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.