Emotion Task...

The last task was the ‘emotion’ exercise. We had to make a character change it’s emotion distinctly. I decided that I wanted to have the same character as from my last exercise; the Bride chasing after the Bus. The storyboard shown in the previous post of the Bus story shows the Bride missing the bus and then starting to cry. I wanted to try and animate the character in her wedding dress again, but in a slightly more cleaned-up and different style.

I firstly looked at a few acting videos on Youtube. There were a variety of different videos which teach people how to ‘act’ convincingly for certain emotions. I specifically looked at the “crying” emotion guides to get some good facial reference. However, all the videos weren’t quite right, so instead I took some of my own video reference on my webcam, and used this instead.

This time, design-wise, I was inspired by the absolutely incredible work of animation company “Headless Productions” most recent film project called “I’m A Monster”.

Vimeo Link: http://vimeo.com/17840692

I absolutely love the design of the characters. Especially the ‘mother’. I adore the nose design, so I incorporated her nose into my emotion exercise to try a different and simplified style in a design sense.

The 'Mother' from "I'm A Monster"...



My 'Bride' Character...



The background is a continuation from the background portrayed in the final shot of the Bus animation exercise. She just misses the bus, so I wanted to show a medium close up of her as she stretches her arm out in a distraught way; her left arm holding on to the Bus stop advertising platform. The design of the background is black and white to echo my prior inspiration from early 20th century New Yorker Illustrations. Though I feel that, if I had had more time, I would have loved to colour this background in the style and design sense of “I’m A Monster”. I will experiment more in the future.

The Background:



*The animation will be featured on my final CD hand-in*

This exercise was done quickly, but I loved using Flash to the best of its advantages with the limited knowledge I have in it. It was fun to do, I wish to go back to this particular animation and perhaps refine and polish it up more, as well as extend the animation and improve upon certain aspects which are not quite complete i.e.; the crying at the end is only two frames, so appears to stutter. I would like to go back to it and fix that.

I also attended Stan’s final workshop on the Z-plane in After Effects. I really enjoyed this workshop, as I’ve been wondering how the effect of it was achieved for a while. I was glad to have been taught it. I took notes and found it relatively simple to understand for once!

So I went back to my first animation (Fifi and the Jam Jar) and decided to apply the z-plane on it. Unfortunately, the camera zoom has not worked, so it is difficult to see that it is on z-plane, but I have taken a screenshot to prove it actually is!



I also coloured the foreground briefly on Photoshop. I tried to keep the colours saturated to bled with the background, but I also added a downloaded wood effect for the kitchen counter as I loved the added texture it gave the scene.




Overall:

Although I did not fully initially engage with the set brief due to a giant misunderstanding, I have enjoyed experimenting with different clean-up and animating methods in the last few weeks. I have learnt a lot in a short amount of time, and it has only made me more curious and excited to explore all the things I have learnt further and in far more detail.


---jkl