Final Animation

This is my final animation for the print to pixel project. I am really happy with the outcome and I think the story relates to the music well. Baring in mind that I didn't have a clue about animation at the beginning of this project I really happy with the skills that I have learnt which helped me to put together this small animation. I have enjoyed working on this project and would like to use this type of design again in the furture.

First Part of My Animation

Here is the first 10 seconds of my animation. I am quite happy with the outcome of this section.

Adding Colour

After designing my background I added colour to it using photoshop. I like the simplicity of the background design and I think it goes well with the character I will be using. I have decided not to use the clouds which I put in in the origanal background design. As I have never done animation before I decided to keep the different aspects of the scenes and characters as simple as possible to ensure that I will be able to finish the final animation in time for the deadline.

The second main scene will take place on this background. This scene appears in the girls dream so as scenes in dreams are sometimes simple I chose this basic layout.

This is the main girl character which will be seen throughout the entire animation.

In the first scene a pair of love birds fly over head and the girl watches them as they land on the tree. I chose two very different colours to show that one is male and one is female.

This is the boy character which is only apart of the animation in the last scene. He will  be waiting in the dream as she falls back down to earth. I chose the use this dark teal colour on this character to show his gender. I didn't use the traditional blue colour as there is a lot of sky in this scene which is also a shade of blue.

In one of the scenes the girl character is crying. Origananlly I left her heart and tears white but have no decided to add colour into them, making the heart red and the tears blue.

Key Scenes in Animation

The first scene in my animation will be the main character starting off in this position and walking slowly towards the tree.

As the girl is walking along these birds will fly over towards the tree and land on the first branch.

This is the character when she is  look up towards the birds which are flying overhead. She the watches them in the tree and realises they are in love.

These love hearts will appear around the birds to show they are love birds.

 The girl then starts to cry as she realised that she feels alone and has never been in love. She starts to think and thought bubbles appear.

As the girl begins to think she slips into a day dream. This image is when she is falling into a deep dream.

She then continues to fall until she meets the land again.

 Where this boy character is waiting for her.

As she lands back down on earth he smiles and waves at her to welcome her.

 On the grass there is a flower which the boy picks up and passes to the girl.

She smiles on recieving the flower

She says thankyou by giving him a hug

She has then fallen for him and takes the heart from her chest and passes it in his direction. The heart floats upwards into the sky



Animation Timings

After deciding that I was going to be using cel animation I needed to decide when each scene of my animation would appear. I think that the short story which I have created is suitable for the given time which was stated in the brief. The animation must be between 20 and 30 seconds. I also need to chose which section of the song I will use. I have listened to the songs a number of times and have decided that from 3 minutes 20 seconds would be most suitable as there is very little singing and it quite a dreamy sounding part of the song. As my animation includes the girl character dreaming I think this will work this best.

Initial Planned Timings
3.20 - Song starts and first scene appears
3.25 - Girl character looks up at tree
3.27 - Girl starts crying after seeing love birds
3.30 - Starts day dreaming
3.36 - Boy appears on next scene and girl falls out of dream
3.38 - Boy picks up flower and hands it to girl
3.40 - Girl recieves flower and is happy
3.42 - They hug
3.45 - Girl hands over her heart to him
3.46 - Heart floats upwards into the sky
3.48 - Animation ends

Stop Motion Experiment

Whilst I was researching stop motion I came across a stop motion animation which had used sticky notes. I really liked this idea so I thought I would try this out myself and create a small animation of my own. As I had said in my mindmapping at the beginning of the project my song reminded me of growth. I therefore decided to look at a the growth of a tree. This small animation shows the cycle of the leaves on the tree. I really like this technique so I would like to take this further and try and create a more successful stop motion animation.

I thought I would have a look at some of the different effects I could add to this video. I quite liked this white version of the same animtion as it makes it look like white paper.

Workshops

During the project so far I have attended a number of different workshops to help with the development of my animation. I really enjoyed the rayogram workshops but I don't think that this technique will be suitable for the animation that I am aiming to achieve. I also enjoyed the stop motion workshop where we used 3D objects and created a small animation. I would like the experiment with this technique further. Here is the animation that my group created in the stop motion workshop. Sorry for the bad quality!

I also atteneded a workshop where we looked at a more taditional animation technique, cel animation where each frame is drawn by hand. At this stage of the project I think this would be the most suitable technique for the kind of outcome I am looking for. There were also a few workshops held where I learnt some of the basic after effects skills. However I saved some of the small examples which I had been playing with and saved them wrong so when I came to add them to this blog there weren't any images, just multicoloured squares. Still need to get hang of these after effects skills I think! Once I'd had some more practice I realised that using cel animation and adding the drawings into after effects wasn't that confusing and decided that this was the technique that I will be using for my final animation.

Storyboard

Girl walking along

She sees love birds in tree

Begins to cry at the thought of being alone. Zooms into thought bubble

Dreaming... Falling in a day dream

In her dream she meets a boy

Boy gives her a flower

She hugs him to say thankyou

Zooms into characters. She gives in her heart

Another Story Idea For Animation

Girl walking along and sees something that reminds her of love which upsets her because she is alone
Maybe she sees a mother and baby or two love birds
She cries and begins to daydream
We go into her thought bubble where she comes across a boy
She might blush or shy away
Boy picks up a flower and gives it to her
They hug
She then hands him her heart
Butterflies or love hearts could appear around them

Story Idea For Animation

Using the character sack boy from my intial character ideas.
Character sitting on top of an earth which is very small in relationship to the character
He sways to the music
Surrounding space consists of various moving planets and stars
Shooting stars flash across the screen

Taking Character Design Further

Storyboard Research

I decided to look at some example of storyboard as I have never worked properly with these before in design. I found this basic storyboard which I really liked. Even though there are only 8 scenes shown the viewer can easily see what the story is about.

Here is another example which I found during research. At first I thought this storyboard looked a little more details but I couldn't easily work out what the animation was going to be about. I would like my storyboard to flow a little easier than this example which seems to jump dramatically from one scene to another.

 

Animation Research

I have really enjoyed researching different kinds of animation. Here are some of my favourite videos which I came across.

I really like this stop motion animation using real people. This is also a good example of how music can be used along with the animation.

I especially like this video as the idea of using sticky notes is so simple but I think this animation is the most effective. I dont think this technique would work for the character ideas which I have come up with so far but I would like to try this technique if I have time during the project.

Character and Scene Research

After listening to the song I have been given numerous times I have decided that a small cute character will be suitable for animtion. I browsed the internet for some ideas on what kind of character to use, here are some of the example I came across.

After listening to the music I also decided that a simple background for the scenes would work best. Here are a few examples of the kind of background which I think will be appropriate for the animation.