OUAN502 - Study Task 2 - SWOT

Here is what I draw together for the peer session of the SWOT chart:

Personal
Strengths
Drawing skill and animation style
Weaknesses
Use of colors, writing skill
Opportunities
To try more animation styles and methods
Threats
lack of communication and networking

Interpersonal
Strengths
Presentation of ideas
Weaknesses
Communication, lack in confidence
Opportunities
Try to speak to more people and share works
Threats
Need to be more confident

Technical
Strengths
Drawing on paper and computer
Weaknesses
A bit fixed style and movement of character
Opportunities
Narrow the direction to area interested
Threats
Not easily adapted into a team

Artistic
Strengths
Drawing style and character design
Weaknesses
Lack of use of colors
Opportunities
Be specialised on character deisgn
Threats
Need to practice with larger range of style

Self-evaluation of Character and Narrative

For the brief Character and Narrative, I am satisfied with the work overall whilst noticeable change can be made for future reference which I’m going to talk about on several aspects in the evaluation, and what I would amend during the making if I can go back.
Firstly on the hand of the generation of the ideas, I started with a random mind storm on paper scribbling out ideas and characters that came into my mind, although several of the ideas were generated, I abandon two of them that I went into the stage of sketching storyboards, but I spend relatively short amount of time to made my mind to focuses on one of the ideas, the Adrift. In the future I would use a better approach of mapping out ideas rather than doing random sketches as I did this time and usually in the past, which can increase the speed of choosing the direction. During the design of the character, what I would amend was that I stick with one of the design and did not attempt to interpret it into a better version or adding any elements to it. The advantages would be that the actual making of the animation can be started quicker, while it may not be the best decision for the character. However, I am satisfied with the chosen one, as it is simple to animate in Photoshop in a higher speed, whilst containing enough details for the audience to tell that the character and the younger version are the same person, which in this case, is her fore hair and the color of her dress. The animatic was made from the storyboard straightly, but showed less movement and what the actual animation would look like, which allows me to adjust the duration of each scene of the animation, and to decide whether I am going to delete or add any extra scenes into the animation by simply replacing the animatic with the short scenes, but on the other hand it gives less information for the purpose of communication with a simple animatic. Therefore I would try to make the animatic that would present in the most similar way of how the final outcome would look like.
Speaking of the making process of the animation, the method I decided to use of collaborating the traditional water color painting with digital animation gives a pleased result and the quality of what I expect at the first place. One of the aspects I would say unsuccessful is that the style of the digital animation has a huge difference which made the character in the animation seems odd from the water-colored background although I wanted to create the effect that the character is standing out of the picture. What I did to solve this was adjusting the color and the quality of the brushes in Photoshop trying to make it look less strange when I group them together into one animation. What could be amend before animating would be to list out more methods, or just using one material such as do the whole animation in water color and make it a stop-motion rather than using After Effect to rig the painted pieces. The whales which are animated with the puppet tools, the movements are too smooth which hugely decrease the hand-made feeling of the water colored whale, but it turned out to be the best way after a few attempts of other methods. During the first crit session I discovered that gif files has a huge disadvantage of not playing correctly but with the white background, which has wasted me a short amount of time to render, it was solved with rendering out image sequences out of Photoshop rather than other formats, that allows it to be edited secondly with a transparent background even after it is rendered out.
It is also the first animation that I tried to include my own record of sound along with the background music. It does not contain any dialogue, which made it easier using just sounds to represent the characters’ feeling. I edited the sounds in Adobe Audio, which I think is a quite functional tool that contains the edits I needed, such as changing the pitch and the speed of the sounds. The other sound effect were found on websites, which I think I will try to produce all of them myself in the future, also as a practice of analyzing what could the resource of the sound be different kinds of sounds. As it has not got any dialogue, lip syncing is also unnecessary, which is one of the techniques I really wanted to have a go, therefore I would try to animate characters that speaks later on.
On the other hand, I struggle sometimes with effective researching, and writing about the research process. In the future I would research in a wider range of media such as books and journals as well, instead of sticking on the internet. I think I did not chose the research titles precisely on the need of the animation but more on a personal aspect, therefore in future researches, I would be more focused on the project itself in order to increase its quality whilst the making of this animation in a more effective way.
As for the study tasks, DUIK in After Effect was took the most of the time comparing to the other ones. As I struggled with rigging the character correctly, which made it hard to be animated. To solve this I looked at several video and text guides, which all helped me to develop a better knowledge of DUIK and would be much more familiar with it if I am going to use it again in the future animations.
For conclusion, I am pleased with this animation for Character and Narrative of collaborating two animating methods together to create certain effect, while a huge amount of amend could be made to increase the quality of the animation when looking back, however there is always a first attempt.

