Self Reflection [ASSIGNMENT 1 -ANIMATION STUDIO]

Below is my self reflection on assignment 1, animation studio. I took the prompts to help me cover the main basis.

What worked well? And why?

Looking back I’m really happy with my environmental thumbnails. I really like illustration, however I mostly ever touched character design and would leave out background work because I found no enjoyment from it. The tone and value, perspective and colour exercises really made me realize planning a environment base on our creative processes, to my shock, was really fun and something I enjoyed doing.

What did not work well? And why?

When doing the time and spacing exercises I think I really struggled getting a grasp on the physics in which something is suspended/falls. I often thought “yeah this looks great” and then playing it over the movement always seemed really awkward. It’s ok when it’s only one pace, however I struggled with anything else.

Planning the script and determining the length of the content to animation was also really difficult because the content I provided didn’t meet the timeframe. I hope to improve on these struggles in the future.

What did I learn about creative team work?

In all honesty I’ve never been good in big crowds. I found that when it came to my own work I always felt too embarrassed/shy, however with working in a creative team I found myself being inspired by everyone’s creations and the things I wanted to contribute to our animation that I put that anxiety aside and began showing my artwork more to my group in class. When looking at everyone’s work it inspired me to try out different techniques and styles that I wouldn’t typically think of doing, and as an artist I think that working in a creative team is a valuable experience to have.

I found that working in a group was a lot better than working solo as there were always different approaches and ideas that poured in that elevated out overall worldbuilding, narrative and designs. Sometimes I would feel overwhelmed by the changes being made and had to give up a lot of my own ideas, however I see this as a positive because if I never got any second opinions on what I was producing I would never see things from an outside point of view and be stuck in my own ways. I also really liked my group and meeting new people whenever things would switch up, and although nerve wrecking it allowed for me to meet people in the class I wouldn’t otherwise meet because of the classes sheer size.

If I were to start the module again what would I do differently and why?

I would be a lot more involved in group chats. I would show my stuff in class but when it came to discuss I always had to force myself to post because I wanted to help my group. I want to get to a stage where I could confidently post my work without feeling a sense of embarrassment.

The biggest thing I would do differently is to work better on my time management and posting regularly on the blog. My blog got deleted due to not updating the link and lost motivation. I feel as well that I could have had a lot more to show if I had kept better taps on my time management and workflow for tasks set.

What do I need to do more/less of to improve my animation practise?

To improve my animation practise I would like to go over aspects of the 12 principles of animation, most importantly spacing and timing my animations. I would also like to experiment further with different software as the majority of the time I was using procreate, which tools are very limiting in terms of animation, for example I would like to look further into Adobe after effects as I feel there’s a lot of potential to be had.

Overall I really enjoyed the time spent in Animation Studio, the work I produced and the time spent with the people in my group. I’m hoping for more opportunities for collaboration as it’s a good opportunity to grow and learn from others.

AnimationJam! Build a World Master Post- Group Disney.

This blogpost is documenting the time spent on my animation jam project. I thought to include everything here instead of individual posts, and post the homework tasks individually to my blog. This way all my information that I’ve gathered is kept in the same place!

Introduction:

For our animation jam I was part of group Disney, which I stuck with from the beginning. In truth I wish I volunteered to move around more to learn what the over groups were coming up with or even provide my insight, however I wasn’t used to such a big class and the thought of switching groups seemed very intimidating. There was only so many ideas I could contribute when it came to the same subject, and since it was Disney I began to become bored of the ideas I was formulating. It wasn’t until new people came into the group and offered their ideas that I began to become excited again as it was like a breath of fresh air each time. There were times where things were stagnate and we all had our own obligations to carry on with and I wish I was able to provide more for my group as I felt, looking back, there was a LOT more I could’ve done to help our design processes and inspiration along.

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Week 7: Animation Introduction.

Our week 7 task was an introduction to Animating, more specifically timing and spacing. I remember when doing my media course and implementing my clips I had always experienced issues with timing, scenes would either drag on or I wouldn’t be entirely sure on what felt natural to prolong in a scene for emotional impact or a structure of story telling. From my own knowledge timing when it comes to animation is an important factor due to cohesion and flow of a characters movement, and it’s is the key factor to a believability of a scene. Timing and spacing frames translate the speed of an action and the physics/weight of that object.

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Week 5: Character Design.

For week 5 we were to create characters that would invest the audience in the story we were going to tell. Characters are what make up a story so I want to invest story telling elements into my character designs to inflict appropriate emotions onto the viewer. I needed to try and understand the story I wanted to tell and how my characters come into play, so I needed to be mindful of the following design steps: target audience, where the character appears, other existing designs, character uniqueness, personality, utilizing exaggeration and strategic colour etc. There is also the matter of us needing to animate this character, so we need to keep our designs simple enough so the overall group are able to translate the designs over into their own style.

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Week 4: Colour Theory.

Week 4 was dedicated to colour theory and it’s purpose. I wasn’t in this week so I was unable to complete the on sight exercises, however I watched through the blackboard content to ensure I had a firm grasp on what I missed during class time.

Going through fine art A-Level colour theory had always confused me. I knew how to use colour to invoke a mood or emotional tie to the image you were seeing, however I tried to only ever add darks and lights to symbolize depth, which in truth isn’t always the case. For example I never considered the technique of atmospheric background depth (see Perspective – 10 minutes to better painting), where instead of adding darker values to symbolize objects behind using a cooler cyan (de-saturated colour) to show the difference that it can make by considering colour and stretching the difference. I try to now take complimentary colour palettes into account when creating a illustration and finding new ways to implement colour that gives the feeling life rather than shading to only fit realism. Animation is an illustration of life, and although realistic colour palettes can be used it’s a medium that bends reality to fit a purpose, and that’s also what colour can achieve.

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Week 3: Tone / Value.

Week 3 we looked into the importance of value and tone when it comes to design work in animation. This is an important step to how artists render and shade objects to communicate light and shadow – depicts form of the design and the overall shape and texture of subjects. The fundamental concept is “when we change the tonal values of a form it changes how we visually read said forms.” Value of depth- contrasting values allows us to understand foreground and background, horizon means lighter tones and the closer the object the darker the object. With going in depth of tone and value I hope to better frame my subjects and depict accurate value changes to my forms.

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Week 2: Composition and Perspective.

For week 2’s homework we were encouraged to look into the importance of composition and perspective to scenes. As previously mentioned perspective is something I was always bad at and heard of the principles of perspective but never put them into action. Performing these tasks I hope to gain a better understanding on how I can put perspective principles into use to enhance my compositions.

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Week 1: Form and Shape – De-constructing forms.

WARM UP EXERCISES ON BLACKBOARD.

I wanted to try the small warmup exercises on blackboard to build confidence in my line work. I have a sketchy style however learning line density and control would help benefit me in the long run, so I thought this exercise to be helpful. I tried this also on Clip Studio Paint with my old wacom tablet which, admittedly, I’m out of practise with. My eye – pen coordination isn’t the greatest and it’s definitely something to get use to if I want to use certain programs in the future. I have 2 monitors so the sensitivity was out of whack, however I adjusted this to fit the one monitor and it was easier to use from there.

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