Convergence/Divergence @eleanorwhytonconvergence - Tumblr Blog

This is the final animation, after minor corrections.

I want to have this video to be aimed at young adults, because the video is based on a girl going through emotional turmoil, this is at an age where a lot of people experience extreme emotion and sometimes changes in their life they cannot control.

#cherish #animation #flowers #greenhouse #family

I also drew out the credits in order for it to fit in with the title from the beginning after finding not font that I found suitable, I preferred these much more. I decided to space the credits out a little at the end as it suited the timing of the song best, leaving it finishing with the song.

I last minute added an addition to the greenhouse scene near the end as before it was just the greenhouse without her in it, and I realised it lost its continuance between the pond scene and the final scene when she sits on the bench, therefore I had her sit on the bench from a different perspective in order for it to follow on. I realised she was a little off proportion therefore I used photoshop to change perspective of the image and distort it then made her an alpha layer in order for me to layer her on the background in after effects.

Here is what I thought would be my final render but replaying it I realised that the title somehow had disappeared and the transition between scenes had changed therefore I needed to do it again. I also wanted to show that after tutorials the main concern was that the music became upbeat too quickly during the sad moments, therefore I used Adobe Audition to repeat a some parts of the beginning to extend it until it got to the happier parts. I added in the ripple effect for the pond and am pleased it makes it look more realistic and on more of a professional level.

I experimented with the idea of changing perspective of the girl when she is looking down at her shoes, but I feel it could be improved by keeping it the way it was.

Animating the pond scene in photoshop, creating a separate layer for each fish and rasterising some frames to make them as long as I want especially when I want them hardly moving at the beginning and I found the cross fade transition where I can fade one frame into the next, to try to give them a more ethereal feel.

I first thought I would use a before and after pond water scene but I realised it was difficult to do this along with so many other layers and effects on top but I liked them especially when I changed the layer effect to multiply and layered them together it made a nicer darker looking pond which helped make the lily pads stand out more and the koi fish. I realised whilst animating the fish that I could make the fish stand out as they were behind the water layers on a white background already therefore I made a darker layer behind them therefore I could use the white paint brush to make them stand out even further and show the differentiation.

This is my pond scene where i animated the movement of the fish and the lily pad flowers opening up digitally using photoshop, the rest of the scene is drawn traditionally. I made as if the lily pads are bobbing up and down , to show they are reacting when she touches the surface but I will add in the rippling affect when I put it into after effects.

Inspiration for my flower scene.

#flowers bloom #time-lapse

Here is the updated version of the flower opening scene, where I added colour to the stem and more details on the flower petals.

This is the next rendered progression of my animation, where I have included the feet walking and the flower opening at the end, I feel like the flower needs to be further worked on, but I wanted to see how it worked in this compilation.

I added this layer in the middle of the transition between zooming into the greenhouse and then seeing the inside, this helped it looked more like you would be looking through the glass and then pushing through to fully see the inside.

When I have to layer my characters within a scene I realised after the first scene that I have to cut them out separately from their white backgrounds in photoshop before I place them in after effects. I used the magic wand selection tool to select round the character then I had to make a layer behind in order to delete this selected area, then to tidy the edges up with there rubber tool I put the characters over a black layer for the rough edges to show up, the afterwards I delete the back layers leaving the characters with no background, save them as a png file to make it an alpha layer so I can place them onto any background I like in the animation.

These are some screenshots of my rotoscoping for the feet walking animation created in photoshop.

This is another animation I created where she is slowly transforming the dying greenhouse, at first it was going to be a tear falling to the ground but I then changed it to this scene instead as it made more sense, with the other scenes where she uses her touch to bring things back to life. At first I created this scene with just a white background to show the flowers and grass more but I realised it didn’t fit with the rest of the animation so I painted another background for it and made it so the background wasn't too overpowering but still fit with the overall mood.

