Working on my project in Sarah’s module had a lot of really interesting topics on offer for me to learn from, and overall I had a lot of fun with it. It was fun planning out my storyboard and then creating an animatic out of the shots I created for it, and it was also interesting seeing how our project has developed this far into the semester.
Communications between our team was very poor online, and was heavily reliant on physically meeting each other for things to really go anywhere. However we did do a lot of development into our project when we did meet up. Even then, we had to be really close to each other in order to communicate efficiently.
What worked well in our project was the idea of using instruments as weapons against the enemy. I chose to make my character use her guitar as an axe and swing it down on some enemies, and I felt that this could create some rather cool action shots. Originally, it was going to simply be music competitions against the enemy, but using them as weapons seemed a lot more fun.
When it comes to creative team work, I learned quite a bit about cooperating with other people’s ideas. I showed them my ideas for the project and input my own ideas for what the project could potentially have in it. Another thing I liked was drawing everyone’s characters in my own art style, and getting a sense on how everyone draws their characters as well as my own in their art style. Everyone has their own approach to an art style, and has helped me a lot in analysing my own art style.
If I were to restart the module again, I would endeavour to be a be a lot more active in providing input into the group project, as I was quite passive in the overall direction of the project.
One of the things I really took away from this semester was thinking how lighting affects the shading of my objects. Doing the lighting exercises and getting feedback on them made me think about how to accurately portray the lighting on the objects and how their shadows are cast because of the lighting.
What didn’t really work was the idea of having the characters face their personified fears. We realised that too complex a concept for our project meant more planning and time wasted on how to have them face their fears. While I did make a few illustrations based on this concept, I felt that simplifying the storyline to just OCS or self inserts facing pop culture icon characters was a good call. What was also forgone was the backstories of our characters. Bridget Fletcher was conceived as a passionate girl who was too lazy to do work, but that was forgone along with the complex nature of the original story.
What I might change about my project is the timing of some of the shots. I feel the animatic I have created doesn’t spend enough time on some of the shots I have created for it. I want to remedy this in the final animation. I also changed the concept of what my character was fighting. The initial storyboards had her fighting original, but rather bland creatures alongside Luca’s character, who used his voice to fight. The revised storyboard, as the story was revised to fight against pop culture icon characters, now had Pokemon from different eras and spaces, Blacephalon, Scream Tail and Iron Bundle, with the former one being slightly modified to give a more unique look. I also plan on making the shot where Bridget swings the axe down on the monsters more dramatic and showy.
This is the current WIP for the animation.