Throughout my experience in Animation Studio, I thoroughly enjoyed it for the first part of the year with the rest of the year group and lecturers. At the start of the semester I found the topics shapes, forms and character designs enlightening with how fictional characters and drawings can be made up of shapes and lines. Made by basic shapes like circles, triangles and squares for facial structure and the personality of the character for being child like, strong or sharp to display what kind of character is like along with personality.
What I think worked well in this course was the use of storyboards and colour theory. For storyboards I can identify and imagine what is happening in the sequence when it came to closeups, different perspective’s and the runtime of each scene when it includes a significant character in the scene or landscapes that viewed for a slow motion view. For colour theory it was clear to understand about the monochromic, analogous or complementary schemes with landscapes or character’s palette. It is also quite useful to use the colour wheel on ‘Abode Colour’ to find straightforward colour schemes.
I had experienced teamwork from different groups each week at the beginning of the module with their themes of stories, concept art of characters and colour schemes. It was fascinating and new to me, switching each week with different people and listening to their ideas they had came up with within their world design. I must admit it was a great way for introductions and a useful tool for communication while getting to know the others in first year by learning their names, birthdays and favourite animated movies. It was also great to see their art skills and drawings within the course of animation this semester. Although switching each week made it more confusing and complicated for each task when final decisions had to be made for choosing one’s group from switching each week to the next as well as picking the final plot line or characters design and colour included with our world project .
If I had to restart the module again in this year, I would consider adding more concept art and designs before onto the final design. I would choose this topic to get a practise on character designs by going for different looks, shapes and outfits based on the characters personality and appearance. To improve my animation skills I think I would need to get more references such as movement practises than still images for this module, so I can get the idea by looking in front of me than sticking to an image in my head.
Throughout this year, I would expect to keep my sketchbook to draw out characters or practising techniques of drawing 2D or 3D art rather on my laptop/drawing tablet.Β I find it more simpler to have my drawings sketched on paper by pencil than using a laptop/tablet as it more digital and a little bit hard to make 2D or 3D arts. If I were to change anything about what I had done this semester, it would be to spend more time watching videos on animation and follow experts on their techniques of their animation so I may get the habit of their skills put into my own work.
