It was my first time doing an Animatic so I struggled a little at first. I started by drawing out the first frame of each scene so that I would have something to work off.

When I showed Sarah my animatic at the stage it was at first, she thought it was good  but there was a few things which could be improved. Firstly, the first scene I had drawn was a 3/4 perspective with an awkward camera angle. She pointed out that this is extremely difficult to animate at any time, but particularly if you are a beginner to animation. She suggested I change this by showing the figure moving out of the camera at the front instead of starting at the back of the scene. This was helpful advice as I could then fix my animatic before I had really started to animate. She also pointed out that it was quite long and it might need shortened as there was a lot of action in my section.

This advice was very helpful when I started to finish my animatic. For the first scene I used Adobe After effects. I had watched the lecture content but It was my first time using it so I did have some problems. I think I need to experiment further with it to get more comfortable with the software. I did however manage to finish this first scene, however the layers were a little off.

The first animatic was ok but the timing was not quite right. I wasn’t happy with it so I decided to make another version which was shorter and had quicker cuts. I also didn’t manage to get the sound to export in the first video so the second take of the animatic worked much better. I wasn’t quite happy with this second edit either, as I thought the timing was not quite right here either.

I was much happier with this third edit as the sounds are much better and so is the timing. I still think that I have some work to do on it though, to make sure that I am completely happy with it and I want to use it as the base of my animation.

For this week our group decided to create a few character designs for our vision of how the characters would look. We planned to meet to discuss our designs and choose which one we would bring forward into our animatics so that we all had the same character design to improve continuity within the project. Unfortunately the meeting ended up being cancelled due to Illness so the group was unable to meet before starting our animatics but we will still decide this before we start our final animation. I have included the character designs which I created for the project.

This is the design I created for the main character, Fern. In my initial character sketches, I had originally designed a different school uniform(Link here: https://blogs.ulster.ac.uk/jasminesheppard/2021/10/21/week-5-character/) which was brown with a short sleeved shirt. The group didn’t seem too fond of this outfit, instead preferring the baggier jumper uniform which my group member Cloe had designed. We decided to take her design as a reference to work out the outfits and decide which we liked best. This prompted me to try a different style of uniform but keeping the bow as a school necktie as opposed to a regular tie. I really would like to include this element in the final design as I think it aesthetically matches the style of the school which we want to create, as well as it being a good way to include some secondary animation with the tassels of the bow moving. I will explain this to the group when I am presenting my idea. I also took the basic character profile which we had come up with as a group when it came to including elements such as skin tone, eye colour and ethnicity. I also took on board the notes we got from Sorcha Cartoons as well as the research I had done online about character poses to make sure the silhouette was interesting and to keep the pose containing movement. This advice really helped me as before I wouldn’t have thought about making the pose larger to capture movement, and I would have previously had very static poses.

For this character design, we had a basic character profile as a group, but we were were each coming up with our own vision for the character. I tried to really think about making the character look dynamic, with movement in the pose. I used the website Animator Island to help with looking into this and there was a few different references I used too to help me. (Link: https://www.animatorisland.com/perfect-posing-1-listen-to-the-character-and-to-physics/#:~:text=Posing%20a%20character%20is%20the%20core%20of%20a,it%20should%20be%29%20a%20new%20challenge%20every%20time.)

The conductors of orchestras look very similar to wizardry with the way they move the baton and the larger than life movements. This will definitely be a great reference for our animation as it will include a lot of magic and movement.

Storyboard one: Rough draft

Second Draft:

Draft 3:

After some discussion with Alec and the group, it was pointed out that a solid colour would work better than a soft brush because it is easier to show the depth in the images. It was also suggested by my group that in shot 12 the size of Fern should be adjusted so that she is smaller in comparison to the hand, thus looking scarier and more intimidating. I also discussed how scene 6 could be improved by moving the arm into the frame more to show the action better.

We have been working well as a group so far to come up with our story and basic character profiles for our animation. The plot is:

black and white set up shot: the old principle and the new principle walk into the forest.  She throws a beaker at him.  The old principle is attacked by the mushroom roots and pulled underground .  The new principles face looks menacing. She lifts the beaker and turns it. Curse is written on it. 

 Fern walks into the dark forest.  She Is practicing Magic. Her spell misses and rebounds off a tree, hitting the ground where there is a pile of mushrooms. She steps forward to look having heard a noise. A hand pops out of the ground suddenly. Close up of fern screaming

 Fade from Ferns face to the principal looking happy. Students walking about in the background. Fern runs in and explains to the New Principle what has happened. They turn to the door. The new principle gets ready and raises her staff

Zombie emerges through the door- grabs two students and infects them. The principal and student look scared.

