Reflection

As with every project, I immediately hate it the moment I've finished it. Well, that's not true. There's plenty of it I like. I like the art style and a lot of the monologue. 

On reflection I should've paid more attention to pacing, not cutting between the lines so fast to reach the end of the character's emotional journey. Also, I'd have liked to have made some styleframes to consolidate the art style before proceeding so boldly.

Lip sync, or a moving moustache, would've been a useful addition. I didn't include it because I didn't have the time, and because Premiere was being a NIGHTMARE that kept breaking my project whenever I saved it, so I found it hard to splice in edited clips. However, I feel that a lack of lip sync removes some connection between the action and the words and puts a barrier between the character and audience. A disembodied voice can instill a sense of unease.

Furthermore, I must better consider the flow of my shots and storyboard more thoughtfully for effect

Style Inspiration for Practical Work

In researching my practical piece, I came across Mikey Please's 'The Eagleman Stag' which addresses a similar topic to my monologue about the finite-ness of time. It also heavily features a monologue and I liked voice actor David Cann's dry delivery. I drew inspiration from its dramatic tone.

In Please's video 'Making the Eagleman Stag, Please animates God as an abstract-looking character. I used this as inspiration for my own character design as it seemed easy to animate fast and it was expressive and stylised. One of my goals this year is to make no two animations look similar, so I'm keen to draw inspiration from outside my regular well of sources.

Finished Animation

I finished all my animation today and will stitch it together tomorrow. I'm pleased with it. I think I may look a little into some ambient sounds to heighten the MOOD as at this point I'm aiming for a complete film. 

Had I more time/ done more pre-production, I would have condensed the monologue further and recorded it in a few moods, from despondent to bold and outraged to frantic. As it stands, the recording is sombre and reflective, which I think is excellent and I adapted the visuals to fit that. However, for the sake of experimentation, it possibly would've been nice to have experienced a slew of tones.

Animating largely on 3s looked better than I suspected it might and I saved time by giving the character a boiling line effect, reducing the need for total precision.

Finishing my ESSAY

With 40 seconds of line animation left to do which I WILL do (I'm so so so so so close), I've finally finished my essay and will take it to be bound today. I was advised to get it proofread so I got my Mum who is a proofreader to do it. She helped me identify some grammatical errors, mistakes in referencing and such things and now it's lookin bloody ship shape, let me tell you.

I'm pleased with the outcome of my essay, generally, and I think the tight deadline helped us all work faster. 

Now, to animate incredibly fast.

Academic Posters

Writing my academic poster was a ROARING success. A useful study task that forced me to summarise my practice during this module in only a few words.

This is a small version of it. A major criticism of it was my TERRIBLE resolution. Everything looked quite pixelly. I must familiarise myself further with Adobe InDesign to avoid this mistake a second time. Otherwise, I was told that it didn't look very interesting but the info was clear and concise.

That's just how I work, normally. I don't waste my precious poster space with a bunch of ornamental rubbish. I'm there for the cold hard FACTS.

ANIMATINGGGG

I'm 28 seconds through my 1 minute 30 second animation. I'll probably just submit line art to convey the character performance, the whole point of the exercise, but after that it won't be too much of a stretch to actually finish to a point where I'm happy to upload the film online. I feel I have to complete the film now, since Barry Purves recorded it for me.

I won't colour in the characters. That's unnecessary. I would like to add a spotlight and some grain to certain elements of the scene to add visual flair but right now I just care about finishing the performance.

Russell's brain, with a trippy art style.

Russell Wagner in the real world

With the real world character, I'll keep the animation traditional. With the abstract character I'm animating on threes and the whole thing is a lot more loosey-goosey. This has the added benefit of speeding up the animation PROCESS
Happy with how it's goin so far.

Tutorial 28/11/18

My PENULTIMATE tutorial yielded insight. Finally, I'm approaching the home stretch. Ahead lies a lot of arduous line animation but I'm sure it'll be FINE.

Firstly, my monologue is far better received than before. The most valuable thing I've learned from this module is that you can cut dialogue quite savagely to the piece's benefit. To think my initial draft was 7 pages long. Now I've condensed to fifteen lines or so.

I've considered further why I'm making this film animated, and have storyboarded some interesting shots and abstract imagery to punctuate the words. Barry Purves' generous recording was great, and his cadence and tone influence the character's physicality.

Essay-wise, I was told to triangulate better and to guide the audience to my natural seeming conclusion. My essay has the substance, I'm told, but doesn't read naturally as I swerve between quotes and my own opinions. So as long as I re-jig it and consider flow, it will all be good.