The Animation

For the final part of the unit 12 assignment i tried to do 2 different ways to animate my animation as i only had a short amount of time to do the animation: I tried drawing the animation at home using "Paint Tool Sai" by doing it with keyframes and i also drew the animatics of the animation at college using "Adobe flash"

I was originally going to use the keyframes drawing I did on "Paint Tool Sai" as a template for drawing on adobe flash as its hard for me to draw on adobe flash sometimes.

 I really love how my character drawing came out with this scene with the character's eyes and hairstyle however i didnt get the character to move around, except for her eyes and mouth moving. I feel like i need to research how to do movement in animation.

 Even though the colours are a bit out there i liked how the character came out as they have their own characteristic to them. my teacher also said that i should try out different body types skin shades as the design of the characters before were all the same colour.

 I used ‘Paint Tool Sai’ for this template scene that I drew. I liked how I created the sky. I blended 3 shades of blue together to represent the sky look however I did not add clouds because I haven’t developed technique to draw clouds. The trees are quite simple but I was trying to get more depth into my environment. I got the character drawing from a sketch that I did in my notebook in which I decided to use this style for the long distance animation. I scanned it in and then re drew it digitally using ‘Paint Tool Sai’. This is a character template.

 I am happy that I was able to get the animatics animated using "Adobe Flash". I was able to get the feeling of how the animation would've gone if i did have it fully animated. The only problem is that I didnt work on the timing of the animation so it looks quite rushed

Animation Development: plans and sketches

 This is the mind map I did for this unit, I just thought of simple things most teenagers think of and I decided to stick with doing an animation about friends.

 These are my thumbnail sketches of different poses. In this I tried out 3 different styles of thumbnails, I liked doing the one where I actually drew out the body but I need to pratice on drawing more life drawings.

 These are my facial expression for the character, I love drawing the shocked face as it has that cartoon feel. I also tried out 2 different styles of eyes: one that's disney cartoon like and the other is an anime style, I decided to stick with the anime style.

 This is my main character design and it was one of my favourite part of doing this assignment as I get to create the characteristic of the character and I used my own style to draw her out.

 This is the design of the 3 popular punk girls and the phone that they like to spend time on.

 This is the design for the side of the building, I really liked sketching this out especially the trees and grass.

 This is the main front school building.

 This is where i got my style of drawing from testing it out in my notebook and drawing characters from TV shows and original characters I created.

For my moodboard i collected picture of different school cliques and someone being left out from a group because that linked into what I was going to animate. While I was looking at these pictures I found the one from mean girls and the plot to mean girls is kinda like the plot I have for my character, new girls trying to fit in but then becomes friends with the popular girl by being someone she's not.

Storyboard

2.1 Essay: Toy Story changing animation

Toy Story: The First 3D Animation

An animation that did change the animation industry is Toy story that was first released on November 1995. This cartoon movie was like nothing that ever came before it as it was one of the first fully computer animated movie on the Big screen and because of this the animator team were on high stakes. The team had only one try to pull off a full length computer animated movie with their deal of $26 million by the Pixar company. If they succeeded then that would mean they created a new software and hardware that them and many animators will use for future computer animation. “At that point, none of us knew what we were doing. We didn’t have any production expertise except for short films and commercials. So we were all complete novices,” Said Ed Catmull “But there was something fresh about nobody knowing what the hell we were doing.”

Catmull also states that these young production studios were in a corner: one failure and that would likely mean the end of all 3 toy story movie contract and the end of Pixar studios. “We grew up with hand-drawn [animation], done the best at Disney Studios,” Catmull says. “It was very subtle and very emotional.” He comments about how Walt Disney used all the latest technology of his time and that’s what makes the film so magical.

Catmull and the computer scientists at Pixar was able to build a software that animators can use to design the film Toy Story and they used this software on other movies like RenderMan which was originally made from Catmull’s studies at the University of Utah and Menv. Working with computers opened new possibilities with animations, letting animators add in details that they couldn’t add in before or would wanted to avoid like the plaid pattern on Woody’s shirt or the stickers on Buzz’s curved glass helmet.

