Secondary Action

Sketches


Turn Around Sketch

Line Tests








Added Sound


Final

I refined some scenes and timing.

To start this project, I listed all the principals and scribbled down quick definitions for each one. I started brainstorming different ways to show each principal and how to fit them all together in a scene. For instance, I used arcs in the washing line and orange branch, easing in the fall, squash and stretch in the orange roll, etc. In this animation, I think my improvement comes across clearly and I can see that I am starting to become more consistent and upping the quality of my work.
I sketched out the character a few times, made a small turnaround that I later refined as well as started to sketch some statues from reference. My personal goal was to challenge myself with the story board and to make a well paced piece.

I wanted to attempt three difficult scenes: a panning shot, a zoom out and a tracking shot (panning with character). It was difficult to imagine each key frame of a moving shot and I found that story boarding it was difficult in small pieces. Instead, I decided to draw three large illustrations and, using colour coded rectangles and annotations, I clearly squared off the key frames and directions of movement. It was really helpful to work from one large piece than many small sketches.

I found that I had been too ambitious with this project. I decided to do it all hand drawn on a line tester and had planned to colour it in Photoshop. However, I didn't realise that the way I wanted to colour it was not possible so I changed my plan to focus on making strong lines and a clean animation. I wanted to attempt a dreamy quality to the piece by skipping frames in the tracking shot through the statues. I don't think this was successful as, without the colour, it looks jumpy rather than fading in.

I am really happy with how the sound and hand animation came out. I think that they are well timed and the slow pull of the orange off the branch reads clearly to the viewer. I am also happy with succeeding in producing a clean panning shot. In the future, I would have made a single large illustration of the statue and tugged it across the camera rather than drawing a load of different frames as that is not what the industry does.

The biggest difficulty I met was in completing the tracking shot. It was difficult to fit the walk of the character with the panning of the camera while also wanting to fully render and colour the scene. I think that this is the weakest part of my animation. To improve it, instead of, again, drawing each frame, I would draw one long illustration of the background statue, a cut out strip of the foreground states and then used paper cut outs to and editing to fade in and out the characters movement. This would have allowed for quicker working, a more successful and complete shot, more control of the pace and much less line testing and redrawing.

Overall, I think this animation shows how my understanding of the principals has improved. An element I had been trying to improve from the second task was being more mindful of volume and I think that the consistency in the shape of the hands (especially through turning and zooms) shows that I am beginning to get an applied understanding of it.