The children like it.

 

 

On a skype conversation with my 4 year old brother and my 9 year old sister, I got some feedback on my animation.

 

They enjoyed it!

 

They found it funny, entertaining and appealing.

I know they are my family, but as kids they are honest and I value their feedback, especially as they are the age range I am most interested in targeting with my work.

Final Animation - Unicorns are real!

Unicorns are real!

I have finally finished my animation. It is short but sweet and I am glad to have made it, even if the last few weeks leading up to deadline have been stressful and testing of my patience! 

Please enjoy and I would be glad to receive any feedback from any fellow illustrators and animators out there! 

Please click on the link above in purple to open my animation up on vimeo.

Text

I have decided to use my own hand writing for the text as I think it has more an appeal to it, and keeps in theme with the hand rendered digital combination. I had previously just written the sequence in black, but I found the starkness of the white background was too much contrast in comparison to the rest of the animation. I have therefore created a layer of collage underneath an opacity white of 85% and cut out the letters so they show through.

The writing was created using flash, and altered in photoshop.

Character Transformations

This is very tedious work and is taking a lot longer than I anticipated it would take. I won't lie, I cannot wait for this project to be over, it is draining the life out of me and I have found it very difficult and testing of my patience. Overall, it is probably my least favourite project I have done so far. Maybe animation is something I can do again in the future when I have unlimited time to create something, but it won't be soon.

Transformation Trials /3

I have added some flashes to make the transformation more magical and fictional.

First Rhino scene complete!

I have added all the background elements for my first rhino scene!

Transformation Trials /2

I am trying to create a flashy but smooth transition from rhino to unicorn. This is my first attempt, using photoshop and different layers to create the flashy and analogue effect.

End Sequence

Unicorns and Rhinos

Final character scenes..

These are some final scenes of my rhino characters for my animation. I now just need to add some background stuff.

I'M GETTING THERE!

Here comes a rhino...

Another rhino animated and collaged.

One clip for the final.

I have completed one clip which can be contributed towards my final animation! Yay! It is only a 16 frame clip but runs for about 3-5 seconds. My next task is to zoom in on his face and eye, to create a more shifty and suspenseful moment before he suddenly transforms into a unicorn.

Progress.

I am making progress. Which is good. And I must stay positive, because I will get this animation finished. I will.

Here is some progress work that I have been working on over the last few days.

Hair falls out from stress.

With 9 days left till hand in, I am beginning to show signs of stress as my hair seems to be detaching itself from my head. More than usual. Animation is tedious work.
I've been a bit slow over the past week, losing the motivation to work and struggling with the concept of animating at least 1 minute of work. I am not sure that animating is for me. Perhaps when I have huge amounts of spare time, or over a much longer period in my life, I will attempt it again, but not in the near future, or as a career. I had a small tutorial this morning, which was more of a motivational bump, and has helped me to lighten the load I seem to have placed on my shoulders. I made some very shit but useful sticky notes with sequence idea and rough time allocation. Using sticky notes is VERY USEFUL! Because I can now move scenes around and get a clearer idea of my whole animation in just a few pictures. Here it is:

 I now have a clearer and simpler vision of my animation and what exactly I need to do. Some of these scenes for example, are just backgrounds which can be zoomed in and out of easily, as well as static images like trees. I have already done a few animations of rhinos as well so it does not seem like such a daunting task as how I saw it last week. I just need to keep going and stay motivated. Just like my sticky notes I put up around my computer today:

 

Character Design Workshop

On Wednesday 30th April, children's book author and illustrator Elissa Elwick came in to do a character design workshop with us. It was a really useful workshop and I have gained some really good advice on character development. The area I chose to explore within the morning session was how shapes can hep to define a character, for example a circular shape is seen as soft and safe, whereas a triangle might be more dangerous and sharp. Using only geometric shapes, I created a rhino and a unicorn. Using this technique has also helped me to better grasp the basic shape of my characters and to retain the memory with ease so I can draw each animal in the future starting with geometric shapes.

Using this technique has also inspired a different style of colouring as I had limited materials on me during the workshop. I really like the different shaded shapes within the rhino after I outlined the rhino and unicorn. Using collage and mixed media would work effectively in these shapes to put my own twist on the rotoscoping, to make it more my own and add lots of colour in the animation.