The students touched have now become zombies. They advance forward. The principle tries to do magic to kill the zombies- it doesn’t work.

Fern tries to cast a spell on the head zombie- His hood falls to reveal his face. Fern recognizes him as the old principle. There is a fade shot to show the old headmaster in both forms.

Fern realizes what the new principle has done and stops trying to help her. The Mushroom principle and the army reach the principle and surround her.

• This board shows the basic story outline but we changed it after a discussion with the group where we thought the flashback wouldn’t work in a short film format*

Next, we came up with basic character profiles which would allow the group to work on their storyboard. We wanted to have a rough draft of each storyboard planned before we had a meeting on Monday the 8th of November.

The meeting that day went well, most of us had a rough draft and we were able to discuss the transition’s between each scene to make sure there was consistency between each part. I got some very useful about my storyboard and I was able to discuss with Eimear about what would be a good transition between our scenes. We decided to do a fade out from my of Fern screaming to the same close up of a different character. I was also able to discuss with the group ways to establish the setting of the school, and we decided I should add an establishing shot to show the school in the background.

For next week the group has agreed to all finish their storyboard section, complete and animatic and create some character designs based off the character profiles we have created. The group will then be able to vote on which design we like the best in terms of features and clothing choices. We are meeting on Tuesday the 16th in order to give everyone time to complete their animatics before Thursdays class.

At this point, I have done three different storyboards, with edits made and colour added so I will be uploading them to a separate blog post to keep things tidy.

For this experiment we were working with straight ahead animation using the onion skin mode to create a drawing from a single shape on the page.

I chose to use Krita for this project as I am still getting used to it, but I have had a bit of experience now so I am becoming more confident. I chose to create a flower coming out from the ground, loosing its flowers and then drooping over sadly. I originally just thought of doing a flower growing out of the ground, but then I thought it would be interesting to see the leaves falling and to create some emotion into the flower to give it character,

The animation was a little jumpy and I did change the original shape a lot as the animation went on which I don’t think worked very well. Maybe reviewing the play through more as I made the animation would have improved the overall quality and made sure there was more consistency. Still, it was very cool to see an animation grow and change from just one shape. I think this method of animation provides a very nice hand drawn look to it so I would like to experiment with it more.

This experiment was really fun, as I was beginning to animate a figure and think about how the body would move, It was just a simple flour sack but this was a great shape to work with to get used to key frames and how they work. I started by doing the key poses of the animation, such as standing, crouching, stretching to jump, the arc of the jump, the decent and the bend at the end to steady his weight. These key frames worked really well because it allowed me to easily think about the in-between frames which are needed to show to progression of the movement.

Once I had finished the key poses and the in-betweens I started to look at the timing. I wanted there to be more of the anticipation shot of the sack crouching down so I did a lot of playing around to get it to the way I wanted. I moved the frames from two’s to three’s to four’s just to see which I liked the best. In the end, I went for a mixture of two’s and three’s depending on how long I wanted each pose to be. I think that the final poses worked well.

Finally, I started to work on some secondary animation in the flour sacks arms, just to add a little bit more to the animation. I think that this secondary animation did improve the piece but I when I spoke with Alec he pointed out that it would improve it a little to have the ears move at different times to make it more natural. I agree with this feedback so I’m going to fix the animation to improve this.

I was very pleased with how the animation turned out, as I have never really worked with key pose animation. I think there was good movement in the flour sack but improving those secondary actions and cleaning up the linework would improve it.

After getting used to Krita a little bit we got to work developing timing and spacing in an animation a little further. We drew a rollercoaster line for a ball to travel along, which would allow us to think about timing.

My first attempt was ok, and the ball was quite smooth in moving along the track. There was a good amount of contrast in the different speeds of the ball at different trajectories. Again, I used a variety of gaps between frames to change the speed of the animation. I did find that the ball was moving too slowly up the hill so I decided to try the animation again in order to fix this. For this experiment I tried at 12 FPS instead of the 24 FPS I had been experimenting with before.

I tried another experiment to see if I could get the speed to look more like how I wanted. Again, I did this one at 12 FPS and I was much happier with how it turned out. The movement was much smoother, and there was a clear distinction between the downwards movements and the upwards  movements. However, there was not the same lack of speed as the ball went up the track. I think I was able to fix this in this experiment and make it look a lot better.

