Overall Reflection

Overall I have enjoyed Digital Media III. I didn’t think at first that I would be capable of making an animation. However, although Pedro the Cat was not the greatest animation I am still happy with what we have achieved. I really enjoyed the presentations today and being able to see what everyone has done. I thought all the animations were great and I especially liked iPilot.

Looking back over the coarse of the semester it is hard to think that we only have one semester left until I graduate from Design Studies. Digital Media III has really made me think about my visual presentation especially. Although animation does not really relate to my other subjects it has forced me to think in a different way. That is how to show things in a mostly visual way. Some techniques that we learnt especially in the poster design have and will help me to think about the composition of future posters and how I lay out my work. Anyway this is my last and final post for Narratives in Animation, thanks for reading.

Final Hand In

Today we are handing in our final animation and the flash folio. Looking back at all the work that we havedone over the semester I can't believe how far we have come. Also after hours spent on flash for the animation I feel a lot more confident using it. Also I now know a lot of shortcuts when importing to the library and the stage. Which ended up saving me a lot of time in the end. But I am happy with our final product and I am looking forward to watching all the animations on Thursday. Now just to work on my speech for the presentation.

Week 13

Hana and myself have almost finished the animation. Yesterday we worked on editing and then put in sound and sound effects. We used After Effects for the editing and then Premiere for the sound. However we found that we could not render a good quality from Premiere so ended up going back to After Effects. We have rendered the final copy however I am a bit worried about the sound quality. Some of the ambience in the backgrounds is not very audible on some computers. However it works fine on others. Seems odd! We hope to put the whole package together today and then work on the presentation for Thursday.

Scene 3

I am happy with how scene 3 turned out. Here is a quick peek at what to expect.

Scene 2 of Animation

Here is some of the work that has been done for scene 2. There are still a few changes that need to be made, however just wanted to show my progress. Also I started editing the scenes today and I must say that I am happy with how it is coming together despite my lack of animation skills!

Week 12

1 more week until the animation is due. Been very busy trying to get my other subjects under control and now I am 100% free to work on this assignment. Im up to animating scene 1 and will hopefully also get scene 2 finished today.

Week 11

During the week 11 tutorials we had lessons on how to create a flash folio. As Stefan is creating our folio I used this time to work on some scenes of our animation.

For the beginning we decided to have a bit of an introduction that tells the story. At first I created it using flash with a fly that went accross the screen as the story was told. However the animation of the fly was not all that crash hot and we decided to use a kinetic text style. So I created the story in Adobe After Effects and I think it looks a lot better than what I had previously done.

Also I have been working on scene 1 of the animation. I had pedro just simpl crying and then walking off. As my animatino skills are not all that great we decided not to have him walk off as he looked like he flips over half way through the walk cycle! So I will work on that.

My goal for next weeks tutorial is to have scene 1 and 2 done by Tuesday and then get up to scene 6 done by friday when myself and Hana will put everything together including audio.

Flash Folio Tutorial

In todays tutorial we learnt aspects of how to make a flash folio. We made buttons and roll over effects as well as sub menu headings. Mine stopped working for some random reason towards the end of the tutorial. Yesterday I also started working on the animation. Finally! Yesterday our group worked out what aspects of the last assignment we will work on. Stefan is doing all the presentation work and me and Hana will work on the animation.

Also yesterday I looked through what type of audio we could use for the animation. So now each scene we have an idea of what sort of sound effects and music will be playing.

Week 10

Now the marketing project is out of the way that can only mean 1 thing..... The next thing due is the animation, eek. This week I am going to try to get 2 scenes done if all goes to plan. Also having spoken to Lisa last week about how everything is going I got a few really good ideas from her. My biggest worry was that since the story was so long that people viewing the animation for the first time would not understand what is happening as there is just so much information to get across. So Lisa suggested we either have narration or use breaks with writing in it. The second idea appealed to me most as I think narration at this stage might not be the best idea. So what we are now going with is short snippets with writing in them with a fly possibly going accross the screen.

I'm looking forward to this weeks tutorial as we are learing flash folios and also I need help with Flash desperately!

Poster 3

Poster 2

Poster 1

Marketing Hand Up

Well we are now all done and dusted with our marketing hand up for our animations. I decided to go with a totally different style than I first started off doing. I tried to create posters that looked like Pedro was having mug shots taken, sort of like what a criminal picture would look like with the height chart and everything. I will upload the Posters in the next few posts. I liked the way they turned out. At first I had created some which included Hedge in the pictures, however after consulation with Josh and Lisa I decided on making the posters all about Pedro.

If I could do the posters again I would have liked to hve come up with this idea first rather than stuffing around on the looney tunes style ones that just werent working. But as I said I am still happy with my submission.

Poster design Cont.

I have now done 3 production stills, dvd cover and disc label and now I'm working on the rest of my posters. This is one idea that I had.

New Poster Design

So I have been thinking about my design and decided that I was no longer going to go with the looney tunes style marketing campaign. I have now moved into thinking about an anti-drug type campaign. Picture above shows my new intentions.

Poster Progress

Progress of my posters so far.

Poster Ideas

Last night I thought of a few ideas for my promotioinal package. I thought of using a 'Looney Tunes' style background and have the characters in the middle, eg Pedro smoking cat nip in one, as shown above. After speaking to Josh & Lisa I still need to make a few changes. The one above was just a quick poster that I pulled together last night.

Mouth Movements

A few mouth movements for the science guy.

Lip Sync in Flash Tutorial

While i'm still not 100% sure if we are going to have talking in the movie this tutorial was good to see how to make characters talk in Flash. I was actually surprised how simple it was to do. Having only a few mouth shapes was not how I thought it would be done. Above shows the 'science now' flash tutorial.

