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Final thoughts

Reflection of the brief

From the start of the brief I was someone who hardly could animate even the shortest clip. I was behind even on animatics, due to still learning how to use program properly. However despite all difficulties I managed to push through. My quick sketching skill improved dramatically, as well as understanding about how to make animations in the program of mu choosing.

Tho say the least I am very satisfied with the work that I managed to produce, while working on my skill as an animator. Probably in the future projects I will not be that far behind and will finish them in time long before the deadline.

All in all it was extremely fun and educational working on those animatics and animations, and I am looking forward to creating more stunning stories and bringing them to life as animations

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Animation 2 - Dark and Light

Final work

Finally this animation is done as well. This one also took a lot of time to finish it and get it right, however I think I made it pretty well. A bit saddened that I couldn’t add any shadows, but the deadline somehow was a lot sooner than I expected.

In this animation I really enjoyed how smooth some motions are due to my new way of animating, however, I didn’t manage to make it smooth no matter how hard I try. Although, it is already a full made animation I think there still are the ways to improve it. Maybe after the initial deadline I can continue working on this animation on my own time and maybe even make it colorful

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Animation 2 - Dark and light

New animation skill

This animation probably would have been ten times harder if only at one point I didn’t remember the advice that our tutor gave us. We don’t have to overcomplicate the animation with movements. For some easy ones we can just stretch already existing frame to make a better transition into next frame. I decided to test that advice and it worked very well

It saves a whole lot of time and makes the animation smoother. I will continue developing this animation further and if I have some spare time in the end I might add shadows to the characters, just to make them a bit better or maybe even more interesting

Also I think it would be an interesting fact that I decided to give charaters these colors. Since the theme is dark and light logically it would have been logical to choose black and white, however I decided to make them red and white because of the colors from the show. Their light and dark nature is revealed by their deeds. One tries to escape with others and the other tries to kill them all. Both of them are the same person but they are so different.

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Animation 2 - Dark and light

Old vs new comparison

As I started working on this animation I decided go combine two styles from the animation which I was referencing in the previous post. I combined backgrounds as just line art and the characters are colored to make them distinct from their surroundings.

Since on the previous animation I was comparing two sequences from newer and older animations, here I would do the same. And the scene which I want to talk about is this running scene from the beginning og the animation

In the old version it was a static motion, and the character just slid towards the screen. There was no animation, not even the flipping if the character as if to make it appear that he is walking. Well that is expected for animatic, however, in the animation I decided to go full out and make it semi realistic movement

I think it looks incredible. I never animated running towards the camera so it was a bit challenging, however I think i did pretty well and I will continue on with the animation to make it perfect

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Animation 2 - Dark and light

Thoughts and plans

Since I chose this animation, firstly I need to think how exactly I will make it better. Since I spend too much time on Animation 1 - Stranded, now I want to make this one somewhat simple. Not because I don’t have much time but because I want to experiment with styles since here there are too many flames so the no line art style wouldn’t work. Since I have no idea how exactly to animate this one I decided to look back into more animatics of other people for inspiration

First animation is just a simple line art work. Simple idea, not many colors used, but perhaps too simple for what I am looking for. However the creator of this animation uses only two colors(Red and white) which I really like and also use in my animation

I’m, H. (2024). Honey I’m Home | Generation Loss Animatic / PMV (SPOILERS !!). [online] YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/M0uprATGIU0?si=DmmIxpcDQjsQvylv [Accessed 19 Jan. 2025]. ‌

Second animatic is a bit more complicated but still the style is relatively easy. Just the characters are colored into colors that they associate more with. I might take this idea into my animatic since it look good

Love (2023). Lay All Your Love on Me || A Generation Loss Charlie Slimecicle Animatic. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/hW5lxEhj1WU?si=vWW_mf3oeQycwmVl [Accessed 19 Jan. 2025]. ‌

Finally the last animatic is full colored and even with some shadows. Yes it looks amazing, however I don’t think that I will manage to pull something like that. Creator of that animatic used a very interesting palette. My knowlege of color theory and palettes is very bad, so I just don’t think that I will be able to pull this off

Loss, G. (2023). DAYLIGHT || Generation Loss Animatic. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/DYG_ckGtVwY?si=1AwgMJ_f_qPdPvxR [Accessed 19 Jan. 2025]. ‌

In conclusion I want to say that I will think about what I can do with my animatic to make it better and test all ideas to see what will work best

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Animation 1 - Stranded

Final work

Finally I managed to finish this animation. Even if it looked easy as an animatic, the process of turning it into animation was long and tedious. Couple of times while working on it I thought about changing the animation entirely. However, I decided to persist with it and now I am glad to say that O am very much happy with the results that I got.

