My Experience during the Animation Studio Module
Overall, I have had a great experience during this module, especially with the learning about the basic principles of animations and having free range when it came to our assignments and how we tackled our tasks. This module was mostly the art I would do in my own time when it came to developing ideas for worlds and creating characters based in those worlds but instead of creating an animation, which I had no clue how to make, I would have created illustration instead. This meant that when it came to creating world ideas, character designs, and experimenting with colours during our project I had experience. However, the addition of having a group meant disagreements were expected and head clashes did occur when it came to deciding certain aspects of the project, including the different dimensions we would use due to each members different interests and skills they had. Nevertheless, being surrounded by people that had different interests to me allowed me to experiment with unique styles and themes that I would not have thought of, if not for the group. For example, cyclopes, which was an idea from Rosaline and a character I would not have considered ever drawing. If the module started again, I would have come into my group with a broader mindset, more specifically my imagination and consideration towards other people’s ideas. It was not until I was added to a group that I found out the small range of themes that I have been exploring as an artist. Already, I can see during the small amount of time that I have been in the module that my ideas for my own art have been broader, which makes me excited to continue the module and see what I will create. Before starting this module, I had no previous animation experience, this meant that I was starting this project from scratch when it came to animating. Even though my basic drawing skills and understanding of the fundamentals of drawing guided me through animating for the first time the process was nothing less than daunting. Even after completing the bouncing ball and flour sack exercise the thought of animating a person was still a challenge due to the lack of knowledge, I had relating to human movement, which I did not uncover until I started this module as I thought I had a good understanding of human anatomy. For this reason, moving forward in the module I will begin to study the movement of humans and how someone’s body moves during different actions. This will be done through references and videos of people playing sports, for example gymnastics or running. In addition, I found showing the fast, twisting pace of the postman being sucked into the portal was tricky. To improve this I will be researching different animation videos related to timing and tricks to convey fast movement. Overall, I have really enjoyed this module as I have an overall liking for learning new art styles and themes while seeing how other people draw. Which gives me motivation to improve my skills and I hope that this need for self-improvement continues.