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After the experimental animation was over, we were given our first live project with a client; 9Trees. For this project, we were instructed to make a poster related to a certain national day, and I chose National Bike Day. I was working for some time trying to come up with a good concept for it, until I finally reached a bike wheel made of trees.

From there I expanded the concept and explored it further, until I finally reached my pitch draft. 

I sent it in and it had received praise, but there were a few issues with coloring. Once I fixed those up though, I was able to send it in for the final submission.

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The first work we went into doing when we returned from Winter Break was experimenting with stop motion, as that was what we would be doing for our puppets. For this, we worked on three different aspects of stop motion; a collage piece, 2D in the real world, and pixelation. 

For the collage piece, I worked with one of my classmates to cut up the people from a magazine for the animation. We built a background out of the magazine as well, making it look like a stage that the magazine cutout people were dancing on. We experimented with cutting up and moving the different pieces of each cutout like puppets, which definitely informed us on speed and movement for later in the project. 

For 2D in the real world, we had to make a moving gif/video of a 2D animation in a real world background. For this, I took a video of the rooftop and animated a flying witch going through the air. It was a very long and arduous process, especially when the character was still and the background video kept moving. But I managed to make it look smooth and make the video flow well enough. 

The final part of the experiments was pixelation, and this experiment had me work with a group of others to make a stop motion film out of ourselves. It was hard, and we found that holding in the right poses for a long time tired us out after an hour of work, but we managed to get all of our work finished and went in for editing next. This wasn’t nearly as long, and was more finding the right sounds than anything. Our final submission was above satisfactory to us.

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Over winter break, I was given an assignment to research a local figure from where I lived. This figure would help create a puppet we would go on to build later on in the year. The figure I chose was Ayanna Pressley, a Boston Representative in the House of Representatives. She is an outspoken and progressive government official, and the kind of person there should be more of in Congress. From a character standpoint though, Mrs. Pressley has Alopecia, which would help differentiate her from many of the other puppets.

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For the final part of the animatic, I put it all together in a video for editing. I recorded the voice lines for the animatic, and after this it was smooth sailing. There were a few scenes where I had to reuse certain panels, but overall it was a smooth sequence from start to finish.

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The next step was to make the storyboards for our animatics. We started out with thumbnails for our films, and continued on by polishing up those thumbnails in A2 storyboard templates. Putting them on the templates helped make clear a lot of the movement and shots, and even made room for dialogue and actions at the bottom of each cell. After that though, we moved on to redrawing and coloring each of the cells on the computers. I had some trouble at first, as I didn’t have access to the computers for a few weeks, but I managed to catch up with the rest of the class soon enough, even managing to color and shade the backgrounds.

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The intro to storyboarding was started by being given different scripts from movies and choosing how we would storyboard them, and from there acted out the storyboard. Making the storyboard itself was fairly easy, but finding compromise between team members was a little bit harder. We managed to find an agreement, but it took much longer than we expected to film the storyboard. Putting it together afterwards was fairly easy, although I did feel like we were being overseen more than necessary and a lot of the editing was done for us. But we managed to put the film together, and present it to the class.

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The next step in the module would be to write up a script for the short animatic we’d be making. We studied how professionals write up their storyboards, and how they would incorporate not only the dialogue, but camera shots and movement as well. We were given templates to work with, and were instructed on how each piece of it came together to make a script. I managed to finish mine up, along with the summary, a little later than the rest of the class, but was still ready to come in for making a storyboard the following week.

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The first part of the Sequential Structures course was learning about character design, and for that first week we visited the Fitzwilliam’s to study design shape. We studied and sketched the numerous exhibitions around the museum, and were instructed to find different shapes that would help us build our character. At the end of the lesson, we were each given a decade and a character trait to base our character around. I had received the Edwardian Period and petty, so I had done some extensive research on both the time period and connections and symbolism behind pettiness. I eventually connected pettiness to jealousy, which was often symbolized by frogs. And so I went forward with making my design a frog woman with a Gibson girl style hairdo named Rahna Vrosch.

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The final part of the Animation Skills module taught us to use After Effects by making a moving background. We started by making moving trees and houses, and were soon called to make our own. I came up with an idea after getting this assignment, a shot of the prairie overlooking the mountains. Making the backgrounds was fairly easy, but I had an issue with making a loopable gif of one of the hillsides at first. Even so, I managed to upload all of my work onto After Effects and make a background. I then tried the camera out, changing the perspective of the shot over the course of the video, and then eventually added sound to make the final product.

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The character walk cycle was an interesting assignment, and I managed to catch onto it rather quickly. We started by sketching out our characters for the walk cycle, and proceeded to study the parts of a walk cycle. Not long after that, we went on to do tests of a walk cycle. One was to see what a regular one would look like, the other to test how exactly it’d look with personality. I had gone a little overboard in that regard, but pulled off a good sketch. 

Next up was the final walk cycle, I used everything I’d learned so far to make a full colored version. I had even given details in my character’s facial expressions with each movement. The first part of the background was easy as well, making a looping one by copying one part of it and putting it in front of the other to create a seamless loop, but I couldn’t find a way to give it color, unfortunately. Even so, I’m proud of the final result. 

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We began working with Maya, and learned the basics on how to create shapes and edit them. I started out making shapes out of a simple sphere and distorting it, but we didn’t do much past that at first. After that though, I picked out a building design I’d continue working on through the rest of the trimester. I decided to make a garden conservatory, and immediately got to work making the shapes. It was a little more difficult than randomly distorting the shape at first, but eventually the shapes managed to work in my favor and build a cohesive building. I then had to work on texturing, which was a little more difficult, as I was working on my own at this point. However, it didn’t take long for me to put it together and make the glass panes and plant-covered edges. The only piece left was lighting, which I was able to put together rather quickly, and finish up my project.

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Caroline Leaf is an animator whose work since the 1960’s has made her a memorable name in the industry for her solo work and animation techniques that she herself had invented. 

She started off in Harvard and learned to animate there, over time developing several methods of animating such as using beach sand on a lightbox, which is how she made her first animated film, Sand or Peter and the Wolf. With this piece, Caroline used the silhouettes she created in the sand to tell a classic fairy tale in a fluid and constant motion. She also used this style in The Owl Who Married a Goose and heavily utilized the black-and-beige color scheme to show contrast between the animals and the environment. 

In her next piece though, The Street, she takes the fluid motions of her style and takes it to another level as she incorporates color into her work as well this time. The film almost feels like a camera shot of many events, and the fluidity is used not only for artistic transitions, but also to make it feel more present and real. 

Caroline’s work managed to win her many awards over the years for her unique methods and original style with a lightbox and sand. It’s truly a testament to animation and how it can be expressed in any number of ways.