#we could have had more screen time with it if disney didn’t shorten it <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[strawberry-slushy]

this should probably be the least of my concerns but can i just ask, WHERE IS EDAS JACKET???

i just am so used to seeing her jacket and i get a boost of serotonin every time luz wears it :(

[loveisblindfanfictionbka]

Love Is Blind: Chapter One

“Come on Robs, what could it hurt?”

Robyn looked over at her friend and frowned.

“Online Dating? Really? Do you know the kind of psychos on these sites?”

Leandra sighed, “Girl, ain’t nobody saying marry them but at least try it out. It’s been years since your divorce. Why are you still so gunshy?”

“Well maybe because my ex-husband ripped my heart out my chest.”

“Isn’t that a little dramatic? You and your ex-husband were both childish and lost. I still don’t think you should’ve gotten divorced either.”

“You and everyone else seems to have my failed marriage all figured out.”

“Look, forget about all of that, you need to get back out there, even if it’s just for a night of fun. It wouldn’t kill you.”

“You know what, just to shut you up, I’ll do it.”

“Good, I got your profile all set up, you just need to approve it and submit it.”

“How in the hell? This is the first time we’ve spoken about this.”

“Yea but this was just a minor technicality because I was gonna set you up anyway.”

“Ugh….get away from me.”

Leandra laughed  as she slid her laptop over for Robyn to review the profile. After a few minutes, Robyn nodded her head in approval and pressed publish.

“So now what?”

“Now you wait to see if you get any hits or you just peruse others’ profiles too.”

Robyn was shaking her head before Leandra even finished her statement, “I am not perusing anything. I don’t even want to do this right now.”

“So let the men come to you, it is the natural order of things.”

“I’ma divorce you next.”

“You love me so whatever.”

Robyn laughed as she leaned her head on Leandra’s shoulder, “Le, do you really think this will help?”

“I think it’ll give you something to do while you try to get your life right again. I love you and I know you and I know that your divorce is something that you’re still trying to understand but your life doesn’t have to stop while you’re doing that. Things don’t have to be serious. You don’t have to fall in love with anybody but it wouldn’t hurt to get from behind these walls you’ve erected and live. You owe it to yourself, if nobody else.”

                                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Daddy, come on, the movie is starting”

Chris smiled as he rushed into the living room with a big bowl of popcorn. He sat next to his 3 year old daughter, Anesa, just as the classic Disney symbol flashed across the big screen.

“You know Princess, you could’ve just paused the tv. This is just a stream.”

“No because you were supposed to be faster anyway.”

Chris chuckled as he kissed her temple. He made the right decision becoming a foster dad two years ago. The little imp had done so much to replace the empty void in his life. He had suffered so much loss, being able to give that extra love to someone felt good. An image flashed in his head and he shook it. Years ago, he thought he had someone but that relationship crashed and burned. It surprised him that he even thought about her sometimes, all these years later.

Just as he started to become enamored with the Princess and The Frog, his phone rang. Anesa glanced over at him as he stepped out into the kitchen to answer it.

“Hello?”

“CB, what’s going on, Bro?”

“Marcus, how you doing?”

“I’m good. I’m moving back to the city so I just wanted to check in and see if we could meet up one of these days.”

“Of course, I’ll see if my sister can watch my daughter so just let me know when.”

“Daughter? A lot has happened, huh?”

“Too much.”

“How’s the wife?”

“Divorced years ago. I thought you knew.”

“I thought you were joking. You really went through with it?”

“We weren’t exactly seeing eye to eye.”

“But you were together for so long since middle school, right?”

“Officially since high school but you’d think that would’ve made our life together much easier, but nope.”

“Wow. We definitely got some catching up to do. Well, I’m back officially on Friday. We can meet at Roddy’s Bar.”

“Cool. 8 good for you?”

“Perfect, Bro. See you then.”

“Bet.”

They hung up and Chris went back to watching TV with Anesa.

                                      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Robyn fought as much as she could to not be curious about the stupid dating app but….that only worked for so long. As she scrolled, the frown in her face just got deeper and deeper. What the hell had the world become? These men were just- no. It was hard being single. She hadn’t been single in years. Scratch that, ever. She’d never been single. She wasn’t used to being alone and being married was supposed to prevent that. Her ex-husband had literally tore her heart in two and she still hadn’t recovered. How two people so in love could be so incompatible baffled her mind to this day? Of course, her people just thought they were too young and just gave up too quickly but what would they know? They didn’t live with them 24/7. Yes, they had awesome memories but all she could remember was how alone she felt when he was in the bed right next to her. How withdrawn he had gotten in the last two years of their marriage. How unsettled she felt. Like she never knew when he would finally explode from holding everything in. She felt like she walked on eggshells her whole marriage but him asking for a divorce shook her to her very core and she had never bounced back from it. She endured his brutal silence, his emotional hardness but yet he was the one who walked away. It just never made sense to her. Just as she was about to close the app, a direct message popped up. 

