The story.

Animation is amazing and fun, I mean if you can draw it then you can bring it to life and that is an amazing and beautiful thing. I absolutely love it and I feel like I am growing attached to my characters as I have drawn and worked with them for so long already and I’m not even half way yet!

For an Animation to have a heart and soul there must be a story. And a good one, the better the story the better the whole film will be. I love stories and enjoy making people feel through a story, ever since I was little I would make up my own stories and characters.

During Pre production we had to obviously come up with a story for our final animation piece. Now this is easier said than done, as we are limited to how long our animation piece can be depending on how many animators are working on the final. For me I am working alone and there for had to try and make the story short, and that’s not easy for me as my ideas tend to be bigger then what I have to work with. So working on the final story for this animation took some time. And as always I had (and still do) a billion stories running through my head. I had ideas for teddy bears, love stories and so forth.

Firstly I decided what media to work in and from the beginning I wanted to work with three main medias, 2D hand drawn animation, stop start paper animation and stop start claymation. I came down to the story of a very rich man who was not happy and went on a journey to find happiness and ends up falling in love after he gives to the poor. That idea was too big, so the idea was shared and tossed and turned around until the final story came, the journey of Emily. Quite a jump from a rich man to a poor homeless girl. But the story still holds the same message, giving is true happiness.  

I originally planned for there to be a forth world, a chalk world, but that would have been too much for a 14week animation piece that is being done by one person. In the end though I am happy with the story.

 In the beginning I felt it still might be a bit too much to try and achieve, but I am loving every moment, even though there are many setbacks which is understandable for an animation I am enjoying the challenge. So far so good. :)

Research.

I have been completely bed ridden and very sick for the past four days. Which means I have lost four days of working which is frustrating but I’m not going to freak out about it because I believe that I can do this animation piece. And If you believe you can do something then you are already half way there.

But while I was sick I watched many 2D animation films and took notes. I was manly focusing on how they animated particular characters or things and this helped me a lot as I know have many new ideas that where far better than my old ones.

For example one of the movies I watched and got ideas from was Disney’s Hercules. They did this great transition that I hadn’t truly noticed till now in the very beginning of the film. It was a slow zoom to cut then zoom. It’s hard to explain but I will try and see if I can use this technique or at least something familiar to it.

I also watched carefully and have always admired how they animated Hades. He is a great character and I believe the animator had fun animation him. But I payed close attention to the smoke he creates at the bottom of his robe as that is similar to my fairy-godmother character. (Except she is a good and cheerful character.)

Another film I watched that helped me greatly was Winnie the Pooh. I noticed that Pooh bears eyes and my character Emily’s eyes are the same except for the eye lashes. I purposely made Emily’s eyes a teddy bear black bead like because she looks better with them and I wanted a challenge. It is harder than expected to animate a character who has no white in their eyes as you can’t always tell their emotion or where they are looking but it is a fun challenge. While watching Winnie the Pooh I was writing down and drawing how they animated his eyes, for example how they drew the eyes so you knew he was looking to the side or thinking.

Paper Animation.

I have done and finished my paper animation scenes. I am pretty happy with how they turned out but things could have been better.

But let’s start from the beginning.

First:

I designed my characters and what they would do in the scene.

Secondly:

I then grabbed the camera and the copy stand to measure out how large my scene will be and therefore how big I can make the scene and characters.

Thirdly:

I designed and made my characters. I have two main scenes in my paper animation where I needed the same characters, Emily and the mermaid to be in a different position. When they swim down they are in an almost lying down position but when they are at the bottom of the sea they are in a standing position.

I designed the mermaid’s tail in a way that she could flick it from side to side like a fish. At first I had the base and the top of the tail separate so that I could just swap the end of the tail around every time she moved. But when I practised with this method it did not work as the cardboard was being bent from all the movement and the scales fell off. I ended up re-doing the tale and ended up with eight mermaid tails.

Original

Final

I also designed the Octopus to have two different sets of arms so that it would look like a realistic octopus. I ended up only using the one set and just moving it around as it would have been much too difficult.

Background image of ocean.

Sea creatures. (original and unfinished)

Fourthly:

I took to animating, the lab and equipment was booked, and I went in on the Saturday to keep out of the way of other people and this was the only time the lab doesn’t have classes. I placed a sigh on the door asking for people to knock before entry as I could not risk any stuff ups. I started at 9:30am and did not stop till 2pm. It was hard work but I enjoyed it.

I had a few technical difficulties such as the camera losing battery at one point so I had to redo the scene. Also a few times I wasn’t happy with a scene and re-did it. I then realised towards the end that for some reason the final images where being cropped far more then what they were supposed to be. This meant that some of my scene has been cut. Now it’s not that bad as everything still looks okay and everything you need to see to understand the scene can be seen. Though it frustrated me a good deal as it does not look as nice as it could have. But I really don’t want to re-do it all over again and I am limited to the amount of times I can book the lab as there are many other students at JMC who need the facilities and equipment.

There were many different versions of the main characters and much to change and move around. But in the end I am happy with the result.