Crit Animation Progress

I took part in a crit yesterday, it was to evaluate everyones progress with in the class. everyone received, both critical and valuable feedback. My animation over all was said to be very good, everyone said I had thought about my seasons very well and that the depiction of spring to Autumn was so far very accurate and the use of colour is very well detailed and considered. The only critical feedback was that some scenes are just missing small little extras to set the scene e.g. clouds, I need to add this so that it feels that there is more going in certain scenes and the odd frames just need adjusting.

My plan is to make sure every scene is very accurate in representing the seasons and I will need to implement the feedback and make sure extra frames are added to make sure scenes flow well and help the viewer be able to take time to view and understand the animation. I need to also decided on the sounds that will be used in this animation as suggested by my peers because it could have mixed sounds for different seasons but also is said to be a very calm and free flowing and smooth animation.

An achievement in representing the seasons had been made because my aim was to make sure that each scene was represented well through little features like the sky and the use of the tree in each scene and my peers recognised each scene very easy which is the most positive point which I can take from the crit.

 

Small amendments

I have shown my work to my colleagues and they really like the work I have produced because of the colour and the way the scenery is done. They think that the gradient gives the images depth, detail and character. The only problem is the motion, I just need to speed up the motion, it is very slow. The frame rate will need to speed up and I need to add little details to help improve my scenery, more secondary motion is need because there are some scenes which need to look real e.g. blowing of a tree branch in one of the scenes is very static only the leaves more. The visuals need to look convincing and need a bit of extra motion.

Plan and progress

The development of my animation is going well. I have developed as systematic plan when colouring my frames, each scene is worth 24 frames and this is what I colour everyday. So far there have been no problems everything is going well and I am making sure that my colours are really realistic and relative to real life colours of the wild life found in Britain. I am using gradients because I believe my work in the past has been very flat in colour. Blending colours adds more character to my scenes because it provides more detail and makes the scenery feel real.  

Making my work detailed

For this animation my objective has been to make each scene detailed visually, this has caused me to take a long time creating various scenes because there is too much work involved but I have managed to make a lot of progress. I add a lot of detail because it makes my visuals with in my animation look a lot more realistic, I have taken a lot of inspiration from my trip to Japan and the studio Ghibli museum, the work which they produced was so beautiful and nicely detailed. This is what I am trying to achieve when creating my animation, want the detail to grab my audiences attention.

Time lapse idea

This animation is a time lapse through time, it shows what is what happens from spring to winter it will show you the growth of the tree branches, grass and life around a tree and English landscape. I have taken many references from actual Landscapes and from my own personal photographs to help me develop visuals for my animation I want it to look as close to real as possible. So far I have received many positive views from my peers about this idea and they think that it will work because it is an idea which they have never seen being executed in an animated form before.

    

Storyboard

I am going to revisit my storyboards because I have changed some scenes in my final animation because I felt that the originals looked too boring to be in the final animation. I changed the scene to add more to my animation and have to go back to adjust my scenes on my storyboards.

 
These were my old ideas which have either been changed or advanced to look better.

Timing of my animation

My aim is to produce an animation which is a minute or so in length, but I have been advised to make it a bit longer, so that there is more to look at so I am going to add a few more seconds to it. Currently based on a test I produced I am on target, because a few of my scenes add up together to make 30 seconds and I still have many other scenes left to develop, I would say that my animation should be near 2 mins long.

Referencing

My aim is to make my animation look dreamy during Spring, summer and dull autumn and winter so I have been referencing some images for Spring and Summer, I love looking at pictures of a bright and colourful and vibrant skies and landscapes. I like bright colours and moods, this is what I want to apply to my animation especially for my target audience. I want children to be able to watch my animation as well and enjoy it for is use of colour and scenery.  

Colour use

I have been taking my colour use into consideration since studying it in Cop, colours have a different meanings and for this animation I plan to use positive colours so I have decided to use colours on the brighter side of the colour spectrum. Tints are what I am working with, I mostly am using gradients because I like the dark and light effect they give. I am not adding too much shade because I want my images to be light, bright and happy. I am focusing on making my images look realistic in terms of my colour use, need the colours to be normal, they need to reflect colours that you would see in real life.

