My original appointed supervisor, Lynn Parker, returned from absence this week so I had an opportunity to rehears explaining the current state of my project, ahead of this week’s progress presentation. I explained the changes to my project since the project proposal whereby I had focused on materials and movement in particular from the wider range of stylistic affordances I had planned to look at.
I showed my work from late last semester and the beginning of this semester and focused mainly on the recent development of my storyboards and a practical test from last week. Using the feedback from this, I will shape my presentation to cover things I’ve missed or need to expand on.
Storyboards
I showed the current iteration of my story idea which was well received. Like previous feedback, because I hadn’t storyboarded the ending, my explanation of the ending wasn’t enough to communicate my ideas. I will ensure I have storyboarded an ending even if it isn’t set in stone as the final ending idea.
I am apparently approaching the project well in regards to tying my practical work to my written work. My storyboard is doing well to highlight techniques and themes I have been researching.
Practical Work
Feedback on the pixilation/clay animation was interesting in that my attempt to animate one thing at 15fps and another at 30fps was unusual and not often approached. Interestingly, there was an uncanny feel to the real life hand which was running at the higher frames-per-second. This was the opposite of my intention when initially creating the animation where I thought having the hand appear smoother would make it appear more “real”. However due to the nature of pixilation animation and my attempt at it, I had made the character feel more natural than the real hand. This was something I hadn’t considered until now, and while this doesn’t detract from the created work, it does shed some light on how I might approach future pixilation. The lower frames-per-second gives of the animated charm I like and so pixilation animation at this same fps will probably feel more natural in this fps.
Presentation
I showed my presentation draft which consisted of showing previous work, current work, the storyboard for my final animation, and where I was going next with the production of the final animation.
The structure of the presentation was overall good. I will want to introduce my concept better by showing some examples of other work that is similar to mine before going into the story.
I am perhaps showing too much of my storyboards and would be better to pick some key shots to better communicate what my story is and the themes I am focusing on. Although I wasn’t particularly too keen to make a new animatic for the revised story idea, I recognise that I will need to as part of the creative process which will allow me to understand the pacing. Since my last animatic helped me to communicate my idea and identify faults, I will now definitely be looking to make a storyboard for this new idea.
Lynn also showed some animations which had similar themes to the animation I was creating. She showed early animations that often featured the animator alongside the animation. These early animations started as camera trickery and were used more for performance purposes rather than focus on characterisation.
This is some of the animations Lynn showed me, I’m going to continue researching this area so that I can expand my knowledge and potentially include some of these as examples in my dissertation.