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Animation 2C: Animated Documentary
This is the group documentary I created alongside Joe Hogan, Bethan Evans and Jake Thompson. Our theme was childhood toys and I'm quite happy with the final result.
Animation 2B: Sem 2, Week 9-11 + Spring Break
Week 9
Unfortunately, I didn't get much work done this week as I was catching up on my two other courses as I fell behind while working on 10x10x22. However, I still managed to get some animation done. I was mainly focusing on getting the cats' animations done and then was planning to animate the dragonfly afterwards.
Week 10
In week 10 I focused on animating the scene where the cat first tries to catch the dragonfly. I tried to use some smearing in the animation but I think I may have gone a bit overboard in a few scenes.
Week 11
In week 11 most of my attention was focused on my group animation for Animation 2C so I didn't get much done. I ended up just working on a single scene where the cat prepares to leap at the dragonfly.Spring Break
The last two weeks before the deadline were quite intense. Alongside working on the short film, I also had to work on a long essay and my group animated documentary which made it quite hard to balance the workload. Due to this, I was unable to animate the full short film and I made the decision to cut it in half. I was quite disappointed in myself for having to resort to that but I'm going to try and learn from this experience so that in the future I won't need to do this again.
Due to the previously stated reason, I also was unable to add all of the sound effects however I don't think that this is a big issue. I feel that the music ( The Hills Yonder by Robin Appelqvist on YouTube) and the ambience sound effect (found on freesounds.org) which I added make up for the lack of effects.
At the start of the course, I was also a bit concerned about my decision to mix 2D and 3D however I think that it worked out really well. Using a 3D environment gave me the ability to create a much more vibrant and detailed environment than I would have been able to do in 2D in the same amount of time and I think this was very important in making my plain white characters stand out. I believe this hybrid method may be something that I would like to pursue in a future project so I will try and continue developing this style during summer break.
Although I'm really disappointed that I had to cut out so many scenes, I am still quite happy with the scenes that I did finish. I think they look quite nice and the animation is also quite fluid. I would say that my favourite scene is definitely the scene where the cat gets up and starts chasing the dragonfly. I found the scene to be very difficult to animate due to the cats' movement and I'm really proud of the final result.
If I had to do this project again, I would definitely make sure to plan my work schedule a lot better. I feel that if I had done that then I would be able to complete a bigger portion of the film. Alongside this, I would focus less on making every single frame perfect. Perfectionism is one of the things I still struggle with often makes me work slower than I would have preferred.
In summary, this project is not my proudest work however I think it served as a very important lesson in the importance of proper time management.
Animation 2B: Sem 2, Week 7-8 (10x10x22)
Week 7
Day 1: I found the start of 10x10x22 to be quite stressful. I wasn't sure what to expect from the other participants and I struggled to come up with a short film idea that could be completed in the amount of time I had. I went through several ideas but none of them really stood out to me. Eventually, I decided to go with a very simple story about a girl not wanting to pick up a call from an unknown number. However, by that point, I didn't have much time left to actually make the animation. In my original plan, I was going to animate the girl actually picking up the phone but I ended up just having her glance over at it instead. Overall, I don't like the final result but I think that was to be expected. I've never really had to work this quickly so I didn't know how much I'd be able to do.
Day 2: On this day I did a few quick drawings of potential film ideas, however, I thought I could try something a little bit different. After considering it for a moment, I decided to start working on a log in screen animation. In my original plan, I was planning to have the girl log into a game and I even animated the game's title screen but I changed it last minute. I felt that the new version would be a bit more interesting. Although the animation is quite simple, I like it a lot more than the short film from day 1.
Day 3: My day 3 film was probably one of my favourite films from 10x10x22. I came up with the idea for this animation early in the morning so I had a whole day to make it how I wanted. The music video for "The Wolf" by Siamés was a big inspiration for this animation. Most of the shots weren't planned before I started animating, with the exception being the shots of the rat running and then jumping towards the screen. I feel that doing it this way removed a lot of the pressure to make the animation a perfect replication of what I imagined.
Enya Liao from FJCU created a wonderful soundtrack for this animation. Seeing how she interpreted my piece was a very interesting experience.
Day 4: I barely had any time to animate on day 4 and ended up facing art block. This cut down my available time even more but eventually, I managed to make a quick animation. It's simple and quite unoriginal so I don't really like it.