Subject: Hello

Body: Hi, I was browsing your profile and you seemed really interesting. I was wondering if you would like to chat.

Robyn frowned a bit but she clicked on his photo to be directed to his profile. 42 years old. Divorced. One child. College Music Professor. 

He seemed harmless. His photo was full length so his face wasn’t the clearest but he looked decent. Besides he’d probably say something weird and she’d never have to meet him in person so what’s the risk and Leandra had listed her under just her initials so it’s not like he’d know her real name anyway.

Re: Hello

Body: Hi, I would love to chat with you. My name’s Anna. Yours?

A few minutes passed before she got a reply

Re: Hello

Body: Christian but my friends and family call me Chris. It’s nice to meet you Anna.

A: Chris? That must be a common name, I know a few of those.

C: I can imagine. Don’t know too many Annas though. Not the typical name of this time

A: It’s a little old school but I like it. I see you’re a music professor

C: Yup. Decided to change career paths once I got divorced a few years ago. You’re a veterinarian?”

A: Yea, I own a clinic and a shelter in the city.

C: No children?”

A: No. Seems like my animals take up all my time.

C: Understandable. Animals can be like children.

A: Definitely. How old is your child?

C: She’s three. 

A: That’s an awesome age

C: Very fun and energetic

A: My friends have children so I definitely imagine. Have you lived in the city long?

C: Just a few years. I was working at another college when the possibility of tenureship opened up at Columbia. Normally that can take years so I got lucky for the invite.

A: you work at Columbia University? That is awesome

C: I think the shock still hasn’t worn off. Kind of waiting for them to take it back at some point

A: Lol when I got the keys to my clinic, I felt the same way

C: Where’d you go to school?

A: Stanford for undergrad. University of California, Davis for veterinary school.

C: Pretty far from home, huh?

A:New York has always been the place for me. I always knew I’d end up here. You?

C: I’m from down south so that’s where my soft spot is. I did my undergrad and grad at Stanford though.

A: Wow talk about a small world.  It is a large school so I’m not surprised we haven’t met unless we have.

C: Probably not, don’t remember many Annas there

A: True. How do you like being a professor?

C: It’s cooler than I thought it would be. My previous job had a little bit more excitement but after some personal issues then my divorce, I had had enough excitement to last a lifetime.

A: My divorce kind of knocked me off balance so I can understand wanting to start over

C: How long were you married?

A: Three years. You?

C: Same. Together?

A: Over ten years. You?

C: Same. Bad ending?

A: I really don’t know. It wasn’t the best situation but it wasn’t the worst. I think abrupt would be a better word. You?

C: I walked away. I wasn’t the best husband but I think we really outgrew each other.

A: That can happen. How old were you?

C: 35. You?

A: 34. A lot can change in over ten years

C: True. I don’t know if she knew that though

A: did you try to tell her? 

C: Honestly no but that’s partly why I walked away. I wasn’t any good for her let alone for myself. I struggled a lot emotionally back then, I still do now sometimes. She didn’t need that weight in her life

A: Did she say that or did you make that decision for her?

C: Both.

A: Ah. I’m sorry

C: No need. She was better off without me anyway

A: you still think about her?

C: I try not to. It hurts. Failure sucks.

A: tell me about it. Have you seen her over the years?

C:No. We both moved away once we got divorced. Don’t really know where she went to be honest

A: Same. Some things are just better left alone, I guess

C: True.

A: You know Chris, this was fun. I was a little nervous about this online thing

C: Really? I’ve done it once or twice before. It’s not too bad if you take it for what it is

A: And that is?

C: Just a way to meet people. Doesn’t have to go further than a conversation unless you let it

A: That is very true.

C: If it’s agreeable to you. I’d love to talk to you again

A: I’d like that

C: Great. I guess, until next time

A: Have a good night

C: You as well

Robyn closed out of the app after reading Chris’s last message. They had a lot in common, a lot more than her ex-husband. She got a little nervous when he said his name was Chris but once he clarified that his full name was Christian, she could let out a breath. Her ex-husband’s name when shortened was Chris but his full name was Christopher. Christopher was a common name but she really didn't need that reminder of him too.

