Evaluation: Character and Narrative

For the brief Character and Narrative, I am satisfied with the work overall whilst noticeable change can be made for future reference which I’m going to talk about on several aspects in the evaluation, and what I would amend during the making if I can go back.

Firstly on the hand of the generation of the ideas, I started with a random mind storm on paper scribbling out ideas and characters that came into my mind, although several of the ideas were generated, I abandon two of them that I went into the stage of sketching storyboards, but I spend relatively short amount of time to made my mind to focuses on one of the ideas, the Adrift. In the future I would use a better approach of mapping out ideas rather than doing random sketches as I did this time and usually in the past, which can increase the speed of choosing the direction. During the design of the character, what I would amend was that I stick with one of the design and did not attempt to interpret it into a better version or adding any elements to it. The advantages would be that the actual making of the animation can be started quicker, while it may not be the best decision for the character. However, I am satisfied with the chosen one, as it is simple to animate in Photoshop in a higher speed, whilst containing enough details for the audience to tell that the character and the younger version are the same person, which in this case, is her fore hair and the color of her dress. The animatic was made from the storyboard straightly, but showed less movement and what the actual animation would look like, which allows me to adjust the duration of each scene of the animation, and to decide whether I am going to delete or add any extra scenes into the animation by simply replacing the animatic with the short scenes, but on the other hand it gives less information for the purpose of communication with a simple animatic. Therefore I would try to make the animatic that would present in the most similar way of how the final outcome would look like.

Speaking of the making process of the animation, the method I decided to use of collaborating the traditional water color painting with digital animation gives a pleased result and the quality of what I expect at the first place. One of the aspects I would say unsuccessful is that the style of the digital animation has a huge difference which made the character in the animation seems odd from the water-colored background although I wanted to create the effect that the character is standing out of the picture. What I did to solve this was adjusting the color and the quality of the brushes in Photoshop trying to make it look less strange when I group them together into one animation. What could be amend before animating would be to list out more methods, or just using one material such as do the whole animation in water color and make it a stop-motion rather than using After Effect to rig the painted pieces. The whales which are animated with the puppet tools, the movements are too smooth which hugely decrease the hand-made feeling of the water colored whale, but it turned out to be the best way after a few attempts of other methods. During the first crit session I discovered that gif files has a huge disadvantage of not playing correctly but with the white background, which has wasted me a short amount of time to render, it was solved with rendering out image sequences out of Photoshop rather than other formats, that allows it to be edited secondly with a transparent background even after it is rendered out.

It is also the first animation that I tried to include my own record of sound along with the background music. It does not contain any dialogue, which made it easier using just sounds to represent the characters’ feeling. I edited the sounds in Adobe Audio, which I think is a quite functional tool that contains the edits I needed, such as changing the pitch and the speed of the sounds. The other sound effect were found on websites, which I think I will try to produce all of them myself in the future, also as a practice of analyzing what could the resource of the sound be  different kinds of sounds. As it has not got any dialogue, lip syncing is also unnecessary, which is one of the techniques I really wanted to have a go, therefore I would try to animate characters that speaks later on.

On the other hand, I struggle sometimes with effective researching, and writing about the research process. In the future I would research in a wider range of media such as books and journals as well, instead of sticking on the internet. I think I did not chose the research titles precisely on the need of the animation but more on a personal aspect, therefore in future researches, I would be more focused on the project itself in order to increase its quality whilst the making of this animation in a more effective way.

As for the study tasks, DUIK in After Effect was took the most of the time comparing to the other ones. As I struggled with rigging the character correctly, which made it hard to be animated. To solve this I looked at several video and text guides, which all helped me to develop a better knowledge of DUIK and would be much more familiar with it if I am going to use it again in the future animations.

For conclusion, I am pleased with this animation for Character and Narrative of collaborating two animating methods together to create certain effect, while a huge amount of amend could be made to increase the quality of the animation when looking back, however there is always a first attempt.

Telling Tales: Week 10

For the last week, I finished the last scene that is needed to be done in Photoshop, which is the grown-up version of the character kissing the notebook, and what left to do for the graphic part is to organized all the short quicktime files into one by using Preniere.

Considering for the audio, I recorded the sound made by the character, and used free sound resources for the whale sound, the bus and the played along music, I found it through a RPG game which contains the resource of the sound which directed me to the free sounds website. To edit the sounds to make it fit the animation, I used Adobe Audio, which can change the pitch of the sound and can apply loads of different effect to the sound as well. I chopped each of the sound pieces into suitable length and fitted them onto the animation in Premiere, replacing the original sound used in the animatic.

