Final Evaluation

This module has by far been one of the most stressful, yet enjoyable modules I have done so far. I feel that I have been pushed to work outside of my comfort zone, which has been helpful. Firstly, I I have never been the most confident with my animation, however this module has made me realise that with enough planning and time management, I can achieve much more than I thought, in terms of quality and quantity. Working with Emma has taught me a lot, because before this year, i had never done much collaborative work. Also, Emma is more confident on the technical side than I am, and she was very happy to spend the time explaining things to me, to make sure I understood and to avoid any issues. We both have a strong interest in quite separate areas, so this was a fantastic opportunity for me to apply the skills I have into the areas I am most passionate about. Since Emma was more interested in animating and post-production, this meant I could take the reigns with pre-production, which is the part I love the most. I think this is why I found the animating of the documentary so enjoyable. I loved knowing that the characters that I was animating, were designed by me, and this was thoroughly rewarding and made me all the more determined to power on through. 

There were some time management issues along the way, due to work from other modules and I think Emma and myself let this get the bestir of us. However, after our final crit, we were able to pick up the pace and get everything done, with time to spare. Emma and I work in a similar way, and have worked collaboratively before, so we knew what to expect. I feel that we worked together very professionally, and we made sure that we were spending time working not just separately, but also separately but in the same room. This made the work flow much easier, because we were able to constantly review each others work. At he start of the animating process, I did make the mistake of animating the first five seconds in the wrong colour, however after realising there wasn’t an easy way to fix it in post, and not wanting to give Emma that extra work, I decided just to begin again. This didn't do any damage to work flow, in fact it only encouraged me to work quicker. This mistake brought my attention to how important it is to keep up good communication, in order to avoid stupid things like this happening again. 

The pre-production side of the this project was one of my favourite parts. I loved carrying out research, and the design aspect of this project. I think having the ability to focus more on my preferred areas this time, has allowed me to enjoy the experience more as a whole and to learn more from it. The style of this animation was quite new to me, because I hadn’t combined watercolour and digital media before, so it was refreshing to do something new. Also, it made me realise that digital colouring doesn’t always have to be the way to go. Creating this documentary has also reminded me how useful and effective animation be for not just fictional narratives, but also for real life topics. I am extremely happy with the amount of animation I managed to create in the space of a week. Due to Emma’s heavy workload in post-production, we decided it would make sense for me to also animate her part of the robin scenes too. This was not a problem for me at all, because I found myself animating at quite a fast pace. Once I was in the flow of production, I was able to get through it without delay. This is the first time I have found my animation pace to be this quick, and also one of the first times I have been so pleased with the outcome. 

If I were to carry out this module again, I would have planned my time out differently, so that there would be no issues with falling behind towards the end. Also, I would be sure to converse with my work partner more in the early stages of the project, because I think this was a problem I had at the start of production. However, I feel excited to work collaboratively again, because I think that the outcome can be very different to working alone. Also, this would allow me to spend more time focusing on my areas of interest. After designing the characters for this project, I now have a greater understanding of what would be required of me in industry, if i were to focus on pre-production, specifically character design. I realised how thorough my designs, and expression sheets needed to be, in order to make it as easy as possibly to animate her part and for me to animate mine. Also, this is the first time I have used lip-syncing. Before hand, I hated the idea of lip-syncing, but this project has taught me that it is actually quite a satisfying part of animation, and that once the phonemes are al created, it is just a matter of reusing the frames where appropriate. Emma and I both have a love for 2D animation, and both have very strong work ethics. I feel that we made the right decision in choosing to work together, because we both had very similar ideas of what we wanted to create. This also gave her the opportunity to focus on the areas she wanted to focus on too. 

Towards the end, on the last day, we found ourselves in a mad rush, due to the fact that we had used my laptop to render everything out in AfterEffects. Emma was used to her After Effects automatically picking things up and 24 frames per second. Mine however was set to 30. This is something neither of us had thought about, so we did find ourselves re-rendering, because the audio and lip syncing wasn’t matching up. However this has taught me a lot, because it was very frustrating to fall behind over something so silly, after working so hard through out this project.

