Evaluation

At the start of this module I had an idea and I was going to create this animation based on Jelly fish and animate it in Maya, the reasons I didn't continue with this Idea was because I don't feel too confident with using Maya, although I look back and think if I had just went through with creating this animation then I would know how to use this software and know how to use it properly, so personally I don't think I had stepped out of my comfort zone very much. Also during the time of this module I was quite ill which had put me quite a bit back from the production of my animation.

A couple of weeks after the module had started I had changed my mind, and I was going to create an animation using photoshop but with painted backgrounds, although it was still a 2D animation, I still wanted to make it different compared to my other animations that I have created and using painted backgrounds was it for me.

I have struggled with this animation because for the characters I had chosen them to be polar bears, which I could not find a lot of reference images or videos that would help me with my animations, although I did watch quite a few David Attenborough documentaries on polar bears. which is what inspired me to have the panning scene at the start showing you the environment in which my animation is set in, I also took inspiration from the documentaries with the music as they play classic music in the back ground, so I had spent a couple of days, which seemed like forever listening to classical music trying to find one that would fit my animation perfectly,

With my animation I feel as if it could have been more interesting, as I feel as if It was just lots of scenes with walk cycles, I just think that there could have been a lot more going on with in the animation and a lot ore movements and everything the quite small, apart from the scene where the bear is roaring, that scene is probably my favorite one as it was really simple and I only used three different images to create that scene but Its in your face as the bear moves forward and there is nothing in the background to distract you, so your full attention is on the bear. I had got some reference images from the film brother bear for that scene, although they are different bears with different body structures and different facial features, it helped me with how the bear should be moving when roaring.

Although I am really pleased with how my animation looks and plays, if I could go back and change anything it would be to create an animation with less scenes, with every animation I have created so far I always manage to try and make it harder for my self without trying, and even though I am happy with the outcome I need to learn how to keep things simpler so they don't become too boring.

When creating the study tasks, I really enjoyed them, although I am not a big fan of using Maya and Moom, I quite liked giving him different expressions and seeing the 3D character become slightly realistic, but I mainly had the most fun when creating the puppet study tasks as they were reallt simple and easy to make.

Studio Brief- Telling Tales Research

The cons of 2D animations are they can become boring, this is because in today's society people are wanting to see animations that are pretty realistic, which has put 2D animations at a lower demand in comparison. but personally 3D animations are too much like our world, instead of letting your imagination run free and escape our world, like when watchig a 2D animation we accept anything that happens whether it be weird sounds or actions this is because of the animations style.

Studio Brief- Telling Tales Research

2D animation can be a cheaper way to animate than it is to animate on a 3D software, this is because it is quicker and saves time in comparison, animation on 3D softwares can be quick but to actually wait for you animation to render out using Maya, can take a lot of time for example It took 6 years to create the animated film brave, and 4 years for monsters inc university but it did render out at 29 hours for each frame, so creating a 2D animation is better when it comes to time wise as you dont have to wait that long for a 2D animation to render out

Studio Brief- Telling Tales Research

One of the Pros of 2D animation is that anyone can do it, without using more difficult softwares like Maya. I think the whole Idea of anyone being able to create a small 2D animation is great, as it gives the chance for people to show their drawing skills and their animating skills, where as in Maya everything has to be 3D modeled. Although if you was going to create a 2D animation in photoshop you would have to pay for this software whereas for students to download Maya it is free,and because of this it might discourage younger people such as students to create 2D animations and for them to create 3D animations

Studio Brief- Telling Tales Research

“The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art.”

John Lasseter

One of the biggest limitations of hand drawn animations is the constant repetition of drawing the same frames over and over again, were as with computer software's, animating can become faster. Another limitation of hand drawn animation is that you don't have the software to create the realistic look of waves and sand for example like in finding dory.

Most Tv shows such as The Simpsons and Family guy ect.. send their animations off to Korea, to animate all the inbetweens, this speeds up the production of creating an episode
Although its not the traditional hand drawn animation but it is a digital 2D animation, where you also have to repeat drawing each frame, but don't have to worry about redrawing things that don't move. 

Studt Task 5- Strike a Pose

Fear

hunger

awe

sadness

shocked 

These are my rendered images from Maya of Moom, I found it difficult using maya again because it had been a while since I had used that software, so coming back to it and not remembering any of the keys that I needed to use made thing a bit harder. I had used reference pictures of myself to help me create the facial expressions and the body postures for my 3D model Moom. The only thing I would change to all five of these images would be to make them more dramatic, because the body actions are quite small. 

Study Task 3- Puppet Master

This is my attempt at using the puppet pin tool in After effects, I personally prefer using DUIK to turn people or characters into puppets as it looks a lot smoother, but creating a puppet this way, was really simple and easy, and I would use this again in the future because of how straight forward it is to create a simple puppet.

Study Task 4- DUIK

I decided to use my character from my animation for the DUIK study task, setting up the character and adding the bones to the character was the easiest part for me, apart I was unable to pin one of the bears legs at first which took a while for me to try and figure out what was wrong. My other problems with using DUIK was the controller for the head didn't work and when I tried to use the quicker option instead on keyframing my puppet didn't work either, so it took a little longer than it should have to complete this task

Studio Brief- Telling Tales/ Week Nine

This is my animation so far, which ends in the scene where the stomach growls, I needed this scene to help tell the story with the polar bears as they were hungry, which is why they started walking to the sea. Im quite happy with how my whole animation is looking and how it plays, but there is a few things I would like to change still like the eyes blinking they need to be slowed down 

In this scene of both the polar bears walking, I started off with the mother polar bear walking and then added the baby polar walking afterwards, the only problem I have with this scene is, that I wanted it so the baby polar bear was walking in the front but because of the size of there mother bear, she overtakes the baby bear. I tried placing the baby polar bear further ahead at the start but the mother bear still overtakes. 

This is the walking scene with both polar bears and then the next scene where the baby polar bear starts to float away. After watching this rendered video of my animation I had noticed that the ice burg doesn't appear for a split second at the start of this scene which I am planning on fixing, I also think that this scene should be slightly longer, so then it gives you a clearer idea of whats actually happening. 

Studio Brief- Telling Tales/ Week Ten

This video demonstrates the scene where the mother polar bear is roaring because the baby polar bear is floating out to sea. I found it difficult to animate this scene as there was not a lot of reference pictures or videos that I could find that I could use to help me animate it, the only image that I could find to help me was an image sequence from brother bear when one of the bears is roaring, this brought problems too because they're both completely different bears that have two different appearances.

This video is of my animation so far, which ends on the sence where the bear roars. I have also gone back and fixed the scene where the baby polar bear starts to walk out to sea as one of the key frames wasnt in the right place, and at the start of the seen the iceburg that the baby bear is on, wasnt there.

In these two videos of my animation, it shows you the scenes where the mother polar bear dips her paw into the water to test if it is cold and then the scene where it shows you the mothers shocked face. Personally I think that the scene the mother bear dips her paw into the water could have been drawn better as I dont think that the paws look right 

This is my finished animation with sound, I had some problems with adding the audio as some of the audio files were so long and it just meant adding the audio to my animation took longer, but overall I am really pleased with my animation as a whole.