Reflective Summary

ART002-2: Art and Design Experiential Learning / Reflective Summary

I was thankful to be put in the only 2D animation project going on this year, I feel like it’s important to learn the first steps rather than skipping ahead to software that basically does the work for you.

My tasks were simple; to animate multiple scenes within the entire film. Overall, the production contains 19 shots, the scenes that I were required to animate were only 5 scenes, however due to unforeseen circumstances, I was left to finish another member’s work, giving an overall of 8 animated scenes contributed towards the final production. Adding together all of my individual cells, my entire workload consists of 244 frames, including around 30 extra due to multiple layers for either the characters or objects from within the mis-en-scene.

Since this was a 2D animation, it wasn’t simply all left on a computer to return to the next day and retouch; all scenes were animated on paper before uploaded onto the computer for toon boom. This meant that the scenes were drawn on pencil, later being fine lined with pen then scanned onto the computer to colour up on toon boom. My current stage of progress is that all of my scenes are fine lined and added onto the computer, ready for colouring in, however I have fallen behind as I am required to re-animate a scene created by another member; this means I was originally on target and have now fallen behind to help finish someone else’s work. I cannot complain about such a matter as it would not change anything to the current situation, I can only keep focused and maintain a constant pace so that my director and myself can meet to their personal deadline.

I believe that I have gained experience during my time working alongside this project. It has taught me the efficiency expected when making a film production within a short time, my first impression on this unit was daunting, on the other hand it made me realise just how much effort I will be needing to put into my own project when the time comes. It’s a different story when you’re the one being directed rather than being the director, it helps you understand that sometimes, you have to meet the needs of others expectations, not just your own. This also made me realise that just because you’re working for someone, doesn’t mean you aren’t entitled to your own opinion, during my time animating for my director, I would ask every question possible before getting carried away with my work; this could include and interpreting the action that they may be looking for within their character, or perhaps suggested another direction that may help the scene, however no meant no and I understood that completely.

Overall, it has been a great experience and has certainly prepared me for when I am making my own production and directing animators the year below, I feel like this will be my most challenging task, not because of my project but the expectations required to being my own director and handling my team members with a clear mind.

ART001-2: Animation Practise: Art Direction, Design and Application / Reflective Summary

During this year of animation, I feel like I have learnt far more compared to the first year by a large degree, it’s certainly a huge step that is difficult to prepare yourself for.

When I started the lip-sync animation, I felt overwhelmed with just how much needed to be done, comparing to how I only did a ball bounce, walk cycle, etc. I was suddenly expected to animate 11 seconds worth of lip sync, consisting of two characters and a explosion. Even though the year was hard, every reason behind it was to help prepare me for the first year and give me enough information to figure out what art style I wish to use for my own production. During this year, I have learnt how to animate lip-syncing, rotascope over a live-action video of our choice and create a stop-motion animation used from recycled materials. All of this uses for animation were new to me and I feel like I have learnt a ton from them all, it has also helped me realise which methods of animation I prefer compared to others and my reasons why.

Out of this year, stop-motion is by far my most favoured choice of animation. I developed an inspiration for the style after watching ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ as a child, the style and textures submerged me into admiration for such a form of animation. Compared to other sources of animation, I believe that stop-motion approaches a completely different sense of feel and understanding. Most animation consists of either a pen or a mouse but with stop-motion, you are made to understand and feel a variety of different textures and materials that you believe would succeed in your expected outcome for your animation. In stop-motion, you actually interest with the scene in a physical matter, I feel like you admire the creations you’ve made more compared to opening a scene through a file on your computer.

However, because of this dedication and an eye for intricate detail, I do not believe that stop-motion would be my choice unless I was to begin creating a studio of the scene now. From my perspective, I admire the time used to master such fine detail within the mis-en-scene as well as the character, ‘The Creator’ shown in a previous post would be a good example of that explanation. I would certainly use it when I begin to free-lance animate but for now, I believe that I will not be using it for my final production unless I were to start before the actual term does. I know that there are shortcuts into making a stop-motion film but I do not wish to do that, I am dedicated when it comes to my animations and wish to prove that personality in my third year production.

My least favoured use of animation is rotascoping. From a personal impression, I believe that rotascoping is a boring method of animation, unless you were to use it as reference, or that the drawn over image would be over exaggerated to the point where you couldn’t tell if it was rotascopped in the first place. I did enjoy my lessons animation to a live action scene, however I saw it more for amusement rather than taking it as a serious art form. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and for some reason, rotascope never caught my interest compared to other forms of animation.

