Final Blog Entry

For this project I animated Olivia, A young girl stuck in an abusive relationship, her world is in black and white she comes across until a mysterious keyhole that pushes her to leave which in turn revives the colour in her. For this I did a lot of research, I researched about how depressed people walk, act and look. I wanted the animation to be slightly gloomy and eerie, for this, the light had to be minimal and the background too. I first wanted the animation to be a low angle shot and then pans up to a mid shot, but then I decided to make it a wide shot for the whole animation. As she “transforms into colour” I wanted her to seem like her confidence was boosted so I made her smile at the end and have her standing upright rather than hunched like in the beginning.

I have redone this animation about seven times and I’m still not one hundred percent happy with it. The walk is wobbly and they hand jerk. I have made another animation with a slightly better walk but she shrunk and then the end of the animation was all wrong. I haven’t had much luck with animate either, it has crashed on me multiple times. I think where I went wrong in my animation was in the rough I hadn’t taken into consideration the length of the walk and the timing. One thing I have struggled with most is the timing charts, I wrote down all my time charts and tried to figure out the timing of the characters actions but with no luck. When I made my animations rough it was very stiff and the walk was very unrealistic, then I re- did my walk and she looked too confident and she was walking too fast.
After tirelessly trying to get it right I went with the one that looked the best despite the wobbly walk.

I had some comments on how the shape of her wasn’t entirely correct so I changed her a bit and made her look more like the original character. Some of my peers said it would be a good idea to make her hesitate before touching the door so I tried to do this and also adding facial expressions that might make it clear that she’s scared of what would happen if she touched the door. I feel like mostly the comments were relating to the walk, and that was so hard to try and fix.

Olivia

So this is my animation, unfinished as i am going to change the walk cycle because its a bit (very) wobbly.

Olivia Update

Here is my rough animation of Olivia, I'm still unsure about the walk and I would love to try it again but I might run out of time for my clean up, Its not as smooth as i would like it to be.

Work In Progress

Im getting there slowly but surely right? I have made the walk less bouncy and added the ending. I now need to try and fix her last pose and maybe make it a little longer. I need to do inbetweens fro her walk to make it look smoother as well.

Olivia WIP

So I've decided to start again for the second time. My previous animation had gotten lots of comments saying she looked confident and she was walking too fast. I was already trying to fix the problem of speed but now i am trying to fix her posture. I've decided to make her "hunch over" and look a bit more like she is trying to protect herself, Hence, I made her arm cross over in front of her body.

Here is the animation I am working on at the moment, what I have done so far.

This is the animation I am working on at the moment with my previous animation.

This is the one I am working on at the moment with my original concept.

Olivia Update

My previous animation for Olivia's transformation was too stiff so I decided to start back from the beginning. This is the new rough draft. I still need to make her walk cycle slower and look like she's scared. 

Olivia's Transformation Mini Animatic

Here is my little "animatic" of Olivia's transformation.

I want her walk to be a little bit slower and more hesitant so i will see what it would look like after i animate every frame. 

Olivia Thumbnail Sketches

For Olivia's transformation, I wanted it to look like a watercolour effect, or a 'when pigment mixes with colour effect" :


The background {see previous post}, I want it to be fairly simple so as to not take the attention away from Olivia, but also not too simple because I still want the viewer to realise and see she is in a room. It also has to be dull and faint as the only light source in the room is coming from the Keyhole man.

I looked up some gifs and images for reactions. I imagined she would be shocked or surprised :



I also hesitated between making her looked surprised and making her look "Stunned"?

Olivia Background Concept

This is what I have been working on for the Olivia animation background. I tried to play with lighting effects on photoshop. This is my first try for the draft just to see where everything would be and how all the objects would work together [Keeping in mind the rule of thirds] Most of the room you don't see but I still wanted it to seem as real as possible and wasn't going to leave just one side of the room blank. I will have to work on the shading as well as my line work. For the background I wanted it to  look eerie therefore have fewer objects in the room.

Olivia Research

So for this assignment, I have to study a character called Olivia. She is a shy, depressed girl in her twenties, abused by her partner. Because of this, I have decided to make the theme of the story very gloomy and sad. She transforms when she steps out of a keyhole. This, I think, (Although I am not sure) signifies her death. Her escaping the hardships of life and becoming a more confident person because after all when you die you don't have any more worries. The keyhole man nags her along her journey telling her to come with him and escape her relationship. The story is in black and white leading up to her transformation when she then turns to colour. I want her to hesitate as she gets out of the door but then turns back and realises that she's doing what's best for her. I have not yet decided what type of transformation she will undergo. Obviously, she will have to have a fast transformation due to the time limit of the animation (4-6 seconds). I looked at a lot of animation environments, most of then seemed to fit what I had envisioned for her house. As the original creator of Olivia had already looked up the house setting I already had a clear idea of what kind of room I was dealing with. I had to study the character to see the way she would walk and act.

Research For Olivia

I tried to look for gifs that would help me with animating my animation. The best thing I found was that gifs were really good for this sort of animation because it needs to be short. I wanted her transformation to not occur so abruptly even with the short amount of time that I have to animate the transformation. At first, I envisioned in my mind that the room could be flooded with light as she touches the Keyhole and then fades and we see her changed. Then I went to a concept of the colour starting from when her hand touches the keyhole and gradually diffusing throughout her body from there (the source).  I liked the lighting in "the paperman" Gif where there is a lot of light behind her. I was thinking I could eventually do something like that. I liked the idea of starting off with her face as well, or maybe even having a close-up of her face as she is transforming or at the end of her transformation. I will have to make concepts for all the ideas that I have.  

Concept Development; ZED

Here I tried experimenting with Zed's facials and expressions. I realised that when making an animated character like zed, come to life all the actions have to be super exaggerated because not only is she young but she looks super bubbly and full of excitement. Her features are also very exaggerated, like her legs and arms are way too long for her body, but it suits her character. I made the final sequence development and have decided that she will find a teddy bear that she had lost or never seen before, therefore she will be surprised and excited. "Holy Smokes!"

Concepts And Thumbnails

So for my animation, I want her to look surprised, obviously because of what she is saying. Im still not sure at this point what she will be surprised about. I am thinking of making her surprised about a science experiment at school. Possibly also surprised about a human object, something simple, like maybe even a water bottle or a phone.

Mind Map and More Research

Journaling And Brainstorming Week 1.1

I have to make a dialogue Animation on a character called Zed, i have to figure out what she will be, where she will be and what she will be doing. For this the first step is to look at all the different possibilities and explore them. I have been looking up things to do with the animation that i will be doing. I have a couple of things that Zed could be. She will be saying "Wow, Holy Smokes"
1.If she were to be in the future or a sci fi setting she would have to be in a gloomy looking environment. Environments in the future will certainly be more evolved than anything we see in our everyday life which means there will be a lot more things going on.
2.If i have her coming from a planet like mars, then there is less likely to be many things on the planet.This therefore opens a lot of opportunity on what she could be surprised about. She could have never even seen a shoe before therefore would be fascinated at the site of one.
3. Then again if she comes from somewhere not on earth she would have to obviously be an alien of some sort.