‘anatomy’.

 

This week’s lecture was about storyboards, as we were beginning to layout our animatics in storyboard form. We were given a storyboard format, with the script filled out, and we had to create the visual part. I enjoyed this exercise, as I felt I could work a little roughly and leave some loose lines which I felt added more personality.

I liked trying to come up with the visuals to a scene, although I definitely struggled with perspective when trying to add more details to the background, like the table beside the cauldron. It’s especially noticeable in the second scene. I need to practice with perspective some more to improve my drawings. I also think I’m still struggling with the values, the tones are too similar a lot of the time, although it had definitely improved.

In this week’s lecture, we were shown how to use Krita’s animation features. The first one was just to make a ball move across the screen, to learn the basics of how Krita works. It took a little bit of time for me to become comfortable enough with Krita, but once I figured out the basics of how to make frames and move drawings, it became easier.

For the second exercise, we were asked to make the ball move along a line, paying attention to the acceleration and deceleration of the ball. Looking back at this now, I think I may have needed to slow the ball down more at certain points by leaving some frames in-between or moving it less. I think I’m comfortable enough with the weight of the ball though.