Week 1 Overview/Targets - Returning to College/Starting Year 2

This week, I returned to college for the second year. During the week, I enrolled for the second time, and took part in class activities.

One of the first things done in the week was a few unit overviews, using the module guides. This was done by Dave in class, with myself and the class listening and asking questions when needed. This was fairly straight forward, as we had done many of these overviews last year. After doing the module overviews, I enrolled for the second year of the college course, using my student finance paperwork. 

We also discussed ideas this week, and what we had been up to over the break period from college. This was a group discussion and was fairly laid back. I generally spoke about how I had mainly been working on trying to improve my drawing skills, and working on a cartoon style for drawing characters.

On Friday morning, we had a session of Adobe Illustrator re-cap led by Dave, where we went over the basic tools and skills that can be used in the software. I found this rather enjoyable and actually produced some work I was happy with (which to be honest, is a rarity). The illustration I made was of a cartoon skull, made out of a slime like liquid. The idea for this came from a doodle I did in my sketchbook. The final product can be seen below.

I made this by first taking the doodle I had in my sketchbook, and taking it into Illustrator. After this, I used the Pen tool to create line work based on the original sketches lines. After doing this, Dave showed me a pretty cool technique that uses the Pathfinder window. Dave showed me how to 'cut out' the shape from a background shape by using this, so that only a silhouette remains in the background. After doing this, to create the slime effect, Dave showed me the Blend function. This effectively allows you to create a blend between two objects, such as two differently coloured rectangles. When you use the blend function on these shapes, the software will 'fill in the gaps', and transition any discrepancies, between the two shapes, by adding new shapes between them. After learning how to do this, I made a wavy, slimy-looking shape, and picked a colour. I then made another, with different bumps and troughs, and then picked another colour. After using the blend tool, it created a wave of colour, to put behind the shape with the skull silhouette on it. Doing this left the appearance of only the skull, with the slime on it.

For next week, I feel that I need to accomplish a few things:

• Develop my character/story for my animation: This is important because this first module is only short, and I need to keep track of my time.
• Experiment a bit more in Adobe Illustrator: Although this isn't vital to my success for this module, I feel like a bit more experience with this software could be helpful, as I personally enjoy using it, and I am a bit rusty after having a long period of time off from college.
• Create a list of characters that I like: Doing this could help inspire me for my animations, so it is a worthwhile task.

Year Evaluation

Over the past year, I have developed both personally and professionally. During the course of the year, I have learned a great deal about traditional and contemporary animation and illustration, such as the techniques used to create the pieces, and the advance in technology, which encouraged these forms of media to continue to grow, more and more rapidly.

One key thing I have learned during the year is how to create and manage workflows, to assist in completing projects in a timely manner. Creating a time plan for a project is an integral piece of this, as it gives me an idea of how the project should be running, and what tasks I should, in theory have completed by certain dates. Obviously, these will not always be dead on, so it is important that I add in at least some contingency time, to allow me to finish uncompleted tasks.

During the year, I also learned how to use a several pieces of software, such as ‘Adobe Illustrator’, ‘Adobe After Effects’, and ‘Final Cut Pro’, among others. Before joining the course, I had no experience in using Adobe Illustrator, having never used the program before. However, after being taught the basic tools and features of the program in time tabled sessions, I quickly grew to enjoy using the program, and particularly the pen tool. While I had used the pen tool in Photoshop before, after using the Illustrator pen tool, I greatly preferred it, as it gives you far more customisation tools, such as the style customisation options available, available in the stroke options. After learning how to use the software, I then continued to use it to create several illustrations during the year, for projects, such as my Larry character sheet, and my Sewer Slime piece. I also learned how to use Adobe After Effects during the year, another software program I had not used before. After being taught by Dave on how to operate some of the core features of the software, I, again, quickly grew to like the program, and saw the potential of the software for both editing and animating. I created both basic animations and edited in the software, for example when I created my basic cut-out character, and animated a walk cycle, and when I was editing some scenes of my ‘Roundy and Squarey’ animation. The final of the three main software programs that I learned throughout the year was Final Cut Pro. Since it is fairly similar to other editing programs I had used in the past, I got a hold of how to operate it fairly quickly. After being taught the basic tools and editing features by David, I continued to use it after doing so, including the editing and introduction of sound to both my final ‘Larry’ animation, and my ‘Roundy and Squarey’ animation.

A key self-criticism I do have for myself concerning the year is my almost crippling inability to keep to a time schedule, as even though I learned how to effectively create time plans during the year, this does not mean that I stuck to them. This was due to a combination of, frankly, laziness on my part, and a wayward sense of motivation; essentially placing me in one of two moods, either I could complete work in a timely fashion, or little, if any work would get done. Not only did this affect the developmental work of my projects throughout the year, it also negatively affected the quality of my animations produced throughout the year, as several sections were rushed to meet deadlines. This is definitely something I need to address before next year, as it very nearly made me miss deadlines, which could have potentially been disastrous towards the completion of the year. Next year, I plan to keep a balance in place of my work and personal life, as it is important I do not squander potential opportunities that may come about because of the course.

Another criticism I have for myself and my work, is that I all too often leave things until the last minute to complete, which, when producing animation, simply does not work, as animation takes a long time to produce and have a final product which looks good. I feel as though not one of my final animation pieces has lived up to the design work that I put into it, which is purely down to my own neglect of the amount of time I should be putting into my animations. This is one of my top priorities going into next year; to make sure I put an appropriate amount of time into the production of my animations, instead of passing it off until it’s too late.

