Group Project Logs

Here's a log of which roles I played in the various different group projects we've been assigned throughout the first year

Pixelation Project
I believe this was the first group project we had to do, although it was a minor one. I didn't actually feature in the video, or really play a big part, but there was a lot of us in the group and the entire thing was created in one day. My part in this video was some work with the camera, taking the stills, positioning and moving props around and small bits and pieces like that. I believe James and Sean edited it and added the titles etc afterwards.
Role: Camera work, Bits and Bobs.



Exhibition Project
In this project Sean and I decided to create an exhibition for the work of the Animator Jan Svankmajer. We came together on numerous occasions to discuss thoughts and ideas for the project, and spent a few days working on the plan for the exhibition and the pieces that we would show in it. We worked up a final booklet to showcase the exhibition, which I created in photoshop while Sean helped make decisions about the look of it. Deciding on the writing inside the booklet was very much a joint process.
Role: Ideas/Brainstorming with Sean, Creating look of Booklet in Photoshop, Co-writing Booklet with Sean.







Student Project
I was mainly in the Pre-production team for this project. I initially went through the script with the rest of the team and brainstormed ideas for the characters we would create from it. We then went away and each drew a few rough pages of ideas and a final look for the characters we were assigned to by the project manager, Holly. In my case this was the Ant character. When all the characters were designed, most of the team went away to storyboard, while I had the job of creating backgrounds for most of the animations. I created 5 in all and handed them over to the team to animate.
Role: Pre-production (Brainstorming/Ideas, Character Design), Background Design in Photoshop.

Alien Background

Beetle Background

Dolphin Background

Ant Background

Rhino Background


Library Project
I moved onto this project straight after completing the backgrounds for the Student Project, and was assigned the opening scene of the animation. My job was to Animate the character over the top of the rough render of the 3D scenes, which I completed yesterday :D
Role: 2D Animator, Scene One.



Original Video - More videos at TinyPic
(Ignore the rough background and crappy quality)

stuff

Time for an update, I think. So yesterday was the third(?) day of intense flash animation for me and... I didn't like it. I was sick of flash already and found myself getting increasingly frustrated with it, not necessarily for a certain reason but I was in a bad mood with it. I kept going though, and I'm actually very pleased with the results. I did the scene where the guy is swallowed by the book, and even though I had to deal with nasty camera angles/movements and perspective, I did it and looking at it today i like it. I think that's the thing with flash and other 2D animating stuff, you fiddle around drawing a million drawings and nudge them along in tiny incriments, clearly punishing yourself horribly because you hate yourself or something, then in the end you get a lovely moving thing.

Yeah so I hated it yesterday, I wondered why I was doing this when I would much rather be keyframing some model that was already made and didn't need me to draw out every single frame. And I'm not sure whether it's the rewarding feeling I got from looking at the scene this morning, or the fact i'm listening to my favourite band whilst doing today's scene, or maybe because I haven't done anything complicated today, but by some freak brain accident I've actually been enjoying it and am considering doing some animating in my own time??!??? It feels therapeutic, helps forget my hangover.

I just tried to make a movie of my last scene but I'm not sure how, so I won't upload it, but here's a crappy mockup of how the final thing will look to make my blog more beautiful: