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.