#mga2danimation

This is my evaluation for my 2D Animation, which you can view here.

Overall I think my animation went well, It didn't go to exact plan due to some personal issues but at least I tried. So I was originally going to make a squirrel screaming while riding a roller coaster here is my story board.

The story board is not as accurate as I would of liked it to be as its not my strong point but it gave you a idea of how it would look. I couldn't get the squirrel to move as I wanted it to as im new to the drawing and animating stuff so instead I had drew an image of a squirrel and made it move with key frames. I then added my backgrounds and added free music which I found which made the whole thing look silly and funny which was my first intention.

The feedback I got was good! Paris said ‘’Nice chipmunk and tune goes with the theme of fun fair, to improve next time make it a bit longer’’ which I fully agree on.

My animation is about two goats on a hill. The male goat, ‘Ori’ tries to impress the female, ‘Eri’ by blowing bubbles at her. However, this ends up inadvertantly trapping her inside and causing her to float up and end up on the moon. The animation coupled with the music feels surreal and somewhat eerie. I intended this as my original inspiration for this short film was from a dream I had. I think that I should work on my storyboarding skills however, as it does not make a great deal of sense watching it back without context.

Overall, I like how my animation turned out. Ideally I would have liked to have put shading on my characters, but this would have taken even longer than it took to create with just flat colour. I think I should learn to curb my ambitions a little, as I struggled with the workload, although it worked out in the end, almost exactly the way I wanted it to.

I was mostly able to stick to my schedule, apart from about a week and a half where I was extremely unwell, and unable to do anything. But, in terms of setting myself goals each week and accomplishing them, I feel like I did a pretty good job. I decided to use frame-by-frame as the animation technique and tried to incorporate my knowledge of the principles of animation as best I could into my work, although it could be improved, I feel like I am getting better at remembering to use motion arcs when animating.

Compared to previous animations, I am glad that I decided to work on twos, as it meant less work while still keeping a smooth animation, (apart from some scenes I feel should have had a few more in-betweens) If I were to create another animation, I would try and use mostly twos with the occasional one for particularly action-packed movement.

Audience Feedback

I asked for feedback from several people asking for two criticisms and two compliments from each, I’ve decided to cherry-pick a few quotes as many of the comments were similar in nature.

Almost every comment I received mentioned how they liked the fluidity of the bubble’s animation. This really pleased me as I worked especially hard to get that right, however, I feel like the scene with the bubble wobbling could’ve done with a couple more frames.

Terri Warren said: ‘I wasn’t sure what was going on really’

I think this could be due to a lack of scenes, if I’d added a few more, perhaps the story would have been easier to follow, however, that would have meant more work on my already ambitious project. I also think sound effects would have conveyed the story a little better, but I wanted the animation to be dream-like and felt that sound effects would have made it a little too realistic instead of surreal.

she also said that ‘[she] couldn’t understand the title... it needed to explain this was a dream sequence’

I understand why a clearer title could have made sense, but I did not want it to be too long, as I wanted it to look nice on the first frame. I also feel like the title is fairly unimportant, and the animation itself should be self-explanatory. Unfortunately, this was not the case and is something that needs to be worked on in future. Also as a sidenote, ‘Baanacht’ actually means ‘BaaNight’. Vague, but relevant.

Brett Warren said: ‘The female goat’s chest implodes at the beginning’

This was an animation mistake that I forgot about during the scene that pans. unfortunatley there were several that I managed to correct last minute, like Eri’s hair colour changing. Sadly, this was one I missed. I think to prevent this from happening in the future, I should show somebody my animation to ‘proof watch’ it before I render, allowing me to correct as many mistakes as I find.

some of the scenes suffered from jitteryness as several people commented. Catarina Ross mentioned: ‘Not tooo sure about the beginning frames where their heads lift up‘

I agree, I would have loved to add more frames, sadly I did not have enough time. I will try to plan better in the future to reach a high quality of animation, where everyhting is fluid, looks good and flows properly.

