Studio Brief 4 – Apply – Evaluation

Studio Brief 4 – Apply – Evaluation

I was asked to produce a 5-10 second animation that examines one of the following words; Surprise, Lateness, Love, Hate, Longing, Happiness and Fear. With pose-to-pose traditional CEL animation. However, I produced an 18 second animation instead. I choice to drift away from the original brief of 10 seconds maximum because I really loved the concept of my Idea and after drawing out a storyboard for my animation I was even more determined in completing this project.

When experimenting with different animation techniques and methods I loved traditional CEL animation; first testing out this method with a pendulum pose-to-pose and flipbook animation. Looking back at these first tester animations, it’s clear where the areas are I could of improved them but at the time I couldn’t see them. For example, the flipbook animation of a bouncing ball doesn’t arc very well instead it moves in more of a zig-zag movement. When it came to the pixillation project (which we could of produced our final animations for the projects with) I didn’t enjoy it near as much as traditional animation. It was fun to experiment with of course, but I’m an artist who enjoys working by hand. Rather then with a camera or on a computer.

 When generating ideas I struggled at first, however an idea sprung to mind that had been floating around inside my skull for a good while. Within Japanese animation there is a cliché of a cute schoolgirl running to school late with toast in her mouth, to cute music and whining about adorable things in her life. I took this as inspiration and living in Leeds now, I’ve noticed the number of stereotypes wondering is quite vast. However the stereotypical ‘chav’ is still a common occurrence in this city. So I decided to replicate the Japanese anime cliché with the typical ‘Leeds style’.  I based the concept art of the female chav within my animation off a stereotypical ‘chav girl’ and the man she runs into then head-butts off of a good friend of mine. Both character designs weren’t too hard to generate designs for, in fact they were more like doodles then sitting down and really thinking about the character design. I know I wanted the female chav to be skinny and aggressive with flappy breasts and an over exposed body, despite the weather. I also knew I wanted the man she runs into, to look completely clueless and innocent, which would emphasise how aggressive the female character was within the animation and how little he provoked her.

Even if it seemed to take a lifetime, I loved animated in this way. There’s something so satisfying about drawing image after image for hours then finally seeing it moving across a screen. Despite needing to scan about 180 images one by one into the computer to then rearrange on AfterEffects.

My animation for this project I am honestly extremely pleased with, this being my first real animation that is completely CEL animated. It’s clear I’ve followed many of the 12 principles of animations, for example squash and stretch and of course anticipation. I feel that the frames move smoothly, even if one shot is missing a certain element to a characters design. I also feel how the scenes move together smoothly, giving the animation an overall appealing look and feel.  I also feel like despite clearly going over 10 seconds with my animation, it was beneficial to the over all project. I would of rather of pushed the boundaries of the brief then cutting off frames and the animation being too fast moving or not even making any sense to the viewer.  

Molly.C.Lester