Introduction
The first official week at the Ulster University Animation course was a different experience to the first week at my other schools and colleges due to the Covid pandemic.
Wednesday Class
My first class was on Wednesday, so I took some time to look through the animation books that we recently bought on the recommendation of my lecturer. I particularly liked Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair. The rest of the time was spent establishing a place to work in my house, trying to get equipment together, doing quite a lot of background administration, and attempting to get myself into a routine. For the first period on Wednesday, I had World of Animation lecture in the morning online where the lecturer Yuan introduced us to we would be doing during her class. I then travelled from home to the Belfast Campus for a small group tutorial in the building that afternoon. This would be the only time this week I was on the campus, but it was a chance to meet Alec and see the other students on my course.
Thursday Class
The next day (Thursday) was all online learning for Animation Studios (10am to 5pm). In that class held on Blackboard Learning, we first when over everyone’s attempt at drawing the skeleton and proportions of some of their favorite characters. Still on Blackboard Learning, Alec went over the basics of world creation and we were then put together into teams of four to five people to brainstorm ideas for a new animated media product. We then went off into our separate groups to come up with100 ideas on which to base our design. It was quite strange doing this online, and at first the conversation was very stilted, so I decided to talk about some of my own ideas to get started. That seemed to work and the ideas started to flow and soon we settled on a world idea. This was a society based on a shattered planet were Monsters, Aliens and Humans living together in different groups with different ideologies that clash quite often. It was a fun exercise and I got quite into it. I would also create two mood boards, one for the worlds
Homework
At the end of the day the Lecturer Alec, gave us a task to develop character concepts and backgrounds for the world. There were to be twelve thumbnails created of the backgrounds, each showing compositions of different landscapes. This would be a task that I would be working on up until the following Wednesday.
This Weeks Work
Mood boards