Titles and Credits

After all of my animating was complete, I focused on the titles and credits whilst Emma was busy editing. For the opening title, we decided that we wanted to create something similar to the actually Rewilding Britain Logo. We decided that we didn't want a completely still title, because this would look very bland.

I took the logo to use as inspiration. We still wanted our title to be recognisable but not too different from the original. Since this animation would only be for academic purposes, we didn't see any problem with altering it to suit the aesthetic of our animation. 

Below is out final title for the opening of our animation. In order to avoid it looking bland, and to give it some life, I drew it out twice and then played it back in a loop. This gave it a slight shake, which is what we wanted. The reason I decided to add swirls to the inside of the paw, was because after a discussion with Emma, we decided it was important to mention in our blurb something about the Identity of Britain, therefore making the paw look like finger prints could work well.

For the end credit, we decided that having a simple background that connects with the style of our animation would work well. I took one of the textures I had created during pre-production, expanded it, and lowered it's opacity slightly, so that it was't too intense. 

I then hand wrote each credit as a separate layer.

I saved each credit as a PNG, so that they could be placed into AfterEffects and moved around easily. Also, this would leave Emma several option of the way she wanted to present them. 

Post-Production

Once I had my animated scenes complete, I then sent the PSD files to Emma. In order to make it easier to apply the textures to the characters in After Effects, she created an APLHA layer for each file, which would be the solid black colour. This would then be replaced by the textures in After Effects. Origioanlly, I was going to do this to my own files, but Emma asked me to just send then to her so that I could then continue to get through the animation.

Although I wasn't focusing on post, I did tell Emma that if she needed any help with post, just to let me know.

Animating The Robin

Animating the Robin, was in some ways easier because this character had less components to it's body. However it did require a lot more changes in emotion and body language. I also included a lot of secondary motion and anticipation where necessary. This was becuause it would add to the comedy element but also to the Robin's appeal, because from the start we knew we wanted this to be a very cute "squishy" character.

There were two key moments where this was applied. One of which is where the Robin is pulling at a worm in the ground. I decided that as the character leans forwards, I wanted to make her belly squish outwards, to give the impression of how little and chubby she is.

Also, in a later scene, she hops backwards three times. Just before she leaves the ground, I added some anticipation by having her compress downwards, to show that she is preparing to jump, and this would add more spring to her bounce. I didn't just incorporate this to her body, I also added it to the feathers on the top of her head, to show that they are effected by the movement of her body. Both Emma and I felt that this would make this character more believable and more loveable. 

Phonemes

Since this character had a much smaller body than the Boar, obviously this would mean that her beak was very small too. With the shape of her mouth it was very difficult to come up with phonemes for certain sounds such as "Eee" and "Rrr". After creating the first few necessary mouth shapes, I realised that I could reuse some of them for other sounds. This made the whole process look much simpler, and it still had the same result. 

The main shapes I used were "Aaa" "Uuu" "Ttt" and "Ooo" because after experimenting I realised these could all be used for other sounds too. 

Fills

When it came to creating the fills, it was just the same as it was with the Boar, however it was slightly faster, because there was less to colour, and there was less movement with this character. When it came to adding the fills on both characters, I changed the background colour just so ensure that I wasn't making a mess of it! 

Background Sound & Change in Work Load

For the background sound, we used the BBC sound library and chose two separate forest tracks, one for the Boar and one for the Wolf environment. We decided to have two separate tracks to make it more obvious that these animals are in similar, yet separate habitats.


Despite being slightly disheartened after our final crit, I do think this give us the motivation we needed. I managed to get the rest of the Boar animation done in a few days. After handing these over to Emma to be prepped for post, I was abele to get going on the Robin animation. However, due to the heavy workload that would be requited in post-production, we decided that I would not only be animating the Robin in the Boar scenes, but also in the Wolf Scenes too. I didn't have a problem with this at all, because I was managing to get through the animation much faster than I had expected at the start, and also, we didn't want to be panicking at the last minuet. It made more sense for me to focus on the bulk of the animation, because Emma was going to be focusing on all of the editing.