Day 5: Although the suggested theme (Ukrainian animators) for Friday was optional, I knew that I still wanted to make an animation for it. I spent a fairly large portion of my available time researching different Ukrainian artists which is how I discovered Natalya Marchenkova. I noticed that she worked on a lot of the animated films I watched growing up and that made me want to create a short documentary about her. Ideally, I would have animated the whole documentary traditionally but that would have taken way too much time so I stuck to digital animation. Overall, I am very happy with the final result and I think it's one of my favourite 10x10x22 films that I made.
Once again, Enya Liao made an amazing soundtrack for my film.
In week 8, Alistair Brown from CHI also made a soundtrack for my documentary. I found it really interesting how different it is from Enya's version and I really like his interpretation of the film's tone.
Week 8
Day 6: After a small break on the weekend, I felt a lot more motivated. I decided that since last week I only worked digitally, I would try and make some short films using animation techniques I haven't worked with a lot.
On Monday, I decided that I really wanted to try out cutout animation. I've never really done it before so I wasn't sure how well it would go. Due to my lack of experience, I made sure to keep it simple. I wanted to keep the pieces needed for the character to a minimum which is why I went with a mouse character. The full character could be broken down into teardrop shapes of varying sizes with the only exception being the eyes and tail. To make the character a bit more interesting, I also drew on some cartoony fur using markers and pencils.
I'm really happy with the final result although I do think that there is a lot that could be improved. If I had to remake it, I would definitely make the first half of the animation a bit more expressive.
Day 7: I was a bit stuck when it came to ideas and didn't have much time to animate on day 7. I ended up asking my younger brother for suggestions and he said I should animate an axolotl since those are one of his favourite animals. I['ve never had to draw an axolotl before so at first, I was a bit unsure about how I should draw it but I'm quite happy with how it came out. However, I do wish I made it with another animation technique.
Day 8: For day 8 I decided to try something completely new and made a very simple 3D animation. Originally I was planning to have the character be a cat (a sketch of it can be seen at the bottom of the post) but I was struggling to get the tail and whiskers to work so I changed it into a bunny. I was hoping to make a more complex animation but my model was refusing to work properly (due to its bones not being connected properly) so I abandoned the idea quite quickly. It's far from good but I don't think that it's bad either. I think that working on it was a very valuable experience. While working on it I learned a lot about 3D modeling, texturing and animating. I'm going to try and continue working on 3D animation during my own time so that I can, hopefully, create a much better 3D animation for 10x10x23.
Day 9: For day 9 I really wanted to make an animation related to food. I really love cooking scenes in animated films so I though I'd try to do something similar. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find my pegbar and a new one wouldn't arrive until next week so I had to try and animate without it. It made the process quite annoying but I managed to make something. Definately not as good as it could have been though.
Day 10: For the last day I decided to follow the suggested theme ("What would you take with you if you had to leave your home in a hour?"). I really struggled coming up with something for this theme but eventually I managed to start animating it. If I had to remake it I would definitely try and include a lot more animation.
Overall, I found 10x10x22 to be really challenging on some days and then really fun on others. It taught me that I can actually animate more than I expected in a small amount of time and the break from working on my short film for Animation 2B was also nice. Alongside this, collaborating with musicians was really interesting and a valuable experience.
Doodles
The following drawings were done during these 2 weeks. Most were character ideas that I considered including in a short film for 10x10x22 but I changed my mind due to not liking it or not having enough time to animate it.
Animation 2B: Sem 2, Week 6
Week 6
This week I didn't have as much time to work on my animation so I mostly focused on fixing some technical issues with the 3D models used for the short film. Previously I had issues with the grass physics alongside its appearance. Although it may seem like a minor issue, it really bothered me and I felt that leaving it the way it is would lower the quality of the film. I had to mess around with the settings for a bit but eventually managed to get it looking how I liked. Alongside this, I changed its' texture slightly as I felt that the darker texture wasn't what I was going for.
Alongside this, I also managed to start working on the intro animation. There are still some things that need to be tweaked but overall I'm quite happy with how it's turning out so far.
Animation 2B: Sem 2, Week 1-5
Week 1
At
the start of the project, I struggled quite a lot. Deciding on an idea that
wasn’t too much work for the amount of time we have for it proved to be quite
challenging. Because of this, I went through about five short film ideas before settling on the current one.
The very first idea featured a grumpy cat and a cat-hating woman. I thought that having a pair of characters like this would be quite interesting to work with however I struggled coming up with a plot that I liked so the idea got scrapped.
My second idea focused on two young cats. Unlike the previous idea, I came up with a plot that I was quite satisfied with. The short would follow the two cat characters as they tried to find a pretty bug in order to win a bug competition. They would search under rocks, up in the trees and even underground however none of the bugs were good enough for them. Except one. Near the end of the short, the two cats would find a gorgeous bug however, a hungry frog got to it before they could capture it. I even managed to doodle some cats and come up with rough designs for the characters. I wanted to make sure that the two characters could be told apart from each other so I made one cat short and fluffy while the other was was tall and had large ears.