Mr Madila

Mr Madila combines not only one animating techniques but in a similar styles, I think what achieved that is the successful character design in this animation, the unique faces but easily recognizable. It is an animation along with a dialogue throughout the whole time, a mock up interview with Mr Madila. What inspired me as well is the smooth lip syncing, what I want to be practice doing in the future as the animations I did in the past are all without any dialogues.

The Red Turtle

The Studio Ghibli and arte France Cinéma has cooperated to release this film, which I seen on the 2016's animation festival. The art style is visually unique to the Ghibli style, very delicate and smooth, but obviously combined with significant France animation style as well. In additional it is the first animated film without any dialog but only scenes to push the plot produced by Ghibli. The narrative of the film is indeed very intense to keep the story going.

Phantom boy

Phantom boy, one of the animated film that I seen on this year's Manchester Animation Festival. The narrative within the film, as I seen, is very successful that demonstrated the full story in an intense tempo. I enjoyed watching the animation either on the story telling and the unique art style as well.
The other highlight would be the successful built of the villain character, with the presentation of the evil characteristic on his colourful collage face, every details on him makes the character's personality extremely obvious.

Pearl

Pearl is a film that I first know in Manchester Animation Festival 2016, it is more than a film, but a taste of animation combined with new technology, a VR experience. It tells a story of a life journey of a girl called Pearl started with her childhood and ended by her grown up life with her friends.
The highlight of this animation personally would be narrating a story with in a tiny fixed space, therefore it is all about the elements around that is constantly changing to demonstrate the elapse of time, the clever part is that it engages with the property of virtual reality and took advantages of the 360 degree perspective to showcase the events taking place all around the audience.

OUAN502 - Study Task 1 - Who am I now?

Identify 5 things you have learned so far on the programme 

Make story boards for animation

Animate

Formalize my art boards to present my designs

Modelling in Maya

Write academically

Identify 5 things that you want to know more about.

Effective narration

Role of character designer

Animating in new software

Animating in faster ways to save time

Effective time management

Identify 5 skills that you think are your strengths. 

Drawing in both traditional and digital methods

Idea generation for character design

Effective storyboarding

Using After Effect

Adapting to different styles of animating

Identify 5 things that you want to improve. 

Animating in 3D

Frame by frame animation

Essay Writing

Self-evaluation

Time management

Identify 5 practitioners that demonstrate your interest in Animation.

Bobby Pontillas

Tomm Moore

Satoshi Kon

Griselda Sastrawinata-Lemay

Tim burton

Identify 5 websites/online resources that demonstrate your areas of interest within the creative industries.

https://www.disneyanimation.com/

http://www.cartoonsaloon.ie/

http://wolfsmoke.blogspot.co.uk/p/animations.html

http://bobbypontillas.tumblr.com/

https://characterdesignreferences.com/

Machinerium

Machinerium is a riddle game with a robot main character, narrating his journey through a city made with machines, in order to find and save his girlfriend. It used a lot of elements relates to steam punk, and the style presents a strong flavour of it.

It was complete hand drawn as it is presented in the aniamtion of the game, creating the effect of ink pen and water colours. The robotic movement of the characters are well presented, demonstrates the property of the character. There are a large quantity of background produced and each are in similar style, but presents different contents.

Zootopia

Zootopia, a Disney animated film released in 2016. The animation I planned to analyse in my context of practice essay. Not to say it is a good Disney's standard animation, the story of the animation contains not only the simple story line, but reflects the reality society as well. Such as the slow process of the sloth in the office, reflecting the long and slow process in the real world. Although the Disney style is not the kind of style that I like.

