Project brief: Using the TASTE theme, the colour palette provided and the Octopus icon of Animocje, create a 5-10 sec animation with sound to promote the festival on social media.
In this project, I worked with Jiaxuan Wu and she did the first half of the animation and I animated the other half. Our topic is SOUR, and we would like to use a big contrast in style of the octopus to show how sour the lemon is.
The music is did by Lune at Royal Holloway university of London.
Project：< Castle in the Sky>
Animation demo：
Initial Pitch
In summer holiday, I drew lots of illustrations and one of them is about a girl eating an apple and another girl drawing an apple. When I was doing that work , the experience of practicing drawing apple in sketch class was recalled. Drawing apple always bothers me and it seems to be a common task for all artists in the world. At that time, inspiration comes to me: what does being painted mean to an apple?
Research and Development
After research and discussion with group mates and tutors, we have a new story:
Longline: An apple is looking for a chance to be a great artist’s model but he only gets some other weird jobs and finally his wish is realised in another way.
Project: < Shooting Star>
In the final presentation, I finished almost the whole animation and I showed it to my tutors. This time I got more advanced suggestions which I had never thought before.
Firstly, there were still some timing problem during the tracing. I need to adjusted the timing and pacing slightly. The second point suggested by Su-Lynn was about the twinkles I had in my animation. She said it was common and general in lots of animation works. I need to develop my style of showing this. This was really a new concept for me and I was stuck by this idea for a while. What is my style? What can I do to make it special and different with others? These questions actually have bothered me for a long time in illustrations and now I meet them in my animation again. However, when I was thinking about this, I got some ideas. Finally, I also got some advice on the zooming and light direction in the background. There were more techniques I could try to make my animation clearer and convey the message more obvious. Here are my notes:
“As soon as I saw the animation, I intended for the music to be light-hearted but tense at the same time. I used pizzicato strings to create a comical atmosphere, quickly followed by string tremolos to create suspense. The pizzicato bass line compliments the rhythmic ride cymbal. The music then changes mood slightly as we enter a more ‘battle-like’ theme when the main character begins following her target more quickly. Here, I added some cinematic drums, forming the foundation of this section. The next section is signified by a snare roll where we hear a more ‘victorious’ theme. This is arguably the climax of the composition, where the character in the animation completes her drawing. This is then met with an ironic silence, highlighting the sound design used in the piece. Overall, the process of writing the music for this project was extremely straightforward and the animation helped me come up with various different ideas, motifs and moods.”———from Euan Su.(Music composer)
Overall, I finished my work on time and received lots of feedback from my friends. This journey was so challenging but also interesting. I have learned a lot and I want to do reflection in three categories.
First of all, the technical issues. This time, I knew that the time was limited and I was not confident about my speed of drawing by using the tablet. As a result, I used IPAD and my main softwares were Callipeg and Procreate. They were really good and supported me to finish the work smoothly. However, there were still lots of limits on advanced functions like zooming and lighting which were essential for my work this time. In this way, I want to practice drawing with tablet more and learn about the softwares in the holiday. In the future, I need to cooperate with others and use the same softwares together. Secondly, the schedule issues. I was especially satisfied with my schedule and plan of the work for this project. According to the experience in Guildhall project, I realised that good schedule could avoided waste of time and made the storyline better. I spent almost a month to do the research and writing my stories. As soon as the final version was decided, I made a clear work sheet and followed the plan strictly. In this way, I completed the line up and the colouring quickly and smoothly and it was the key reason I finished work on time. In the future, I hope I can keep this habit and work systematically. The third point is about cooperation and communication. Although I worked solo this time, I still got lots of support from others and they were necessary in my projects. I showed my work to others frequently, because I thought my target audience was all people in the society. Then my classmates helped me to think about the plots together and told me their experience of sketching. My tutors also gave me lots of hints and questions which lead me to discover and complete my style and my story.My composer was really talented and he supported my project actively. I really appreciated everyone who had supported me in this project. I will continue to communicate more with different people to discover more perspectives and I will support others’ work too.
When I started learning animation, basic drawing skills and animation principles are the most important also the only thing in my mind. When I finished the Guildhall project and also this exploratory project, I found that there are much more stuff I need to considered in an animation. It is totally different with illustration and I really learned a lot. I will keep working, practicing and never forget what I learned this time.
As Su-Lynn mentioned, I lost the fox in my animation. She said this is my experience and inspiration for my work, I should consider using this lady in my animation. This suggestion was so useful which made me clearer about my model woman. Previously, the only element for the target is elegant woman, there was no reference and details. Another suggestion I got was from my classmate Yanbin, he pointed out that the plot in screen room was hard for the audience to find the focus point. Then I got my notes and developments:
Intent of the project:
This project will be a story-telling animation. My motivation is to depict a daily event to resonate with the audiences. The target audiences are the young adults like us. Additionally, I still want to make the animation with humour which can make audiences laugh.
The picture above is my first finished storyboard and I showed it and all stuff mentioned forward on interim1. I got these reflections from my tutors:
Firstly, as I still left lots of blank space for story, I was suggested by Su-Lynn and Darren to have a clear direction and focus point for the animation. They mentioned spy style and how the character would sketch targets. This really inspired me and provides me a hint for the whole story. Later, Mario, my teacher in toolkit, questioned me the motivation and goal of the main character. “Why she wants to follow and draw very quickly? How does she feel and how will she behave? “ These questions attacked me directly and these are my notes and developments:
I need to make my storyline clearer and to achieve that, I have to delete some ideas and plots although l love them…
My focus point should be on one character and show how the girl will trace her target as a spy and I need to exaggerate this process. This part will be the core of the story and extremely interesting.
I need to show the content on her sketchbook to tell the audience why she needs to follow one target and what outcome she wants at the end.
