Animation: The Second Instalment

Overall, I really found this project useful. I think I have a much stronger foundation of understanding the anatomy of multiple different animals as well as how they move and behave when performing certain tasks like walking and running – although I could probably be a bit more observant of their running motion.  I think this is great because it means in future, I can also consider adding animals into my own animations without apprehension about the way they may behave in a scene. 

As well as looking at the quadrupeds, we had to do the push, pull, and lift cycles. I really enjoyed this part because it forced me to be considerate of the 12 principles of animation – particularly, I found anticipation to be very significant when characters are moving items and I never really thought about the complexity of different principles that may come into place when doing an action as simple (yet intricate) as a push or lift. I found this to be great fun though and this has helped me to distinguish the weight of items my characters interact with also.

AFFECTION - final

I don’t think I’ve ever been nervous and excited about a project before. The two-minute film production was probably one of the toughest points for me as an animation student so far. I was so committed to and engrossed in this project that I let a lot of other projects be brushed under the carpet. I was in the university everyday for at least two months chipping away at my stop motion and it has been the most physically and mentally draining yet rewarding experience.

 Preparing my own props and character and organising sets has set something alive in my creative soul…a flame of excitement around animation and its possibilities has come back into my life and I think its amazing. I never knew I enjoyed making things so much until this project whether that be woodworking for the sets and heads, wigs, clothing and more I had the best time. Filming was difficult as I had no prior knowledge of how to use a camera or the Dragon Frame software, but once I got to grips with it, I was in my element. I really enjoyed utilising lighting to bring new levels of depth to my scenes also. 

The character project was mounds of fun. I learnt a lot about making more expressive animations. Beginning with the dot; a character with no particular expressive features I was able to convey different emotions and temperaments purely through movement and on-screen physical interactions alone. This was intriguing and exciting as I had never thought about what makes a character expressive before – is it the way they pace themselves, how high or low they are on the screen, the paths of motion they follow? All these things came into play and at my disposal they made for a visually captivating piece of animation. 

I found the elements project somewhat more challenging as I had chosen zero-gravity for my element. This meant I wanted my character to move very VERY slowly in a space scene. I found this task to be tedious and somewhat difficult as I felt I could never get them to go slow enough regardless of how many frames I added to the sequence. However, after some personal reworking I found that using a different software and some more patience meant I was able to make more intricate and concise changes to my sequence and it gave me the desired outcome eventually. 

Colour Project Final

My most recently completed Colour Project animation!

LinkedIn Learning

I used LinkedIn learning to learn a bit more about after effects for my colour project!!

This was very useful as they have a multitude of courses and tutorials available to teach you about how to do things on a wide range of topics. As an animation student, learning more about after effects was Ideal as it allowed me to easily composite my animation and meant I could foresee adding many exciting effects and special features to the animation that may wouldn’t be possible without learning about these tools.

Elements - V2

What a fantastic project. This project really allowed me to unleash my creative flare! Everything about this project was exciting although a little full on. With just a week to complete it I really felt a push to put all my energy and attention into this process and I think it paid off. 

Firstly, creating the characters was cool as they could be a little bit weirder and quirkier that traditional character’s I create which meant I could experiment with different shapes and backstories when designing them. Also, while creating them, I had to think about what environment they would interact in so with my Nacho character for example (the one I eventually chose to use) I was hungry and imagined how cool it would be to have a character interacting with foodstuffs! In my group we also divided our character designs up by colour and this was also interesting as it meant I had a more limited pallet and had to get creative with the resources I had – this aspect was quite like the colour project (character part 2). 

Animating over live action video was also quite interesting as it meant I had to plan out what I filmed beforehand which was useful as it meant I could visualise more clearly how I wanted the animation to go and how I wanted my characters to interact with the physical space.

A labour of love is what the Grad Assist Project was ha-ha!! I think this was my least favourite project and this was down to my poor time-management as it brought me the most stress rushing to complete my work in the final weeks. Honestly, I really struggled to keep on top of this project as I had so much going on with my own two-minute film. However, when I could make the time to work on the project, I really enjoyed it! 

As the first project I was working on with Fatma and Cagla was a stop motion project, it meant that I was learning a lot of interesting new techniques whilst helping them such as how to carve puppet heads (which I was really curious about for my own work) and new ways of making hair and designing sets and furniture. This was great experience, but also very time consuming and I didn’t find it very easy to approach them for work. 

This is our completed Weird and Wonderful creatures animation as a group!! Its really epic to see how all our work came together in the end to make this awesome sequence :D

I don’t really enjoy pre-production, but after working through this project I can absolutely see why it is a vital aspect of animation. Doing the pre-production for my film meant that I was able to sift through and better get to grips with my own thoughts and make my ideas more concise and sensical. 

Once I was aware of what the narrative would be about (my teaser and synopsis) I found it very useful to create resources that helped me be considerate of the feel and atmosphere I wanted to create with my film. This meant exploring research tools like mood boards, pallets, spider diagrams and more as well as looking at other artists and animators own work whether that be personal or professional.

 Moreover, the creation of my production bible specifically helped me organise all of my base work like my backgrounds and character profiles and it helped me to think about my timescale as I needed a schedule. This encouraged me to set out tasks for myself and to think about how much time I need to complete each task to remain on -track to complete my work by the deadline. This was a fabulous way of being prepared and organised before beginning my production.

The internship project has been quite an interesting one as I’ve never considered the future possibilities of a career in animation until I started this. 

I think one great part about it was creating my personal database of different animation studios as I was able to look up loads of different studios around me – many whom I had no clue about prior. So this really expanded my studio knowledge and I actually found that a lot of short films I had watched were produced by these studios which only furthered my interest in knowing about their process. 

The next step was approaching them and at first this made me quite nervous and I wanted to be very formal and professional, so I emailed the studios by details provided on their websites. However, I found this was not a very effective method of contact as I would either get a very basic and bland response from their communications team or I wouldn’t hear back from them at all! 

At this point I wanted to take matters into my own hands and so I started utilising the most fantastic tool – social media. This was amazing as it meant I could connect with and directly contact artists, animators and directors who worked at these companies in a much more laid back and friendly approach and I was much more likely to get a response (I did!). This was absolutely fantastic as it meant I was conversating with professionals and learning so much about how they got to where they are now as well as what they do in their current roles at studios. 

28/04/2022

Museum trip to the Victoria and Albert!