Final Presentation (Week 12)

The final week of our semester was for all students in their groups to present the work and history of their world up until that point and to present to the class with everyone’s commentary, the final group animation. I sadly was sick this week, ironic as it was an important week within the semester, however I was able to communicate effectively with my group on WhatsApp and was able to send them any work that they needed for the presentation, the project and was able to give them the final animation which I had created in order to sort into our group animation of our collective nightmares.

This final week the group with everyone’s busy timetables, everyone had more so worked alone for the remainder of the project and we had been able to meet up before the week twelve had begun to discuss what parts everyone would take for the presentation and what further work had to be created for our animation. The work which I had still to do was to send over the group any work I had created up until that point for the presentation and to also begin my part for the groups animation. Previously I had thought that we were all going to create our own animations and then the group was going to take a short sequence from our own animations and add them all together to create the final animation. However the group had decided that it would be best to focus on all joining together for just a group animation and that there was also a lot of certain characteristics that the animation needed that everyone may find difficult to incorporate into their own animation.

This included things like the positioning of where the character was going to be positioned in everyone’s animation, so that when they were pieced together smoothly and were not all jumpy and out of place. So I had asked Matthew within our group to send me over the template, I got information on how long my animation was needed to be which was around a minute so twenty four frames and had began in creating my short animation.

Beginning the group animation wasn’t too difficult for me and I wasn’t too worried about time, as I had already done a little bit of experimenting and trial and error with my own animation. I had developed a character, an idea for my background, my story and had even gotten some advice of Alec on how I could improve my animation. So this was a really good thing in helping me not stress over our first semesters final portfolio, as up until this point I had kept up to date with each piece of work we had been tasked to do and completed them within the time given. Although I am not too worried about not having the work done, I am nervous for the standard that will be required of us and our work. I am a first time university student and worry if I will get a stark awakening when my results come back for my work and I find out my work ethic is not good enough for the grade. I hope my work is of a high enough standard to pass and be accepted, but if not to be allowed the opportunity to try again and improve my work in the further assignments to come.

As I had already drawn and kind of finalised the look of my character and background, the draw up for the new animation wasn’t too difficult and fairly easy to re-create. I just quickly drew up the beginning template for my drawings and used the quick copy and paste tool to move and duplicate my drawings onto different layers.

I then within the two separate layers, focused on the colouring of my characters. I hadn’t filled in the colour yet for any of my animation so this was a first design of the colour I wanted to include and I had to keep in mind that for the character the group had agreed on her hair being ginger and her eyes being brown, to keep everyone’s character design similar within the group. I had also included on my character a bright and striking yellow coat which is inspired from my own yellow coat and a game I have recently been playing called ‘Little Nightmares’. Tarsier Studios are the creators of this amazing game I had found and was a immediate interest for me as the artistic and eerie design it had expressed was something I adored and a theme that has always been of interest of me. In the game the character wears a bright yellow coat and it works well in highlighting the character and combining well with the dark and dusk colours of its world, which I would also be representing in my dream world.

The next part of the animation that I needed to add colour to was the background and for this it was quite easy and I was sure on a dark and mysterious theme for my colour palette. I learned purple and green worked well for the reactions I was looking to achieve and then the other details such as the trees, grass and head stones were all natural colours and inspired by everyday life. Once I had seen the colour palette of both the character and background combined, I thought I had done a pleasing job on picking the right colours to complement one another, in creating a reaction and allowing the character to stand out with her yellow coat in her spooky dream.

This was the final animation that all my work had gone into developing and I have to say for my first actual drawn animation I am really proud of what I have designed and completed. For my first animation I had gone with the starting theme we as a group had decided on, by having a girl falling asleep in bed with her cat and waking up in her dream world. I developed this further and had my by character notice that she is in a dark and old graveyard and is curious about a beam of light behind her. She then begins to run to the light, not before tripping into a puddle and noticing she has undergone her fear of aging and nearing death, waking with a nightmarish fright.

In my group animation I had tried to capture this story in a more complex narrative and with simple frames, as to not be too different within the group project. I had a number of ideas such as the characters skin and age quickly increasing or to have the character just fall in a puddle and be old, but I had instead gone for the character to notice she is young, is in a frightening and old graveyard and must run fast for her life before the world swallowed her up. I hope that I expressed my fear effectively with my animation and intrigued the audience into knowing more about my story.

After my final presentation and as I wasn’t able to attend the group presentation myself, I had sent my short animation to my tutor Alec in order to receive some feedback and hopefully add some final touches and improvements to my animation. On first analysis of my short animation I got some good comments on the style of my character and the rough story I was hoping to present to the audience. I was then shown what changes I could make to my animation to allow it to run more smoothly and professional. Alec had gave me comments on how I could change the position of my characters eyes, as following up to her eyes shutting close. The position that I had drawn the previous drawings of her eyes, didn’t quite match up and could also be kept for a longer frame. I was also told that I could keep her eyes open constantly for the last few frames of the video and it was just some small details like this that really would make my animation just that more believable and structured.

I also had comments how my running and arm movements were a tad stiff and how I could bring more movement into the arms swinging them further and drawing more movement into the elbow and that also head bops while the character is running would also help in loosing up the characters movement. I was aware and understood this criticism as I had also thought the characters running could have been worked upon more, but was cautious of the movement of her arms as I wasn’t confident in the arms looking too out of proportion for her body, I had also been to nervous to try adding a head bop onto the character, but was aware it could be something that would really allow my running animation to improve and something I would enjoy practicing.

The final pointer I had gotten to add to my animation was to allow the gradual transition of the background becoming further away from the character running, to be added together more smoothly and better timed to her running. This will probably be the task I struggle with most in changing as the only idea I had for showing moment in the background firstly was to bit by bit zoom out how close the photo was from the screen, I have either gotten the dimensions different from frame by frame and could align the frames up more closely or may have to experiment and find a much smoother method of stretching out the background. All these simple but helpful pointers for my animation and the changes I could make will be something I will try to improve in my animation if I have time before the deadline, but will be something that I will include in my future animations.

This semester was really, really enjoyable for me and was a great introduction into university life, I just hope the rest is as challenge but rewarding.

This is the final animation which my group produced and I am so happy with how it turned out, everyone did an amazing job and it was great to see everyone’s different styles and how well they compliment one another.