Epic Blogging session Begins

Should have done this as I went along , would have been quite useful in hindsight but I was more focussed on doing it as opposed to procrastinating and putting down what I have done anyway its so long ago this should be interesting.

In the beginning......

We put together our groups in a random order. At the time I had no idea what our group was going to be like and how it was going to work, we were all kind of pre production people which was a bit of an error as it made delegating roles and keeping everyone happy more of a challenge. Initially we sat down and picked our favourite 3 sound bites each and then made a final decision. Winnie was our sound of choice with her charismatic and batty approach and we focussed in on No Holiday. It was hugely important I felt to get a immense amount of character into her animation as she was such a funny little character. Above are the initial illustrations I was looking at. I was really keen for it to be sketchy and quirky as was Steph. Joliffe and Jess wanted different things. I then went back to the conceptual side and started to look at further images. I knew though that I wanted the animation to be lively, quirky, fun and colourful. Nothing over the top just a cool style that would be fitting with Winnies sound.

Rain Attempts

Overthought....

Haven't blogged all my stuff for a while and really should have as it would have been good to see my thoughts in order as they occured but ah well, I'll go back to them at the end of the project and try and explain my trail of thoughts. At the moment I just need to get out the frustration.

Ok so at the moment we have Tuesday, Wed , Thurs to pull this all together. We have all the scenes as a basic. The backgrounds however I have decided apart from the rugby one dont look coherent enough with Winnie herself. This is because it would take to long to colour Winnie in the same style as the backgrounds I think. Its my bad as I should have done an animation test earlier instead of just a concept still. Either way right now I'm animating rain for the first scene. Literally its pissing me off no end. I did a short simple version to get the idea of how to do it. I then did a new version of it last night to only decide at the end of it through being wound up about it to delete it. I'm still glad I did this as it wasn't good enough for the scene. I'm currently workign on it again but going backwards. I need to sit down, take my time and think carefully instead of just trying to bang it out and spending ages doing it but rushing and trying to re correct at the same time. If I dont do it by tomorrow I'm letting the group down. If I do do it I'll still be annoyed because the backgrounds still wont be completly coherent with the animation. If the animation doesnt look aestheticaly slick I will be pissed off no end. It will be my fault as well being producer with the final look in my hand. I'm just worried it will look tacky. The group have been fantastic so far with Steph working endlessly on the colouring and the first and last scene animations. James has produced the most dynamic and characturzing animations which are so much better than anything I could have done. Jollife has produced the sea scene entirely himself I had worries it might look a bit to different from the other scenes but it looks amazing and is so slick. 1st thing to do is this rain , I want the first scene together animated and looking swweeet , that will then flow in the second rugby scene easily and then into the cricket. Then that will just leave the final scene. I just have to get the first and last scene changed again to suit Winnie. I've messed around with these scenes so many times I'm pretty sure my mind is just clogged now and isn't thinking straight about them.

Final Project Briefing

We just had our Monday chat with Andy, watever he does it seems to work I always come out feeling extremely motivated and so keen to get working. It was a good thing as when I read and heard the brief for the project the thought "ah shit" came to mind. It sounded dull and uninspiring. However after cycling through them I have found a love for Winnie and her timeless re calling of her life. My favourite has to be for her love of Hayle and why she has never needed to go on Holdiay. When she talks you can visualise what she is saying. She has a lot of character and I think her memories would be fun to manipulate and animate.

We got the groups sorted and we are deciding on our roles. At the moment I would quite like to be producer but I'm not sure I can carry the responsibility. My drive fails me sometimes and I need direction. At the same time though I want to create this direction myself. Ahh group work, this should be interesting. We are all mainly pre production orientated. This should mean a soild backing from which to go on hopefully. And then errr yeah....... Animation. Ironic how we are all doing animation yet half the class are trying to steer clear of the animaion itself.

What I like about the group is there is firm belief in stylization, not just the animation. I want to half a concept art and character stylization that will merge with the animation in a way that makes it original and interesting. The pearce sisters that we were shown today was fantastic in its style for its dark humour. Anyway we are all having a gander at styles tonight lets see what happens tomorrow. Time for the beach.

Evaluation

Finally got the finished ChewTv ident up on here. For some reason it still lags on here but at least its up. Overall its alright. I wish I had made decisions quicker and that would have saved me time. Often I tried to take shortcuts in flash and as a result I didnt like the outcome. I would then go on to do what I should have done originally and take up a lot of time for something that shouldnt. My main qualm is that the final animation lacks substance. I ran out of time after playing with ideas for too long and in the end the thought bubbles just ended up as lame banannas. The style of the bubbles also looked quite tacky. The explosion is also poor. I should have made his head inflate so it got the idea across of him just having to much in his head before it exploded so it was more like a grenade exploding. Some of the timing is out also. In short I didnt allow enough time for post production. I spent to much on pre production and thinking to much over it but not actually doing anything. The animation could have been much more slicker had I had the time after I finished it to look over and critically evaluate it. This was down to my lack of time managemennt even though I thought I had laid out enough time.


On the upside I like the character, he has the dopey look I was going for. Also the colour scheme before the bubbles are introduced gives it an alternative feel which I like. I find 2D really rewarding in that you can create a style that is more your own however I think the actual animation side of it is harder currently. Trying to maintain sizes and proportions through turning is hard and my character was simple.... Oh well first personal animation. Can only get better :)

Chew TV Ident - Better late than never