Whilst I am still not done working with helping work on Abbie’s second year film, I’ll report on what I have done so far. I was given two separate tasks, the first was to animate a rough pass of a scene. Interestingly, Abbie’s film is not a short, but a reel containing many short clips based off of prompts, which I think is quite cool as it gives the opportunity for them to demonstrate skills in animating all different kinds of scenarios.

For the rough animation scene I was given a storyboard in TV paint and a character design sheet to work off of. I loved the character deign and it was fairly easy for me to adhere to, as Abbie seems to favour sharp lines even in her sketches. It almost felt like cheating, as the storyboard sorted out a lot of the timing and the character art, as they were really quite detailed.

I tried to challenge myself by animating different aspects of the wave on different layers; one layer for her body acting, one for her mouth calling out to her friends, one for her eyes and one more for some follow through with her hair. This was extremely challenging, especially doing so within a limited time frame. I am still getting used to TV Paint as a software, so I’m sure there were easier and quicker ways I could have animated it but I didn’t know them. I definitely should have kept the eyes and eye-brows with the body acting, as drawing them in after was difficult. It looks like they have their own follow through. I tell myself that the fact it is rough animation means it’s fine, but they do look so off putting that they detract from the other parts of animation. I learned that maybe it’s best to take the easiest and fastest route, instead of trying to do certain things because ‘professionals’ do it. The body acting and the hair follow through I am really pleased with though. I didn’t actually use a reference, although Abbie did send me a gif of a character from the anime SteinsGate waving to give me an idea of the kind of movement she wanted. The character description describes her as outgoing and sporty, so I made her wave very forceful and energetic. I also gave her some acting in the eyes. The result is very anime-esque.

Honestly, I would have enjoyed a lot more time with this task, but with deadlines I felt I couldn’t give it the dedication I wanted to. Over the holidays Abbie is going to give me some clean up and colouring work. I love her style of animation- she sent over some roughs already- and really want to practice drawing consistently. I feel like I could learn a lot more through those tasks. Rough animation is what we have been doing already in class, so it didn’t feel like anything new, though it was really valuable to learn how to animate for someone else. There’s a sort of dilemma you have to work through as an animator to decide how rough is too rough. Do I want to do cleaned up as possible so that Abbie has less work? Or do I want to keep it minimal so that she can fit it to her style easily when she cleans up?

As of Tuesday March 7th I have not received feedback yet, though I hope she likes what I have. We have agreed to touch base tomorrow (Wednesday)

I’ve kind of learnt not to overcomplicate things unnecessarily, and that there is such a thing as too much follow through. I re-did the hair a couple times because initially I made it look as if she was waving in the face of an industrial strength wind machine. I think I may start making storyboards/animatics in TV paint from now on as it really speeds up the rough animation process.

I can’t wait to get started on cleanup!