FINAL ANIMATION & EVALUATION

I learned a lot this semester and generally feel like I have improved majorly in many areas with my body of work. For example, prior to this assignment, I was not aware of the terminology used in the animation department, such as frames, in-betweens, and arcs- these were all very new to me at the time. In addition to this, I also learned how to use specific programs such as After Effects and Premiere Pro. Although both were really new to me, I would say without a doubt that After Effects took a lot longer for me to get adjusted to as I found the layout and structure of the software complex and confusing at first. However, after some practice, I can now use the software to achieve effects such as making layers parallax, which was tricky at first. Moreover, group work was another thing I wasn’t used to. This took me a while to get the hang of as in my previous courses, they were very much independently based. Whenever I got to get to know my group members a bit more it became a lot less daunting as it turned out that a lot of us share very similar interests. This made it easier to communicate with each other and generally gave a shared sense of motivation. Despite this, I do feel that it would have been a lot less difficult to get acquainted in our groups if it were done in person. Not just that, but there were often technical issues such as poor Wi-Fi and this meant that some group members missed out on information. Nevertheless, I am now confident enough to say that this course has given me the opportunity to improve on my ability to work as a part of a team, and this is something I am really satisfied with.

In terms of the animation, everyone did an amazing job with their own parts. The great thing about our team was that if there was anyone in need of help, there was always someone there to give advice. On Discord, we would talk regularly and hold daily meetings to see how everyone was getting on. Even though I didn’t need much help, knowing this was a huge encouragement to the workflow. With my animation, in particular, I decided to make it reasonably simple and had my character do a run cycle. The reason I chose this option is due to how I was and still am a beginner in the area of animation, therefore, being realistic with my goals was extremely important. With the run cycle, I was influenced by The Owl House’s outro, and as well as colour palettes shown in the likes of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. I think as a whole, my part turned out quite well for my first official animation. The colours, linework, and actions are all naturally coherent to the theme of the clip, which means that changes to this environment are not too spontaneous. Even though I am relatively satisfied with how my animation turned out, if I had more time, I definitely would have added more running frames, as well as thinking more about the perspective as he jumps into the bushes. This was something that was already pointed out during one of my tutorials, however, I ended up having very little time towards the end and I struggled to balance between my animation and my blog posts. In the future, I plan to improve on this by having a time schedule laid out or an action plan of some sort. One activity I really liked when creating this animation was experimenting with Foley Art techniques. As I was unsure of where to get specific sounds for my piece, I decided to research into doing it myself. As a first go, this turned out reasonably well and was super fun to experiment with! For reference, the grass effect was achieved using plastic bags, and the heartbeat sound was done by pulling on a jacket.

In conclusion, from what I have learned in this semester, I will continue to improve and practice upon. It has given me confidence in this subject that I didn’t have before and this includes both skill-wise and with sense of communication. This is something that is invaluable and for the future, my aim is to become more professional with this.

My contribution:

Final animation put together

Inspirations & references