Reflection

ARTWORK

Struggles with colour work, getting to know what works and what doesn't . . . this illustration is pastel and coloured pencil all smudged together, in more detail than the storyboard. I know this detail is not necessary for animation production artwork, this is just attempting some concept artwork.

I like using watercolour paint because it gives quite a smooth finish to colour, but I get too involved in detail as I lean too close to the work and don't stand back enough.

I spend too long painting objects in detail, as in the Character Animation Lip Sync project . . . I intended the background to be simple and it ended up being too busy. And I spent too much time painting and judging by the grade, not enough time animating.

The Storyboard artwork worked better, using mixed media to achieve the look I wanted and viewing lots of storyboards on various websites trying to get the right amount of shots to tell the viewer what is going on. Using pastel and coloured pencils for all the girl and fish drawings, scanning in and using Photoshop to create all the water on multiple layers. Fusing the two together by making sure the outlines of the scanned images were blended into the backgrounds.

Storyboard Project

A few shots from the storyboard project.

Well . . . I feel like I have been on quite an emotional journey with this project. At the beginning I thought this sounds like an interesting idea for a storyboard, but as time went on and an idea just didn't arrive in my head I had second thoughts and decided it was a horrible project.

I think it was the time scale of the other lip sync project that disturbed the flow of ideas in my brain. I got into the lip sync project (which I didn't think I would enjoy doing) and after I had finished that I found it difficult to transfer my thinking over to a different project.

I had hoped to have about 8-10 days to work on the storyboard but the days just started to pass by and nothing happened . . . I tried sketching and doodling, thumbnails and writing but just couldn't settle on an idea in my head. When eventually late on Sunday evening I just tried to draw up a few scenes that had been visualised in my head, and that was fortunately enough to kick start the whole story idea in my head. So Monday morning I was able to get on with forming key scenes and very quickly it then started to come together. . . much to my relief!

Now I think that it is my favourite project to date for the result I achieved. This is probably the first piece of colour work I have produced since starting my degree which I approve of. It is a lot nearer to the kind of imagery I have been trying to get to. Although it took a lot out of me, having little time to produce the finished piece actually meant I couldn't sit and think too hard about the drawings, and the individual scenes flowed as I did them without a break, so there is consistency. Some of the drawings could have been done better and I can only hope that it does read well as a storyboard.