Evaluation|Responsive

For this brief we had to pick a competition or live brief to work on and produce a final piece that then can be then submitted. We were also asked to consider a possible ways of turning the final outcome into a transmedia piece.

When I was searching for a brief I was really interested in doing an animation as it is something really challenging and new for me. Moreover, I would like to do more animations in next year and this brief seemed like a perfect opportunity to do so. I have picked a Filminute festival, as it was quite open with the themes and techniques that were available to use. The only constraint was a one-minute limit that I had to work towards.

With this module I wanted to concentrate mostly on improving my animation skills. I also tried to experiment more with colouring styles and get out of my comfort zone. I had to change my workflow to suit the needs of this project. I also had to keep the style of the drawings coherent and don’t overdetail some of the backgrounds. Characters and props had to be also done in the same way.

After choosing a festival brief, I had to think of a story that will be suitable for such short piece. I decided to extend an existing idea, based on one of Homer’s poems, which is about Odysseus and his journey to the Cyclops Island. I used it before for my final piece when I was on Access to Higher Education. However, this time I have added few different elements and changed story slightly. Odyssues mission where about getting a perfect photo together with Cyclop (a selfie), as he is addicted to the social networks. I chose children as my target audience and avoided any gory or violent scenes. I’ve created a short script and then a storyboard to have a rough guideline of what type of shots I can use. This time I haven’t made an animatic, as I had an idea of how much time can be spent on each frame of storyboard. I tried to make it quite funny and appealing as well as easy to understand. When it came down to edit each sequence I was only around 20 seconds above the time limit, which was easily solved by cutting down unwanted bits of footage.

I went for a colourful and simple visual style, as it seems to be really appealing to the young children. I animated everything in After Effects, which is good software when it comes to camera movements. However, animating any kind of movement was really hard and should be done in Flash or Photoshop, by drawing sprite sheets.  I have done few simple tests with Puppet Tool, mostly to see if it is possible to animate facial expressions with it. I struggled a lot with creating a convincing walk cycle, as it was almost impossible to make just by using After Effects. When it comes to controlling body movements, Puppet Tool can be useful; however it is completely useless for mouth or eye movements. With this constraint in mind I tried to key frame rotate and position values to add some extra little movements. It does not look bad, but next time I will have to create a series of sprite sheets or just work on the character animations in different software, like Flash, and import them to After Effects to add backgrounds and effects, like smoke or lens flare.

Correct time management was another challenge of this brief. Even though this was a very long brief, we didn’t have a lot of timetabled sessions or tutorials. Moreover, the submission deadline overlapped with two other module deadlines. With these factors in mind, I had to concentrate on various project at once, while keeping the quality high. I have to admit, I got a little bit behind with this project and have not managed to do as much as I initially planned. At the beginning of this brief I had a little experience with animation and wasn’t sure how time consuming it is. Later I found out that it takes a lot more time and there are many things that can possibly go wrong. Therefore, preparations for my future animation project, will start earlier and I will try to leave myself extra time for editing.

Sound editing is probably the most challenging task for me. With this project I did it myself, and although it doesn’t look that bad, for future projects I’m going to ask for help, possibly collaborate with other students. For this project I have avoided putting any dialogue in as it requires not only extra lip sync animations, but also castings for voice actors and recording.

Summarising, I have learnt a lot during this module, especially when it comes to making an animation. I got out of my comfort zone and that’s the most important part. Animating is hard and very time consuming but also really rewarding and I’m looking forward to future animation projects.

Although I am quite proud with what my final piece look like, I feel like it needs at least few more weeks of hard work before being ready for festival submission. I mostly want to work on little details, like better quality animations for characters, slightly more detail on backgrounds and extra movement for objects like tree branches or waves. I’m also hoping to practice my animation, learn Flash and improve over the next couple months.