Although the animal animation still looks a bit weird, but at this point of time it is the best that I could have achieved with the skill that I poses at the moment

Over all It turned out great, but I am not much of a fan to draw people in this style

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Animation 1 - Stranded

New way to animate found

The animation I started very strong, however, I have underestimated the time that it will take to draw int the no line style. However even with all of that trouble I a\manage to learn something new about usage of Procreate dreams and animation there

I learned how to make groups in animation, which helped me tremendously, since I manage to make the animation even better that it was before. By grouping art that helped me to atimate some details int the picture and then move whole composition, creating zoom effects or any other movement with “camera” that is depicting all of that

Also while we still looking at the image that I attach I wanted to talk about animals. No matter how hard I tied I couldn’t manage to make them more presentable or realistic. So the deer that you are seeing is the final version which I decided to leave in the animation as it is. Since they pass the camera fast I don’t think this will be noticeable

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Animation 1 - Stranded

Comparison between old and new

I only started on improving the backgrounds and I am already shocked by results that I managed to achieve

Looking at backgrounds from Hayao Miyazaki I managed to lear couple of tricks to help me color leaves. It turns out it wasn’t that complicated. I found the perfect brush to simulate leaves and after that the only thing that I needed to do was just to understand where the lights are and then shade accordingly

To be honest I knew what to expect from no line art style, however, never even in my dreams I would have imagined that it will turn out this perfect. Maybe if I knew how to shade better or my skill in background creation was better, I would have made buildings that closely resemble the real life ones

All in all I want to say that the animation is going great and I am extremely hyped up to finish it to see how it will play out

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Animatic 1 - Stranded

Thoughts, plans and a bit of research

Since I pick this animation I definitely will face some challenges. First of all I have no idea how to properly draw leaves and foliage in general. Buildings are relatively easy to shade but leaves. To learn how to draw that better I probably will need a bit of inspiration. For example works of Hayao Miyazaki since they are always showing amazing backgrounds

(Fig. 1-4) Princess Mononoke. (1997). [Film] Toho.

I decided to study this animation of backgrounds in particular because I wanted to make all the animation in the no line art style. I know it will be complicated. However, the realism which this style bring would help tremendously in boosting the aesthetic of this animation

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Animation decision

Final thoughts and choice

In comparison all the animatics that I made have their own plusses and minuses and here I want to discuss all of them and decide which one will I pick to move forward with

Animatic 1 - Dark and light

+ Theme which I want to animate

+Everything done except backgrounds

-Might be too complicated, will not have enough time

Animatic 2 - Growth and decay

+ Interesting animation practice with unusual views

- I don’t like the story and changing it will mean reworking the animation from scratch

Animatic 3 - Places of Mind

+ Great and long awaited concept

+ Many interesting details

+ Easy to animate due to not may backgrounds

- Might seem boring

Animatic 4 - Echoes

+ Everything is ready even the backgrounds

+ Interesting plot

- The echoes part still confuses on how to animate it

Animatic 5 - Stranded

+ Great backgrounds

+ Over all easy animation

- Animals are hard

Judging by all that was presented, my own choices are on animatics 1,3,5. In class we also made a vote and basically my classmates chose the same 3 that I did. However, even if I wanted to take Animatic 3 - Places of mind , but I think it would be more interesting and diverse to take Animatic 5 - Stranded. I will have one dynamic animatic and one where it is amazing scenery. I think that will work really well

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Animatic 5 - Stranded

Final result

Final animatic looks decent enough. With the sketchy backgrounds it doesn’t look that good, however that is what I can do at the given time. Maybe if I continue working on the animation further it will look better

The good things that I can point out in this animation, again it is its concept of the desolate city. If the background be more detailed or just not this choppy it would have been more interesting. Also it is a good practice to draw perspective and foliage. The other good thing that is in this animatic for practice, are animals. Studying their movement definitely was very entertaining

Also another thing that was suggested on the crit is to make the person in the end look at the camera. For time given I didn’t make it, but for the future I definitely will remember to do that

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Animatic 5 -Stranded

Half work done

At this moment of time I managed to finish the half of the animatic. In comparison to others it look really simple and too easy to make, however the backgrounds and animal movements take a long time to make properly.

Since there is not enough movements in the frames I decided that this animation would be based solely on the backgrounds and how they are made. For animatic there simple one would suffice however to make the animatic better I will have to implement some more complicated art tools and shadows to turn the backgrounds into something decent.