Animating process

I have hand drawn all my animated frames for this animation because I prefer to use traditional. I believe that my hands are more accurate when physically drawing on paper because it is a techniques I used daily. Drawing on paper is the best way for me to create an art piece piece which looks great on the eye, drawing digitally is my weakness I struggle to achieve accurate lines and my work looks messy. My other reason is that I like traditional work, it feels more real and official to me, I like holding a piece of art physically created by the hand, this is why I don't draw digitally.

I can admit that the traditional process of animating is long and laborious. There has been various occasions where I have wanted to cut corners but I have considered that this work ethic has not done me many favours in the past. I want to produce an animation which is smooth in motion so I have been working at the considered frame which is 24 frames per second, currently the animation is very smooth and I am making very good progress in terms of my work load. Currently I am colouring my frames it is taking a while but everything has been considered in terms of motion and visuals. I am just colouring everything natural colours making sure that the visuals are bright and reflect the mood of the scenery as seen above in "Spring".

studying colour in my Cop dissertation because I have a better understanding of  how colours effect your emotions and which colours suit certain types of situations. I want the colours to be positive for this animation so I am using a bright colour set.

   

Music Made

For my Animation I have produced a beat which is very happy and relaxed, this is what i was aiming for when I created this track, every thing in each scene is very relaxed and easy going so the music need to reflect that, I need it to run well with each scene so i will make sure I will aline the music with the animations content.

https://soundcloud.com/malaki7/steve-lacy

Referencing for Animation

I have use many images to help me develop the right images for each scene. I have made sure my has been relative to each scene adding as much detail as possible so they are easy to recognise. I find images of trees on the internet of landscapes, trees, clouds, snow. Before doing so I didn't know they named clouds depending on their appearances, few examples ...

• Cumulonimbus
• Cumulus
• Nimbostratus
• Cirrus
• Altocumulus Lenticularis
• Polar stratospheric cloud
• Cirrocumulus
• Altocumulus
• Altostratus 
• Stratocumulus
• Cirrostratus
• Stratus
• Noctilucent cloud
• Cumulus Congestus

Some these clouds appear depending on the weather condition, mostly summer or spring, I found this very interesting, I did not know until I researched.

Animatic and Changes

Recently the class was brought together to have a look at each others animatics to see how far everyone has progressed in terms of our work load and animating. My animation is on track but I have disregarded my animatic for the sake of my final animation so there was not much to look at, it was said to be too fast, only 8 seconds, it should have been 1min or so. I am currently working on this  and have found my animation to be flowing very well. I am making sure that my animation is being animated at the right frame rate and that the scenes sync with the music. I have made many changes to scene whilst animating because I felt scenes in my story need more detail and visuals to look at, the storyboard was lacking in detail, I know I will have to go back and change parts of the storyboard. The aim is to give people more visuals to look at and also make each scene symbolic to each season so that people instantly recognise what season is taking place.

This was a previous test I did for a blowing tree, I have gone on to develop a nicer looking tree with and mice frame rate for blowing wind, the leaves russel in the wind nicely.

Animating Process

I have been animating since the end of February into March. Making very good progress, four main points when creating my seasons animation was to make sure it was animated a 24 frames per second, draw each and every frame neatly, outline neatly in black and then colour using gradients. So far every thing is going well because I am currently outlining my frames and testing the frame rate. it is currently looking very smooth in its motion.

The reason for using the four stages above is because, in the past I have produced many substandard animations which did not look very presentable nor where they animated well, I used to outline directly on to the animated frame and this did not work so I have taken a different approach to making sure that I create another frame separate from the original frame so I can trace each drawing. It might seem very long but it makes my images more clearer and neater than before. Everything currently is easy to recognise, I have checked with my peers and they like what I am doing. I am a head of my schedule and am very comfortable that I will complete my animation on time.