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. 

Studio Brief- Telling Tales/ Week Eight

This is a finished video of my second scene in my animation which is of the baby polar bear walking up to the mother bear to meet her, although I am happy with how this scene looks, I personally think that the scene is over to quickly and isn't long enough. 

In this video I decided to carry on the baby polar bear walking, as I want the bear to walk to the end off the scene and then have the baby polar bear walk into the next scene where it will start to play with the snowball, I am still unsure whether to include the next scene where the baby polar bear plays with the snowball or just have it go straight to the scene where the bears stomach starts to growl, as I don't think that the next scene is completely necessary.  

After watching this video of the first couple of scenes of my animation, I have noticed that in the scene where the baby polar bear meets the mother polar bear, the bears eyes blink too quickly, because I am unhappy with how quickly the bears eyes blink I will be extending the time where the eyes are open, I have also started the third scene where the baby polar bear sees the snowball and starts to climb up to play with it. 

In the first video on the last scene I was happy with how the polar looks walking up to the snowball and was happy with how everything flows but I didn't think that the scene was long enough and that the baby polar bear kicking the snowball needed to be longer. In the second video I had animated the scene longer and had animated the bear slowly walking back down the snow. For this scene I had to make a small model of the baby polar bears head, so that I could take reference pictures to help me get an idea of how the bears head should look when turning, I had only made the model out of blue tack to quickly get some images so I could continue animating.  

Studio Brief- Telling Tales Research

Song of the sea is a hand drawn animation which uses painted backgrounds, I thought it would be relevant to research into this animation further as I am creating an animation in a similar way using water coloured backgrounds and then animating over it. Tomm Moore talks about how hand drawn animations can be more personal than animations made with CG because if you have a simple character design and beautifully made backgrounds then you can project yourself into the characters.
Tomm moore also stated that he prefers to makes animations for children because as a child they are easily shaped by animations, this is why he prefers to create his animations by hand drawing them.

Studio Brief- Telling Tales/ Week Seven

After some feedback I had slowed down the panning speed so then you can see the environment that the animation takes place in for longer, but also I have started to animate the baby polar bear appearing out of its den, the only thing with this scene is, that the snow below the polar bear slightly moves, this isn't really noticeable and wont take long to fix 

In this rendered video of the start of my animation, it shows you the movements of the mother polar bear turning her head to greet the baby polar bear, there is a couple of frames which I am not completely happy about as the position of the mother polar bears head looks like its in the wrong place, but once playing back the complete scene back the movements look really good and flows really nicely which i am happy about. 

I have continued with the scene where the baby polar bear meets the mother and I am really happy with the walk cycle as it flows so smoothly, as there was some difficulty with the walk cycle that I had created last time, the only thing that I now need to change in this scene now is the placement of the two polar bears as I have left quite a lot of dead space and the baby polar bears looks as if it is floating

Studio Brief- Telling Tales/ Week Six

In this video it demonstrates the first couple of scenes together, although these are just backgrounds it helps give me an idea of how my animation will actually look. If I was going to change anything about this animation already it would be to slow down the first scene as I think it pans to quickly and doesn't give you enough time to understand what you are watching.

After realising that the first scene moved too fast I had went back and adjusted the keyframe set for that scene. The scene now pans a lot more slowly across and zooms in to the hole more slowly too

In this video, all of the backgrounds are placed together, ready for me to start animating onto of them,  so far I am really happy with how it looks and the timing of everything

Studio Brief- Telling Tales/ Week Five

This is the first scene of my animation, which is just panning through the environmental shot. I wanted this scene at the start of the animation because it leads you into the story of the mother and baby polar bear, I had also watched quite a few David Attenborough documentaries which helped influenced this scene 

This is still the first scene but the scene then leads into the second scene through zooming into the hole with in the snow, this is where the baby polar bear will appear

These two images are some more of my backgrounds for my animation, these backgrounds will be used towards the end of my animation when the baby polar bear drifts off out to sea.

