Evaluation for flash animation
For this unit we had to first do research on animation then when created a walk cycle in flash then we started planning out another animation based on a story we were given. It was called the Magic Paint Brush. We decided what our style would be and then we spent some time drawing out a storyboard with characters. First we did a rough one then a proper one. After we had planned it out and added sound we were going to have to the story board we started animating. Though out the animation process our tutor showed us some tween techniques for flash and some other things to help us achieve creating an animation.
I have learnt a lot from this unit I couldn't use Flash at all at the beginning of the unit. After the tutor showed us the basics and what to do I started to understand the program more. Then as we went along I started to understand the program. I asked questions when I didn't know how to do something and after I was showed I could get on and found the program easier than I thought I would. Because I have an animating program at home I could compare both programs and I believe that flash may ultimately be a better program to use. Although there are something's I seemed to be able to do in the other program and I didn't know how to do in Flash but since I am only just learning to use the program I expect you'd be able to do it in the program. I also was comparing the programs when I was working on it. I was disappointed when I thought Flash didn't have scenes because the program I used (Toon Boom) I had always used scenes. But as soon as I thought this our Tutor showed us how to use scenes in Flash. This relieved me and I realised I still had a lot to learn about the program. I believe and hope that I have furthered my animating skills during this unit. also although I didn't have great time management I managed to complete the animation before the deadline with soundtrack. Before I did an animation for my art project in year 10 but I had a whole year to do that so I never really felt the need to rush but this project has show me that I can do an animation in a certain amount of time.
The point of this. To improve animation skills and program that I am able to use has expanded. This has helped my animation of people although I believe I still need more practise with that I believe this could help. If I were to go on to do animation people are commonly used in animation. Since I am used to animating animals and animal-like creatures this was quite new for me. So I think this would be useful on the movement and drawing of people. This project was useful as it has showed that I can animate a story that has been given to me instead of one I have made up myself. Which would obviously be of use in the future. This process has given me the idea of practising drawing people a lot more then I do. If I wanted to go into a job of animation or character design or something people are the most commonly used in these. So I will practise drawing them more and I have only been drawing them in anime style but I hope to expand to other styles of people. I have already tried some anime people drawing and this unit encouraged me to do this as I doubt I would of done this before.
What worked
I liked the way some of the movement I animated turned out. The bit where he swings the paint brush to make a river the first time I thought the animation work really well. That took a long as I completely redrew each frame to get the effect of the hair moving and the body swinging. Although it took a while I think that turned out well. If I compared it to the other time he draws to river where I only drew one image and just moved the parts. I think that worked too but if you compared them the first one was more effective with more movement. Another bit that I think really worked was when the character jumped into the water. Yet again this was all individually drawn for each frame. I did use the same head in a few of the frames but then I changed it as well. I think things still look effective if you are drawing parts of the body from scratch in each frame but you keep one thing consistent though out the animation. For example in the last scene of my movie the character is walking away and the body and head are one image but the legs change drawings all though out until it gets to the loop. I have found out from this that both versions of animating work well. But when you put in more effort of drawing each individual frame it can look very good. Even though that bit of my animation is very quick you can see the hair of the character fly up as he is jumping and this defiantly would have looked better than if it was the same head from the start of the jump. Also the dragon wave. I hadn't put that in my story board but I had the idea from the start and just wasn't sure if I would be able to do it. But I believe that it worked very well. I am really pleased with the outcome of that scene. Also I turned the dragon into a wave which I wasn't planning on doing and the idea came to me and I decided to test it and I thought that it looked so good that I had to use it. But I also thought it would make sense if it turned into a wave because then you could understand it was water and the villain wasn't getting hit by a dragon he had drawn. Something I could have improved on that scene would have been to do with time management again. When I had the idea I should of tested trying to draw it out because when it came to that bit I had to look up dragons on google images that I could look at for the kind of thing I could try and draw. This didn't take lots of time as I quickly remembered a cartoon dragon that I could look at for the idea of mine. But for the improvement if I had done this before animated not during I could have saved some time.