On the plus side I think my experimentation with sounds in this animation reached their peak. I am using many sounds from free to use libraries. For example: birds chirping which create great ambience. Cities are usually really busy with people so it is rare to hear anything but cars. But here in this stranded city, where nature reclaimed it the sounds of birds are like an indicator that the wilderness had reclaimed this place

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Animatic 5 - Stranded

Thoughts and some work

I decided to go with a story with a character who is stranded in a desolate city. I decided not to make the back story for a character. The animatic is probably like an advertisement for some film, since the character appears only in the end as if foreshadowing the story that will begin.

My main proud moment right now is the backgrounds that I am making. It is my first time making such complicated backgrounds and I think for an animatic i managed to do a good job, at least indicating where and what is going to go. Perspective art is not my strongest, but the buildings are not that complicated, just big 3D rectangles. Although, if I would say about difficult part, that would probably be a perspective of windows. They were just to hard to put into place properly.

Nevertheless, it is already a bit unnerving to think of creating this into a full animation for future project since it will definitely take a huge amount of time

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Animatic 5 - Stranded

Inspiration, ideas and music

The last animatic that I want to make is to the theme Stranded. My general idea is to create something entirely without humans since the previous animatics all featured the main character as a human. I can create some distant island where only animal roam

Although after researching and looking through some animation I think it would be better to add a human at the end. Then It will be as if the world has been destroyed and that lone human is stranded in the wild that used to be the cities that the humans once were living in. The great example for the world like that would be this video, showing 3 robots in a post apocalyptic world

Death, L. (2022). Love, Death Robots / Three Robots: Exit Strategies. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/FQcMPUw7rWI?si=XHa6uhVrGhL5eS2a [Accessed 19 Jan. 2025]. ‌

On the other hand this animation is depicting how everything could come to mass extinction of humans. I might use the concept of war as a thing that wiped out all humans and that way I can make buildings mire broken, with hols in the ground and many other things showing that it was a war world which returned to the wilderness after humans were gone

Resilience | Animated Short | CalArts Film 2023. YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/F1QRZki3zb8?si=-LRQXHok2qew6oL6 [Accessed 19 Jan. 2025]. ‌

This animation or anime if I say it correctly is depicting how after some catastrophic event the whole humanity was turned into stone. After a while one person wakes up and tries to save the world. That might be an interesting way to spin the story of why in my animatic there one human still in the world, when others are gone

STONE, D. (2019). Dr. STONE | OFFICIAL PREVIEW. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/7YZzYeBartM?si=Z5lDs2_DLOE9EC2t [Accessed 19 Jan. 2025]. ‌

The sound that I picked out for this animation is this one. I decided to use just the ambience without any words. Since this song is mostly calm, I can create long shots of some places depicting the desolate city

Desire (2024). Soft Weight of Slow Desire. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/A4IConEi72w?si=GlBwrdiskkiMmMR3 [Accessed 19 Jan. 2025]. ‌

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Animatic 4 - Echoes

Final work

Finally the work on this animation is done. To say the least it probably was the most challenging out of all the previous animations that I made

I am not even sure if this still can count as just animatic since if I work a bit more on it, it will become the full animation it supposed to be. Maybe this is perceived like that because of colored backgrounds which I never did before for any of my animations. However, it is a fact that if I add some more poses for the character and ad shades, thr whole animatic will become an animation

If I would talk about best things in this animation I would probably say that it is the concept. The idea that I show in the animation can be understood very well. Another thing that is great are the backgrounds, I really like how they look and they definitely make the aesthetic of the animation ten times better.

However, where is good there is bad. In this animation that would be the transitions into echoes of the past theme. I still couldn’t figure out how to do that properly so I left it as it is. Probably because of this inconvenience this animatic wouldn’t become the animation in the future, since I still don’t know how exactly to do that

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Animatic 4 - Echoes

Almost half way done

Me pushing my limits was a very foolish decision. I couldn’t even make the animatic half way before this post. I only have 12 seconds so we can count it as a 1/3 of animatic.

Although I did a first test with the echoes of the past theme. However, if I wish to develop the animation further I would have to think of a better way to make the transition from present to the past. And I mean better because this is it just CapCut preset to animate videos. As a concept it worked like I wanted it to, however as an animation practice it was very bad

There are like 3-4 more echoes of the past so I will have to figure it our if for the future if the animatic will ever have the chance to become a full animation later for second part of the project

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Animatic 4 -Echoes

Interesting development

While working on this animatic I decided to push my limits even harder in all the way possible. I made detailed backgrounds, interesting camera placement and movements, as well as added a lot of different sound to make the animation more interesting and not being just music video \

I am learning new ways for animating with the usage of different layers to make it seem like the character is moving on a car behind trees. With all that coloring, probably if I colored the hero it would be a genuine animatic which I can post somewhere.

However the most complicated part is next, because I will have to experiment with echoes part and see how it will play out. Imagining something in the brain and making it a reality are two different things