Documentary Animation// Unable to start animating

After taking a closer look at the pages that define which segments I'll be animating, I realised I recognised the allotted timings as the ones I'd outlined roughly in a script for the storyboard; which was taken from the original narrative. Now that we've replaced the narrative and it has a totally different structure the timing is useless as well as James and Malachis storyboard/animatic. I've spoken to our director (james) lightly about this problem and he's said he'll make the necessary changes in the next week or so. But considering we're already behind schedule this problem will set us back another two weeks, on top of how far behind we are currently.  

Documentary animation// starting animation!

Since I've started working from home I haven't had any contact from my director besides being assigned which segments I will be animating for this project two weeks ago. I'll be animating every segment involving the feline characters I've designed and the orangoutang characters i've designed will be animated by our director; the third team mate will animate text and backgrounds.

I'm struggling to attend university because of how I feel in myself and my own mental health; but next week I'll really push myself into attending university classes instead of working from home.

Responsive// Do it in ten final animation 'DARK'

Here is the final animation I'm entering for this months theme 'Dark' for showmetheanimation's contest 'do it in ten'. I wanted to portray a personal feeling towards night time, because I'm afraid of the dark. I wanted the characters in this animation to be as vulnerable as each other, and that the comforting from the man is honest; so designed them very simplistically and nude. I also wanted to animate flame, so first animated the 'line' sequence and then returned to it and animated the flame into sequences. For the audio James Grimshaw let me use one of his pieces free of charge, so special thanks to him!

Screenshot showing the effects of opacity in layers/positing in photoshop.

To give the illustration of darkness in the animation I first created the backgrounds as if fully lit and then applied a royal blue layer over the top - then changing the opacity of that blue layer, I could then tiny all beneath layers with that shade. With the candles glow I did the same thing, but with a rounder light and then key framed the position of the light effect according to the movement of the candle.

I also managed to keep 'scenes'/'effect' files few.

Responsive Group Work// The Amnesty breif and who's involved.

Today was the day we'd declare to the rest of the year (illustration, animation and graphic design) which public brief we wanted to work on. We did so by each being allotted 15seconds each other three slides in which to introduce ourselves, display examples of our work and then declare who/which brief we wanted to work with.


I was very keen to work on the Amnesty brief where it was set that they wanted visual work to educate young people on what they're organization does and has done in the past, in hopes of encouraging more young people to get involved. I've campaigned in the past on pushing forward a verity of human rights issues and felt like I'd be missing a huge opportunity to avoid this brief as someone who can participate with their work to educate more on human rights.


Only two others wanted to work on this brief, which in itself makes my point; young people really do need more information on organizations like Amnesty and human right movements. Emily Flanagan from illustration and Poppy Young from graphic design were the two others interested in the brief and the three of us formed the project group.



This brief involves taking on board what Amnesty is all about and what their group represents and create some form of campaign presence to attract a younger audience to the group. In the brief Amnesty discusses just what they want in entries; seemingly wanting some sort of visual work to help attract younger people and students to joining their campaigns and getting involved in their work or even just supporting them. This brief is all about attracting a new generation to Amnesty and inspiring them to get involved.  Amnesty in their briefs suggests to the readers about keeping to their color pallet and heavy on what's appropriate to represent them.


We've spoken briefly about meeting up in person or welcoming together to discuss project ideas sometime this week. But we seem to be focusing on creating some sort of moving visuals, be that moving digital imagery or an animation/short video.

Responsive// Do it in ten - Dark development

For this project I wanted to keep characters as basic and simplistic as possible because of my shortage of time to work on this project (starting on it slightly late and all). I wanted a rather abstract approach to visuals; working with colour shapes rather then defining strong lines in the background design and simple lines for the character animation.

I've been developing a more personal drawing method that I wanted to apply to the characters in this animation. Recently I've been drawing quickly, drawing for enjoyment not just chase 'realistic' in my drawings; so I wanted to carry on this enjoyment with this small project. I feel like this brief will benefit me because there's no entry fee (great) and this website is fairly dead as of recently. There seems to be little interest in people entering, I might as well take advantage and advertise my work within this brief on their website.

Documentary Animation// Presentation

Today my project team presented our pre-production work to our class, I was absent to the presentation. I've spoken to my class mates about how they responded to our presentation and they liked my character designs. One class mate said my designs seemed a little too childish considering the subjects talked about in the narrative but then said it balanced it out well. Apparently when presenting our tutors encouraged the animatic with sound to be played instead of the silenced version that James wanted to play because neither of us were confident with playing our interviews so soon to our class mates and tutors.

I'm struggling to attend project related events both inside university and outside (with meets up with James and Malachi). I feel uncomfortable about this project, about using something so personal and something that still effects me so much as a sort of 'entertainment'. I've spoken to the both Malachi and James briefly about the effect this project is having on me but have yet to fully voice my opinions.

Documentary Animation// Recording the interviews

Both myself and James recorded our personal experiences with losing our fathers today and I found the whole situation very stressful. The sound booth itself is made of glass, which left me feeling extremely venerable and anxious; so I found it very hard to speak clearly/slowly to begin with - let alone with talking about something so personal.  I already knew about James experiences with losing his father because I've been friends with him for going on two years now however I really struggled talking about it openly with James in the room. We had both already written down scripts to refine what we wanted to say in the sound booth but we both found we'd written far too much to squeeze nicely into 2 minutes (1 minute each). I focused on keeping my dialogue very basic and almost 'naive' - to help push the childish approach to the situation, in the memories I was talking about.

After finishing the recording I've realised I'm less prepared to explore my memories which involve my father and talk about it openly. Although a lot is left out from the interview I'm still finding it difficult to work in an environment thats topic has me so on edge and nervous. I believe it's important for me to speak about my past with my father and that this project will help me come to terms with what happened - despite the fact it happened so long ago.

Documentary animation// the animatic and re-recordings.

After Malachi finished the refined storyboard it was James job to then convert it into an animatic. Taking the storyboards he drew new illustrations from them and then positioned them in after effects an an animatic along side our first recorded interview. I say 'first recorded interview' because our tutors advice our group that a lot of emotion was lost in our recording compared to our script because we rushed our lines and barely paused to take a breath. Both myself and James re-recorded the narrative, this time focusing on slowing our words down and speaking more clearly. After completing the new recording James didn't adapt the animatic to suit the new narrative so visually the animatic is out of sync with the interviews.

I don't have a link to the animatic because James hasn't uploaded the video to youtube yet because he isn't confident about having the interview published for viewers yet and with the presentation coming up we cut the narrative. However, now the animatic is hard to understand without the recordings so James added my visual storyboarding script to make it easier for someone outside the project to understand.

Responsive// Do It In Ten - Dark Animatic

The latest brief for the 'do it in ten' monthly contest is Dark.
Dark to me is the night time and is something I still find quite spooky, but the things that come with night time? Stars? Sleeping? Lovely.    Below is a very rough animatic I've developed in the last hour to get a feel on this project, as I'm already late to begin this project I'm really rushing myself to start animating it.  I wanted to animate something quite simple and lovely - something comforting. I don't sleep very well, but when I wake up in the middle of the night I love seeing the night sky and sitting indoors in the warm with a candle and a nice book or friend close by.