The Animated Self: Dance Sequence

So in the end, I realised that I hadn't planned my time very effectively and this meant that I was getting a little stressed, as what I wanted to do wasn't very realistic in the time frame that I had. This also resulted in me Rotoscoping the whole animation.

Although this wasn't what I quite had in mind, I'm not at all that bothered about it, as I was doing this to experiment with something new and to focus on creating motion through animation, which I have done. I am a little disappointed, as I didn't get the chance to practice my drawing skills, however, I will have plenty of opportunity to do so later on.

Because of the tight time frame I left myself with, I also haven't been able to add in the hands for the majority of the frames, meaning that for the most part the dancer has no hands. However, when I watch the animation I don't feel like it ruins it as such, but it would look better overall if all he frames had the hands. I also haven't had time to think about a backplate, but personally, I like that it is just the white on black dancer within the animation. Yet I am aware that some people don't agree with this and I will consider a backplate for the exhibition.

Overall, I am really pleased with myself for learning a new skill and for producing an animation such as this in such a small time frame. Although this animation isn't the best of quality and there are a lot of things that need improving, I am still quite happy with the results.

The Animated Self: Idea Refinement

Whilst gathering the reference videos I needed in order to create my animation, I realised that there was actually quite a bit of work to be done and I couldn't help but feel that there was a much easier way to do this than how I was going about it. Then it dawned on me that there was. Other than the throwing sequence, all of the other sequences are elements that appear in dance. So it made me think I should probably just do a dance sequence instead, as this will include the majority of the motions I wanted to animate, whilst allowing for a very smooth transition into each different element. It will also allow me to use more of the space and in a much more imaginative way.

Rather than doing what I originally had planned, I'm going to create a 30 second animation of a dance sequence using a range of different media rather than 5 separate sequences.

The Animated Self: Storyboard

Whilst thinking about my storyboard I was also thinking about how I wanted all of my separate sequences to merge together. I realised that I wasn't too thrilled about the idea of all of my sequences being separate and just simply switching from one to the other, as I thought this would look kind of boring and it wouldn't flow as nicely as if the sequences were somehow integrated with each other and lead off from one another. And obviously because I'd already noticed how much better it would look if the sequences were all one big sequence, I couldn't go back to having separate sequences so I started to think about how I could effectively create this without creating too much extra work for myself. This is what I came up with.

I feel satisfied with what I have managed to produce for this brief and I feel that I have come up with something that is quite manageable. Whilst it looks like it could be difficult in parts, such as creating work in ink, I don't feel as though there is too much work there to be done and I feel that I can handle this work load on top of my other briefs. I also feel that I have managed to successfully think of a way to make the sequences flow together in a creative way, rather than just having them as separate sequences, which makes me happy because I wouldn't have been happy otherwise. 

The Animated Self: Choosing the Methods

Before I started to animate the 5 motions I had chosen, I needed to think about which methods/ techniques I wanted to use for each of the sequences, as I wanted to use a range of different methods to get across that I am interested in all methods of animation at the moment. However, I do feel that 3D animation may be a problem, as we haven't learnt how to create a human figure in Maya and it may take longer than I have to learn how to use it for this purpose so I have decided to miss that one out for this project. That does leave me with a few others though.
Because I want to demonstrate my strengths as well as areas I need to improve upon, I feel that it is safe to say I will be using traditional animation and digital animation for at least 1 of the sequences and because I am so familiar with these methods I feel that it may be a good idea to use these for the more difficult motions to help balance out the difficulty of the task. Therefore, I will do the dancing motion in traditional animation and the jumping motion in digital animation.

Thinking about what software I am good at using, I'm confident in using Photoshop however, I'm not too familiar with Illustrator and for that reason, I feel it would be a good opportunity to experiment with using the software to create images to be used in animation and I've deiced to create the trowing action in Illustrator, as I feel as though I'd be comfortable with creating this motion using this software.

This leaves me with stop motion animation to explore, which in itself has a large variety of techniques to choose from. To start with I eliminated puppet animation, as I feel that it would take too long to create a puppet to use for the animation and the puppet I made earlier in the year isn't actually fully finished yet and I feel that it would be too much of a strain to get it finished in time to animate with. I also don't want to work with Plasticine, as I find using the medium extremely frustrating. Paper, however, is something that I feel I'd like to try, as it is something I've briefly tried to animate with before and I'd like to see what I could achieve by using this material for the walking motion.
For the last motion, running, I'm not quite sure what I want to use, but I really want to try and create a stop motion piece using ink and water. However, this may be a little too ambitious for the time scale I have. I think I will experiment with it and if it doesn't work, I will fall back on a technique I am familiar with to create the running sequence.

The Animated Self: Choosing the Motions

Thinking about what kind of motions I want to animate, I've been considering what kind of motion I can actually do. I've realised I've never actually done any kind of motion other than a pendulum, a ball bouncing and a squishy toy jumping. So it made sense to me to start at the beginning and animate a walk cycle and a run cycle, as these seem pretty important. It will also allow me to work on my drawing skills, as I will be focusing upon the human form in motion.

That's the first two sequences sorted. To challenge myself I have been thinking of animating someone dancing, as they move around a lot and there's a huge opportunity to develop a number of the 12 principles of animation including ones such as overlapping action and follow through, which I have ha very little practice in. Having said this, I could focus one of my sequences solely on overlapping action and follow through. Why do I have so many choices to make?

Because I was struggling to come up with the remaining 2 motions I made a list of all the motions that I felt would benefit me the most when I came to animate them. I also tried to think of motions that weren't overly difficult, as I already have a lot of work to do with my other projects. And I came up with this.

After thinking about it for more time than I'd like to admit, I managed to come up with 5 different motions that I'd like to animate, 4 being 5 seconds long and 1 being 10 seconds long, as it would be a dance so I'd like to animate the motion for longer. I think I have made a good selection here that will allow me to explore motion in a number of ways and I will also be able to experiment with methods and materials and techniques as well. Now all I need are the reference videos. 

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!

The Animated Self

In today's briefing we were given our last brief of the year (I don't know whether to be sad or happy), in which we have been given the opportunity to create an animation that reflects our interests in the subject, our strengths, and what we would like to further develop. Although I don't have many ideas right at this very minute, I'm actually looking really forward to this brief, as it will give me the chance to focus on aspects within animation that I want to develop and explore further throughout my time on this course. It will also help me to pick out specific aspects within animation that I could benefit from improving on.

Not thinking about this too much, from a previous project I am aware that I need to improve on my drawing, so I could develop an animation that explores the human form in movement in order to develop my drawing skills. I could also extend this to environments within an animation, as I could focus on creating very detailed environments that the camera can pan through. These aren't definite ideas, but they do give me a starting point to start thinking about which areas within animation I'd live to improve on.

I'd also like to think about which area of animation I'm most interested in at the moment, but I think it's safe to say that I find the whole process and the many different methods all really interesting. Having said that I do find storyboarding tedious sometimes, but I do enjoy coming up with the story and I find storyboarding quite fun if I'm really into my idea. I think at the moment, I'd like to focus on character and environment design simply because I feel that this is what I need to improve on the most, as I do struggle sometimes with both character and environment design. But other than for that reason, I'm not sure which area of animation I like best, as I enjoy the entire process for different reasons.

Finally, I think it would be a great opportunity to show my strengths within animation as well. For instance, I could showcase my ability to create digital or traditional animation, as these have improved greatly over the period oft he course.

I need to start to think about what I want my animation to show exactly and I also need to think about which aspects of animation I am really interested in.