Final Crit

The final crit, was a difficult one. Due to deadlines from other modules and a struggle to manage everything efficiently for a few weeks, we found ourselves behind with the animation. However, we were not the only group with this problem. For this final crit, we presented the few scenes we had animated so far. These were received well, and we were given some good feedback, however we were panicking a lot afterwards. However we still believed we could get this completed in time, so we went ahead and powered on through.

Animating The Boar

The most efficient way to animate the Boar, was to have a separate layer for the Body, Head, Ears, Eyes, and Phonemes. This made the whole process much easier. The animating was done in Photoshop which is what I am currently the most comfortable with.

Having everything split into the appropriate groups made the animating less stressful, because it was so much easier to keep track of all of the different layers. I was using the pencil drawings of the environment as reference so that I knew where the characters would be placed. Each character would be rendered out separately, so I focused on getting the Boar complete before starting on the Robin.








 

Emma and I were making the time to show each other our progress  to make sure everything was consistent. Everything began to go very smoothly which is what we wanted.  Creating the digital fills for the specific body parts, was also quite time consuming, however it took a lot less concentration from the animating, and it actually became very therapeutic. 

Production - The Beginning!

Over the Easter break, I decided to get cracking with the animation after getting the okay from Emma that we were good to go. However, once we met back up again after the easter break, it appeared there was a bit of a problem. I had begun animating before we had the finalised colour sheet, and I was under the impression that we were going with black outlines, however I soon realised that the five seconds of animation I had done for the Boar, was in the wrong colour. After Emma and I spent some time trying to figure out how this could be fixed, I decided to just create those five seconds of animation again.

This was because, I had already begun animating the new scenes in the correct colours, so I knew it wouldn't take me long to re-animate these five seconds. In the end, it only took me a couple of hours, not only to animate the five seconds but the whole of the Boar's part in this scene.

Although it was frustrating, this mistake helped me in the long run. Firstly, it reminded me how important it was to keep up communication with Emma. I do not blame Emma for this hiccup,  however I do think that it was partially due to a failure to communication between the two of us. However I believe it was mostly down to me diving in without ensuring I had all of the information.

Final Textures

Once the textures were finalised, Emma very kindly put together this colour sheet which we could both use as reference when animating. Specific colours would need to be used for the outlines and fills. 

New Expression and Turn-around Sheets

After the updates had been made on the characters, I decided to go back and take the time to produce some new, better quality design sheets. This was for several reasons. The first being, the original sheets weren't matching to the final characters, also I wanted to crate some digital sheets, as I felt this would look more professional. I was already doubting myself in terms of the quality of my work, so I knew I needed to take the time to improve.

Also, I wanted to be sure that there was enough expression reference for Emma and myself when it came to animating.

Expression Sheets

Whilst creating these new sheets, I was taking into all of the different expressions each animal could possibly be making at different intervals. Whilst Emma had been doing a previous animation test of the Robin, she was struggling to make the character look scared. So this is something I wanted to make much clearer this time around. 

Turn-around Sheets

Although the character would be quite still through out the animation, we still wanted to know what the character would look like from different angles. 

Final Animatic and Storyboard

Emma and I agreed that I would create the new storyboard digitally, and she would then edit the panels into an animatic. 

Our animatic was much better this time, because we had the final audio pinned down and altered so that it would fit into the two minuet slot. 

Intermin Crit

Despite not having a neat version of our animatic and storyboard for our first crit, it was very helpful. Sara and Martin seemed very keen on our idea. Afterwards we had a clear idea of the direction we needed to go in. We also received some useful feedback on the textures, which helped us a lot. The rough animatic and storyboard that we presented, despite not yet being finalised, were well received. This crit reinforced to us how important it was to pin down our final animatic before beginning any animation, that way we would have something to refer back to.

