responsive interim crit

This session was not how I pictured it being as it was useful in a way I did not intend it to be. I was unsure about some of my work as I tried to test some slightly different techniques and visual aesthetics for some of my work. I was expecting some criticism on my work to see what needed improving however there was none. I received plenty of feedback however it was all overwhelmingly positive. Although this did not give my anything to work with to improve my work it was a nice confidence boost. Going in to the room I did not feel that great about the work I had produced my responsive briefs however this session made me a lot prouder of my work. It was nice to see the kind of work the illustrators had produced as I was unsure what kind of work they were doing. I got some good feedback on my layout of my boards and will continue in a similar manor for future presentations.

Applied: digital water colour tests

We discussed using water colour in our animations however there were some big issues surrounding doing so mainly material cost, if we did a 1:30 of animation it would be 2160 pieces of watercolour paper at 24fps. This would be very costly and over ambitious in the time period given. I suggested the possibility of using digital watercolour as an alternative. I hadn't done much of this before but I had been experimenting with brushes in photoshop a lot recently. I tried using the stock water colour brushes and also downloaded a few from the internet however noting produced the effect I wanted. I started to tweak one of the internet brushes in the brush settings. I found altering settings that involved jitter worked really well as the made the brush come out more randomly. I reduced the flow of the brush which preserved its texture a lot better. 

Above was the result of the final brush I created I was very happy with the effect generated however the main thing I couldn't really achieve was the leaching you get when pigment gravitates to the edges of the brush strokes. I put a cartridge paper texture under the piece which made it seem a lot more realistic. I want to try and overlay some of the same texture of the top to give the piece more depth but haven't worked out how to do it effectively yet I'm sure there's a simple solution.

I then gave a quick test on using the watercolour in animation. I used some old line work to test out some colouring methods. I tried drawing frame by frame watercolour but I found it to be too crazy and messy it was not pleasant to look at. I then used some settings in after effects with track-mats which only show the animation through sections that are coloured and I used a continue fill effect to make the centre a solid colour to allow the effect to work. It produced some nice results which are worth exploring in future.

Applied: mood board

We all discussed what kind visual aesthetic we wanted to go for but all struggled to articulate what we wanted. There was a lot of talk about simple line work and possibly messier lines for the general animations. Then for the animation from the child's perspective we wanted some messier colour to really contrast with it and we all discussed using watercolour. 

Fortunately when we all brought our mood boards into the next session we all had similar results from mood boarding and where all striving for the same visual aesthetic.

applied: finalising ideas

After a lot of discussion and thought we finally came do a conclusion on what we wanted to base our documentary on. We very much like the use of different media used to tell different stories in the animations we were shown so we wanted to have a few different stories in our animation not just the one. We started to focus on the different perspectives on the same situation from parents and children but we felt it was too general a subject to get answers from. We narrowed it down to the subject of parents telling their children white lies to cover big or difficult situations. We wanted to have stories such as a dog dying from the parents perspective which then morphs into a wackier child's perspective of the same event with narration from just the parent. The next step for this was to start establishing a visual style to go with the stories and to get interview material to then script.

Applied further planning and stratigising

Lauren who is much more organised than myself suggested a calendar for the project which was very good idea, we all discussed and put together a timeline for when we needed each stage completed by. We have a lot of work on with other project so it was a good way to make sure we don't fall behind especially on the preproduction which is easy to leave. Lauren then put the info into a spreadsheet which our group can hopefully stick too.

applied: initial ideas

We were given 4 different main topic to choose from for our animations. I was very early on torn between two, I felt I could do more some more interesting work with the family title but I'm also extremely passionate about climate change so wanted to talk about the environment. 

After lots of indecision from my self the decision was made for me as I joined a group with Lauren and Wing who where working on family. I felt this was good move and I'm excited to work with them both I think we all bring a lot of interesting skills to the table. 

