Since the development feedback session that was conducted in small groups in class, I have taken on board the feedback that was given back to me and my ideas for my animation have since evolved and to my mind become clearer and I now feel I have a direct route to the finished animation.
Firstly, the actual production of the animation. Originally I planned to produce the animation by hand in a traditional manner. The idea of producing a cell animation also occurred to me, this way I could have a set background for the characters in my animation to move around in the foreground of and I could concentrate on animating them to the level I want to for this particular solution. However, the idea of hand painting individual acetate sheets combined with the inking and scanning that would have to be undertaken made the task quite daunting and consequently I decided against the idea. Since the first animation we produced for the 'Animation Skills' module I've learned to undertake a more reasonable work load and to not be over ambitious. In the case of the animation I produced for the last module it was left unfinished and consequently wasn't up to the level it could have been because of this. I spoke with Matt about what would be the best way to approach the animation, bearing in mind my priorities were the fluidity of the animation itself and the cinematography as opposed to the story and character development. He suggested the idea of using Photoshop to draw the frames using the timeline in Photoshop CC, and this proved to be a good idea for me personally. It meant I could paint the background like I had previously done a mock up for during the development and idea generating process and use that as a background to the scene with my characters. From here I went into Photoshop and experimented with some of the features the timeline function on Photoshop had to offer, I quickly discovered it had the ability to use effects such as fade ins, fade outs and various zoom and camera functions which made the process of creating a good animation on Photoshop that much easier for me, so I shall continue to practice using this software and hopefully create something interesting for the final out come of the project.
From my original character concepts I created simplistic character models that could act as my in-animation characters. In other words for the purpose of animating and hand drawing them with the priority of creating fluid animation with my limited knowledge as of now I wanted to make things as simple as reasonably achievable. The style of line work I want to use I have also discussed with several different people and I have different ideas about the possible styles. In line with the fluid Japanese style since it's set in rural Japan with the characters being samurais the brush I use on Photoshop could be a calligraphic brush, to give a sharp and 'swift' type of feel to the animation. The line work here would be very simple, and I would use a mixture of thick and thin lines when necessary to portray weight and hopefully deliver a dynamic style to the movement of the characters. The draw back here is that using the calligraphy brushes would take some practice to feel comfortable on using them at the level I want. The next proposal for the type of line is a more sketchy style that is reminiscent in some hand drawn animations such as 'Duet' by Glen Keane. This would perhaps portray a traditional hand drawn feel in an environment that is considered a very traditional place; rural Japan. Overall this would be nice, but could potentially be difficult to be consistent with. The final idea is to use smooth, weighted, sharp lines similar to the style of line work in the animation, 'Thought of you' by Ryan Woodward. The animation he directed was very smooth and I would love to capture something even vaguely similar to what he achieved in that short animation. I think I will need to try using each technique and experiment a little before deciding for sure which route to take with the style of line to advance with, which could be vital to the overall feel and fidelity of the animation.
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| Brush Ideas |
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