jousting animation (final outcome and module reflection)

Jousting match animation (Final outcome)

Evaluation and reflection

At the beginning of the Innovative animation module, I worked with a number of people on different projects throughout the first five week period. The techniques we learnt through course of each one included the Artist BLU street art animation which we did through the form of chalk; Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette style; time-lapse method through photography; multiplane method of using multiple frames going over on top of each other and Caroline leaf’s oil painting style of animation through using sand materials.

What’s worked best through all groups I’ve been with is working with different people, building confidence on leading, helping and communicating at times with other members; planning, executing and finishing the main scenario before deadlines. Even learning many ways animation can take form from through useful experimentation that would help build ideas to make my animations unique and different.

What didn’t work well in groups was in some case the lack of communication, mostly online and worrying that myself or other members aren’t contributing enough towards the projects as other group members.

In the last half of the module, our task was to create an individual animation inspired by the group projects we did at the beginning. First approach was planning decent ideas that would fit the outcome. The main ideas include faces that morph into different emotions or features and the other was a jousting match. The idea I chose was the joust as it fitted the criteria I want for the outcome. My original though was to use the silhouette technique as it was a method I enjoyed when filming. But to make my animation more interesting I decided to use mixed media elements, comprised of drawing, puppeteering stop motion and multiplane. For starters I produced character designs for the puppets and a storyboard to form the main scenario of the scene. Then I started to rotoscope footage from internet research of the jousting scenes I needed which was done on TVs paint; drawing the outlines of the jousters then filling the colours in with backgrounds. Next, I used after effects to form multiplane backgrounds to move with certain scenes in the animation which once each background is positioned in the right time length, it blends into tv paint with the scene.

Next was filming the puppets, which were made from black card for body parts and white paper to create different emotions for each character. Once each scene of stop motion was done, the next thing to do was blend them in with the backgrounds which were both done in tv paint aswell as placing them in between rotoscoping scenes based on the storyboard. Once that was done, the last thing was blending the puppets with the rest of the animation, by using the drawing tools to sketch the shape and shading onto the puppet images using only black and white colours.

The final thing after exporting was putting a decent soundtrack based on sounds that would be normally heard in a jousting match through adobe Audition then placed with the footage on premiere pro from the free sound website and YouTube.

The best part of this piece was creating my own technique by mixing drawing with stop motion. What I could improve on is mainly time management when planning and executing the production stage and being able to do all scenes I planned from the storyboard; and I would like to improve my sound making skills to make the animations more interesting.