The Animated Self: Idea Generation

When I first received this brief I recall mentioning how I was really looking forward to this, as it allowed me to focus on my strengths within animation and what I would like to improve on and whilst I still feel that this is a really good opportunity for me to do all of those things I really struggled to get the ball rolling with ideas. So I turned to the best way I know of dealing with a mind block like this, very messy brainstorms.

After getting the felt tips out, I began to think about what skills I had learnt over the course of this year and which of these skills I was good at and which skills I needed to improve on, as I thought that I could create an animation that was skill based rather than story based because I don't need to add to my mountain of a work load. Once I had thought briefly about the skills/ methods, techniques that was good at, I then thought it'd be a good idea to think about what I need to work upon within animation that I could also use to my advantage for my current project. 

Timing and spacing, movement and drawing seemed to be aspects of animation that were popping up in my 'improvement' sections of all of my evaluations so far so I decided to make a note of these and then realised that all three of these elements fit nicely together and I could possibly do something with them. 

So thinking about all of those elements I finally came to the conclusion that I should create a series (3/ 4) of short (5 seconds each) animations that explore movement of the human (and possible animal) form in motion. This would nicely incorporate all three of the things I feel I need to improve upon within animation, as well as help me with my current project, as I haven't yet moved onto the movement element yet. Thinking on what emerging interests I have in animation, it's fair to say that I don't think I have any particular interest as of yet, so I feel that the best course of action would be to try using a different method or technique for each of the different motion sequences. However, I need to bear in mind that some methods I am unfamiliar with, so they may be more time consuming, as I would have to learn them first. I also need to bear in mind that each method will take a different amount of time regardless of how familiar I am with it too. However, I do want to get a range of methods in there including ones I am not so confident with, such as stop motion so I feel it is worth exploring at least one method I am not familiar with within this brief. 

In short, I intend to create a series of short animations that depict motion using a range of familiar and unfamiliar techniques and processes. Bring it on!