Telling Tales: Week 9

Giving a title to the animation, I decided to use the theme I have chose in the first place to create the story boards, which is Adrift. To link the style of the title and ending to the animation, I used pencil tool in the Photoshop brushes for both the title and the ending credit as well.

Telling Tales: Week 8

The animation is almost finished, with only a few scenes that needs to complete, which add up to about 5 seconds. Adding the title and an ending that contains the credit will fill it up to about 35 seconds, which I am going to be doing since the animation pieces are all put together into Premiere and complete.

The intern crit a few weeks ago has remind me that I have not considered about the sound since I've put a background music in for my animatic, therefore I should be shortly starting to consider the audio track. During the crit session I have been suggested to create sounds myself, and adding some whale sounds. On the other hand, exporting Photoshop files into image sequences that can be easily edit in After Effect.

DUIK Exercise

For the study task I designed a character on paper and then scanned it into the computer, I separated the part of the character into 5 pieces, which are two arms, two legs, and the body with the head on it. I used the auto-rig tool to link the part together and tried to create a simple walk cycle. I did firstly had some trouble with rigging the character, therefore I watched a few video guide in order to help me to get familiar with the tool.

Although at last when I was trying to render the video I discovered that the movement of the character is too slow because I did not considered the time pace when rigging the character, which I will definitely be doing the next time if using the DUIK tool again. The background I used with this short practice is from the main animation Adrift that I am making.

Puppet Master

For the study task we need to take a picture and animate it with the puppet master tools. Which are the puppet pins, puppet overlap and puppet starch. I did not used the real time records as I thought the timeline is more convenient to use. I have stick a head of a pigeon on the photo of myself in order to make it look more interesting. It is easy to use and a huge freedom of rigging the body part which gives the animation a huge possibility.

Telling Tales: Week 7

Continued animating, processed to the last few scenes that needs to be animated in Photoshop frame by frame, which I spent the most of time animating. The top scene is straight after the title, so I decided to make the scene sharing the same background as the title, where she point out her head straight after the title vanishes. The second scene is she lying on the back of the whale and pointing her hands to the sky, that afterwards she turns around and kiss the back of the whale.

Simple but Inspiring Characters

The character doodle sheet of tinker bell

It is a relatively simple character, but with enough and obvious character that makes it unique. The elements that make her unique are the hair style, her shoes and her wings. So for the main character I designed for my animation Adrift, I tend to create a simple character at the first place as it could be much easier to animate, in order to keep her unique, I remain her fore hair and her dress the same to indicate that they are the same character but just grown up.

Water Colour in Animation

On a aesthetic aspect in my own opinion water colour can be a great way of presenting a certain atmosphere of the background. What I used in my current animation is a mixture with the background painted by water colour and the whale being cut out digitally but created by water colour as well. It has fulfilled my expectation with the effect that I wanted to create at the first place. Therefore I think water colour has a wildly applied use in animation but not being restricted by the style. 

Below is a set of the screenshot of a masterpiece Chinese animation called MUDI, it is all done by water colour each frames on special water colour papers. The other one is also an example of use of water colour in animation. What is different to my animation is that the characters are animated in water colour as well, while I animated mine digitally in Photoshop.

Reference: https://one1more2time3.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/shanghai/

Telling Tales: Week 6

When considering the colour panel and the choice of the brush in the Photoshop, I tried out several different brushes, and discovered that the pencil tool among the brushes can do the best to remain the hand-made feel of the digital animated part of the animation, which works well with the water coloured background as well. Therefore, I used it for animating the characters and several other scenes on top of the background and the moving whales, which is the effect I wanted to create for the final outcome though the animatic was done in just black and white with simple lines.

Taking the references from children’s story books, I found that water colour would create a smooth and comfortable effect which matches the narrative of the animation, which is a girl’s imagination of herself turning back to childhood. The animation will not contain any dialogues, but just background music and sound effects, which in the animatic I’ve made, is just a single piece of music playing along, so it would be considered as the graphic of the animation has been finished. So at this stage, I started from creating the digital animated character in Photoshop, these is one of the examples rendered into a gif.

Digital VS. Traditional

Speaking of the animation I am currently working on, I combined the traditional painting and the digital animating together to create the feeling of a mixture and collided style, which helps the character to stand out of the whole animation as the style and the colour panel is completely different to the traditional background. Besides, it is much quicker to animate on computer than to do frame by frame on animation paper, it cost much lower than using a bunch of animation papers as well, a complete recycled method.

However no one can answer that whether the digital or the traditional is better, they both got their advantages and opposites, therefore I found it extremely interesting when combining both together.