Things to improve
Overall I am really pleased with my animation. If I had to improve there are a few things I could have done differently. I wasn't pleased with a small few of the drawings of the characters I had done in flash. I had drawn them on the story board and I really liked the way they looked but when re drawing on flash my characters either looked better or worse. although I was glad how they looked moving and colourful on flash there was one or two drawings I would like to have done better. I could have improved this in a few ways. one would have been to draw the character again until it looked good. but another thing I could have done would have been to scan the storyboard drawings in and put them on flash with the ones I was having trouble with. I could have done these things maybe if I had more time which is another thing I would have improved on. making the animation took very long time which is expected but by the end of it I was starting to feel rushed as I still had the extra research and evaluation to do. an improvement would have been to make the story a little shorter then I did. I have always tried to get a lot done when coming to animation but this isn't always a good things as throughout the animation I was finding myself not minding if I didn't like the drawing I had done. I sometimes re did it but other times I just moved on because I thought I need this done quickly as I need to finish so. maybe by increasing the story line i had reduced some of the quality of the animation. However saying this I did believe a lot of my scenes were good and had some great animation. but if I had given it more time I could have made all the scenes look really nice. another thing- backgrounds. I usually don't concentrate very much on backgrounds but i did better this time. but yet again if I had more time a may have concentrated on the backgrounds a little more. On background I did concentrate on drawing little houses in the background and i really liked the outcome. Also I know time can be a problem. When I did the walk cycle there was no background.
Copying animation and cutting corners two other things that I could have improved although with the cutting corners I think a lot of animations could have the same images or movement twice. Also the style I did mine in was anime and in a lot of series of animes the images and movement can be seen repeated a number of times. With the copying I looked at a character walking and then animated mine in a very similar way. I think it was ok to do this but I don't want to do it more times because I want the movement of my character to be what I have created and how it would interpret how they would move. I only did this at the end when my character is walking away. I like the animation I did for this but I can't help but wonder if I had made up the movement myself would it of looked any better. Another problem with the time would have been if I didn't have flash at home I would have struggled with the time. it wouldn't have been as good if I hadn't got some extra hours at home. so if I had kept it simple then maybe it would have been quicker to do. but it could also be a good thing that i put in a lot of extra hours to get it done but could have be a big flaw if I didn't have the programming. so this is probably the biggest improvement would defiantly have been time and length of the story board. A target would be better time management and planning.
Audience reviews
"This is the first animation I have seen Sophie do with people as the central characters (as opposed to animals!), and as such I think it's a fine effort"." Things that I particularly liked include:"
- The way the jail scene transforms from the previous scene
- The "dragon" wave that overcomes the man in the river.
- The sparse but colourful backgrounds and simple character animations with clear facial expressions
- The "drowning" sequence
- The end credit
Yes I agree with most of these and I think that those scenes were some of the best ones I animated. I might disagree a bit of the jail bit. I was testing the shape tween to see what would happen if I try to morph one scene to another. I did really like the result and I especially like the jail bars going across. however I believe that the scene looked slightly better when you had to whole background in the picture but I had to zoom in. Maybe I should have tried some different scenes to see how they morphed. But I left it as it was and I believed it could of looked better but the viewer wouldn't know this so actually maybe I do agree this was a good scene and worked well.
"The things that might have been improved like in some shots the limbs and body length look a bit odd!"
Ok I agree with this. But I think the villains body was the right shape it was just the good guy. He was wearing a polo neck and I made the mistake of giving him an abnormally sized neck in some parts. But I wasn't really thinking about it when I was drawing him. Then this meant that the shoulders were going wrong because I would draw the neck then the neck of the top the same length then I would add the shoulders at the end of that as if I was thinking it was the neck. I think it only coursed trouble with that character because of the clothes I gave him but I also wasn't really thinking about the way people should look.
"The way the man holds his paintbrush is not how you'd normally hold a paintbrush?"
Yeah I realise that as others have mentioned it but I disagree as I did this on purpose. As it was a magic paint brush I thought it should be held differently than a normal one. Also the way he painted was a quick movement and it wasn't like he was painting in detailed. I thought because it wasn't on paper he was painting in the air I think that the way he held it was more like a weapon. Also as all he did was swing at the air to paint the river I don't believe that would have looked right if he was holding it normally furthermore it was more an act of power he was showing with the brush by the way I animated then it being delicate
"The story is not all that clear - probably because of the short amount of time in which to tell it - Also at the beginning you can't really tell who's feet are walking and that is the bad guy coming- probably needs a voice over or some text to clarify what is happening in the story?"
With the character walking I realise people watching may not realise that it was him. because I created the characters and I know that its him coming and that his trousers are a different colour I may not have thought that others may not notice that it was him as its not on screen for ages.
This I do agree with and I only thought about after I had done it. I should of had the story maybe told somehow and made it clear what was going on. But I didn't really think about that but next time I would.
