250 words reflection
This project has been a very valuable journey for me. I learnt so many things and face different challenges. I’m proud of my story, it’s certainly an enjoyable one. Even though it’s my personal memory I’m glad people are still able to relate to it. “The Red Crayon” wasn’t my initial idea for the animation, I’m hesitant to change the concept because I’m afraid “The Red Crayon” is too childish. After I received a lot of positive feedback from everyone, I felt more confident.
Moving on to the designing stage, I mostly struggle with the background and colour. These two have never been my strength. My first plan was to not focus on the background and having some kind of washed-out colour background which created a flashback vibe to the animation. Eventually, I made a bold decision where I draw all the backgrounds in the same style with the characters, they are not detailed backgrounds but it is lots of work and effort, surprisingly I was enjoy doing it. I also had fun storyboarding and visualised my story. I have some minor struggles with finding a good angle and staging. I understand that I still have a lot to improve but I did the best that I could and I am pretty happy with my final animatic. I enjoy making my production bible, I fell behind the schedule and couldn’t finish it as my plan but I do have fun making it.
The animating stage causing me many troubles. I struggled and not quite sure where to begin. I thought I would make a rough animation version base on the animatic just to figure out how the character act and move. But it took me like forever to be done. In the end, I found that I could just add more frame to my animatic, this is much quicker as I don’t need to draw my keyframes again. I also have a few struggles trying to keep my character consistent throughout the animation. I hope I will get the hang of it soon. It such a shame I couldn’t finish my animation before the hand in, there are still lots of work that need to be done and I will try my best to finish it before the end of year show.
It’s been a long journey and an enjoyable one. Despite all the hardship I faced, I have improved and learnt a lot this year. Thank you all the tutors and friends, for always being so supportive.