Research 

Before going straight into the animation, I had to think, plan and create my animation based on what studios it would be targeted for my placement and put into my showreel and what art style I would go for before sending it off. When I searching through studios that Alec had recommended for us, along with students who had finished their placements and came in to show off their work and answer our questions which involved their roles, how they got help with unfamiliar software they never used before, how long they worked for, how they were able to adapt to different art styles and finally what they had learned after they left. 

Looking back at the animation studios with the knowledge I received from each student who had experienced each one including the game companies and what they got out of it with communication and good teamwork. From the most certain to the last backup my choices are JAM, Flickerpix, Alt Animation and Paper Owls which are my top companies I would be applying too. For studios being targeted towards children with kid friendly animation I had the most interest for each being 2D and having other animation styles like 3D and stop motion with a wide variety of animation. For art style I was fascinated with the characters with dot like eyes and plushie faces I knew that I would choose that style to put into my showreel.   

For character creation I had went through a various of different art styles with dot like eyes and seen quite a few that had sparked my interest. Then I had an idea to make the characters human looking but have a toys appearance like talking dolls of sorts like Pixar’s Toy Story but with a 2D look. 

Here are references for the Toy girl’s appearance called Dolly. As well as some ideas for the sock puppet hand with the Man toy known as Benny.

Afterword’s I drew concept art and the final design of the characters (with colour) to see if they would make it into my 11 second animation short. I coloured them in in hopes of finishing the rough animation and fill in the in-betweens of each frame. 

Animation Reference 

For collecting references for my 2D animation, I thought I would follow other peoples animation ideas while looking for a way to animate my 11 second scene I decided not to use someone else’s instead make my own. Since many animators collect references for animated movies and tv shows which I would often see on YouTube, by recording their self or other team members in a single room to capture their characters’ expressions, speech and body movement. I did the same with my characters so I would capture their personality and what they are meant to do for those 11 seconds while editing the clips together and follow the timing of the sequence of the audio to match up with the clips which wasn’t hard for my first time around. 

I chose my eleven second clip from the movie Coraline, the scene which she is talking with her father before exploring the house but only those 11 seconds with the snipped audio added here. 

Here are my references collaborated together and storyboard. 

For body movement e.g. lifting the cup or the puppet moving from the hand. I scrolled through the net and found a couple of live action, 3D and 2D clips for my secondary character to break down that simple action here of drinking tea. 

After moving on to the lip sync I went to over sites and blackboard to find out how to shape the mouths when one letter comes out of the mouth thanks to the internet I found solutions to the lip syncs. The puppet was easy enough since like a puppet it doesn’t make much mouth shapes. 

Rough Animation

Problem Solving and Feedback 

I had shown Alec my progress with the rough animation I had just done last weekend, if it needed any improvements it would be a good time for lecturers to view it from Mondays class. Near the last seconds of the rough sequence he suggested on making Dolly (the blue character) fix her stepping with taking a step forward or to the side and his 2nd suggestion was with her only moving her legs but not the feet so she’s still in the one spot and not gliding off by the feet with the knees coming down with in between poses for the last seconds of the sequence for more movement. So that was something I worked on from the last couple of days before submission while I was looking ways to fill in the in-betweens and fix the legs for Dolly, so the animation becomes more smooth and everything would have been cleaned up.

Reflection

Throughout this module, I very much enjoyed this semester doing practical animation again whether it being 3D or 2D animation, while the assignment itself there were ups and downs during the process. The pros were selecting our own type of animation and art style we would have to follow for our future placements which would be part of our showreels. But the downs were having to do it while completing our essay’s and group project models assignments which wouldn’t’ be finished until May.

As well as the animation project introduced to us at week 5, but didn’t have any animation classes till the last three weeks that was all 3D animation exercises but none being 2D involved. They were still handy exercises to follow for my 2D project for notes and references to add into my 11 second animation with the lip sync and timing to help me out. If I had to say what I would’ve done better this semester is wishing we had more time to do the second assignment animation that way the animation short can appear much smoother and cleaner itself and done more animation other than university work while on my free time but trying to balance between assignments and exercises was difficult. Overall I was really satisfied this second year in animation with everyone else.