Most people liked the character design, finding them ‘cute’ or enjoying the colour scheme, however Matthew Rimell said: ‘I don’t like the design, there’s too much emphasis on the rear end’

I understand everybody has their own tastes in characters, I believe the scene to which he is referring is the scene with Eri tumbling through the air. I simply exaggerated certain aspects of her physique to make it a little clearer which direction she was tumbling in. I found that if I animated her without this, it became less clear. However on the topic of the characters, I do not like how I have drawn them in several scenes (especially some of the inbetween frames) and would like to have stuck a little closer to my design.

 35,000 years ago - The first known attempt at depicting moving images was first seen many milennia ago as cave paintings with several pairs of legs. This is because at the time, there was no way to create actual motion, so early humanity simply drew several poses and sets of limbs to represent movement.

1600 bc - The Egyptian godess Isis had 110 columns covered in her image, with slight tweaks in between each picture. This gave the effect of movement to anyone riding by. Similarly, ancient greeks had a method of painting pottery with sequences, so that when it spun it could suggest movement.

1640 - The magic lantern was invented. Similar to a film projector it would project images onto a flat surface (usually a white wall). The only light source available at the time; oil and candles, were used. This meant the images were usually of a poor quality and flickered.

1824 - The Thuamatrope was invented. It proved animation was possible due to our eyes and mind retaining the last image we saw for a fraction of a second. It was a disc, whith two images on each side e.g a bird and a cage. When spun rapidly it would merge the images together, eg. a bird in a cage.

1841 - Joseph Plateau invented the Phenakistoscope, it combined two discs, one with imagesand one with slits to look through. It gave the illusion of motion when spun. This proved to be a popular form of entertainment among many people.

1867 - the Zoetrope was created. In principle it was fairly similar to the Phenakistoscope, however now multiple people could enjoy it at the same time, due to it being a circular contraption in nature. These devices were sold as toys for children and adults alike as entertainment.

1868 - shortly after the Zoetrope was created, the flipbook appeared. Unlike the Zoetrope and similar ideas before it, its images were in a linear sequence as opposed to circular and could tell a story instead of looping a motion. The flipbook was a book that you could flip through the pages to create the illusion of motion. regardless of it being an old invention, flipbboks still exist today both as young childrens toys, and sometimes used by industry professionals to quickly create an animation without it being digital (often for short ideas later translated to more detailed animation).

1877 - The Praxinoscope came into use as the successor to the Zoetrope. Like the Zoetrope, it was a circular device with images painted on the inner wall. The difference was that instead of narrow slits, mirrors were used to reflect the images. This proved to help with the clarity of the animations, and with more modern lighting eventually being used, the whole experience became easier to view.

Late 1890s to early 1900s -  photographs of drawings were played in succession to create the first moving pictures. The most famous of these are matches arranged to convince people to send matches to the troops in the boer war. Another popular early stop motion film was the ‘Humourous Phases of Funny Faces’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGh6maN4l2I  which contained similar techniques, but also the first ever seen frame by frame animation.

1911 - winsor mcCay  created 'little nemo' and 'how a mosquito operates' which were the first colour truly frame by frame animation, an amazing feat considering it was the first of it’s kind, ‘little nemo’ itself was 4000 frames long and a huge milestone for animation.

1914 - 'gertie the dinosaur' McCay invites the dinosaur to eat a real apple, the first time an audience could identify with animation as real life and animation intertwine. This could also be seen as the first time animation was used as special effects.

1920s - felix the cat showcasing real personality that a camera cannot capture was a massive hit, and a milestone in creating an animated character with definate personality and memorability. People today still know or remember Felix as a step forward in technology and ability.

1928 - 'steamboat willie' was yet another large milestone as the first animation with synchronised sound. It is mostly reknowned for the first appearance of mickey mouse, a character who later became arguably the most well known cartoon around. It was just the beginning for the golden age of film and animation created by disney.

1932 - 'flowers and trees' was the first fully animated colour cartoon. Created by Disney, it had plenty of charm and well designed characters.

1937 - 'snow white' is premiered as the first fully animated feature length film, paving the way for countless cel animated feature length films, yet again created by Disney, who was nearly talked out of creating it by his family. The cost of this film ran so high he had to remortgage his house to pay for it.