The other side:The Animation

The outcome of the animation the other side.

Animator vs. Animation

Animator vs. Animation is the series of animations about characters' engagement with the softwares on computer within the computer screen. The animator has been doing the series for a long time and this is the original version. During my research in order to link with the animation that I'm doing, this piece of animation came up to my mind. Both of mine and his characters are involved with the computer screen, and the software in the computer from a third person's view outside the screen. I found it helps me a lot with the inspiration of how to play with the character and the elements that can be appeared on the screen, while his animation is about the software that creates the character, which is flash, and mine is about a game.

The other side:Story development

During the development of the story, I added more details such as the reason why the character went into the screen, which is that the character's cat went into the screen and he went to chase it, that leads him into the other side of the screen. The question is what would happen in the computer in order to make their journey to the other side more interesting rather than just the character chasing his cat.

During the discussion, I made my mind on the cat has jumped into a game accidentally, and turned the character into the main character of the game who has to fight the dragon, while the cat itself is trapped by the dragon and the character went to rescue it.

Traditional animation

Traditional animation during 20 centuries are mostly done on paper and then filmed or photographed, and since 21 centuries digitalised animation became more and more commonly used as backgrounds and frames can be scanned in straightly or done on the computer directly. I like both of the methods as traditional animation creates a unique effect while the digital animation cannot, and on the other hand digital animation is much more efficient than traditional animation.

In my animation "the other side", for the reality world part, I tried the combination of both by making simple backgrounds on paper, photographed then in, and used other digital tools to animate on the background again.

The other side:Development

I started to make the final animation with these scenes, by using backgrounds drawn on paper and the character drawn in Photoshop and rendered the frames with timeline. I would use a different background for the world inside the computer screen which I am considering is a old styled computer screen.

The other side:Development

I made a few experiments on animation paper at first, considering the style of the outside world, I think using animation paper is a good choice to contrast with digital animation. The image here is the first scene of the animation, where the cat stood on the table and stares at the computer.

Cat soup

Cat soup is one of my favourite japanese animation with two cats as the main character, it is about their adventure of searching of a flower. The style of the animation is in between the traditional and  the contemporary style, but it create a great effect of fitting with the bizarre story it tells. My animation also contains a cat character, what's the difference is that the cats in the cat soup are personalised and walks in two feet, while my character remains the nature of a cat. The concept of the animation inspired me with the idea of traveling between different worlds, and it links to the theme, the other side, as well.

Old computer games

Old PC games such as Super Mario brothers always have a unique quality that indicates the old computer style. It can be easily tell that it's digitalised than other styles, which is exactly what I need in the animation that I'm currently working on, due to the content of the character travels through the reality world and the digitalised world. I wanted to make a contrast between the two worlds, and I found that using these kind of old games' style is a great way of indicating the world which the charter is in currently.

The other side:Storyboarding

I roughly planned the animation with the storyboard and had about 20 scenes, and each of them lasts more or less than 1 seconds. The two parts in two worlds each last for about half of the animation.

Simon's cat

Simon's cat is a series of short animations with a cat being the main character. I think it demonstrates that how cat moves, or how to animate a cat's movement in a simple style of drawing, therefore it helps me to understand my character and it's movement as I have got a cat character as well.

I've picked the one which is one of my favourite among the series, and it contains lots of movement and engagement with environment of the character, which is what I need to try to improve. Compare to my style of drawing, the simon's cat has more detailed face expression, that can help a lot with the understanding of  the animation.

The other side:Character

I did a few concept drawing during the generation of ideas, for consideration of the character, due to the time management, I decided to use a simpler character rather than the first attempts. Therefore I had the final outcome of the following:

Minor alter might be applied when I came to the stage of making the final animation.

The other side:Initial ideas

When I was first generating ideas for this brief, I came up to several different ideas in the form of words, such as life and death, reality and dream, maze and parallel worlds. I summed then up and get to the two final ideas, which are life and death, internet and reality. 

Life and death 

Character is dead, then seen the other world, and came back to life and discovered that it was his dream.

Internet and reality

The world in the screen is the other side of the real world, which is the 2 dimensional world verses the 3 dimensional world. The cyber world becoming more and more like reality, and people are starting to get lost in the other side.

Bouncing ball

This is the bouncing ball practice for the preparation of the brief. I used key frame in this piece of practice, I key framed the ball when it hit the the ground and jumps to the highest point, and then fill the gaps with balls with consideration of timing and spacing.