Rotation 1
For my introduction class I had used Framelaps to make a starter animation and make a transition. The first one i had created was a short 4 second animtion consisted of a borrowed object and i had used that as a tester to see how i could get used to the program.The other one I had created was a drawing stop motion which had moved from a big zag to a boxy humans figure. As the task was to complete an independent transition that was free and creative.
For this project i had to jump out of my comfort zone and create a nonconventional face shape independently. I struggled with trying to see the aspects of cardboard I could work with that could help me see what
type of face I could create. As a gathering material I simply try to arrange them as basic shapes ie rectangles. This took what felt like a long time and was very difficult for me to achieve.
The next task was to use the same cardboard face to create a transition into another face. When faced with this challenge I wrapped my head around the different possibilities and was left feeling completely unsure so I thought i should have stuck to basics and done a regular transition. This lasted for 1 second. The final independent task i was given was to create a facial transition using not only my own work but my classmates. As I walk around trying my best to make this as smooth as possible for a perfectionist such as
myself I did my absolute best to let go of that perfectionism and create a fast pace 1 second animation. I was not fond of this task.
☐ For this task I was put into a group of 3 and had to create a puppet. This was strange for me because I am not well versed for lack of better words in making puppets, so this was quite the challenge for me. I was shown some examples to help me create ideas but at that point i was still unsure. The immediate idea was tot create a string line cardboard puppet with a circular face. I only had a limited amount of time to brainstorm with my group so I tried to describe the general shape and routine of the puppet I wanted to create. My group was in agreement for the torsos part, and I thought it would
be fitting to leave the rest of my group to create the head and its design. I found large scrape cardboard for the body base and my group found and oval shaped cardboard scrap piece that would be later used for the head. After I created the box body, I had come across difficulty with how the body would attach its skeleton and head. This perplexed me for quite some time but after thinking about how I attached the limbs through string I had thought I could essentially do the same however the string was far too flimsy, so I switch to something with more grip which was a folder long piece of cardboard. The next challenge I faced was how I was going to attach the skeleton to its body without it falling so initially I used 2 bits of cardboard and placed it on the inside opposite from each-other
holding the skeleton in place using PVA glue but it did not hold for long, so I used some more PVA glue and black taped the pieces in place. Next were the final additions on the head which were white pieces of paper with eyes at the back of it and afro detailing. The other thing was to attach the head to the neck and for that I used black duct tape again.
☐ The next task was to pick our puppets into the studio to shoot a short film with no minimum number of seconds to work with. The only requirements would be to work on 25 frames per second, which was something I was not used tot as I had previously only worked on lower frame rate such as 24 frame and 12 frames per second, use the app called dragon-frame which
again, I was not only not used to but completely unaware of what this software was but even, so I kept moving forward. The plot for this animation was to make our subject which was our box puppet which we renamed to be a box troll who cries because she of her lack fo self confidence of her size because she is much larger than others but makes a little ginger bread friend who helps ease her sorrows but even that short burst of happiness doesn’t last because the gingerbread man also had a friend and they leave together leaving the box troll girl crying once again.
☐ The next task was to make a 30 second 25 frame per second animation. For this project we could reuse our puppets and make
something different from our first animation and the prompt was transformation, we had to use sounds and edit it before the deadline. We were given time to create more props l. During this time, I was constantly thinking about what direction to take the animation and what aspects of transformation I could take. As I piece together ideas, I produce destroying our original torso box and creating another body for our box troll, so she smiles. Creating the extra pieces took most of the out time for our first session but we did our best and tried to rush as best as we could so that we could start filming. However, when we finally got to our station our computer was malfunctioning and had to to be replaced, later the camera was having problems as well and to
make matters worse even when there were mistakes but made progress and finally got to a couple of seconds our computer crashed again, and we lost all our progress, and we had to start again. The next lesson we had a more solid idea of how we were going to tackle everything and this session was a lot smoother than last. We were able to animate about 30 seconds worth in 3 hrs and the rest of the time was trying to adjust the timing and overall editing. The final session we attached sound to the animation, which was kind of difficult, so I had to look up a tutorial on how to import it and after that we were finished and I was responsible for uploading the final animation. I had edited it one last time to reach the exact 30 second requirements.
Weekly projects
☐ it was another group project that was
not to be done during lesson and only 1 week to complete simultaneously with my class work when I had to complete my 30 second animation. The task was to a book on how elephant and castle came to be. My group spent a lot of time on discussions and who was responsible for what and so on. For this animation the idea was to create a parody of Romeo and Juliet of London. For simplicity we decided to use black out cut outs and use a rostrum camera to create a stop motion effect. I had created acrylic stamps i had carved out as well as make silhouettes of some background scenes. Next was to use the studio and create the animation. Another person in the group had to come in and animate a portion of the animation and the rest of the group came and helped edit, animate and keep to time. We made it into for the deadline and worked right up until the final few minutes.
