Elements Animation Development Process 3

Well we are now about a month into the project and time has gone way too quick. In the past week we had to present a presentation to our groups for a critique. I feel the critique went well and of course the obvious issue was brought up, would this animation be created in time for the deadline if it had taken around three weeks to just animate grass. Basically I responded to this feedback with the understanding that yes, to get the right quality with this animation and to make it look like how I want it, it is going to take a huge amount of time. Therefore I will just have to complete my Visual Language brief so I can focus all my time and attention onto this animation.

29/11/14

I've finished my Grass! Now, what I mean by this is all the grass animation I needed for one certain shot lasting around a second is done. So, you could sort of say one second down, nineteen to go. But of course the second isn't yet fully complete, I still need a background.

The idea was originally to save time by instead of drawing or painting a sky, simply photograph the sky. I felt it would have a really nice effect because if I were to photograph the sky and then photograph it slightly to the left for example, when I play it back it could look like a time-lapse in on of itself, like clouds are passing over. Or if I were to photograph the sky in the evening every ten minutes, when I play it back it could look like the sun is going down at an incredible speed to add to the time-lapse effect. The sun going down photography would be slightly more challenging to animate with because of course if the lighting changed in the background, it would make sense for the central objects, such as the teddy bear to stay lit with the same lighting.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I haven't been able to get any photography of the sky because it's been grey. cloudy sky everyday for the last month. But as soon as there's a blue sky I'll be out there.

Anyway I knew twiddling my thumbs waiting for a sunny day could take a lifetime so would not be an effective use of my time. So, before I had any time to relax I moved on to designing my girl character. The idea is that since the animation is only twenty seconds long we are going to have very little time to get to know her so that's where the time-lapse comes in.

When we are first introduced to her she is around four years old. No one's going to tell us she's that age, therefore she needs to look like a four year old. I thought about having her play on a small swing held up by a branch. I've debated with myself whether we should see her face or not. I feel definitely we should when she's older (I'll explain why later) but...

No wait scratch that! It's been a day since I was last typing so much has happened. Originally I wasn't going to show her face but then I decided to show her face. At the end of the day, she is the protagonist.

There's a great website called Shutterstock that is basically a massive filing cabinet of reference material. It has everything. In order to represent the character as a four year old girl I need to animate her as realistically as possible. The easiest way to understand how a four year old girl would act on a swing is to basically find footage of a young girl on a swing. That is when I searched exactly that into Shutterstock and found exactly the right reference material I need.

As you can see its not just as simple as animating a girl on a swing, there are certain things you need to take into account. The girl in the above video swings amateurishly, like she doesn't really have the strength to push herself off the ground very far. You can also tell due to her age, she can't really sit still without wriggling. Then you look at the boy who is slightly older and you can tell that due to his maturity he has a greater understanding of how to do it and can also sit still easier.