This is the clip that Shilpi gave me to add to.This is my clip that I sent back, adding frames of the dinosaur squashing her character as requested.
In spite of my last blog entry, I have managed to find the time to complete the aforementioned second clip that Shilpi asked me to deliver. I think it definitely has room for improvement especially in terms of more exaggeration, however I believe that my awareness of what I could do to improve is something that is still contributing to the over all development of me as an animator. I felt bad about potentially not being able to deliver on what Shilpi requested, and so gave it a go despite being swamped both with deadline stress and working a job outside of university hours.
While I feel that this is not my strongest work, I believe that my ability to complete what was asked of me is a testament to the dedication I had both to my second year, and to the brief I have been set as a whole.
This brief detailed working alongside a second year student, assisting them in the production of their own projects.
The partner that I was given was Shilpi, who reached out to me through email. We had a meeting where she explained her work and ideas and what she would like me to try and help with. Her idea is to subvert the expectations and pressures that women often face and have to try and live up to.
I enjoyed working with Shilpi in that she was quite relaxed in what roles she wanted me to fulfil, which meant I had more free reign in choosing how to complete the brief. Shilpi sent me two different clips from her animatic along with her character design and she said that I was free to choose between them both, and to keep it rough.
The work I ended up doing was creating in-betweens for one of her animated clips, of a woman riding a skateboard and then falling off. I converted the .mp4 file she sent me into an image sequence and added the in-betweens in Photoshop as I did not have access to TV Paint at home. I then sent this over to Shilpi, who approved but also asked me to try the other shot she had sent over as well. Unfortunately I have not had the time to complete this due to the upcoming submission, which I have communicated with her.
I believe my performance within this project was prompt and professional, I liaised politely and effectively and had a relatively quick turn around in terms of receiving her work and returning it. Shilpi sent over her work for me to complete late at night on Sunday 26th Feb, which I then returned to her with her proposed in-betweens on Tues 28th Feb. I think something that we could have improved on was communication, as due to first and second year timetables mis-aligning, it was difficult to arrange time to meet up outside of studio time. If I were to do this exercise again I would strive to define the roles I would be undertaking from the start, in order to better avoid confusion in expectations.
The role I fulfilled is relevant to the industry as in-betweening, animating and clean-up are all important roles that need to be filled in order to aid the production of animation. It has been a great opportunity to experience that environment within a simulated capacity, as it has helped both to improve my technical skills and understanding, and also widen my network as an upcoming animator. I thoroughly enjoyed this experience as I was able to talk to Shilpi about her perspective as a second year student, and glean advice from her in terms of what is to come for me. She has been friendly, helpful and understanding throughout.
I believe it was successful as I was able to adapt to her style, which I really enjoyed both as an exercise of my artistic ability as well as being an exposure to the diverse range of styles that animation can take. A challenge I feel we hit was Shilpi initially mentioned that I may be able to colour some backgrounds for her, which I was excited to do, however it ended up that her project is not yet developed enough, so I had to take on another role instead. As she has been using an IPAD to develop her film, I was a little unsure of how that would translate if she sent over her project files, as I do not own one, however I think I found an appropriate solution, as aforementioned re: conversion of .mp4, which was something I had not done before, and so have come away from this brief gaining a new skill. I utilised the animation principle of anticipation, which we covered in the first term, by adding it to the frames I in-betweened, adding more tension to the dynamic action the character carries out.
Stop Motion Lip Sync exercise using a Vine audio. I’m aware of lighting inconsistencies and if I were to do this scene again I would pre-make the mouths to then swap out between sounds.
