Introduction to Animation

[mi4011antoninaamska]

Final animation for a sound reflection

I really enjoyed making this animation and I tried to engaged in this project as much as I could. The sound I got was “Just a Cloud” by Lucine and I really liked this music. Also I immediately knew how do I want to make animation and what about.I decided to use two techniques in order to represent two words – realistic and unrealistic world. I decided to use digital animation for realistic part and hand drawn animation for the unrealistic part. Also I wanted to put the watercolour effect on the digital part so it would look more depressing and melancholic. I must say I didn’t expect so many problems in order to finish this project as I’ve never really had many problems with software like Toon Boom or Photoshop. I am still a freshman but I know how to use Toon Boom and I fell comfortable with this software. However the Toon Boom doesn’t cooperate with the Adobe programs (even though I managed to download the app that would make everything work) and many errors occurred during creating the digital animation. I had to remove the watercolour effect and redraw a great of the animation which led to wasting much time.  Of course It didn’t make me lose the engagement and excitement so I worked more, sticking to the first idea.The hand drawn animation was fun to make and I enjoyed it very much. The tests I made looked exactly how I wanted them to look, so I kept working. Unfortunately due to the personal problems with my family, traveling, pandemics and other things I wasn’t able to sacrifice as much time as I wanted for project making. I was sure I am able to meet the deadline but I turned out I was not able to finish hand drawn part of time. I decided to colour the hand drawn linearts in Photoshop and now I think it was a good idea but I did it very badly and I think the outcome looks awful. Photoshop didn’t want to colour the background properly. I think the issue is the lighting that was the best I could achieve but still bad. I coloured some frames with coloured pencils and in my opinion the looked neat. However when I finished the animation those frames look very bad and in my opinion the need colouring. Another problem I encountered was also connected to the photoshop, as for some reason I wasn’t able to colour the background without leaving the black lineart. In the part when the character cries with the coloured tears the photoshop coloured whole picture on the plain white colour. Fortunately I fixed that and managed to colour all frames but when I uploaded the pictures to the After effect (in order to crop everything to the region of interest and connect pictures) the half of frames was replaced by the error and I wasn’t able to change that. In the end I had to upload something so I replaced error files with the rough lineart, without editing it.I was very excited while making this animation but I am not satisfied with the outcome. Again, my lack of skills led to wasting of time. I am quite annoyed for myself I am not do fluent in using adobe softwares and that it takes me a lot of time to fix even a small error. I think I will do this animation again, but without time pressure, so it will look exactly how I want it to.

[mi4011antoninaamska]

Animation test, showing the error when I add the watercolour effect.

As you can see I managed to learn how to add the watercolour effect to the animation but the error occur. I asked for some advice on the adobe community but so far I didn’t get any response. I tried to fix that but all my attempts ended up failed. 

[mi4011antoninaamska]

Frame Rate issue

After a while, I noticed that Toon Boom renders all projects in 24 FPS. I noticed it after creating first 3 seconds of the animation. I tried to fix this on my own, but of course, Toon Boom is still a bit difficult for me. Fortunately there is a forum that help people like me. I used it and fixed the problem quickly. Also, I rendered the previous made last 2 seconds again, because they are too fast, making the whole project shorter and unfitting to the music. Honestly I don’t know why I haven’t noticed it earlier but I am glad that I have chance to improve the project before it’s too late.

[mi4011antoninaamska]

Test with Tears - part 3 + things I need to fix

As it can be seen on the previous video, the transition between digital and traditional animation looked quite well but a one problem appeared. The backgrounds of these two animations were completely different, even though theoretically both were white. I got the suggestion from the lecturer to edit the background so the white would look the same in both styles. I did that with a help of photoshop. The traditional piece of animations consists of total of 73 frames. I exported them in a zip folder, uploaded them to the photoshop and repainted the background using bucket tool.  It was actually much easier to do than I expected and the outcome is as good as I wanted to be. Using after effects, I cropped the traditional animation so it would fit the 16:9 ration screen, but as you can see it didn’t work. I tried to change the background of the screen, but no matter what I do, the traditional animation remains with two black stripes on the both sides.  This the thing I would like to fix in the near future.

The only thing that really annoys me, is the low quality of the hand drawn tears. It is probably the effect of using the free version of animation app that doesn’t have the option to shot in HD. I tried to fix that, but there is no possibility to improve the quality of the animation. This little problem doesn’t spoil the whole project, it just annoys me and I wanted to fix that only because of aesthetic purposes. 

[mi4011antoninaamska]

Test of tears - part 2

This short video shows the last 10 seconds of the project. The main target for this week was to connect traditional and digital animation and this video shows the outcome. Also I improved the lighting, using the professional lamp used by photographers. To make the digital part, I used Toon Boom as I feel very comfortable with this software. I drew the black tear filling the screen and then I joined it to the sequence I have drawn in the previous weeks. You can see that the colour of character is still blue and without watercolour effect. I am going to change that in the near future. In my opinion the transition looks good so far. To join two animations I used Movie Maker, because I still don’t know how to use Adobe Premiere Pro. In the next weeks I will definitely try to put the video in the adobe softwares and try to improve the whole creation. 

