#30 second animation

For my E4 idea i wanted to animate someone falling because i had been inspired by a specific shot of a piece of animation that I enjoyed on youtube. Pork Soda Spinimation:

It was interesting piece of animation that i wanted to explore. However i struggled to think of a unique idea that would fit the E4 Ident theme.

I decided to move away from the drowning/floating aspect of the animation that had inspired me and think of other themes. I opted to go with falling and with that i began to think of Alice and Wonderland, specifally when she falls down the rabbit hole

Final production; A Cat’s Coffee, my 1st year 30 second animation.

All of this animation was hand drawn, lined, and painted with inks and watercolour, and was produced in Dragonframe and edited in Adobe After Effects. 

I largely like the end product of this animation, although have noted a few things I would change in future, such as to lay out more precise ideas for the shots, as I feel certain scenes were cramped or could have been shot in a more sophisticated manner; as well as using lighter/more defined tones for my background, while this issue was largely down to inexperience in animation and with inks, I feel like certain scenes would have been difficult to view without the defined lines my animation achieved due to the effects placed upon it. However, I am incredibly pleased with the style I chose for this animation, which has created a wonderful effect, as well as the animations, specifically the animated transitional shot of the door opening and the bell ringing; which caused me some issues in trying to plan out but the finished product is what I had hoped to achieve.

One of the inspirations for my animation's style, was the 2012 French comedy-drama (Ernest et Célestine) Ernest and Celestine, and was the first animated film to win the Magritte Film Award for Best Film.

The narrative follows the tale of a mouse and a bear who’s society demands they act as enemies as they slowly learn to appreciate each other’s artistic talents and change from unruly outcasts to heroes. 

Alongside following the film’s production blog, which gave fantastic insight into how the film was made and the process involved in making an animated film, but also had insight into their methodology.

A quick test on regular A4 paper to try out the colouration of some inks I bought for my animation. As this was my first time using inks, the main focus was to experiment to see how they could be blended, what colour they could create, how to dilute the colours, and how they worked with watercolours. 

A small test using the previous animation test. This was to experiment with effects in Adobe After Effects. The above effect was created using the stylize option ‘Cartoon’ and that ‘Edges and Fill’ option within that option. Unlike the previous test with Edge and Fill, where I went for the default options, I experimented with the option as so:

Stylize: Cartoon

Detail Threshold: 0.0

Width 1.2

Softness: 0.0