This is a list of everything we accomplished within the session! I was both surprised and impressed at mine and my peers abilities to loosen up and learn so much.We had an exercise where we had to pick a film and strip its plot down to its “barest bones”. This enabled us to prioritise the things that matter most within a story, and allowed us to focus on labelling the variety of emotions those different plot points evoke. I chose the film “Scream” and had to force myself to let go of information I previously thought of as integral, such as a characters age or gender. It was a great exercise for me in particular as I am very used to writing in a passive form, but Lucy noticed that and encouraged me to write from a more active perspective – that of the protagonist and the subsequent actions they take. We then had to draw the plot through different iterations of water – whatever emotion the plot point evoked within us we had to express on the page! This freed me up creatively and encouraged idea generation.Together as a collective group we identified various archetypal tropes often assigned to characters – we then broke off into smaller groups to discuss the specific traits of the archetype we’d chosen. My partner and I chose “The Maiden” as I find the damsel in distress character an incredibly interesting case study, both in her most stereotypical form and the ones that subvert them. This exercise, along with the other group work exercises encouraged me to be sociable and relaxed around my peers as we were all actively participating and learning not to take ourselves too seriously in the process.At the end, my partner and I had to choose a few different tropes and create a story based around how the archetypes would interact with each other. I feel that my most important take away from this last segment was a growing awareness that characters can adapt and evolve into various archetypes, and go on developmental journeys that change their internal philosophies!
This post shall provide a window of perspective into some of the ways I’ve been developing my understanding of the theoretical and historical elements of animation.
I have been reading “Understanding Animation” (1998) by Paul Wells, and using it as a frame of reference in terms of each new project I embark on. Through this book I am developing stronger critical skills which is enabling me to analyse animated media through more of an academic lens.
I have been checking the Dragonframe websites’‘Showcase’area regularly, which is a great place for scoping out new and upcoming animated films that have been made using Dragonframe. As I am incredibly passionate about stop motion, being able to keep up to date on how others within the industry and community are utilizing the tools I have accessible to me is enabling me to stay creatively inspired and encourages idea generation!
I attended the Lisbon, Portugal “Monstra” Animation Festival last year which exposed me to a great deal of creatives and allowed me to network with others, many of which I am still in contact with today! While I was there, they had a featured Joanna Quinn exhibition, where they showcased a collection of her sketches as well as her latest film. Her traditional style and expressive color palettes and character designs have been an inspiring choice to witness that has since influenced my own style.
I own a copy of Peter Hames’ “The Czechoslovakian New Wave” (1985) as its a movement that I’m endlessly fascinated by and am always eager to learn more about. Eastern European Surrealist media, particularly Czech New Wave, is an art movement that I constantly try to pick apart and explore as an artist, as I find that it produces an incredibly unique atmosphere.
Checking out “Short of the Week“, similar to the Dragonframe Showcase, is a great way to stay up to date on new animated releases. It’s also great to see what makes shorts successful in getting elected for festivals and nominations. Particular favorites include “Train of Thought” by Leo Bridle and Ben Thomas, and “The Cat with Hands” by Robert Morgan.
A particular animator/director that I have recently been watching the works of is Terry Gilliam, who has a very recognisable style.
Another Animator I’ve been drawing inspiration from recently has been Yuri Norstein, particularly for his “Hedgehog in the Fog” -This feeds into my aforementioned interest in Eastern European animation, especially with this paper-cut out stop motion style. It is incredibly evocative and in my opinion, both equal parts unsettling and alluring.
These individual experiences all intersect with one another, fusing into a strong foundation of knowledge for me to move forwards with as an animator and artist. The skills and awareness of myriad techniques that I am developing will continue to help me far down the line of my own professional development, as well as exposing me to the joy of thousands of others’ hard work. The more information and data I gather on various animation styles and movements, the more I develop my internal understanding of the shape of the animation landscape as a whole, which since embarking on this course, has already improved significantly!
This has been a really useful process as I have developed my observational skills and I am building a stronger understanding of timing. It’s been really useful learning to act out scenes and use myself as reference, as it is helping to improve the authenticity behind my animation!
In this session we had to pick one of our peers character designs to animate. I chose one of Lavanya’s stop motion puppets, “T-Man”, as I thought he was adorable due to his leafy head. This video depicts my roughs of T-Man finding a stick, waving it around and then jumping on it as if it were a witch’s broom. I am excited to clean up this animation and smooth it out with more inbetweens.
I’m slowly gaining confidence in animating in Maya, and learning the processes of starting with simplified movement and slowly adding more complex smaller movements to make it more fluid.
