Self-learning: In the hand-drawn section, I learned more specifically about dog characters and practiced some poses related to walking, getting down, sitting, and playing. I then practiced the dog walking cycle animation, as I have rarely animated animal themes before, so I researched some information and observed the habits and characteristics of dogs.
In the storyboard section, I learned how to articulate the storyline more clearly, for example, by using more movement when the character is explaining something rather than just standing there talking. Then, when conveying information to the audience in the animation, I could not rely too much on words but could use supporting characters and objects that were connected to the characters to convey the storyline. Finally, about character action, an action can be divided into several stages rather than being shown in one shot, first, the action, the anticipation, and next the action take place, thus, I thought to use this method when I showed the part where the police arrest the driver.
I recreated the subplot and deleted some shots to more clearly convey the spatial coherence, as I had a lot of non-compliance with the 180 degree rule, which I corrected in post for my animation after the video tutorial. 180 degree rule means imagining a straight line connecting the two characters in a dialogue scene between them.
For the animation part, I learned some new skills about After Effects to present the animation better. Firstly, Function Fade, which is a function that allows a transition between two images so that the animation's ending is more natural, rather than switching quickly to the next image, which gives a very stiff feeling.
Then Camera Move, as my animation had a big scene where the driver had to deliver the dog, so I needed to move the frame around, I used the camera function in the software so it could adjust not only the camera movement but also the size of the shot.
About Sequence Layers, this function automatically arranges the frames of the animation sequence. This feature will save me a lot of time.
About new Composition, this is a feature that allows me to consolidate all the images into one in After Effects, as I have a lot of images to insert when animating, but sometimes when reviewing my work I need to go back and find the exact scene image and animation cycle, this feature helps to consolidate them into one, similar to a folder, and then on top of that I can use this "composite" to animate directly, for example by stretching the timeline to clip animation, and It can also find animated scenes quickly.
Finally, I learned a few things about 3D Max, such as building props for scenes and characters, including some object textures. As I am not sure if I will be working in 3D in the future, I wanted to learn some basics to develop my animation in the future.