I really enjoyed this practice, as even though it was very simple I think it was very helpful for getting used to the process of animation and I cannot wait to experiment further.

For this exercise, we were beginning to think a bit more about timing and spacing. We were tasked with making a ball roll across the screen, thinking about how to edit the speeds to make it a little more interesting than having everything at one pace.

To start with, I did a quick image of the ball moving all at the same pace across the screen. I kept the frames all at ones to try and create a smoothness. I was able to get the ball moving across the screen but I didn’t think it was very smooth and it was a bit jumpy.

The second attempt I think worked much better. I was able to make the balls movement a bit more smooth, and also to add a little bit of timing into the sequence. I used more space between the frames to make the movement after as the ball approached the right hand side of the frame, in order to make it look like the ball was gaining speed.

The third attempt was even better and I think I was able to work on the timing more and think about the impact that a ball hitting a ball would have. To show this, I used more of a gap between frames when the ball moved forward to show it getting faster, then beginning to slow down again after it hit the wall. To do this, I reduced the gap between the frames. I did this animation on one’s because I wanted it to be smooth and I think it worked well for the exercise. One thing which I think could maybe have improved the practice would be to add a bit of squash to the ball to show it hitting the wall.

Overall I think the experiments went well and even from these three quick trials at getting used to Krita I was able to learn and develop my work a little bit.

I also completed a very small experiment of my dog, just to get myself used to the software. It is extremely basic but it did help me get a bit more used to using Krita.

To get us used to animations, we started with the simple bouncing ball technique. This is a good practice as it allows you to think about timing, spacing and also squash and stretch- three vital animation principles.

I used adobe Animate for these first animation tests which I have never used before so it was a little difficult at first and it took me a couple of tries to get started.

For my first ball I chose a basketball as I thought it would have good bounce to it and I could look at the squash and stretch depending on the force with with it hit the ground. I used a guide for reference for this one, just to get me used to the timing and spacing of things. I was quite pleased with the outcome, especially the squash of the ball as it hits the ground.

For my next practice I chose a bowling ball, as I thought it would be very different to my first practice as it is much denser. I wanted to really look at the timing in this practice as a bowling ball doesn’t have much flexibility and so squash and stretch principle didn’t really come into play here. In my first bowling ball practise, I wasn’t happy with the outcome. The bounce was not rigid enough, compared to the reference video I watched on youtube. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eejc0p7nCM). I also found that it wasn’t bouncing quite high enough, even though it is a heavy object. One thing which I did like about it though was the speed at which the ball falls.

*Due to not being familliar with the software I did not manage to save the video or base file of this experiment properly and so I cannot include a video. I have however,  included a screenshot*

I decided to try another practice at this, to see if I could get more of the bounce I was looking for. This was much more successful, as the bounce looked much more accurate in the angle it jumped at. I do think however that it still could be a little faster, since the ball is quite heavy and so it should fall at a greater speed.

For my third attempt I decided to use a ping pong ball as I thought this would be very different from my first two, particularly the bowling ball. I really liked how the animation of the jumps turned out, as well as the stretching of the ball but I think the speed or timing could be better. It almost looks as if it falls in slow motion, so I think I would have been better using less frames to create a faster motion.

Overall I was happy with how my experiments turned out. I know there is a lot of learning to be done and a lot of work to do going forward but I think I was able to make a good start into learning the processes of animating.

We had a lecture from Sorcha Cartoons, which I found was very helpful. She was able to explain how to break down character designs to fundamental shapes such as circles, squares and triangles and how this is helpful when beginning to design a character. By breaking everything down this way you’ll be able to create a character which will then be easier for a team to bring to animation from your sketches.

She got us to try an excercise of our own, where we designed some characters using the simple shapes.

I struggled a little with this at first, as I am still not used to creating characters from basic shapes. I found it difficult to find the balance of using the shapes e.g. triangle but not making everything in the design triangular. The square design characters also fell a little flat and 2 dimensional which I wasn’t happy with. I think I will need to experiment more with these basic shapes to become more comfortable with building characters from the ground up so to speak. The more circular shapes I feel worked a little better, and I was able to get some personality into the designs.

I think overall I need to think differently about initial sketches, and how they don’t have to be perfect- they can be something which is built upon and in fact they should be.

https://www.sorchacartoons.com/