Studio Brief- Telling Tales/ Week Four

This is my animatic without sound, just to get an idea of how the time will be before I add sound to my animatic. I am really happy with how long each scene will take place

This is my final animatic with sound, although there are quite a few sound tracks added to this animatic I am really pleased with how it sounds. I am also unsure about some of the scenes in my animation, such as the two scenes where it cuts to the mother polar bears face, as I think that those scenes are nott really needed 

Studio Brief- Telling Tales/ Week Three

These are some of my environmental backgrounds that I had started off with for my animation. I wasn't really happy with how the backgrounds had turned out because you can see where the paper has bent because I was using water colours, and over all I think the backgrounds are too dark and too blue for my animation as I wanted something a lot more subtle.   

This is my storyboard for my animation. which shows various different scenes in which I will animate the polar bears in. I think I could have developed my storyboard a bit more as that would help me more planning my animatic and helped me more with my actual animation. 

These are my new backgrounds for my animation as I didn't really like the original backgrounds that I had painted for my animation, I think that these will work better within my animation as they are a lot less vibrant and more subtle, These backgrounds will also work better with my characters of the polar bears too. I feel as if these backgrounds have a lot more depth to them and look more realistic. 

Studio Brief- Telling Tales/ Week Two

I decided to change my Idea from Predator and Prey to Adrift, and have decided to base my new Idea on Polar bears. This is a mood board that I had created which shows images that I had found on pinterest, that I think will be useful towards my research for my animation idea. 

Here are some of my concept drawings for my animation based on Adrift. These drawings basically show some of the main key poses i will be including in my animation, I have also drawn some really basic facial expressions, I have only drawn three expressions because the expressions on the polar bears will only be shown towards the end of the animation. 

This is a basic walk cycle I have done to gather an understanding of how a polar bear walks and the different movements throughout the polar bears body. This will help me in many different scenes within my animation as I have a few scenes which demonstrates the bears walking 

Studio Brief- Telling Tales/ Week One

For the Telling Tales brief I started my research on predator and prey, and came across the idea of basing my animation around bio-luminescent animals, but mainly the Comb Jellyfish and having the Jellyfish lure a scuba diver down into the depths of the ocean using their colours and then stinging him.

This is my mood board for the Telling Tales brief, I started to collect images from Pintrest, which helped me develop my idea further, as I was going to leave the background black and without showing what is happening at first have the flashing lights appear and then have the scene pan upwards towards the diver where then he would find the jellyfish. 

These are some of the drawings I had done whilst trying to come up with a narrative for my predator and prey animation Idea, But I was still stuck on ideas for my animation. 

Evaluation

For the brief Applied, the thing I struggled most with would have to be animating in Maya, as I would forget the short cut keys and would find it difficult how to move some objects around, like when creating the truck. In the future I do plan on carrying on using Maya as I did like using it once I started to understand how Maya works, I personally just think I need to keep practicing and then the software wont seem so daunting to me.

If I was to go back and change anything over this brief it would be, small things in both my animations for the Tv idents, as I didn’t realize till last minute that on the hallmark channel, the girl in the birthday panel her hair doesn’t completely cover her head and when creating her mouth I made it a light pink colour but when creating the bride I created her mouth to be white and then realised that the white mouth looks better, so if I was to go back and redo this motion graphic these would be the things I wouldn’t change.

I would also change how the logo is presented on the Hallmark channel ident as I feel as if it is too long being shown for 3 seconds right at the start with nothing else happening, I did try and fix this by having the logo shown for a second and half each at both the start and end of the animation

The things I would change on the E4 TV ident would be to completely recreate the scene where the person is tattooing the woman as the arm movements look so wrong and move too much, I also noticed there was a gap which I didn’t see in the scene where the person wipes away the ink and by the other arm its white where I had missed.

