Week 5

This week we were showed how to use bones in Flash and Adobe Premier. Bones was fairly basic and should hopefully help us out with our animation. I already had a bit of experience with Premiere, but I think it was the older version.

The animation is progressing. We have made the characters in Flash out of different shapes, then we changed them to symbols and put all the shapes on different layers.

The video recording should commence shortly.

Week 4

Project Plan

This week we were working on the Project Plan. After speaking to the tutors and getting feedback from the previous assignment, Nella and I decided to alter a fair bit i.e. the content and layout. This assignment was also quite interesting and gives a great perspective on the 'real world', as this is what animation companies need to consider.

The timeline of events was a very useful portion of the assignment. This will help us get organised and see clearly when everything should be done by. I found that it was hard to find suitable festivals for the marketing strategies section. All of them were either international or film festivals not really relating to our animation. We made our company logo eNVy Productions- because it is the initials of both of our first names, and can double as a word. For the logo we made it look like handwriting on a wet window. When we animate it, we may show ‘eNVy’ being written and then 'productions' can be made with typewriter text and noise, with the letters appearing one by one.

Nella and I still need to finalise our story. The middle needs the most changes to it. After speaking with the tutors today, we were told how our final could be achieved. Next week Lisa will be showing us how to make mixed media. The first thing we should do (and soon) is film a toilet door. We will go looking for an appealing one, which is not to complicated to animate.

I am excited to start this animation, however I know first there is more planning to do.

Week 3

Concept Pitches

This week we presented our concept pitches. I really enjoyed working on this assignment. Going away for our core subject partially got in the way of doing this assignment, however our group finished by the third day in. Seeing as there's not much to do in Whyalla this allowed me a whole day and a bit to work on this assignment.

On Tuesday I showed my pitch to the tutors and I was told to alter it slightly. Tuesday night I fixed up the storyboard and worked on the presentation. Considering we only strictly had a minute to present our pitches I had to keep cutting parts out of my speech. Eventually I managed to condense it to a minute (20 seconds for 3 slides). I described the important parts of the story, while also trying to make it seem appealing. The slides showed the characters and their personalities.

After everyone presented I found out that my pitch got picked to be animated- must've done something right! Nella decided to be in my group so we will get to working on it son.

I think my animation will be very interesting to work on. Seeing as it will be mixed media I still have a lot to learn.

Personal Animation

I have done a lot of research by looking at other animations on YouTube. I liked animator vs animation, and want my animation to be along those lines. However, after seeing how hard it is to animate a sick figure, i may have to reconsider. I found many good precedents for my design.

I have a few ideas. I like the idea of mixed media, with a cartoon character going into the real world, so most of my ideas revolve around that. After discussing a few of my ideas with Josh, I decided to go with the toilet story. About the signs on the toilet doors (make/female) and make it into a love story.

Still lots of work to do but at least I have the underlying story.

Week 2

The Walking Cycle

In the tutorial we learnt about the walking cycle. We drew a stick figure which proved much more difficult than expected. I didn't get a Wakon tablet so had to draw with the mouse. It was interesting learning about the different stages and positions of the walking cycle. I never thought about it, but it makes sense that the body and head don't stay on the same level.

In the other tutorial we worked with the Kaiser cutout. This was a lot simpler that the stick figure. It was fun to play around and perfect his walk. I was happy with the outcome of the kaiser task, which looked a lot better than my stick figure.

Week 1

Intro to Animating

In the first week we were shown lots of animations, which looked really good and professional. I was comforted by the fact that these are professionals doing it, however in the lecture we were informed that there is no reason our animations can't be as good as some of them. This got me a bit worried, but excited at the same time to see the end result. I can tell that this subject will require lots of devoted time and effort, especially in the computer...luckily for me I like spending time on the computer, perfecting everything.

When we started using Flash, I was slightly worried that I wouldn't remember anything because I haven't used it in so long. Regardless, I managed to remember a lot about it and learn a lot of new features and shortcuts. We created a bouncing ball, which I found fairly easy. I really thought it was interesting how we made it look realistic by changing the settings and making the ball squashed.

Generally I have been finding this subject very interesting and am looking forward to learning more.