During the year, I also feel as though I have developed as a person as well as professionally. I feel as though I am now a lot more comfortable sharing my work with other people, since this year of the course was the first time I had actually shared my animation work with anyone. I feel as though the course has also allowed me to be a lot more comfortable in generally when speaking to people I don’t particularly know, which may seem like a silly thing to worry about, however before the year, I was far less open about myself and my work than I am now, which I believe shows a definite improvement.

Along with this improvement, I also feel I have become far more able to accurately criticize and improve my own work, as well as more easily spotting mistakes or poor decisions that I have made. This has allowed me to more easily improve my work, in however small ways that I can, allowing me to steadily improve over time.

Overall, I feel as though I have greatly benefited from this first year of college, both professionally and personally, for the reasons mentioned. It has allowed me to begin to take animation and illustration a lot more seriously in terms of production and development methods, and has also allowed me to become more critical of my own work, which means I can more easily self-improve. 

Work Update #6 - 14/04/2014

Within the past week, I have been working through my animation, by creating environments and animating.

I have now completed the shot I mentioned in the last update, showing the door of Larry's workplace, and then having the camera pan up to the top of the building. I decided to add a sign to the top of the building, with an obviously ridiculous name. I also decided to make the building completely in black and white, to make it look ever so slightly depressing, and to show a contrast between Larry's job, and the rest of the scenes, which look cheery in comparison.

This week, I also decided to touch up the animation in the first scene, of Larry walking, as the animation had Larry skating along the floor somewhat. I also rendered the sections of the animation I had completed, to begin getting ready for the editing phase.

Work Update #5 - 07/04/2014

Recently, I have been constructing the environments in Cinema 4D, and then animating using the model of Larry, and other props I have created.

After testing the compositing technique, I have decided to instead simply create 3D environments, as I feel far more comfortable doing so, as I have a greater amount of experience doing this rather than the relatively little amount of experience I have using 2D/3D compositing.

I have mainly been producing the first main scene, where Larry is walking down the street, to get to his office. However, alongside this I made a short intro scene, of Larry's alarm clock on his bedside table going off, which I plan to add appropriate sound effects to in the editing phase. To create the first scene, I worked from my basic sketches, to create a 3D environment, however I did heavily change the detailing, such as adding a long building in the background, to avoid having a distant horizon, without filling it full of too much detail for such as small space. I also added things like a park path leading away from the concrete path, and a basic window on the building inside the park.

I am also planning to add in a shot of the front of Larry's office, which then pans to the top of the building, however I have not begun work on that scene yet.

Background Design

For my animation, I need to create both 2D and 3D backgrounds, for the appropriate sections of my animation. I have made basic concepts, but I still need to get my ideas down properly, which is why I am making this post.

The main idea I have for the scene where Larry is walking down the street, is to have a small park next to the route he walks down, as well a building next to said park. These will be fairly light in colour, to contrast the later grey scale colours of Larry's workplace. Larry will walk past the park, which I am intending to have a few trees scattered around a dirt path, which the end of cannot be scene, as it leads out of shot.

After the first main scene, I intend to have a small transition scene, which will likely just have some basic background pieces, such as trees and a skyline.

After this, the final scene is in Larry's office, where Larry will be sitting at his desk, rather like the pose I made for the character sheet. The background for this scene will be a very basic white wall, similar to an office, with the fairly standard analog clock above his head. I may put in a background piece which allows the audience to see a portion of the rest of the office, however this may slightly take away the effect of Larry being sad and alone.

Compositing in Cinema 4D

Recently I have been experimenting with compositing 2D and 3D images in Cinema 4D. The way I've been doing this is by placing backgrounds into the project, and then adding the photo as a texture. After doing this, I add a camera and adjust the perspective to fit the photo. Once the camera is in position, I add cubes to the project and move the points of them to fit the geometry, while respecting the perspective of the photo. After adding the cubes and getting them in the right position, I add the the photo texture to the cubes, and change the projection to 'frontal'. This makes it so that the texture of the cubes matches the texture of the background. This creates an effect which allows the 2D image to have layers parts, so it can be used in 3D.

One test I have tried is using a New York skyline, and attempting to make the buildings 3D using cubes. I feel it worked well, if slightly strangely put together, and hopefully, now that I am considering using this technique, I can streamline the way I do this.

I added lighting to the project, to make the changes more notable, seen below. The buildings on the right have been composited, whereas the ones on the left have not, to show the difference between the two.

I may use this technique in my animation, however, since I am very inexperienced with the technique, I may simply opt to create a full 3D background in my animation.

Sound Test

For the sound test that I will be doing, I will likely be using a website I have found called Incompetech.com, which provides royalty free songs that can be used for videos and animations and such. The music is helpfully catagorised and tagged so that I can easily search for the type and style of music I want in my animation. For my animation, I am looking for a somewhat cheerful track, to use when Larry is walking to work. Ideally, I don't want the music to be too obnoxious, rather I want it to add a relaxed backing track, without drawing too much attention. The tags I will be searching with are 'Bright', 'Humorous', 'Bouncy', and 'Uplifting'. 

I plan to distort the track, making it so the further the animation progresses, the more distorted the music becomes. Im not entirely sure how I will distort the music; I will test some techniques once the animation portion of the production is complete.