The lip-sync animation taught as the starting unit was certainly helpful and will prepare me for future animating, on top of that, we were required to animate the key frames in both traditional and digital forms so it allowed me to see an understanding on how useful both sources are. I wish I had spent more time animating this scene because it is far more useful than it is considered the first time, however I was so restricted in the way I originally drew, causing a lot of my work to appear static and because of that, I never got around to finishing the animation to see its final outcome. Having to act out my own scene was also very useful as it allowed me to get a feeling of how a character would actually move and react during a scene, sometimes you forget those small details, such as a head tilt or the raise of the shoulders etc. without those, the animation would feel tense.

Overall, there were styles of animation I loved and hate but I do not regret experimenting or being introduced to either of those, I would rather finish uni with a little knowledge of everything rather than a main focus on only one style.

ART007-2: Developing Visual Communication Skills / Elective 1 / Reflective Summary

For my A2 poster, I decided to use charcoal as my final drawing. My drawing reveals an old man kneeling down in the middle of a desert, the twist to this particular drawing though is that the parts out the man’s body making contact with the floor are made out of tree bark that are buried into the dry soil of the ground.

During the 8 weeks of my first elective, I witnessed many people, including myself at the time, creating cliche ideas of the future involving the destruction on man-kind produced by the industrial machines made by their own hands. Each story was the same; pollution would overtake, technology would become so enhanced, man-kind would be their own undoing etc. However, I had a different idea by the end of my first elective and decided to follow a different path as to how the world would look in the future.

Everyone thinks of the intoxicating mechanical side of life, it’s never the other way round; why does no one step back to consider what nature itself would do in the future? Even now, when there is signs of destruction, people never look back to see that plant life and other natural sources begin to envelop around the rubble and turn it into something new. Although we create things to be indestructible, it seems that greenery has already learnt that method since an early stage. So I decided to draw an image that questioned what nature would do if humans were to fall; leaving a man merged with a tree as my final drawing.

I didn’t want it to look like a sign of destruction though but a sign of acceptance. The human presents a face of concentration and tranquility, I didn’t want the future to be represented as a bad ending, I see that too many times! Sometimes people forget about the things that they see around them almost everyday and you forget how important they are (trees breath like us and exhale oxygen to help us survive) imagine if we had to become one with nature so that BOTH of us could survive? It’s an interesting idea.

It’s a metaphorical poster, exaggerating the thought of how the future in around 10 years would look, it also helps spread awareness of the problems we face with nature already over the fact that many animals are extinct due to humans claiming parts of the world for their own gain.

Overall, my interpretation of ’2025 – Nostalgia for an age yet to come’ depicts nature as a source of nostalgia, to remind us how much we may miss something after we have taken it away. The man within the image represents the acceptance of nostalgia and is somewhat depicted as a sacrifice as both understand that they can only survive through the other. It sounds like a grimacing outcome but I wanted to represent a sign of peace and an understanding of your mistakes when it perhaps almost too late.

ART007-2: Developing Visual Communication Skills / Elective 2 / Reflective Summary

Compared to my first poster, this second one is completely different in comparison and in fact encourages the use of technology by representing a gossip website.

I decided that I wanted to follow on a different approach from the serious image I had recently drawn, this was because I was finding it tough to create a website based off of 2025 nostalgia. Later on, I noticed just how popular gossip magazines are to people and the sheer amount that get sold over the span of a week, it lead me to question what people enjoyed from reading these magazines, even if most of the stories are either white lies or exaggerations. I searched through the internet for multiple gossip magazine website layouts, such as heatworld and OK! Magazine. This inspired me to search up a variety of well-known people and change them to an alarming degree, it made me begin to wonder if people would still believe the story if it was from a believable and well-known company.

An example of this method is from the ‘did you know?’ franchise that launched its way into the internet and funnily enough, a lot of people believed what they read. The theory got more interesting when a DYK (did you know?) post was added onto the internet claiming that if you put your iPhone into a microwave, that it would charge the battery! It was amusing to find out just how many people had attempted this ridiculous lie, it’s interesting to see just how many people will fall for something that they deem to be true.

I know that my stories within my website are overboard but it leads me to wonder how bad gossip stories would be in the future, I mean, they’re already ridiculous enough yet people will listen as it’s music to their ears,would it be any different in the future? I originally found the stories hard to come up and write with, however thanks to my media studies knowledge, I could write up something simple but understandable and hopefully, it will humour any other students who see the articles. If I had more time, I would’ve focused longer on the actual stories, even though the poster is based on the skill of art, it won’t look like a believable website if the stories are simple and informal. I wish I had added additional little features, such as a date on the website along with fake journalists names next to the stories, it would look more professional.

This entire poster was drawn out using Photoshop Elements 6, however I feel like no experience was gained during the process of the poster as I have already been using the software for several years. I learnt how to use photoshop by hand since it came free with my tablet but contained no instructions or a leaflet explaining how to use it, so to this day, I still fiddle around with different features to see how the outcome would look.