Animatics
I was very pleased with the outcome of the Animatics rotation. It taught me valuable lessons in timing but visually everything turned out almost exactly as I imagined apart from the addition of an extra panel. I chose the bank robbery prompt as I was conscious of the 30 second goal and envisioned that a fast-paced comedic scenario would be the best fit for this time frame.
The rotation emphasised the importance of staging and making sure each shot had a purpose. Therefore I decided to make my animatic wordless, only including noises such as yelps and laughs as character reactions to ensure that the visuals themselves could tell the whole story. This was my first experience making an animatic on post-it notes which taught me not to be too attached to detail or the order of shots as they could easily be changed or reshuffled. My experience of making improvised comics with friends helped me to be able to create the panels quickly and keep perspective in mind. The concept of the three robbers was simple, but effective. I loved adding details such as the “B4DD1E5” number plate and the bystanders’ reaction.
Another aspect I enjoyed was adding the sound. I understood how much sound adds to an animation and went all out with the sound effects and found a fitting choice of music to elevate the animatic. I chose one of the upbeat rising action themes from one of the cartoons of my childhood, “Smeshariki” as the music for the animatic, and my friends voice acted for the bandits . This brought it all together and elicited the audience reaction I was hoping for.
Animation
I found the 2D rotation really interesting and informative as I had never used Blender before but had always been curious about trying it. It was fascinating what the software could do, but just as much of a struggle to figure out why it wasn’t doing what you want.
I had heard of the 12 Principles of Animation before, but it was very useful to have a formal explanation and animate at 24 fps for the first time. I had previously been using Krita and since it is not as powerful as Blender it cannot handle a large amount of frames, so I was really invested in figuring out all Blender could do even if I had to look through numerous forums and tutorials.
I also learnt about pose to pose and straight ahead animation which helped me be more aware of what choice of workflow I have when working on an animation. Something I was not aware of previously and just chose at random.
I took the given task of “shape dancefloor” a little to literally in this rotation and drew all my shapes very 2D, as if they were trapped in an aquarium. If I were to re-do this exercise I would consider changing angle, but apart from that I am quite happy with the result being a simple Blender animation experiment.
Stop-Motion
This rotation was very exciting and I’m proud that I managed to get a nice outcome despite the challenges.
This was my first ever experience with stop motion and I was particularly looking forward to building the puppet and trying out Dragonframe. Unfortunately my personal experience wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. There is a lot I would change about the final outcome if we had the time and more support from group members.
We unanimously agreed on creating a dinosaur puppet but due to shortage of time and hands I took the body and top semicircle shape of the head home to work on. I really enjoyed crafting the puppet and figuring out creative ways to make it work as we could not use armature wire. I created the legs with twisted card paper and tape filled the body with paper and used a glue gun to create “skin”. My favourite part was working on the head, creating the moving jaw with the wiggly tongue, plus the horns and teeth made up of broken toothpicks encased in glue and covered with tape. Although the legs and feet I made looked spindly and not very strong, Ned the Dino could stand perfectly well. In the ending we used card, spare parts from the tail, his detachable head and white paper to create the impact frame which turned out quite well.
During the rotation I also enjoyed the paper animation test we did where we had to create a transition between shapes. Although I originally found this prospect quite daunting and it took me a while to get my shape frames cut perfectly, I was really proud of how smooth the transition between my circle to square went. After seeing how this type of animation works I find it less impossible but it still looks like a massive challenge to undertake if one were to make a whole animation using this method.