Updated Final Animation

Added more frames for longer run time and slightly smoother animation. There are still just as many flaws in the previous, these problems are something to consider and think about during my next time animation work.

Critical Analysis

Below is the first final form on my animation presented as a .gif for blog use only:

Looking at the animation that I have produced, I feel reasonably happy with the results, I feel like the sequence portrays the change of state clearly; the motions of change are easy and really visible to read and see throughout the animation. The animation follows a set story, the snowman does not just suddenly melt, there is a setting of scene/build up and then the portrayal of the theme, change of state.

Another thing I felt that was tackled well, was the animation in the scarf. Whilst the wind is blowing during ‘build up’, I animated the scarf to move flowingly, with a flick when it hits its highest point; if the animation was just a swinging motion, it would look to still and like a solid object rather than fabric. I also made sure to animate the scarf folding during the ‘melting’ stage of the animation. By doing this you can really get a feel for what the fabric is like, and that it is not something which looks hard like is may appear around the neck.

Although the animation hits the theme, it is also full of many flaws. First of all when the animation comes to the snowman melting, it is slow and seems a little clicky, although this is due to variations of frame lengths (Due to working on triples, since double frame animation proved to be too fast for a melting scene, even for a cartoon animation where it does not necessarily have to stick to reality). I feel like more in between frames are needed to be added to make the melting more smooth. If there is time before presenting the animation with the group to the client, I will take the chance to add this to improve the quality.

The snow that is on the ground around the snowman also appears unnatural, rather than melting it simply slowly piece by piece disappears, and although it is clear what is happening, it could be vastly improved. The placing of the snow is also random and not well thought out, although it does help set the scene, perhaps snow on the mountains should be added and redrawing that on the ground may be needed to improve the quality and feel of this bit of animation. By adding snow to the mountain tops, the atmosphere will feel cooler too, as it stands, the snowman and small piles of snow feel almost unnatural, even though there is a clear representation of weather change. Considerations of making the clouds grey should also be included next time.

The last problem I feel which could be improved on is the lengthy ‘build up’ time. The removal of clouds and setting the scene takes up around half of the animation length, although this is necessary and the scarf animation only repeats once, there is still a noticable delay before the theme of ‘change of state’ is visible. Some might argue that the changing of weather could be considered a change of state, but overall it isn’t important, the snowman is the main focus. I feel there is no way to improve the time length of the build up right now without significantly moving up the animation which is not wanted, therefore this is a topic to consider at a later date should I ever produce a similar animation again.

Background

Here is the final background design for my animation

The clouds are not included in this image as they are presented on a different layer due to being animated. The light green line around the image is my stage guide, anything outside of this will not be seen in the final result so it is fine for the colouring to be messy outside. Here there is no snow so this is the background as it appears whilst the snowman is melting. I added bight colours to help present the heat of the atmosphere.

Inspirations

For my snowman animation, I didn’t exactly take inspiration from other animators specifically for this piece, however there are several animators which inspire me overall on a general basis all of the time. There are too many to list and remember so here are some of the few:

Cale Atkinson – Lil Red

Atkinson is an illustrator as well as an animator, he brings his distinctive illustrative style into his animation to create cute and quirky little masterpieces which are enjoyable for all. Lil Red uses a lot of sliding pan transitions however this works well to really get a feel for the amount of travel through the story and to show the beautiful creative background arts presented in the short animation.

Manpuku Jinja – Memories of Phantasm

Manpuku Jinja work on fan animations based off a popular Japanese game. Their studio for a small group produces beautiful and high quality animations that are very engaging and visually pleasing. The colours are bright and vivid and the animation is professionally smooth.

All the storyboarding and preliminary sketches can be viewed on their blog here

Cartoon Saloon – The Secret of Kells + others

Cartoon Saloon  produced a beautiful piece of artwork and animation with their feature film The Secret of Kells, the art is beautiful and creates the perfect atmosphere for the films story. Currently they are also working on Song of the Sea, the outcome of this incorporates the same beautiful and creative animation and art style and will surely be a masterpiece to be seen once completed.

Song of the Sea’s production process blog can be found here

Bullion Productions – Easy

Easy is a personal favourite of mine, I love how clean and crisp the lines are and how colours are explored and work well together. A wide variety of shots and angles are used and the animation works well to the beat of the song bringing this as a piece together.

 

Animation Sketch

To start the animation I created a rough version, planning all the movement and transitions out first.

After some work I came up with the below animation:

this animation shows the build up (the removal of clouds) with extra animation to keep the viewers occupied (blowing of scarf) and then moves onto the change of state. The animation lasts roughly about 8 seconds and is on a variety of double and triple frames.

I used a different colour for each part of the animation sketch so it was easy to see and understand, the next step for me after this is to continue to work on the clean up and start producing it into a final animation. More frames may needed to be added at a later date.

Artist Research

During Bradford Animation Festival 2014 Andreas Hykade presented his well known animated film ‘Love and Theft’.