The first thoughts where I definitely wanted to explore mixed media or even it was all digital looked like a mixed media piece. I then thought a lot about what I wanted to ask, I wanted to look into what makes families different and the small family experiences that really interested me. It then turned into a group discussion around similar ideas. We discussed questions to ask people about family life, such as what peoples favourite memories were. Questions like this felt too bland we wanted to look into a topic that offered much more intrigue. We discussed a few different ideas over the next two sessions to try and finalise what we wanted to do as we knew we didn't have lots of time to waste. 

applied: what is a documentary

Our new module is on documentaries and of course we all are aware of documentaries. I feel I have watched quite a few good documentaries however my knowledge of animated documentaries was very rudimental. Other than creature comforts I struggled to name many others. It was really interesting to see such a wide range of animations that were documentaries but also what constituted a documentary. Many of the ones we were shown didn't feel like a conventional documentary as a narrative was still very important however these narratives are from real life experiences.
I think the main thing we learnt was that there are things animation can do for documentaries a lot better than if they were done with live action. Some issues are very hard to talk about with live action people may feel a lot more uncomfortable being in or watching the subject matter when its live action.
Another thing that was brought up was that documentary making was a great chance to explore mixed media animation. I found the animation about peoples virginity stories the most interesting mainly because if the use of media to help capture the mood of the narrative. Someone with a very bland relationship had very clean line work where as someone who had a very negative experience it was very dark and messy.

Onform: New techniques

I was very happy with this onform entry I think its the best submission I've done so far as I tried to push the illustration a bit more so its less obviously stylised like the rest of my work. The top image is from half way through the drawing process I tried quite a few different rock textures and tree textures. I however found that the simpler techniques in my opinion where far more effective and less cluttered. Although not too noticeable I used a compositing technique I hadn't used before to add texture to the mist. Using track mats it only makes the texture appear on the sections that are animated and not in any alpha.

I think the mist could have been animated better, it would be nicer if it moved smoother and slower. This would have taken a lot longer because it would require a lot more frames. This piece took a lot longer than it should have but that was mainly due to the trial and error approach I took to it and I felt I learnt quite a bit. 

further onform entries

 

Since onform is a weekly challenge there are many opportunities to try different challenges. I did not manage to enter all of the ones running over the last month and bit but I did do a few. Above are my idea generation sketches, I found it to be the best way to come up with ideas for the weekly shape is do a quick sketch of all the ideas that come through my head.

I found this weeks challenge difficult to come up with an idea that would be animatable to the specifications of onform. I think this was one of my less successful entries to onform however I enjoyed using a charcoal style brush in photoshop and think it produced an aesthetically pleasing result. 

I was very fond of this entry, and it was set up very nicely to animate. I had the idea that it could be a scorpion and did some rough sketches but I realised it could be fairly quickly animated if it was drawn right in photoshop. I draw all the segments of the legs and claws on different layers in photoshop, this allowed me to move each section independently in after effects. It would have been nice to get some secondary motion on the sting/tail but I'm not allowed to change the shape according to the brief. 

First onform entry

This was the first onform I entered, I really like the challenge of it and the fact it changes weekly. the weekly change in theme means you're constantly forced to engage in new challenges under smaller time pressures so you have to think about what you make carefully. 

When first looking at the challenge I noticed it was jsut illustrations being entered however since tumblr uses a lot of gifs and I'm an animator I thought it would be good if I could make my entrys animated. 

There response was yes to making animated entrees I just had to make sure I stuck to the rules of submission. I knew animating the shape would be hard if it could not move however I noticed in the rules it only said it cant be rotated of scaled but said nothing about lateral movement. This opened up a lot more options for animating. 

 I wanted to experiment with pencil/natural style effects in photoshop I tested a few new brushes I found online. The one I found for this I felt was the best out of the ones I'd downloaded it created a nice effect. I started this onform by drawing out the shape in a sketch book so I could do some rough sketches of ideas. I settled on the one below quite quickly and moved onto making it. 

   

I was very pleased with the final outcome of this entry, I wanted to use this task to experiment a bit and I feel I've tried some new texturing techniques. It was one of the first gifs submitted to onform and was quite popular on the blog.