Initial Ideas and Thought Process

I think my brainstorm is pretty self explanatory, but just to give some insight into my thought process as I was going along with the ideas the very first thing I felt I could commit to was an idea based around a mermaid and the water element. But I thought that I could equally get as excited about the element fire. When I initially think about fire I always consider myself to have a fiery personality being a Sagittarius and wanted to do something with the idea of a character being all fiery, I even considered doing a fight scene but then I thought about and analysed my skills as an animator so far and decided that the amount of referencing and pose to pose would be intense and I think I'd need a lot more time than we have to do something like that, so maybe I'll bare that in mind and do some practicing over the summer. 

But I carried on to research fire and fire personalities and I came across this really insightful website which provided details on fire personalities, http://www.innerjourneyseminars.com/the-five-elements.html, and I thought that it would be really exciting to do a visual represention of a chinese man reading this description out and really focus on key elements of the mouth moving and layer fire into the image. But the more I thought about this idea the less stimulating it became as an idea, I think to be done successfully this idea would require precision. each of the key frames would have to be very precise, and I think visually if the focus is on the audio it wouldn't make sense to have fussy visuals so they would have to be very clean and stylised, I already know that which ever option I chose as I don't currently own a laptop it would have to be hand drawn. Therefore This idea would need a lot more development.

I decided that even though I didn't have any initial, initial idea's for air and earth I left it a week to mull them over and come up with some possibilities. I was talking to another student who was considering the possibility of the Greek Myth Icarus and after spending the evening watching Percy Jackson's Lightening bolt I started having brain waves the idea of using Medusa. I can actually picture the snakes idividually moving and the texture of the cold hard grey statues of the people she's frozen. As you can see above I started doing a rough storyboard, mainly in my head and I quickly realised it was a really complex story and to set the scene and ambience then it wouldn't actually be worth it for such a short brief. I then went completely the opposite way and was thinking about earth and rock and one path lead to another in my head and I was shortly thinking about a little Rock Band, and I didn't really have a narrative for them I thought if I was to do this idea then I would just concentrate of the movements of playing instruments and repeating bits and setting the background. And then I thought that actually as a narrative, story telling is my strength I need a narrative or it's not good enough for my name to sign it off. 

NB: Writing this after I have finished my animatic I've come up with a really good story for the rocks, but it's a bit of a long idea so it might not of fit into the twenty second brief. What if they were addicted to rock music and like everytime they played it caused the particles in there bodies to vibrate so much they started to crack until they were too small to play music anymore, and it's message could be all about living life to the fullest.

And then finally another corker of an idea I had for air was to do with a wizard, see above. But I mulled over all my ideas and wrote my thoughts at the time about them down and realised it was time to stop coming up with so many I need to move on and focus on one. So much like I do when I go shoe shopping, trailing round for hours and finally going back to buy the first pair, I went with the water element and my mermaid idea and decided it was time for some Character Development. I wasn't feeling very inspired with character development so I just did some rough sketches see below and decided to crack on straight with the story board.

Studio Notebook For Animation Skills

Animation Skills Evaluation of Module

I have found this module enlightening. I have enjoyed learning about the basic principles of animation and some basic techniques to experiment with. Starting with the first brief, although Storyboarding is not new to me I found it refreshing to deepen my understanding of a storyboard and go into more detail with the camera shots. I was surprised to be one of the only ones to go town with the presentation of it. I really love the thought that a storyboard should be a work of art. Being the first project I was probably overly enthusiastic about it in hindsight I wished I’d of spread this enthusiasm like peanut butter throughout the entirety of the module so that each bit had perfect storyboards. However I was able to take Mike’s criticism and improve my storyboarding for apply as it was a bit dreak by that stage. I also enjoyed creating the flip books and understanding squash and stretch. I really like working traditionally so doing this activity and the pendulum swing was a comforting way to work, and I found I work through these tasks swiftly and effectively. However saying that, I did enjoy learning how to create an animation via photoshop and went back to it in my own time, to create a walk cycle. I believe this is shown through the apply brief with the combination of hand drawn and then coloured in on the computer. One part of the module that I really struggled to get into however was the pixilation, I would say that I’m not fond of using the camera I really enjoyed the photography inductions, and I enjoy doing stop motions with models, I just really struggled to find the motivation to do it. Therefore I think this is why it’s the weakest part of my submission because I procrastinated for it so much and ended up doing it last minute. This leads in nicely to my Time management, on the whole (excluding the pixilation) I don’t think my time management was too bad. In future I would like to keep on top of all of the modules though and not let any slip away because I fear the deadline week for this module may of left me with a bit to catch up on in Visual Language. My Final brief was Apply and although this is my proudest piece of work for this module if I was to repeat this exercise I would like to have worked more into the background and made it rain more, I would of also like to have added sound. I think this is a crucial element I shall have to consider in future and make sure I leave enough time to include sound as it should not be overlooked. Finally I would like to mention my blogging although I feel I kept on top of it I realise that more work needs to go into my blogs and the only way to improve my vocabulary is to read more, and also I would like to design my own header in time for future submissions. I really enjoy looking at works in the industry and can’t wait till someone looks in awe at mine.

Pixelation Video

I had a very difficult time getting to grips with the pixelation and can guarantee that I wouldn't choose this process again, I just don't think this technique was for me. I found it very difficult to get my direction across and I did try the first two ideas but i had problems with my camera going out of focus each time and when using other people i just felt like it was a nuisance for them and that just made me not want to do it even more. So i procrastinated and in the end i sacrificed the people for models. Improvements, in this project would be managing my time better and using people who actually want to help, and also using the camera the right way round so the format's not portrait. But basically i just don't think this process because for me the motivation comes in the model making and playing with models and i just felt uninspired by the themes. So although I appreciate that this is a part of the module am I still glad I did it because it's made me more aware and sure of what I am interested in and now I know not to go back to this.

Apply Studio Task

 For this brief I decided to create my 5-10 second animation around the word longing, and chose to do an old man longing for his dead wife. I really enjoyed applying the skills we'd learnt throughout this module from storyboarding to hand drawing the animation to colouring in on photoshop. It was a real delight. I think if I had more time I would of liked to alter the backgrounds and made it looked like it rained more. I was very pushed for time when colouring in and I really didn't think it would take so long and therefore I don't think i would use this method again.

Nursery Rhyme Storyboard

I really enjoyed the first storyboarding task and took it quite literally when Mike said story boards are a work of art in there own right. Although I am really pleased with my mixed media outcome if I was to do it again I would include more detail of the camera shots with arrows of movement and boxes of pans and zooms, however i did want to lose the visuals on this piece so I would do it in a different way.

Final Six Images of Scarf

Photography Induction

 For the first day of the Photography induction, I had a play with the continuous shooting mode of the camera, and thought this might come in handy for the pixelation task. We were also shown the basic elements of lighting and how to cast shadows and create reflections with the glass tables. It was very interesting but also very technical and seems like it'd be something that would only come with practice and slight obsession.

I thought my photo's of the mexican man were very successful, i really like how the lighting gives a dark side to such an innocent character. It's theatrical.