Assignment 03

Well Assignment 03 is finally complete. We presented to the class yesterday and thankfully everything came together. Today we recieved some good feedback for what needs to be worked on for the final production. These include:

-Make Hedge a similar visual style to Pedro
-Animation of characters needs more work
-Build up the 'Black Market' scene for humour
-Consistancy

Next thing that we will need to work on is Assignment 04. This is a promotional package that needs 3xA3 pages and also 3 x scene shots as well as a DVD package. really looking forward to this assignment actually. We have 3 weeks to produce it so that gives us plenty of time and also in the mean time we can work on the animation.

Walk Cycle Hedge

Hedge Walk Cycle: Needs more improvements also. These include making him match the visual style of Pedro more. Also to erase the lines to eliminate the 'leotard' effect.

Walk Cycle Pedro

Walk Cycle for Pedro: still needs improvement. Got a few ideas of how to improve design, these being: make flies follow him, put in a limp and also maybe make his feet drag a bit.

Work In Progress

It's now a "non-teaching period" and our group has steadily been working on the progress submission due the first week back. So far all our backgrounds have been completed. They needed a bit more texture added to them, i.e. shadows which create depth which was lacking a bit. However, after these touch ups I am happy with how they have turned out. Our character design is coming along nicely, Pedro and Hedge have gone through a few changes and are now looking more their part.

Over the holidays I have been working on the flash presentation. I had to whip out my old flash book from Imaging Our World so that I was able to remember how to use flash for this purpose. And I must say it was a good exercise! I feel a bit more comfortable using Flash now. Also today I started my scenes for the animatic. So far I have done scene 1 & 2.

We have a group meeting tomorrow so hopefully we will be able to get a lot of the work together and collaborate what needs doing and what is done.

Style of Animation Example

Image 1: The style of animation that I think would suit. This image would be used in scene 1 where the cats are protesting out the front of the whiskers factory. This is an example of style only.

Week 4

This week has been pretty full on at uni with a few assignments due this week. Our Project Portfolio was put together and was handed up on Wednesday on time! Now we are able to get into making the animation. Assignment 03 has a reasonable amount of work attached to it. So on Wednesday we spent time going through what needed to be done, by who and when it needs to be done by. Our allocated tasks are as follows:

Background scenes: Stefan
Characters: Stefan
Storyboard: Maddie
Walk Cycle: Hana
Flash Presentation/DVD: Maddie
Animatic: Everyone
Logo: Stefan
Test Animations: Hana
Oral: Everyone
Marketing: Hana

I have given Stefan images of styles that we could use for the backgrounds. These are attached in the next post. Also we have decided to change the ending of the animation to Pedro going to either jail or rehabilitation so that he just doesnt die at the end!

Animation Pitch

Wednesday's tutorial in week 3 was where everyone in the class pitched their ideas for a short animation. Believe it or not but my cat nip addicted cat was chosen to make into an animation. Stefan & Hana are my team members. We chose roles for the production process, these include:

Me as the Director and Animation Assistant
Stefan is the Animation/Art and Audio Supivisor
Hana is the Marketing Supivisor/ Producer and Animation Assistant

We got straight into Assignment 02 and have allocated tasks to everyone in reference to what they have to do. Then on Tuesday we will put the assignment together ready for hand up on Wednesday.

Todays tutorial was the 'Kaiser' person walking accross the screen. It was much easier to do than the hand drawn image walking accross the screen. I also thought it looked much better than the hand drawn figure and was much easier to create a personality in the character. The only thing that I need to work on here is following instructions. My guy walked pretty funny and his eyebrows were moving all over the place. Quite funny, but need to brush up on some of these skills before I start the animation work for the final project!

Week II: Walking Cycle

While I work on ideas for a concpet pitch, in class we have also been working on Flash stuff. Today we made a person walk across the screen. Sounds simple enough, although making it realistic is the though part. I have attached the Flash file so you can check it out. There are so many things to remember in Flash, hopefully I can remember this stuff for when it comes to making our final animation. Fingers crossed!

Ideas for concept pitch

Ok so I have a few ideas for my concept pitch. I have been looking around at different cartoons and even the little cartoons in the newspaper to gather some inspiration. My first idea, which I will probably run with, is a short story based around a cat that is addicted to cat nip & has resorted to a life of crime to pay for the addiction. I have a few ideas although I am stuck for an ending. The story so far includes a cow named 'Hedge' who runs her own milk production business. In which the cat (who I will now name Pedro!!!) hates the success that Hedge has and steals milk off her to pay for the addiction. This is all sounding a bit scrachy now, but just need to work on my characters and the story line. Right now I have enough ideas to make a feature film!

Week One: Introduction

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my blog for Narratives in Design (Digital Media III). It's only just the beginning of the course and I'm already freaking out about the amount of work this semester. But, I'm also excited to get into it and start work. So to give you a low down of what happened this week in Digital Media III:

Day One: Introduction into 2d animation & what we can create in Macromedia Flash. We saw lots of different types of animations that we will be aspiring to create over the course of the semester. Slightly freaked out by some of the amazing drawing & animations. I'm definately going to have to scrub up on my drawing skills this semester! Also we got into a bit of Flash basics, shortcuts, etc.

Day Two: Got more into the Flash stuff. Created a bouncing ball which I will attach to the post. Didn't have too many difficulties with this one. However, I am starting to see how much work really goes into animation.

Lastly, I have started work on Assignment I (the concept pitch). I have thought of a few ideas & characters for the story. I'm just struggling to keep the story line short so that it would be possible to run for 1-2 mins. I'll keep you updated on my progress.