Honestly, when Mr. P told us, I sighed at the thought of working on an animation for a whole term. I had no idea what story I would do and I had this terrrrrrrible feeling that I wouldnt do any work for the first couple weeks.
Heh, this all lasted one minute. I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket and eagerly pressed "Doodle Jump", my favorite apple app... TING! Yes, that was the sound of a lightbulb suddenly turning on. I could picture the whole storyboard in my head about this little dude getting sucked out of the phone and having a lil adventure! I got so excited that I actually started working on the first scene on the following weekend!
As the term progressed, I found that my animation turned out to be quite different from the movie I imagined, stashed somewhere in my brain. However, the original concept was not altered. The story plot did not falter and I believe that the cuteness of my Oodle dude was present,,, to some extent. X)
One thing that was clearly modified was the scene numbers. I splitter some scenes and stitched some scenes together, however, this did not affect the overall animation at all.
During the process of creating my animation, not only did I have heaps of fun, I believe that I developed skills in the several aspects:
1) Drawing
Animationish required a lot of drawing, which consequently led to improvement:) One specific example I would like to point out is the tears when my Oodle dude cries. Although i havent quite mastered the part where the tears fall, i believe that the part where tears are welling up in the lil dude's eyes is pretty good. I didn't know how to do that before, but with the help of Camille, i learnt.
2) Different shots. 3) Stopmotion.
These two go together. Scene 2 was my first attempt at stop motion in quite a while. As you can see, the movements are quite "jerky" and not-so-smooth. The camera shots, like the point of view, are limited. However, improvement is shown and the end of scene three and four show smoother action. These scenes also show a variety of different shots, or views.
4) Efficiency
The time I took to complete scene 4 or 5 is amazing compared to that of, say, scene 1. While scene 1 took a couple of weeks, I finished scene 5 in three lessons. Efficiency.. That's what it's all about :)
I encountered a few problems, but surprisingly, not as much as I thought I would. Ever since information futures in grade 7, I had the impression that if animationish didn't shut down on you at least twice in one lesson, you were luckyyy! So yes, it shocked me when animationish didnt even once shut down on me, except for the opening scene dilemma mentioned previously. A couple problems I encountered is posted in other entries. One I didn't post is scene 5 where I had to get the Oodle dude up the table by his jetpack. Whoa, I did think it though while planning the story board, but it was quite hard. When my fellow creative median asked me how the heck I would do that, I replied, "I dunno, I'll think about it when I get there." ahaha. What I did was; Get a picture of the Oodle dude with his jetpack looking upwards in a determined expression. Then I moved camera moving upwards while filming. I made this an image sequence and imported each individual photo as a background in animationish. I imported the photo of the determined Oodle dude in the foreground. Using the treasure chest and the truck, I made him gradually move up to the table, following the background positionings. Then, I drew the flames cming out of the jetpack! I was so proud of this scene:) the sound effects really topped it off well.
My storyboard is seemingly messy and rushed. I admit, it's messy. But it's definitely not rushed! Each word and drawing ran through my head for at least a couple days before they were converted onto a piece of paper. The storyboard was awesome. It acted as a guide whenever I was stuck or got sidetracked. It was very helpful, it felt like bringing a maths book into a maths test! Hehehe
I didn't have any time-management issues,,,,or, so I thought. The first half of the term, I was sitting there, lazily working on my animation singing "La La LA! Whatever. La La LA! It doesn't matter. La La LA! Oh WELL!" (Tonight Tonight >> By Hot Chelle Rae). This was all good until the DUE DATE loomed around the corner. I didn't have enough time sing tonight tonight while working on my animationish:( but enough time to finish it, albeit the credits were a bit rushed:) Oh, I left one day for sounds, instead of one week. It still worked out fine. Okay, what I SHOULD HAVE done is this. Work more efficiently on the first couple of weeks in order to allow more time for later scenes, credits and sound. Although I finished everything in time, this would allow me to go over everything thoroughly therefore this is the improvement I believe I should make.
My Animation was broken up into parts, like suggested. As a result, at the end of each part, I could check over my scene and then post it up on my blog. Plus, whenvever I encountered a problem or had a complaint or modified something, I put all the info up on my blog. Therefore, in my opinion, yes, I did have adequate reflection throughout my project.
Initially, I believed that I would finish this project in no time. However, this point of view changed when I worked on the very first part of my animation for what seemed like 30 minutes….which actually turned out to be 3 hours! Gawshhh, once, I finished my scene but I didn’t ike one part so I tweaked it a bit and WHAM! A WHOLE LESSON GONE! ahahaha. So yesh, it required wayyyyyy more time than I thought it would.
Ooh, if I could modify my animation, I would def. modify scene 2! I would make the movements smoother. Also, I couldn’t find a suitable sound track for the opening scene of my animation. Therefore, I used a random sound track from garage band but whenever I watch it, it doesn’t create the same “mood” or “atmosphere” that I wanted.
“What would I do differently?” is, in fact, quite unrelated to the previous paragraph as that paragraph states the things I would like to modify, meaning that I can’t have huge changes. An example being,, say, change the main character. That would be in this paragraph, not the last one. Wait, that was just an example! I would never change my lil Oodle dude!! Okay, something I would do different is, manage my time more efficiently. Some changes relating to my animationish would be a different opening scene and a different credits page. As explained before, I would like to make my opening page a bit more.. decorative, and as a originally planned: start with “odle Jump”, then have my lil Oodle due roll in the capital “O”, which makes it “Oodle Jump”! Haha:D Also, I would like to hand draw my credits in animationish with my lil Oodle due jumping in and out of the scene!
Overall, I think this assessment was pure awesumness! I am so glad that I chose Creative Media over Design Futures, as i enjoyed every lesson of CM! I like this assessment in particular as the product of it, Oodle Jump, is great! It turned out chouette and i love the fact that I made it
(Posted, Saturday 17th of Septembe 12:59am)
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