Story Animation

Main Point

The main scope of this project was for us to learn how to put many animation skills together into a complete story with a beginning middle and end. We had to use the animation techniques that we had been learning throughout the quarter and find a way to put them all together. This was also my first larger animation so I was also learning project management and how to use time effectively and find ways to make things more simple.

 Process

This project had a very long process including preparation work and creation of backgrounds/ characters, then animation work trying to bring it all together and even editing after the final was done and feedback had been received to try and make the animation better. The time spent one these areas was very large but overall was worth it and the result of the project was worth all the work.

Pre Creation 

The first step was to brainstorm for ideas I could use on the project such as the tank escape or maybe a robot destroying a city, most of these ideas got scratched early on and he final idea for a tiki getting captured and then escaping was picked. Then I created a plan for my animation including a story line pyramid and story boards. After that I tried to figure out what would be the easiest was to create the many scenes and how I could reuse backgrounds to make the project a little easier. Then I drew my main characters and used a scan to put them into the computer.

Creation

Once on the computer the first thing I did was take the original character scans and use the paint bucket tool to color them in and then use the paintbrush tool to give them ams and legs. Next I started to create the backgrounds for my story which took a lot of time due to the fact that my story took place in a rainforest and there is a lot of detail that I had to put into making the trees and vines look right. This was defiantly the most time consuming part of creating everything for the animation but did turn out looking how I wanted it. Then I went back through h and created the other prop type objects I would need and fixed or fine tuned anything I found that looked off when I was double checking.

Animation

At this stage I was ready to combine everything into one final animation but it would not be as easy as I thought. To create a story with multiple scenes in Adobe Premier you are required to create multiple compositions and add them all together into a final composition. The individual compositions each gad to be made as if I working on operate projects and they took up large amounts of time trying to figure out how I could make things look the way I wanted

Change

If I were to redo parts of the project I would use the critics I got from my class to help me know what would be best to change. The first thing I would change would be to make some of the walk cycles more smooth and keep the feet from slipping as much. I would also take more time on making the trees that are further back look more faded and have less detail so that it looks more like they are far away. Another thing that could be better is I could connect the scene where the tiki falls in the hole and the next scene where he's in a cage better so that it makes more sense.

Favorite

My favorite part of my animation is the overall art works and how all of it looks like its the same style and that it all looks like it goes together, I think this is a very important part of an animation so that it looks like one complete animation not a bunch of things thrown together. I also like my tiki characters and think they are well done and help add a lot to the story.

                                   Takeaway 

The biggest take away for me from this project would be project management because this being our first larger scale project and I had a lot of things to get done for my animation Sometimes it was hard to find time for everything. I found that keeping your files organized and knowing what you want to have done by certain times is very helpful in keeping things running smoothly and making sure the project ends up done on time.

Conclusion

In conclusion this project was a lot of fun and taught me a lot about how to manage my time and eep things on track but didn't come with its struggles. The project has helped prepare me for other large projects in the future and proved to be a very valuable experience. although there are things that could be worked on more I am overall very pleased with the results of my project and am very glad I put the time into it that I did so that I could make it who I wanted.