Storyboard Animatic

This is my finished storyboard animatic for a script called "Ranger Rick’s Adventures: Boomer’s Grumpy Day". I am happy with the voiceover and sounds and although the drawings aren't very good, I think that it's still possible to get the idea across.

Mouse

For this 2D animation brief, we were asked to create an animation of a 'thing' walking into a room and 'something' happening as a result of them interacting with an object. I chose to make a mouse going to get cheese and getting eaten by a cat as the result. Although I am not amazing at drawing, I think that the overall point is shown and is successful. 

Front Walk Cycle

Here, I have animated a front walk cycle which was quite tricky to do because of the angle. Using the grid for the feet was really useful and helped me to create this animation. If the knees were bent a bit more then I think that it would have helped it to look more animated but I think that it works effectively.

Juggling

This is my animation of some balls being juggled. It was challenging to get the hands to move in the right direction and when going through this animation frame by frame, it is clear that there is a frame where the ball should be held by a hand but isn't. Although this is an issue when going through it this way, it doesn't seem to affect the overall animation and it still works, looking like someone is juggling three balls.

Smoke

Here's another animation on Flash. As an improvement, I would perhaps have the background moving slightly as it's noticeably static. I also think that the top and bottom of the smoke moves a bit dramatically at times and so a few more in-betweens could be needed. I think that the broken off bits of smoke look successful and the overall animation works well.

Splash

This is my animation of a character that I created jumping off a diving board into water; I think this worked well. As an improvement, I would make the splash last slightly longer and add one or two drawings in between the last two of the character. This is because there's a bit of a jump from the character being in the air, to when she's in the water.

Bradford Animation Festival

Whilst on our trip to Bradford Animation Festival, we had the chance to view many animated shorts. In particular, I really liked the stop motion animations which included, ‘Moving On’, ‘Life Begins at Breakfast’ and ‘The Bigger Picture’.

I was really impressed by the animation for the music video of, ‘Moving On’. I think that the use of string to create the characters and scenery was unique and very interesting to watch. Additionally, I think that it was interesting to use this technique to display the sensitive topic of somebody dying and ‘moving on’ since it allows the audience to connect with the characters as well as making it easy to watch.

I also liked ‘Life Begins at Breakfast’ because of its unique style. By using fabrics to create the characters, they appear lovable and adorable. Although this was only a very short advertisement, it is one that I found memorable because of the characters.

I thought that ‘The Bigger Picture’ used a very clever technique, and this animated short in fact won an award at the festival. The fact that this animation was partly painted and partly modelled seemed very impressive and again, covered a sensitive topic in an interesting way. Something that particularly stood out for me with this animation was the transitions between each scene. For example, one of the characters was pouring hot water into a mug and then the water from this scene merged into water in a shower. This was very well thought-out.

Another stop motion animation that won an award at this festival was the music video, ‘Robin’. Although I didn’t think much of the song, I really liked the animation in this video and its use of natural materials such as leaves and flowers to create a beautiful animation.

As well as this, another form of stop motion animation that I liked in this festival was the use of cut out animation in the animations, ‘Tiger is Gun’ and ‘Katachi’.

Even though I didn’t particularly like the narrative in ‘Tiger is Gun’, I did think that the cut out animation style was enjoyable and the transitions were clever. An example of this is where some paper representing grass was used in one scene and then, following the camera panning upwards, the same paper was used in another.

I thought that the stop motion music video ‘Katachi’ was also impressive because of the style being a cut out animation. I particularly liked this animation due to the fact that paper used to create it was all laid out together and never taken away so that it looked like one continuous shot.

My favourite animated short at the festival however, was ‘The Bear and The Hare’ which was a mixture of 2D animation, stop motion and 3D modelling. I thought that the design, music and the narrative of this animation together were very moving and the animation as a whole was very beautiful to look at. Additionally, I think that the link to Christmas meant that this was more appealing to a wider target audience as most people celebrate this time of year.