🌸 Week 11: Final Project

 For the final part of the sememester we had to make a long sequence and I decided to make a sequence following 2 water droplets. 

To start I made a rough storyboard to decide on the direction I wanted to take the sequence. In the first version of the sequence the main characters were a rebelling water droplet and an angry watering can. It was supposed to start out by showing the water droplets walking towards the vegetable patches and watering them. After it would turn to the watering can who is napping. The watering can would then wake up when one of the droplets decides to run off in the opposite direction instead of following the others. This would be followed by a chase scene and later the watering can would get angry at the droplet (shown by it slamming its spout againsts the ground similarly to how an angry elephant would shake its trunk), eventually resulting in it flicking the droplet towards the vegetable patches after it refused to go back by itself. 

Alongside this I drew some different watering cans in my sketchbook to decide on a design I wanted to use. Eventually this sequence storyboard had to be scrapped as I thought that I might not have enough time to animate everything however I did recycle some parts of my original storyboard for the second.

My second storyboard followed a similar idea of a rebelling droplet however this time the 2nd character was also a droplet. This storyboard started out similarly however all of the action takes place on the vegetable patch instead of further away from it. After one droplet waters the carrot which the droplets are standing on the main character (which is coloured slightly darker than the others) refuses to do the same which makes the other droplet quite angry. This makes the angry droplet charge at the other droplet and throw it into the air, resulting in the droplet splashing on the ground (and thus watering the carrot) and attracting the attention of some other droplets (which show up in the background at the end of the sequence). In this version I also tried to use some different perspectives to make the sequence a bit more interesting.

For this sequence I kept the character design extremely simple to not only save time but also to practice expressing emotion with very limited shapes. I decided not to give the droplets faces of any kind or arms however I did give them legs to move around. In order to make it easier for the viewer to distinguish between the two droplets I made one of them slightly darker so that it was obvious which is which. In order to show that the second droplet was angry I decided to base its behaviour on how angry bulls are typically portrayed in cartoons. I decided to make the droplet exhale bubbles instead of air since it's made of water and I thought that would be a bit more fitting. 

Before animating I did some quick sketches of the backgrounds that I was planning to use. I thought about making the backgrounds a lot more detailed however I decided to simplify them to save time. Instead of drawing full backgrounds I drew simple objects which are part of the background to give the viewer an idea of the enviroment in which the actions are happening. I though that colouring everything would be a bit too much and would take the viewers attention away from the droplets so instead I just lightly shaded them using a light blue which I think worked very well.

I tried to add some sound effects and music into the sequence however I didn't have as much time as I was hoping for to work on the sound. I think it's not too bad however the sound can definately be improved and that it something I will pay more attention to in future projects.

For this sequence I had to work with After Effects a few times which was quite confusing at the start. I spent some time watching YouTube tutorials on how to achieve the effects I wanted and I think it came out quite well. I used scrolling backgrounds to animate the walking sequence at the start and later the background closer to the end where we see the angry droplet start to charge. Alongside this After Effects was used for the angry droplet POV scene where it's charging at the other droplet. I had some trouble getting the video to shake and zoom in to make it look like the viewer was running towards the other droplet however after trying it out a few times I managed to figure it out. It's still quite rough and could definately be improved however I believe it looks okay for a first time.

I found this project to be quite challenging but also fun. I believe that there is a lot in my sequence which could have been done better such as having the movement be timed better, some of the lineart to be cleaner and the movement to be more exagerrated to express the emotions I am aiming for however I still quite like it. My favourite part to animate was the angry drooplet exhaling bubbles and I think I animated the bubbles quite well. Overall I am quite happy with the sequence I made.