Applied Animation

Evaluation

The module for me started off slow, initially I had plans to direct my own animation and to assist my other peers with theirs in the modelling side of things, this started off slowly but neatly, the plans were in place. This slowly deteriorated as we were falling far behind with other modules taking up too much time, so I came to the swift decision that I had to solely work on my own animation and pull out of any prior agreements, this was difficult due to my morals, but it needed to be done if I wanted to get the work done in time for the screening.

            The process began with making a brief storyboard using Maya which I didn’t much like as its not an aspect of pre-production I enjoy doing, plus I managed to scale the shots horrifically wrong, so my peer kindly offered to do A storyboard for me, it turned out amazing! I absolutely loved them; this filled me with confidence as I finally had some good ephemera for the animation.

            But my absolute favourite part of the module, which I got most out of , was the set building. Being an avid model maker I was really in my element here, and I learnt a lot when it comes to building scale sets, from the floor plans that took me a while to grasp, to the way materials interact with each other, using thicker pieces of MDF to avoid warping due to the amount of glue and grout I had been using, and also to accommodate the nails which tended to split the thinner MDF. Also having the contrast of using pneumatic saws compared to hand sawing. I found some methods of getting precise cuts free hand, but nothing will compare to the ease of use and accuracy of the automated saw in the wood workshop. The only thing I would change would be to get the sets done well in advance as they took up quite some time as you can see in my ‘Making Of’ video.

            The animating I was very apprehensive about, I was very rusty to begin with and learnt not to be too adventurous with the camera, sticking to fixed camera angles would guarantee no jerking of the camera due to accidental nudging. It took a test take to get in the zone (which was detrimental to the puppet) but after I was in the swing of things and was very happy with the outcome.

            Post-production was also something I was dreading due to my in-experience in the process, but I think I handled it quite well considering! If I were to change anything it would be to constantly come into uni to test my renders on the Mac’s due to the different gamma settings making my animation look a lot darker than on my own laptop, this would help me accommodate this by increasing certain settings where needed.

            So over all I thoroughly enjoyed this module, the time management could have been handled better, and realising the amount of work I was taking on would also help. But by far the most beneficial part of the module was the set building! I only wish I’d allocated more time to it to further enjoy it!