Final Learning Agreement

Thinking about the meaning of the words convergence ‘to tend towards or meet in one point’ and divergence ‘from a common point in different directions’ and then I thought about what these words meant to me. Ever since I moved to university I had parted from my family, but I live close by with easy access so I didn’t notice it as much. But then when my sister went to Leeds, I realised how segregated we had become, but it was nice to know that we can be together again when we want to be. Then I thought about how throughout life we begin in a converged family, then as we grow up we diverge further from our family and then when we meet new people we converge and create our own families, all the time we converge and diverge between people, whether it is family, friends or even work colleagues. Then I thought about how some families don’t ‘diverge’ slowly and comfortably but instead are forced apart. The worst kind of situation would be if you had a death in the family and how that loss and separation can affect the family left behind.

The Narrative project helped me structure stories in order for them to be understood to the reader and marry the text and images so they support each side and work together in harmony. This animation project will need to show a story that people can follow well and understand the content. I want to show in my animation that I can tell a story without the need of words and text but just by expression, emotion and music as well. I am also starting to find my own artist style throughout these projects, I know I love to use watercolour and show detail in line work, so I would love to incorporate my style within my animation and make it my own.

For my animation, I want to it to be about a young girl around twelve years old who loses her family. How she loses them I think can be left a mystery, so people can interpret it how they like, whether the parents have died, become ill or divorced etc. but its not the most important part of the story, the basis is that the life she use to have (focusing in the greenhouse) can no longer happen. I want to focus on the girl going through her struggle of grief and to discover her own way of dealing. This is why I decided to title the animation ‘Cherish’, as I discovered that this has a few meanings that I feel fitted this animation perfectly. The meanings are ‘to hold and treat as dear’, ‘to care for tenderly, nurture’ and ‘to cling fondly’. This explains how she manages to cope with her change in lifestyle, by cherishing what she used to have and using it to heal herself and the greenhouse.

She ventures out into their green house where her family loved to spend time in. When you first see it, the green house is dreary and colourless (reflecting the mood of the girl and the neglect since the loss of her family) but as she walks through it, she touches plants and they grow and become more colourful, as if she has the magical power to give life to plants, but this can be interpreted as a fantasy world or use this metaphorically speaking, where the greenhouse represents what she feels inside.

I want this to be wordless and have music to fit the mood alongside it. This stems from my love of music and fantasy. I knew I wanted to create something with a touch of magic to allow myself to be more open with my animation, have less rules and play around with possibilities. I will make use of the workshops provided such as stop motion, flash and Rotoscoping on Photoshop to find a way of animating that suits my style and the animation I want to create. I will use tutorial videos provided by Lynda.com to get to know animation programmes like After Effects or Photoshop and use the advice and help from friends who study animation. I have considered my art style I want to use, that includes great detail; therefore I know I want to go for the minimal approach to animation, where I have only certain elements moving within each scene.

I have researched potential non-copyrighted music that I can download and use. I realise there is so much more on offer than I first thought, places like YouTube, Jamendo and FreeSound offer many different genres that are good quality. The music piece I’ve decided for the animation is a song called Andromeda by Jacoo, found on YouTube on the channel FreeSongsToUse. I feel this has a nice soft beat with a modern side and includes some sound effects like rain and rustling of plants that could suitably fit the animation. I will also like to include additional sound effects throughout to match certain elements.

The visual research I will make will be of different animation shorts, looking at their style and techniques, the way they move and how they convey emotion and atmosphere. I also want to look up references for my scenes, such as the greenhouse, a graveyard, flowers and plants, character design, how flowers bloom and branches grow.

Here is the start of my compilation up until the animated crying scene. I drew the title ‘Cherish’ to make it suit the surrounding background opening, but after a student tutorial I was told the opening looked too bright and colourful at the start then it suddenly becoming dark and dingy, it felt out of place and almost like it could be a spoiler, so I dulled down the colour to flow well with the beginning, then instead have the colourful version with the credits to emphasise the change at the end. I used a few more ‘ink reveal’ transitions to blend each scene together nicely especially when zooming into the greenhouse and for the flashback scene. This was useful as I could get one where it could reveal part of the scene and then disappear again giving it the feel of showing another time.

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Convergence/Divergence