The
biggest challenge for me for the first term of a three-year long degree in
Animation was research. Of course, I love to geek out about animations and I am
always hungry for information however, the type of information I am hungry for
is almost always exclusively visual. I love to watch video after video and look
through pages upon pages of character designs and concept art, but heaven
forbid I actually remember any of the names, dates etc. It is a personality
flaw I have been dealing with my entire life and am working on changing. Nevertheless,
let me dive right into my successes and failures from Module OUAN403, Animation
skills.
The
first brief was entitled Identify. The task was to set out and find artists and
document their professional practice through critical analysis. It seems easy
enough, however when you have other ongoing modules and projects at the same
time as well as work on the side, it is easy to leave research at the bottom of
the priority list. Because I absorb visual information very often and very
quickly, it is easy for me to come up with creative ideas using primarily my
intuition, therefore it becomes easy to leave stimulated and systematic research
for last but this is a determent to a project because the reason we are
assigned to research in the first place is in order to be influenced by it for
our projects. Although I enjoyed my research for the Identify brief, I can see
how it would have been infinitely more beneficial to do it before or during our
set tasks and projects as opposed to after.
The
second brief, entitled Telling Stories was a fun one for me. I have created
many storyboards and comic strips as a freelance artist and am quite used to
it. Something quite valuable I pulled from this brief has been a better
awareness and understanding of camera shots and angles as well as the
appropriate terminology for these positions. It is important to familiarize
yourself with this terminology, especially if you are part of a production
team. You need your ideas to be communicated as clearly as possible so there is
no confusion. My only regret with this project was not pushing myself out of my
comfort zone; unlike many of my classmates, I am much more accustomed to
traditional methods (i.e. Drawing) than modern (i.e. digital). I drew my entire
storyboard as well as outlined, shaded and rendered with ink. If I could go
back, I would have dedicated at least some of that process to the digital.
The
third brief and perhaps my favorite, was entitled Explore. In this brief, we
were set various tasks in order to explore and develop the technique, knowledge
and understanding of the twelve principles of Animation set forth by Ollie
Johnston and Frank Thomas. I knew about the twelve principles before enrolling
onto the course and had been eagerly looking forward to getting my hands dirty.
Learning pose-to-pose animation has been the most gratifying aspect of this
brief because it made the process of animation a lot quicker not to mention
more interesting. Something I did find challenging, however, was the Pixilation project; I have never used this method of ‘animation’ before and was not very happy with the final result.
Our
fourth and final brief, Apply is tied in first with Explore in terms of my
favorite briefs. This brief required that we pick from a list of subjects to
explore: surprise, lateness, love, hate, happiness, fear and longing.
Instinctively, I chose Lateness (which may or may not have something to do with
my own personal habits). The brainstorming was fluid and quick, I managed to
solidify a concept by the end of the day and began animating the following day.
By the end of the week, I had created a funny looking creature that seems to be
in a hurry to fulfill some sort of important responsibility. I used pose-to-pose animation in response to
this brief and found it very rewarding. Using my Animator’s survival kit, I was
able to efficiently create a running cycle, which is mainly the basis of the movement
in my animation. One of my regrets is, again, not having done enough stimulated
and systematic research as opposed to mainly intuitive research.
In
conclusion, the biggest change to make for the following terms is to research
gradually and thoroughly before and during the process of production. There is
no doubt this will expand the depth of my work and invite newer and more
innovative ideas. I was inspired by Fred Bates’ Lecture last week on research; if we
can combine systematic, stimulated and intuitive approaches to research, our
work will undeniable gain more depth, meaning and relevance.
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