Creative Explorations - Summary

Overall this project was a success for me. Being able to visualize your narrative in terms of composition is one thing but being able to prototype a fully rendered look for it is a whole new challenge. I really appreciated having the chance to apply my illustration and colouring skills which have been on the back burner for some time.

Animation Technique
I do like the cut out animation for the water elements. This technique will save time for a fully animated piece. I’d like to explore what else I can do with it. I will keep my choice of using 2D cell-like animated characters. I do need to fine tune how to colour them without getting too elaborate in the shading department.

Content, Story & Character
This scene is a working intro for a larger storyline called Sun Dog. It’s about a girl, Cara living in a abandoned lighthouse waiting for her Dad to return home from fishing. He is lost at sea in a storm. Sun Dog meets Cara and is able to aid her in bringing her Dad home. I am content with the story at the moment but I find Cara’s character really dull. She needs to be more outgoing and visibly getting more and more panicked as time progresses. I have since thought up a few ideas which will be in my next animatic.

Sound synchronization
I am happy with the high quality stock sounds I found in the library. I found everything I needed to set the mood of the storm at sea. However the folly sounds felt very rough. I found it difficult to find thumps, footsteps etc to match the materials even with adjusting the levels. This tells me I need to budget for either buying some folly online or making my own. Also Cara will need a voice actor.

Revelations
I discovered that I am on board for this storyline. Haha! Every time I work on it I think of improvements. That’s good right?

Unexpected surprises?
I didn’t anticipate how long cleaning up and colouring takes. And for the love of animating do cut out animation in After Effects not Premier. Compositions are your friend.

Challenges faces? Unanticipated hurdles?
The biggest challenge was how to approach the lighting of Sun Dog. Not really pleased with how it ended up in this project. It needs a lot more prototyping. I’ve been doing my research on glowing creatures that are animated in 2D.

What features will you continue with in developing your proposal? What would you like to research?
I will continue with the Sun Dog story. I would like to research more ways to colour 2D animation, and develop the character of Cara. This summer I plan to visit a light house to do some research on location.

What would you do differently? New proactive, reasonable goals you could set?
If anything I would have started the colouring process sooner. I suppose this was due to my critique group being last so I only had one week to pull it all together after my final leica crit.

Concept Art

Some concept art. Reverting back to my old ways of digital painting just for fun. (Black outline with painterly colouring.) The face proportions are a bit large >.<

Used some Miyazaki inspiration for how black contours would look for character animation. The process takes me way too long with my tablet, but doable I think if I did my clean up on a cintiq.

Creative Explorations - Final

Creative Explorations from Tegan T on Vimeo.

It's finally done! I like where the textured cut outs & painterly layouts are going. Still experimenting how I want to render my characters though.

Some of the cuts are a bit sudden. I made the mistake of not using After Effects for some of the more complicated composites. The Premier project got really heavy and it was lagging a bit. Sound is a bit rough. I would like to make it richer with better Foley. So that is where I would polish this project further given time.

On the whole this was very useful project. It's rewarding to see a fully rendered preview after working with so many line tests. The only negative feedback is related to how the critiques were organized. I know it's a time issue, but being in the last group I felt that I was 2 weeks behind where I should be. Having only one week to address my latest crit to my leica roughs, colour and animate was a crazy workload.

So far positive responses for my story :) Infinite happiness!