Over all I am proud of my animations and my work that I have done on Maya, as I really like creating motion graphics and feel comfortable creating them, and I think the sounds that I have chosen for my E4 ident really fit well with my animation.

Study task 1- Maya Modelling

This is my walk cycle on maya, above are just some images i had screenshot whilst animating my character moom to walk, to create the walk cycle I first had to create a plane so it looked like moom was actually on the floor and then had to create a another plane so then I could place my reference picture up besides him, this would make it easier for my to know the correct movements in the walk cycle. 

Although I had created the walk cycle, I then realised after rendering out my character moom that it looks as if he is limping, and he has lost an eye, I don't know how I managed to make him loose an eye, but I think in the future I will improve as I plan to carry on using Maya to animate. 

Studio Brief 2- Idents

This is my finished animation for the brief Applied, this animation is a TV ident for the Hallmark channel, based on life's special moments, I tried to pick 4 special moments that would apply to most people, and I think the fact that its a motion graphic will fit in with the Hallmark channels audience as it is for families.

Studio Brief 2- Idents

      

This is my final Animation for the Applied brief, This animation is a TV ident for E4, overall I am really pleased with how this animation has turned out, although I do think that I could have gone back and improved on some things such as the arm movements

Studio Brief 2- Idents

This is the last scene of my animation, this reveals the E4 logo at the end once all the ink has been wiped away, I wanted it so no one knew quite knew what was going on really until the end but obviously the colours that I have chosen to animate with give away what TV ident this animation is for. 

Studio Brief 2- Idents

This is my animation for the E4 TV ident so far, this is the fourth scene completed, as I am happy with how the video of the woman getting tattooed plays inside of the TV in the other scene and I am also happy with how the whole of the fourth scene zooms in, so it looks as if it is playing through an actual TV screen.

Studio Brief 2- Idents

This is how I wanted the scene to look alike but then i quickly seen that the image i have placed in to the TV slightly moves forward. Idealy I would want the whole scene to zoom in to the Tv screen and then the remaining scenes will have a boarder around them as if you are still watching it on a Tv screen.

Studio Brief 2- Idents

This is a short piece of my animation, I then rendered this video and had to place it with my other part of my animation so then this video would play inside of the TV in the other scene, the one thing I would change out of this scene would be how much the arm moves, as it doesn't need to move as much as what I have animated it to be.

Studio Brief 2- Idents

This is an image and video of the man in scene 2, this video demonstrates the movements of his arm when switching on the TV, I struggled a bit when it came down to animating this scene as the perspective changes as the remote and the hand get closer, I then had to take reference pictures to help me for this scene 

Studio Brief 2- Idents

For my first scene I will have a still image for only 1 second, in this image it will be of a living room then the scene will cut and change to the scene where the man will be on the couch, these are just some tests of colour for the scene, I decided to go with the second one as they were the E4 colours and having just a purple scene is too much but with only having a slight bit of white in the scene makes them stand out so much more 

Studio Brief 2- Idents

For this third scene again the scene its self is still, this is because I wanted o make it look like the TV has taken a second before it has properly turned on, so this scene is only a second long and then the next one will be where the woman gets her tattoo

Studio Brief 2- Idents

This is my animatic for my E4 TV ident, this is basically showing you how long each scene will be played for and what the sound will be like with the animation, although if I had the time I would go back a create a more detailed animatic.

Studio Brief 2- Idents

This is my final rendered video before adding sound and completing my motion graphic. The next process of my animation will be to figure out the correct timing of the sound track that I have chosen and then add it to my animation.

Studio Brief 2- Idents

I had went back in to illustrator and redesigned the wedding arch, I had also changed the colour of the arch to a slight grey colour as I felt as if the white was too bright especially with a bright green background, Once the arch was finished and keyframed in after effects I then went back in to illustrator and create my the groom and bride characters, these two characters I have key framed so then they both appear at the same time and will be stood underneath the arch at the same time.