Andreas Hykade is an animation director from Germany. Quoted from Wikipedia: “Before studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart from 1988 to 1990, he attended König-Karlmann-Gymnasium Altötting. He worked as an animator in London in 1991, then studied animation at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg until 1995. Since then he works as animation director, partly at “Studio Filmbilder” in Stuttgart, and as the Professor for Animation at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg.“

Over the years Andreas Hykade has produced and directed several short films and music videos, those conclude of:

• The King is Dead (1990)
• We Lived in Grass (1995)
• Zehn kleine Jägermeister (1996)
• The Riddle (2000)
• Bla, bla, bla (2000)
• Ring of Fire (2000)
• Just a Gigolo (2001)
• Time (2002)
• Tom & the slice of bread with strawberryjam & honey 1-13 (2004)
• Walkampf (2004)
• The Runt (2006)
• Tom & the slice of bread with strawberryjam & honey 14-26 (2008)
• Love & Theft (2010)

The last, Love and Theft was entered in the BAF was in instantly recognisable for Hykade’s smooth animation and bizarre subject. Hydake uses movement of lines of one image to reform and take the shape of another, keeping this cycle going he creates an animation with a constant state of flux and unsettles the audience. With this animation Hydake gives a perfect example of how one thing can always lead onto another, and not always something we necessarily expect either. He uses symbolism and psychedelic imagery to disturb but also move the viewer and get them thinking, along with referencing other well known animations keeping it so familiar and enabling all viewers to be able to relate to it in some way, shape or form. Using minimalistic colours and techniques as such as squash and stretch as a transition along with other movements, Hydake creates a certain atmosphere which is tense but also of somewhat lax and leaves us with a peculiar feeling of confusion making the animation very successful.

Artist Comparison:

After researching and discussing the matters of ‘Love & Theft’, I also took a look at Bill Plympton’s “Your Face”
Your Face differs from Love and Theft in many different ways, most obviously through media, Your Face is clearly drawn and animated through traditional means. Other differentiations consist of how this animation starts with a calmer atmosphere and builds up to its unsettling ever changing state; whereas Love and Theft tackles the bizarre right from the start. The two however do have many similarities; Plympton’s animation shows change of state in a more slower manner however the techniques are almost of somewhat the same, the ways in which the person in the film changes the shape of their head in different ways over time is a lot like the way Hykade changed character to character in Love and Theft. To an extent, both artists explore the same ideologies in their animations.

 

 

Initial Sketches

Having already chosen my theme and confirmed it with the group, I went on ahead to produce some starting sketches with basic ideas. At the start, I produced some initial starting sketches exploring both chosen themes, each containing at least 3 key changes of state that would appear within the animation. Although I was already leaning towards the snowman theme, I still wanted to experiment a little bit with the other theme to confirm that this was the right task for me.

 

Ignoring the experimental frog sketch in the bottom right, the above image shows a basic tadpole shape, a middle preliminary stage of a frogs growth, and a lose illustration of a frog. I decided that going from this style of drawing, it would be very time consuming and drawn like this may be hard in some areas to animate to the same standard. With this in mind I scrapped that idea there and then and continued to explore the same 3 stages of cycle for the snowman animation; its stood form, semi-melted, and mostly liquid. With this illustration I saw that the character has a much more loveable appearance and a slightly comically tragic result could be acquired as an end result making it potentially more successful for me than the frog. Although a build-up/something to set the scene will be needed for the action to take place, with the more simplistic approach of character, this should not come to be a problem and not add too much time onto the making. 

After some thinking I also decided that the build up would best work as the parting of clouds/the sun rising, giving the snowman the means to logically melt.

Research on BAF

The task for this new brief is to produce a piece of animation for Bradford Animation Festival. It is important to know the client so I did some quick research on previously held festivals.

Bradford’s National Media Museum is a museum which specializes in recording, documenting, interacting and engaging everyone with creative media. The BAF 2014 will be held there on the 17-22 November and is open to all kinds of submissions and explorations of animation and takes on the themes.

Cited from the official website: “The UK’s longest-running animation festival takes place every November at the National Media Museum in Bradford, UK. Host to screen talks, retrospectives, workshops and special events by some of the industry’s top names the festival culminates in the annual BAF Awards, which celebrate the very best in new animation from around the world.”

 

The winners of BAF 2013 can be found here. The winning animations explore a variety of different animation techniques and creative and heart touching ways of telling a story through a theme.

Bradford National Media Museum also hosts other kinds of festivals which should be noted, one of which is the International Film Festival. BIFF has been taking place since 1995 and has over the years seen some outstanding pieces of work and short films, those interested in film making alongside animation should research further into this festivity.

Introduction to a new task

Several weeks ago after completing the Billboard task, I was introduced to a new brief, although my blogging has been inactive, since that moment I have been working towards the final outcome..

The brief stated that an animation was required of me, 8 seconds in time, after doing some experimenting I found that in flash, on 25fps, using singles this would be roughly around 200 frames.

The brief states that the organizers of Bradford Animation Festival have invited my agency (picturethisillustrations) to create a short professional film to participate in the event, the theme for this animation is ‘Change of State’. For this task, our group will chose 2 of the listed subject suggestions and each. Themes listed were:

• Human to superhero 
• Human to werewolf 
• Seed to plant/flower 
• Caterpillar to butterfly 
• Tadpole to frog 
• Snowman melting down to water 
• Flesh decaying to bone
• Other (must be confirmed by client)

After a group discussion my agency decided together on the themes of tadpole to frog, and snowman melting

The strict requirements for the Flash animated film consist of:

• a minium of 8 seconds (no upper time limit)
• must be on the theme of ‘change of state’
• format must conform to the standard widescreen aspect ratio of 1024×576 pixels
• frames at 25 per second
• colour and sound are optional

I decided that I would tackle the snowman melting animation as I felt I could have fun exploring the way the shape and structure of the snowman would decay, the falling and creases of his scarf realistically and add slight humour to the snowman’s positions. 

Presented Design

 

 

 

Above is the very final of my billboard design. I made a few tweaks to the final product so that it fits to the other members designs with a running layout theme showing that we all worked together as a group to present our themes ideas as one organisation. Creating this image was a fun and enjoyable task, and I am excited to present this to our client with our other work ready for their final choice.