Evaluation

Evaluation on Pre-Production

For BA1 pre-production our task was to design a biped character, this could be based on a description from an existing piece of literature, everyday object or just someone we found interesting. We had to also consider a narrative scenario that we'd be able to storyboard for our character to eventually develop into an animation. Pre-production consisted of the character sheet, 12 frame storyboard, animatic and blog of our choice.

I felt like I was introduced to an array of new techniques for this project, I was introduced to new software like ‘fotomagico’ to produce my animatic. Alongside getting to grips with photoshop and a graphics tablet to create my character design sheet and storyboard. Which I felt considering they were fairly new to me came out pretty well. Animation is a new passion of mine, so it was great getting to learn about the process behind making an animation.

Timing will always be an issue for me, along with not asking the tutor for help if I feel I’m struggling. I say timing as I feel like my work could have been a lot more in depth and better quality if I’d put the work in sooner. Rather than keeping to myself. I feel as if I could have planned out my animatic and storyboard in a clearer and professional way if I’d researched deeper into how to produce them.

I talk about timing again it is something I need to work on, it’s hard to produce your best work at the last minute. I need to be vocal about worries and queries I may have. 

Post - Post Final Story Boards

From the changes I made to my animatic, I updated my storyboard. This was the cakes in the first frame. I decided to make the cake the main focus, that this big cake compared to this small egg would show the audience how small and useless he feels even though he made something so great. 

The bathroom changed again, I felt like the ones i'd done before were too basic. As a result added a shower to the side of the sink and a mirror. Which I did think about having my character distant reflection in, but felt like that would take away the point from the items on the shelf when you're trying to see him in the mirror.

A simple change was an extra plaster on my characters face, another being the look of the window. I felt this was one of the best changes. You can see the whole window, one of the windows is also open which I attempted to portray. It looks a lot neater.

Animatic

I know this is too fast to comprehend, but as the moment this is my animatic. A very fast assortment of frames that I will later edit on fotomagico.

Animatic Producing

I made a 16:9 box and printed it out to make a template for my animatic, I felt like I needed structure. In order to get the placement as accurate as possible. 

It worked pretty well, I understand that I will be able to edit it further on the rostrums and fotomagico later. But I wanted to give myself a head start.

Attempts at the Story Board

From the animatic I previously made I decided to pick the 12 frames that would make up my storyboard, the ones that I felt had the most meaning to the story. I know it's not the right way to do it, but as I was drawing the storyboard, there was a few frames that I decided I wasn't happy with the way it looked. So I made some changes, to for example the bathroom. I felt like the angle wasn't right, I tried to over complicate it. 

For example here I changed the look of the compost, before he was just sitting in a box of compost. But this time he's the main focus of the scene sitting on a pile of it. Due to these changes I will go back to my animatic and reassess some camera angles and what is actually in the shot.

Practising the StoryBoard

I decided to start working on my storyboard and how I would go about drawing them, what would my style be? Would I draw straight on the paper? Or go by layers and draw over the top of what I've already drawn. I decided to go by layers.

I feel like this style was easier for me, it also felt more authentic to my original ideas as I just drew over my original drawings. This was very important to me because I love hand drawn work.  

I was reading a book on Aardman Animations when I cam across these storyboards, I felt like they were a perfect way of me seeing what an authentic storyboard looked like. It was also for a stop from animation, it was more critical that each scene was accurate. You can't afford for a storyboard to be wrong when you're animating with stop motion. 

This was the ending result frame by frame for 'A Close Shave', you can see that they're near enough the same.

Post Final Character Sheet

I was simply just experimenting with different facial expressions and positions and came out with something that I was actually happy with. Unlike my older painting I didn't put shading on here, as I felt like there was enough going on and shading would probably be too much. I went with a range of emotions from sad, sad wiping his eyes, happy and curious. Also just showing the eyes, as they are his main feature to communicate.