Well I didn't think I would make it through the first year, so it feels quite strange to be here at the end.
There is a lot of stuff I have enjoyed this year, imparticular life drawing which is something I hadn't done for years and really feel a strong connection to, which probably isn't the main aim of the course but it is my favourite topic. I hope to improve my drawing and general artwork next year further.
I have struggled with technology this year because I had limited experience when I started and having to get to grips with so many programmes all at once caused my brain to crash several times. This is still a mine field for me and I have come to the conclusion that this will never be a strong area for me.
Some of the storyboarding and scriptwriting work was enjoyable to do, but I don't know whether I could do that much of this work as it can get a little tedious.
Overall it has been a difficult year because of doing so many different things which use so many different sections of the brain, which is fine if you can multi-task. . . .but I can't!
I did survive though so I guess that is an achievement in itself.
Friday 6 June 2008
Thursday 5 June 2008
Group Project: Post Production
Editing and Sound
I continued to work on the elphant t-shirt project to do editing, foley and and compositing.
We recorded some sound effects for the elephant ( James is now the voice of the little blue elephant!) and edited the results in Audition. There are 6 sounds in all, including a drumroll, nervous 'oooohs' for the elephant and audience applause. This took quite a while to do, trying to get some atmosphere and character into the final film. But I am sure a proper 'sound man' would have done a much better job!
The final stage of exporting was a painful process, it turned out that the original Flash file was over a GB in size for some reason, so the rendering was taking over 2 hours. So in the end I exported the Flash files as a PNG image sequence, which was of more normal size and then could render from Premiere in a few minutes.
I enjoyed working with Charlotte as producer, as she helped when I needed her to do something and left me alone when I needed to just get on with things as I wished to.
Things I learnt:
More timing in animation, as just reading about it in thoery doesn't get it into your head, only doing it does that.
How not to work with too many images from hand drawn to computer vectors, there must be another way. . .
Some stuff about rendering but this is still a mine field.
And how I am not too good at sound
I continued to work on the elphant t-shirt project to do editing, foley and and compositing.
We recorded some sound effects for the elephant ( James is now the voice of the little blue elephant!) and edited the results in Audition. There are 6 sounds in all, including a drumroll, nervous 'oooohs' for the elephant and audience applause. This took quite a while to do, trying to get some atmosphere and character into the final film. But I am sure a proper 'sound man' would have done a much better job!
The final stage of exporting was a painful process, it turned out that the original Flash file was over a GB in size for some reason, so the rendering was taking over 2 hours. So in the end I exported the Flash files as a PNG image sequence, which was of more normal size and then could render from Premiere in a few minutes.
I enjoyed working with Charlotte as producer, as she helped when I needed her to do something and left me alone when I needed to just get on with things as I wished to.
Things I learnt:
More timing in animation, as just reading about it in thoery doesn't get it into your head, only doing it does that.
How not to work with too many images from hand drawn to computer vectors, there must be another way. . .
Some stuff about rendering but this is still a mine field.
And how I am not too good at sound
Group Project: Production
Production - Animation
Animation of 'Aaaargh Nuts': I decided to do the animation for the elephant using traditional method of animation with drawings on peg paper, for two reasons, one, that I felt I could work out the timing better and two, that I wanted to get some fluid movement into the elephant which I didn't feel confident I could achieve in drawing straight onto the computer.
I decided to use peg paper to do the animation as I thought I could achieve the movement I wanted better, it had been a while since doing the animation practice exercises in the first term, so it took a while to get into it again. I don't think I could have done the movement straight into Flash in the same way and I didn't want to have a cut out, dis-jointed look to the animation.
So althought it was a good way for me to work it was a long way round, and the scanning followed by converting all 207 frames was annoying.
I had hoped that by using the scanned bitmap images and converting them to vectors rather than drawing them as vector, as I did for the OSTN project, that I would cut down on the work load and therefore it would be quicker. But unfortunately the conversion process did not go smoothly! The scanned images picked up some marks on the paper from rubbed out lines and so when converted and coloured in there were gaps left which needed to be filled in manually, this added so much time to each frame and felt like my life was ebbing away. The lines of the drawings became grey and not a smooth line, so I think I just don't have the experience to have known how to sort the settings out. The converted images didn't look as I would have liked in the end.
It was difficult to get the positioning of all the frames into the right place, I used a box drawn around the animation to act as a guide but this didn't always work and the animation jumps around a little.
I would have liked to use more movement in the body as well as just certain parts, but getting everything to move at the right time is difficult.
I was satisfied with the line test but less so with the Flash test, due to the scanned converted image artwork.
I do enjoy using the hand drawn peg paper process, but getting to the computer stage sometimes is less satisfying.
Animation of 'Aaaargh Nuts': I decided to do the animation for the elephant using traditional method of animation with drawings on peg paper, for two reasons, one, that I felt I could work out the timing better and two, that I wanted to get some fluid movement into the elephant which I didn't feel confident I could achieve in drawing straight onto the computer.
I decided to use peg paper to do the animation as I thought I could achieve the movement I wanted better, it had been a while since doing the animation practice exercises in the first term, so it took a while to get into it again. I don't think I could have done the movement straight into Flash in the same way and I didn't want to have a cut out, dis-jointed look to the animation.
So althought it was a good way for me to work it was a long way round, and the scanning followed by converting all 207 frames was annoying.
I had hoped that by using the scanned bitmap images and converting them to vectors rather than drawing them as vector, as I did for the OSTN project, that I would cut down on the work load and therefore it would be quicker. But unfortunately the conversion process did not go smoothly! The scanned images picked up some marks on the paper from rubbed out lines and so when converted and coloured in there were gaps left which needed to be filled in manually, this added so much time to each frame and felt like my life was ebbing away. The lines of the drawings became grey and not a smooth line, so I think I just don't have the experience to have known how to sort the settings out. The converted images didn't look as I would have liked in the end.
It was difficult to get the positioning of all the frames into the right place, I used a box drawn around the animation to act as a guide but this didn't always work and the animation jumps around a little.
I would have liked to use more movement in the body as well as just certain parts, but getting everything to move at the right time is difficult.
I was satisfied with the line test but less so with the Flash test, due to the scanned converted image artwork.
I do enjoy using the hand drawn peg paper process, but getting to the computer stage sometimes is less satisfying.
Monday 2 June 2008
Group Project: Pre-Production
Moonut T-shirts project - Elephant on Diving Board
I worked on several thumbnail storyboards for various t-shirt designs with the team and then drew up 2 design concept ideas in more detail to submit to the client.
The 'Aaaargh Nuts' idea was accepted with some ammendments to the story. Following on with some character drawings and colour tests using illustrator.
I worked on several thumbnail storyboards for various t-shirt designs with the team and then drew up 2 design concept ideas in more detail to submit to the client.
The 'Aaaargh Nuts' idea was accepted with some ammendments to the story. Following on with some character drawings and colour tests using illustrator.
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