Work Proposal

Today we had to type up our proposal for our group animation. In my group the criteria was divided into three sections and we had to type up a paragraph of around 400 words each. In my paragraph I had to discuss and explain about our story outline and the concept of our entire advert. I went into detail on why we chose the idea we come up with and the management of the project. I went on to talk about our deadlines and how we hope to achieve our work by the deadlines from the production schedule.

Although it really necessary yet, we have started to think about our focus group for which we would present our final advert to an audience and receive feedback from for information for our evaluation where I would say where I could improve and what was well received in the advert. I hope to upload my advert onto this blog and direct people here for them to comment and give me their feedback.

Cut Out Animation

This is our group practise animation using the cut out technique. The dress is cut out from a magazine. I found this quite funny to be honest! Even if I do say so myself...

Storyboards

Today in class our group task was to complete our storyboards for both the 3D animation advert and the 2D animation advert. Last week we wrote up the script so it was easy to see from that what had to be drawn out. I was assigned the main role of storyboarding. I am a confident drawer so I was happy to do it. I started off writing out the shot types for each key frame along with a short description and noting down the dialog that would be said at that shot. This then made it easy for me to have a clear understanding of what the shot had to look like and anyone who read the storyboard could see easily how the advert would run. The group I am working with now are very easy to get along with and contribute lots of creative ideas. This makes our work a lot of fun and we are able to achieve our objectives pretty quickly and with quality and detail. Now that our storyboards are complete next week we hope to start creating our sets using cardboard boxes with the set designs drawn up last week, and our character 'Jerry' will also be in the making.

Experimenting

Each week in my media class, we have had a few hours to try out different techniques with animation. I previously had experience with stop motion animation but I am new to claymation and cut out animation. With Jess I made a clay character of Keith Lemon right down to the ginger tash and we had a laugh making him wave and blink with stop motion software on the mac.

I have also tried out cut out animation using a paper mannequin and a dress cut out from a magazine. In my unit group we will be using both of these techniques in our production.

Pre Production

Last week, in our animation groups, we started our pre-production for our 3D animation unit. I was assigned the role to draw up the plan for our set design.

For me, the most important aspect of a production is the planning and preparing because it helps me create a clear idea of what we are meant to be doing and allows for a smooth production.

At first, I felt that pre-production wasn't that important because something always ended up changing or not going right. However, I learnt that this can then be analysed in my evaluation and if proper planning was in place, contingency plans would prevent any issues and provide a back up solutions for problems that may arise.

My Flash Example

This is one of my Flash animation examples I made for my portfolio and also showed to the class. It consists of about 6 layers. The clouds are on separate layers each, the sun is animated and also on a separate layer and the background, flower and silhouette are different layers. It took me quite a few hours to draw our every movement for the walk and designing the added layers! I don't think the quality has come out very well on the video...

Starting Up

Today in college I was spoke to by my college tutor to consider and create a blog to showcase my work and write a diary blog about my units and daily tasks.
I should be off to Uni in September to Hertfordshire doing 3D Games Art (BA) and I suppose this would be a great way to start off a website for myself.
In class today, I was in my group for my animation unit and had to create a questionnaire of 10 questions to ask 15 people for our target audience research. I usually don't like being hassled myself in the street by people wanting to ask a few questions so I was a bit hesitate about doing so myself, but just like all of my other units I completed last year I got on with it and students around college are pleasant enough to oblige.
In the afternoon, after we had completed our questionnaires over a long lunch, we had a Flash tutorial from our technician Brendan. I had already become quite familiar with the program Flash because I had to create a few examples for my portfolio for my interview at Hertfordshire and so I had the opportunity to help other students in my class and try something a bit more advanced. I really enjoy playing around with Flash and I also got to show the class a few of my examples.
Next week maybe I can try something a bit different. I will also need to type up my questionnaire in an evaluation.