Tengami

I could say that Tengami is the most beautiful mobile game that I have played, it is a japanese game that includes a very strong flavour of the japanese culture. It is made into folded papers, that are folded together to construct the buldings and the mountains, and all other enviorments, in additional, the character himself. Follows with the movement of the character moving across the screen, the papers moves around as well. The style of the game is one of the style I would consider to try to animate with.

Journey

Journey is a PS4 game, it is a story, as the title of the game suggest, the journey of our main character, while he or she travels, he will discover red cloth, and it will become the extension part of his scarf. During experiencing the game, I was completely brought into the game itself, the 3D modelling and the movement of the character when controlling him was realistic, and the enviorment of the game is very realistic as well, especially the change of the atmosphere and weather, such as raining and sand blowing.

Year Walk

Year Walk is a mobile game firstly released on IOS platform. The trailer of the game has captured my attention therefore I bought the game. It is a riddle game also narrates a story, but because of it contains some horror contents, I did not managed to finished the game. But more importantly I like the art style of the game, it used the contrasting colours to make the contents such as the buildings standing out from the backgrounds. And as well the sound effect that fits the animation perfectly. It is a game that I would definetly recommend to who likes riddle games.

Paprika

Paprika is a animated film by Japanese animation director Kon Satoshi, one of my favourite animators and animations. It is an animation telling a story by an abstract way, it also reflects on society phenomenons. It has mixed a variety of different elements and presents them in a abstract way. The action developed is extremly interesting to me, it is said that the film Inception, also being one of my favourite movies, has reference the idea of Paprika, of how people travels between reality and dreams, achieving similar target, where in Paprika, the character paprika travels into people's dream to heal their mental problems. The character design stands out with its ability of demonstrating the two personality of the same person, where presented by two different characters in this animation.

The Suicide Shop

The Suicide Shop is a animated movie released by 2012, but I have just recently watched it. It demonstrate a story of a shop ran by a family which sells products for people committing suicide, based on a bizarre world clouded by depressed atmosphere, while a lot of people commit suicide every day.

What I like about this animation is the cooperation of the animation and the music, the design of the characters that indicates the personality of them which can be observed easily, such as the main character Alan constantly remains a smiling face, while other people. In additonal, background of this piece of animation are created effectively demonstrating the tone of a depressed world.

Copyright

Content produced and hosted in the UK is covered by copyright. It protects them by forbbidening individuals from copying, adapting, distributing, public transmission, public performance, renting and lending. Copyright of illustration belongs to the creator, the company and the employer, and for video game, belonging to the company and the emplyer. Copyright can be transfferred or add to another party, but nedding legally trasferring. In the UK, copyright is automtic, and there is no registration system.
Copyright of literacy, dramatic, artistic and photographic works for life plus 70 years, while sound recordings works for 70 years, that raised from 50 years in 2011. To get permissions to use, you need to contact the owner director, or to contact the organisation or company who represents them. Non-commercial, educational research or private study and teaching does not generally need permission. However copies are not able to be made without permission.

The Scarecrow

The Scarecrow is a great 3D animation that conveys a mesage of that the food industries nowadays are lowering the quality of the food to make more profit from the consummers, the main character being one of the scarecrows that is working for the industries, he wants to change the situation. The 3D models in this animation is in a very reality style, but presenting a character that is not human. The music is beautiful as well, suitable for the presents of the personality of the character, who would not follow the system of the current industries, but wants to change it into a better one.

Little Red Riding Hood

This animation is a re-defined narrative of the traditional story Little Red Rding Hood, it tells a different story, where the wolf actrually likes the little red riding hood, instead of trying to eat her and her grandma. I like the art style of this animation, where it uses a lot of plain colours in the background of the animation, and pieces of plain colours to present the characters, with only simple black lines. In additional the audio is well considered to reflet the atmosphere of the animation.

DRRR!

DRRR! is a Japanese anime adapted from a novel written by Ryohgo Narita. It is one of my favourite animations that demonstrates a series of city legends, narrating stories that exaggerate the reality therefore would not happen in real life. The fight scene and the movements of the characters extremely interested me, the frames flows smoothly. The other aspect I like about the animation is the character design, I luckily had a glance at the original design of the characters with pencil on paper, but did found the resource on internet. The character sheets has presented a variety of facial expressions of the character, and as well, the front view and side view of the characters. It provides a complete and helpful reference when making the animation.