Rotation 2
☐ This rotation was to draw a random object in different forms such as drawing with non dominant hand and making a character based on said object. Next was to create a storyline and we had compile creative freedom on it. I had made a collection of storylines based on a bartender, a circus puppet and a plague doctor turned mortician. I had chosen the last one.
For the final lesson of this i had to explore the rest of the principals and upload it.
Rotation 3-motion plan
☐ For this rotation I was to recap the principles, explore and learn how to animate on photoshop, explore how I should communicate my character and their personality and ass sound effects and character sounds. Animating on photoshop was something I was not used to. The tutorial itself was easy enough to follow, and I have dabbled in some animation software, but this felt a little difficult to get around at first. The hardest part I struggled with was trying to figure how I could capture in a short span animation how my character is bold, compassionate and cheerful. I had spoken to several people and saw what they did for their animation and at that point I started to gather a general idea of how I was going to execute this. I started on the first part of the animation and tried to animate her popping into frame and posing to reflect the cheerful aspect of her character personality trait. After that I wanted to show how i could then make her embody the rest of her character traits which were quite the challenge
Rotation 4
animatics
for this rotation the task was to create a 30 second animatic on anything I wanted. I had not been able to attend the first week due to illness so I was only able to participate in the second week and during the second week. I had not solid idea of how I was going to execute this and the only thing that came to mind was to create a dark and droopy Victorian esq background or a dark late at night London street and maybe the essence of a dark entity looming in the background. for this animatic i had made a quick paper storyboard based on a previous rotation idea i could build up on. this paper storyboard was very short and only showed about 5 major points surrounding the main point of the main character stealing from this entity. for the first part of the animation i had created a background that was reminiscent of the general vibes i was trying to go for. from there i had gotten the idea to make a running cycle but i was unsure as to what specifically the main character was running for so i opted for a general dark entity and refine the thought as i went along. the next part i was trying to attempt was exploring different camera shots for this running cycle and explore what my capabilities were. to explore this i wanted to do a close up shot of the main characters face which i based of my own appearance. the next part of this animatic was the hardest part and that was to create a frighten scary vibe of how terrified the main character was of this entity and how even though they are being chased and are aware what may happen to them it was very important to keep this stolen item. it was at this point that i had come to the conclusion that maybe the entity chasing my main character would be death. it took some time for me to choose what exactly they had stolen from death. what would be the most important to them? what would show that they are in fact death in their design? how could i convey the importance of this object? all of these question made me think very hard on how i would want this 30 second animatic to look. to start off with i tackled the hardest question in my opinion which was ” what would be the most important object to them”. for this question what came to mind the most was the anime soul eater, most importantly the character “death”. i had watched this show quite some time ago so when i had the idea i had to familiarize myself with the “death” character and i had noticed one of the major part of his character design was is weirdly shaped cloak, his skull mask and his strangely large hands. among those aspects i had chosen to focus on his mask and make it so that the main character had somehow stolen the mask for some sort of grand purpose. once i had gotten over that the rest of the animatic had gone rather smoothly.
out of your head
during the drafting of stories the way we had intended to move forward way by going based off a particular “vibe”. in this particular vibe we had discussed whether it would be a dark and gloomy vibe or a heart-warming vibe or something sad or something that felt more fun and goofy. after some time we had decided on going for a dark mysterious vibe where we believed we could have more creative freedom. i personally like to also go with this sort of vibe because in my previous project i found it was much easier to draft a story based on emotion and horror than a story we had to make heart-warming.
the next stage was to pick our prompt words and make stories based on that. the words we chose were:
blind fold
lies
silence
decay
commotion
the next part stage we had to go through was choosing what type of main character should they be and look like but more importantly what was everyone’s strengths. after some time i came up with 3 questions to ask.
how old is our main character?
are they animalistic or human?
are they gendered or androgynous?
for this story i originally wanted our main character to be an older or elderly human woman partly because i was confident in my ability to draw women but also because i wanted to experiment with the concept of age. i had put this idea forward and asked the rest of my group if this is the direction we could take and the others suggested we opt for a younger lead with animalistic behavioural traits instead more specifically a young child. the suggestion of animalistic traits made me feel a little confused because i could not visualise how we might be able to portray her behaviour beyond just the character design so i asked my group and they were rather stumped too so we later scraped the idea and went for a younger lead. i suggesting making her older than a child because we could have more creative freedom and my group agreed.
now that we have a sort of idea of what our main character is going to be the next would be to see how many characters in total we should add. the minute that i started this project i always wanted this animation to be quite limited with how many character we incorporate, purely because being responsible for a large range of characters would be quite taxing and take far too much time and energy so focusing on a maximum of 2 to 3 character would be more than enough and manageable to get and easier flow of the story. when i put this forward to my group they also agreed because they also wanted to create a clear and concise story.
now it was time to start drafting stories. we decided that each person in our group would go away an draft stories on their own and come back so that we could later vote on which one to go for. during this my group made a group chat and onedrive with all of our major ideas and progress.