Although I liked the idea, I ended up scrapping it after realising that I wouldn't be able to make it in a single semester without cutting out a lot of scenes and simplifying the visuals by a lot.
In my next idea, I continued experimenting with anthropomorphic characters. This time I thought about focusing on two hairdressers who were also dogs. The plot would focus on the characters' rivalry. They had been given the task of creating some mannequin displays so that their customers had a better idea of what they're capable of. However, it all goes wrong when they start trying to sabotage each other. At the end of the short, they would be fired for destroying the salon during their "battle". I was quite passionate about this idea so I came up with the character designs and even started building a 3D model of the salon in Blender.
However, I scrapped this idea for similar reasons as the previous one. I realised that I wouldn't be able to make it in this amount of time without having to cut out a lot. Alongside this, I started losing interest in the characters.
My reason for scrapping this idea was that I simply didn't like it that much. I thought that the idea was okay but it wasn't something that I wanted to make right now. However, I still got some rough designs done for the two characters. I did two different designs for the vendor and one for the young cat. The young cat's design was inspired by the tall cat character in my 2nd idea.
Finally, I decided on an idea for the short film. For the main character, I decided to use the fluffy cat from an earlier idea. I really liked his design and didn't want it to go to waste however I did remove some things to make him easier to animate. For the 2nd character, I decided to go with a dragonfly. As for the plot, I tried to keep it simple. It can be summarised as a cat becoming friends with a bug and then being upset when he realises that playtime is over and it's time to go home.
Once I was done with that, I went back and sketched out some scenes in a bit more detail alongside doing a couple of layer plans.
I started out with a basic plane mesh. After that, I scaled it up and edited it into the shape of a hill. Then I simply had to add a particle emitter to the mesh, tweak the settings a bit to make the particles look like grass blades and then animate it swaying by using the wind and turbulence force fields. Next, I focused on making a texture for the mesh. I went through about 3 textures before I got my final version. The previous textures weren't bad but the colours were too dark and they weren't detailed enough for my liking.
Afterwards, I quickly made the tree trunk at the top of the hill. I started out with the basic cylinder mesh and edited it into a tree-like shape in edit mode. The texture for it was a little more challenging to do. I did a few versions but they turned out too dark or detailed. This made the object stand out too much and made it obvious that it was a 3D object. After playing around with different layer effects I managed to create the texture below. It's far from perfect however I think it looks a lot better than my previous attempts.
After this, I imported the 2D files into the 3D environment. To create some sense of depth I tried to avoid placing the layers too close together. Alongside this, I rotated all the layers as they looked a bit off in the camera view. I still haven't created a texture for the bushes so I'm just using the tree foliage texture for it but it will be replaced in the near future.
At this point, I started working on the intro shot. I imported all of the 2D drawings I did into Blender and then animated the pan by simply moving the camera. Although I could have achieved a similar effect using something like After Effects, I think that the process was a lot quicker this way.
However, I decided to scrap this intro not long after I finished it. It went on for far too long and I don't think it did a very good job in setting the scene. Due to this, I had to go back and rethink the intro. In the end, I came up with the current intro. I feel that this intro is much better at setting the scene alongside letting me introduce one of the main characters very quickly. Plus this is also a chance for me to show off the swaying grass that I spent time working on.
The 2D animation was done in Clip Studio Paint and then imported into Blender.
Week 2
In week 2 I continued working on the animatic and made a rough animation of the 2nd scene in the short film. Overall I am super happy with how it came out.
Week 3
In week 3 I continued working on the animatic. I also animated the mother cat character for one of the scenes. Her design was based on one of the vendor designs that I made in week 1.
Week 4
After last week's discussion, I ended up changing a few scenes in the animatic. The feedback I got during the tutorial was very useful so I tried to apply the suggestions I got. For example, during the meeting, it was noted that the ending of my previous animatic seemed a bit abrupt so I tried to work on that.
Week 5 (+ reading week)
Unfortunately, I didn't make as much progress as I was hoping to in these last two weeks. During week 5 I encountered art block so I only got some super rough animation sketches done. Then during reading week, I was mostly focused on an upcoming group presentation and I also ended up becoming a bit ill. I'm planning to make up for that in week 6 and hopefully, also get some work for the short film done during the 10x10x20 project.
The music in the animatic is also a bit messed up near the end but I will be editing that later.
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