I used crayons and black marker to create the traditional animation of tears. This sequence is suppose to represent the hallucinations of the main character, that’s why the style of hand drawn part differs from the digital one that represents the real world. 

[mi4011antoninaamska]

Test with tears - part 1

The next step of making the whole project is connecting traditional animation with the digital one. Here you can see the first small test I made to check if the animation of tears falling down look like I want it to look like. Also, I noticed that lighting is awful. The tears so far look good so I decided to colour them.

[mi4011antoninaamska]

Storyboard to the animation “Just a cloud” put together with the music. This short piece of video shows more or less how the animation will look like, and how long each frame will last. In the further weeks I am going to animate all of these frames and compose a full animation.

[mi4011antoninaamska]

Walking cycle made in a traditional way using coloured pencil and marker

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Visit Original Link

30 second extract from a song, that I choose to use in my animation.

[mi4011antoninaamska]

Gesture drawing made during classes. Still need a lot of practice but it was fun.

[mi4011antoninaamska]

Tutorial

In order to create watercolor effect, I tried to find some information in the internet. My knowledge of After Effects is still low. I was more than happy to find a very good tutorial showing, step by step how to make this amazing effect.

Here you can find the link to this tutorial:

https://vimeo.com/273252743

[mi4011antoninaamska]

First Animation test.

Using my experience with a Toon Boom software, I created a simple, 2 seconds animation showing the last frames of the storyboard I posted befoe. I animated color and outline separately. As you can see, I used only one colour, so it took me less time to perform the test.

Using After Effects, I created the effect of watercolor painting. The outcome is not perfect, but I am closer to succeed now. My next steps will be to try animate this sequence in colours, and in better quality. 

[mi4011antoninaamska]

First, quick storyboard for my animation.

[mi4011antoninaamska]

Character Design

Following feedback of the lecturer I decided to change a little but the character design. The difference is not very big, however I think that the new version is much more symbolic and pregnant.

I stuck  to the same colours as before, so I used turquise, red, dark blue, light blue, pink and yellow. I think these colours together compose a very neat palette that is pleasant for the eye. Although as you can see I toned these colours down, so they are not as vibrant and contrasting as before. Pink and light blue caused the most problems as it is really hard to create soft versions of these shades. What’s more, I also changed the lineart to the thinner one. In case of scarf, I omitted the lineart in order to create the impression of gauziness of the textile. Now the whole composition response better to the anxiety, loneliness and sadness that I want to show in my animation. 

This watercolor picture more or less shows what I want my animation to look like. In the next week I am going to do some test in order to check if I am able to create the watercolor effect in a digital way.

[mi4011antoninaamska]

Ball|After Effects

my instagram: timelady_666

[mi4011antoninaamska]

Character design

I created the character that I want to appear in my animation. I called her Jo, but it’s not important information.

I put her in the sourronding I would like to appear in my animation. To draw it I used my photos as a reference.

[mi4011antoninaamska]

As I mentioned before, I really enjoy the sound I got and I use to listen to  it nearly everyday. I decided to make animation focusing around loneliness and surrealistic visions/hallucinations. 

For couple of month I have been dealing with insomnia. Sometimes I don’t sleep for 2 or 3 days so I wander around, tired and looking like a Zombie. To copy with this problem I walk a lot. When sun goes down and the whole city becomes quiet and dark, I go out. Usually I listen to music or my favourite podcast to feel less alone. I really like walking at night, I feel safe and invisible. Night and darkness give me freedom to have surrealistic visions, to create stories and pictures in my head. I must admit that these walks are inspirational for me.

This is what I want to show in my animation. I want to show how it is to be alone, tired, anxious. I want to show how it is to stay on the bridge in the middle of the night and have hallucinations and strange visions caused by the lack of sleep.

The moodboard I created consists mostly of the pictures I made during my night walks. In my opinion every picture somehow represents the feeling of loneliness but also mysticism that I want to appear in my animation. In the moodboard I also put two art pieces of Zdzisław Beksiński, Polish artist. He is known from his surrealistic, post apocalyptic paintings that are full of darkness, sadness, loneliness and death. I really recommend to check his works. Beksiński created also photo collages and art works that were made with the use of photoshop or other similar softwares. These art pieces are really surrealistic and even sometimes can be disturbing. Zdzisław Beksiński has always been my greatest inspiration not only because of his work but also because of his life that would take a lot of space to describe. 

Summing up, in my animation I want to show the loneliness, exhaustion and surrealistic visions that appear when a person deals with some problems that are not always visible.