my inital idea was to have a religious main character like a priest or something who lies to their followers about a massive truth that would put them in a bad light, lie to their followers and force them into blind faith and take away their voices, silencing anyone who speaks out against them and through this dictaorship sparked a rebellion that ended with the main character is dying or rather decaying and through her final breath caused a massive commotion that could spell the end of everything.
my second idea was a refinement of the first.
the main character was a child often compared to the tyrant of the city that harmed and killed thousands, they strived to be nothing like them and avoid that fate with their life and though that resolution they gradually ended up taking the same path as the tyrant. they died instigating the next person to take their place, i sectioned out the story based on the prompts given like this:
forshadow: they will become and then encourage the next generation
blind fold: the main character blinded and restricted their followers
lies: they lied to those around them and even themselves
silence: those around them
decay: dying from their mistakes
my group members suggestion was:
“Blind: Character imagines everything in their home is alright and it’s a normal day
Lies: Lies to themself thinking nothing is wrong
Silence: Family member cannot talk
Decay: Family member starts rotting away
Commotion: Outsiders find out about the death and cause a commotion
Foreshadow: Hints that the Family member isn’t okay
MC drags their family member across the house, completing their usual daily routine. They notices strange differences like how their family members looks, acts and smells but ignores it. Neighbour comes to visit and discovers that the family member is dead so the call the cops and alert others on the street leaving MC struggling to process the sudden change in their routine
There was a person who envied another person who was perfect. She kept observing her behavior and actions, and found a reason to play a game with her. If she lost, she had to scratch her nose. But the other person refused. The two started fighting, and one accidentally stabbed the other person’s eye, causing it to go blind. Then the latter lost his balance and fell down, dying. She put on the clothes of the deceased and dressed the deceased as herself, continuing her perfect life as if she were still alive.”
my other group members suggestion was:
“There was a person who envied another person who was perfect. She kept observing her behavior and actions, and found a reason to play a game with her. If she lost, she had to scratch her nose. But the other person refused. The two started fighting, and one accidentally stabbed the other person’s eye, causing it to go blind. Then the latter lost his balance and fell down, dying. She put on the clothes of the deceased and dressed the deceased as herself, continuing her perfect life as if she were still alive. After that poliece try to find the dead body, but she hide at the attic, slowly let the body rot, smelly, and attract so many flies, represent the secret gonna expose.”
a few more suggestions were made and we chose to complete this by doing a poll however that didnt pan out the way i wanted becuase we were not used to eachother yet we were very polite with one another which fustrated me quite a bit but then i later suggested doing spin the wheel and we ended up choosing my group members storyline choice. next was to descied one who does what and what programs everyones uses so that we can see how we will animate it.
the story we ended up choosing was having our main character live with her mother and go about her day with a sort of blurred vision and when the pet character comes into play they help reveal that the main character had been in denial and she was not seeing that her mother that she had been living with the entire time has been dead and rotting. the main character was living in the 1800 Victorian era.
my group member april was great at doing backgrounds which the other including myself lacked so she was responsible for back ground designs my other group member was great at making animal style characters so she responsble for the pet character and my other group member was responsible for the main character design and i was reponsible for the final humanoid character.
character designs
i immediedly go to work with the charcter designs for the dead mother character. i used the base of “easy pose” the app. this part of the project felt rather easy because the cloth design for the mother character was not as important and the only part that mattered that she looked dead and decaying. i loved making these designs because they helped me make characters i was not used to making but still felt familiar in some sense. i also liked how i really pushed her style and different depictions of how she looked decayed. the only thing i did not like was that i could not design something more. for the process of designing this character i wanted her clothes and her skin to be a green or a variation of it because i tend to associate green with death, the earth and rebirth and because of that it make the desigiing process all that much more simplifiyed.
storyboarding
during this time my group member had created the first work in progress scenes that would shape our look for our animatic and started sectioning out everyones part it by bit while i was overseeing it all. i worked with my group member and started refine the idea of the images i was given by my other group members. i found this part kinda of diffuclt because i it was hard to collect all the images i needed for the animatic and make it feel as though what we had was ok but far too much and to have to cut down would be very diffuclt for me as i love to have a lot of content. i found this rather restricting because i thought 30 seconds were too little. the major issue we had was that the importance of the bird character was far too minimal as we got for feedback so the issue now was to make the pet bird character seem undeniably important.
during this there were mulipul revisions and quite honestly i was so very furstrated with that because i was convinced that the original plan was though out and well executed but with so much feedback from various different lectures i felt so very overwhelmed. i hated how much it had changed from the initial but i pushed through non the less.
now that the animatic was better refined the next stage was to focus on sound. since the idea was a young victorian woman in her early 20s. during this exchange i had sent her the first draft of the script we used that help my group further developed. i was rather distressed during this because i wanted to make sure everything was done perfectly so that when we started production all we had to do was attach the audio and and fill in the gaps.
for this animation some parts I had to do in between frames and I had used a real life reference, sister, who modelled for me to create a smoother motion.
- https://vimeo.com/1161280233?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci
- https://vimeo.com/1161280849?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci
- https://vimeo.com/1161281340?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci
These are the links to the videos for almost all the rotations ive done