Further Character Alterations

As we carried out our final preparations before animating we settled on how we were going to split the work load. Both of us decided that Emma would focus on animating the wolf, and I would focus on the boar. For the animating of the robin, we decided that it would probably be best to bit animate the robin in or own scenes, because this would help make he production process smoother as we wouldn't need to keep exchanging files over to one another and swapping to and from.  However we needed to make sure that our animation of the robin's lip syncing and body language are compatible. So we decided that it would be necessary for Emma to do an animation test and then pass that on to me, so that I could also produce a test which would enable us to double check that our animating doesn't look too different.

Emma did need to make a few changes to the face of the wold character in order to make it easier to animate the lip movements. This is something she consulted with me first in order to make sure I was happy with it's final design. To be honest I really liked the changes she made to it, because the alterations weren't too extreme and in some ways I actually think it worked better than my final design!

The alterations Emma made led to the boar looking slightly more realistic. This wasn't a problem at all, all it meant was that some slight changes needed to be made to the boar, just so that they didn't look completely different! The main changes on the boar just needed to be around the eyes, because at this point, he was the only character with eyebrows. 

We decided together that reducing the size of the eyes and giving him a ridge above his eyes similar to the one given to the wolf would give them a bit more of a connection. Also the ridges above the eyes could still be animated exactly the same as eyebrows would have been. 

Emma did suggest at one point that enlarging the ears on the boar could possibly enhance the character appeal. However after experimenting with this I decided that I really wasn't keen on this design alteration, I felt that the big ears made the character look too bat-like and a bit too threatening. So after some discussion we agreed that just altering the eyes would be necessary!

Another aspect that needed to be noted was that, in my original designs, all of the characters had sectioned off coloured tips to certain areas. For example the robins feathers/fingers and the top of her feathers on her head are all sectioned off. The same with the wolf's tail and ears. The same goes for the boar's ears and tusks. This is something we definitely needed to keep because this was one of the main features that connect all of these characters together. 

Final Evaluation

Through out this module, I have learned a great deal in terms of collaborative practise, but also individually. Whilst working on my individual briefs, I realised how sometimes working alone can be much more of challenge, which isn't what I expected. I am very pleased with the individual work I have produced, however, there are some areas for improvement. For example, my LoopdeLoop animation could have had a larger variety of shot framing and angles, instead of the two characters being completely stationary. However, the production of this animation taught me a lot, because I realised that my original way of animating on a timeline in Photoshop, was not the best idea, so I began animating on different layers for each frame, which proved to be much more practical. Therefore in the long run I think this brief did teach me a lot. Also, I have become more used to entering my work into competitions. This is something I used to be scared of, however now I understand that it is something which is supposed to be enjoyable.

Through out the collaborative brief, there were some difficulties and some set backs, however I do believe that these were recovered from well. This brief has allowed me to become more used to working with other creatives, which is something that I know will be needed in industry. Working across courses proved to be a very interesting yet challenging experience, because I found that I was then working in a style that was new to me. This however was very refreshing, and I am now more aware of the fact that as an animator and as an artist in general, I am able to branch out and extend onwards from my own individual style. This is something I feel will bode well for me in the future and during the rest of the course.

During the collaborative brief, I wasn't working on post-production, however after some mistakes made with the setting of the camera during the filming for the stop motion animation, I realised how important it is to keep a very close attention to detail. Because although the camera not being set to wide screen was something that none of us realised until it was too late, it did result in more work being required in post for Emma. This was a reminder how one mistake can impact badly on everybody in the group, especially those who need to fix it. However, despite this, I am extremely happy with the work I have produced during this module. I have never focused on making short live action films before, let alone animating over the top of them, so this was really exciting and enjoyable. This module overall, has taught me how to conduct myself when working alongside others, as well as how to adapt my style to fit with the required brief. This module has given me the opportunity to work towards new, external briefs, some of which have been more challenging than others, but all of them have resulted in work that I am proud of.