The software is good for making geometric objects like blocks and bouncing balls: the types of things you’d find in Andy’s room and toy box. Anything with an “organic” shape, texture or look ended up looking like a plastic toy, this fits nicely with the theme of toys and plastic objects coming to life “Toys always hung out in a kid’s room” Lasseter added “which let animators do their illustrations on a perfectly flat floor that was simple to render”.

Toy Story was the highest selling film the first 3 weeks of its opening day. To be the first 3D computer animated movie it was a huge milestone for animation and the most significant since the start of colour animation.

1.1 & 1.2 Essay: role of an animator

What is a role of an animator?

The role of an animator is to make a sequenced of images, that are called frames. Once these images are put together they create an illusion of life and movement and this is what you would call animation. Animation can be made on a digital software, drawn by hand, puppets or models.

What techniques are taken in this role?

When working on an animation there’s a lot of things you need to get used to and do. First there’s the script writing and when I say this I mean have some sort of story that you want the characters to be in and a plot with a beginning, middle and end. Once that is done then you can sketch up a bit of a character design so you have the basic idea of what he/she looks like. Then there’s the storyboard where you do quick drawings of what will happen in the story, plus you can add some arrows and a small description of what’s happening in every scene. Storyboarding is a key part of making an animation as it’s the part where it gives the animator a basic idea of how it going to play out. After that there are the rough thumbnails where the animator experiments with the different poses of the characters. Then after doing some rough passes (that is also known as animatic).

Then there the key frames that are drawn out and the in-betweens to keep the flow of the animation. After that there’s the final clean ups colouring and background to make it a full coloured animation and then they add some special effects and voice acting. If I had to pick on what is the most important part on having an animation is having a story and having the key frames that can tell the story.

When I did the animation for my FMP, adobe youth voices and other assignments I used adobe flash as it has most of the tools I needed to do animation and it had the smoothing pen for drawing smooth lines. I also liked using the onion skin tool for doing the in-between frames and with some simple parts of the animation I use motion tween like with moving the eyebrows up to create a shock look.

2.1 Essay: Persepolis Review

Review Persepolis

Persepolis is an animated film based on the graphic novel Persepolis. It was created by Marjane Satrap, who also created the graphic novel, in the year 2007. It is also a French-Iran-American animated movie. The story is an autobiography following Marjane’s childhood of being in Iran and it goes through her coming of age and realizing the Iranian revolution.

I felt that the film opened up both my mind and eyes about other cultures and countries about how it can affect people’s childhood for the best and the worst. It also shows the real difference between her childhood and my childhood is the place and timing. When I watched this movie for the first time I found it hard to pick up because of how deep it goes about the Iranian revolution but after watching it a second time I got a better understanding. Seeing how this was about a girl coming of age I was interesting in watching it and there were some parts that I can relate to, like the rebelling from the crowd and having fun listening to music. the movie did cause some controversial before it was even released but once you’ve watched it you sooner find out that it’s not controversial at all.

The Main Character Maji is brash and stubborn during most of her animation that is her childhood but when she had to leave her country for a life where she has to be independent she starts to mature, and this can also be shown through her age. Marji is seen to be quite westernised from her fascination of western pop culture such as rock, Karate movies and Nike sneakers. She doesn’t hide her opinions on her corrupt politics and doesn’t let what is happening in her country stop her from what she wants to do and you can see that from Marji’s rebel side.

Another theme throughout this movie is family. Marji sees her grandmother as an idol: strong, independent and beautiful and her parents and relatives are supporters of the revolutions however some of if they are even in prison for threatening to fight back. As this movie is told in a linear format it demonstrates the passage of time communicates perfectly on how the family is influence and helped create Marji’s ideals and actions.

The animation style is animated in a simple design and limited palette and because her story is told in black and white we can see that it uses this as an advantage to show her past and childhood and then they change it to coloured animation to show when she has matured to a point of understanding why she had to leave her home country. The black and white is used to show the theme of her defiance, like when she is told not to purchase western merchandise but she goes to the black market and when she conforms to false ideology of now taught in her school but she calls it in the middle of her lecture in middle school.

As a Conclusion I think this movie is a great movie for young people to see to get a better view of people like them growing up in a country with corrupt politics and shows how young people’s opinions does matter.