ISSUU - Project Report

Presentation Boards - Dazed Media

Presentation Boards - Infected By Art

Presentation Boards - LoopdeLoop

Presentation Board - Onform

After completing all of the briefs chosen for this module, I gathered together all of my development work, as well as the final outcomes, to be presented on presentation boards. 

Onform Sketches - Part 2

Week 6.

Once again, I wanted to go down the route of creating a character. However at this point, the work I was doing for another module inspired this drawing. The animation I had been working on was focused around animals and one of the characters I had designed was a chubby robin. I was able to draw this bird that was partially inspired by this Robin.






Week 7.

When I first looked at this shape, the first idea that came to mind was something along the lines of a cat or a dog. However, I really like the idea of giving living features to an object that wouldn't usually have them. I loved the idea of a little salt and pepper set being stood together.









Week 8.

This shape was quite a tricky one for me, because the first few ideas that came to mind had proven to be quite popular. This included, a bird or a mermaid of some description. I did't really want to draw something that had been drawn many times already, so I decided to create an eye out of the shape. This isn't my favourite outcome, however it was something new and quite different to the other drawings I had produced.





Week 9.

After playing round a lot with drawing wings, anchors and Elvis, I decided to go with this drawing of a dog. Part of the reason I went with this is because it isn't completely side on like a lot of my other drawings, it is more of a 3/4 angle. Plus it was keeping up with the character theme that had been running through quite a lot of my previous drawings!






Week 10.

This is probably my favourite out of all of the drawings I had produced. I decided to go produce something completely unexpected, especially after seeing that a lot of other's had transformed this shape into a head of some description. There were a lot of different interpretations of this shape, so I decided to try and draw something totally new. One of the reasons I turned this shape into a small Island held down by an anchor is because I am TERRIFIED of the sea and of anchors (which I know is strange) but I thought this could inspire something quite interesting, which I think it did!

Onform Sketches

For my third Individual Brief, I decided to do Onform, because I really loved the sound of it. Some other people on my course had said how enjoyable it was, so I thought I'd give it a go! Onform is a weekly challenge set up by Karoline Pietrowski. Each week a new shape is released which is available for download. The challenge is simple, to draw something over this shape, to turn it into something new. The rules are simple, the shape can not be rotated or changed in size, and the only colours that can be used are black and white! My aim was to produce at least ten different drawings for this brief.


Week 1. 

This first shape sparked some ideas off pretty quickly, straight away the image that kept coming to my mind was something side on, to me it looked like a head with bobbed hair, so I decided to go with this. I kept it quite simple, but did quite a lot of experimenting with different opacities of black and white, as well as differently proportioned facial features.







Week 2.

The second shape here on the left, triggered a lot of ideas, most of them either to do with hills and mountains or people with big bellies! After seeing this be done quite a lot by other people, I decided to go down the BIG NOSE route. As an artist I often draw faces side on, I don't know why, this is just something I have done a lot of. And it was also around the time of completing this challenge that I realised my love for character design, so I tried to apply this to this shape. I love an excuse to draw a big nose.


Week 3.

This third challenge made me realise that I had focused on the theme of faces a lot, so it was time to produce something that wasn't a face! This shape made me see a lot of things, a jellyfish, a cake, a turtle, but the object that I wanted to draw the most was an ice cream, purely because an ice cream of this colour is some what odd, so why not?







Week 4.

This shape is one I actually struggled with quite a bit, and after looking online to try and get some inspiration, I noticed that a lot of other people had chosen to use the shape as an outline for long flowing hair, with  face in the centre. Once again, the kind of image that was coming into my head was a side on face with a large nose, possibly quite a snobby looking character. Although I had already produced faces from side on, I decided that as long as each face was clearly a different character, there wouldn't be a problem. Also, I liked having a theme running through them.

Week 5.

The idea for shape number five arose much faster than some of my previous ideas. Once again, I thought BIG NOSE! Whilst I was sketching and playing around, I thought to myself that this could quite easily be turned into something from Night Fever, so this is what I went for!