Chris dropped his phone onto his nightstand just as Anesa ran into his room. He laughed as she tried to climb onto his bed before leaning over to pick her up, “what’s the matter Love Bug?”

“Can I sleep in here with you?”

“Of course you can. Did something happen?”

“I had a bad dream.”

“Aww...I’m sorry, Love Bug. Come on, get under the covers.

Anesa climbed under the blankets as Chris turned off the lights. She cuddled onto his chest and Chris hugged her close, “Comfortable?”

“Yes. Goodnight Daddy.

“Goodnight Love Bug.”

                                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So….how was it?” Leandra asked as her and Robyn sat down for breakfast.

“It was a nice conversation. He seemed like a decent guy.”

“What’s his name?”

“Christian but people call him Chris.”

“You really have a thing for Chris’s, huh?”

“Don’t say that. Chris is just a common name.”

“It is but what a coincidence.”

“Yea.”

“So what does he do?”

“He teaches music at Columbia.”

“Nice. Educated. Kids?”

“A daughter.”

“Marital status?”

“Divorced like me.”

“Guess you can share horror stories.”

Robyn chuckled, “my marriage was a failure but not a horror story. Stop it.”

“Have you spoken to Chris?’

“Not since the divorce was final. Why?”

:Leandra shrugged.

“Le, what happened?”

“Nothing. I thought I saw somebody who looked like him the other day, that’s all.”

“Where? Here? In New York?”

“Yea.”

“Please don’t tell me we moved to the same state.”

“Robs, I don’t know if it was him. I just caught his profile. It could’ve been any cute light skin guy. They are running around here galore.”

“That’s true.”

“So about your new Chris?”

“What about him?”

“What’s the next move?”

“We agreed to talk again but nothing more than that. I’m still stuck in limbo, I’m not trying to make something out of nothing.

“I guess. Are you gonna meet him?”

“Nah. Some things are just better left alone, you know.”

“Not even if you really start to like him.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m swearing off serious relationships until I fix my broken heart and I have no idea how long that’s gonna take.”

“You still love him, don’t you?”

“I don’t know but I don’t want to.”

“You were together a long time.”

“Yea and he still left me so what does that mean?”

Leandra sighed, “I don’t know. “

“Chris, who are you messaging so much?” Jessica, his sister, asked as she started stirring a pot of beans.

“I met this woman online. We’ve been talking for a few weeks.”

“Online dating? You sure that’s safe?”

“I don’t plan on meeting her so it’s not a huge deal. Just a conversation.”

“Few weeks is a long time for it to just be a conversation. You like her?”

“She seems really nice.”

“Glad you’re opening your heart up somehow.”

“I’m not opening anything up. I went down that road and have no qualms about avoiding it.”

“You know you walked away from your marriage, Chris. I don’t understand your apprehension with moving on.”

“I didn't walk away to move on. I walked away to keep from hurting her. Two different things. I’m not fit to be in a relationship, let alone a marriage. My daughter is the only woman I’m concerned about right now.”

“Anesa can’t be your whole life.”

“Who says?”

“I wish Momma was here to talk some sense into you.”

“Don’t do that, Jess.”

“What? She was the only person you listened to. Did you ever tell your ex what happened with Momma?”

“No.”

“You never took her to meet her?”

“It’s not like she was around. Auntie C raised me.”

“So when you left every weekend to see Momma in the hospital your ex never asked why?”

“She asked. I never answered.”

“Chris.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t for her to know. She didn’t need that kind of weight on her, ok?”

“You never gave her a chance to really love you, Chris.”

“Well that doesn’t really matter. She moved away and about her life. I did the same. No harm, no foul.”

“I wouldn’t quite say no harm, no foul but whatever.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I don't want you to hurt this new woman because you’re still in love with your past, Chris.”

“I’m not in love with anyone so there’s nothing to be worried about.”

“And that worries me even more.”

[applegelstore]

My sis and I are through with the actual main plot of KH3, so I can officially go back to scheduled ToZ fangirling now. …Well, I promised Cray a bit of fix-it-fanart, so after that, I guess.

Hit the cut for a resume. It got super long and has endgame story spoilers, so you might not want to stumble upon it by accident.

Another extra big shoutout (again!) to @crazayrock for bearing my liveblogging on Discord, screaming without context and occasional spoilers. And linking me fluffy Soriku doujinshi. Here, have my favourite, spoiler-heavy excerpt of our conversation:

Okay anyway, let’s get started: GAMEPLAY

Kingdom Hearts 3 is BEAUTIFUL. The gameplay is so smooth and intuitive that you can immediately get to playing like you’d never done anything else; in fact so smooth that I doubt I will ever be able to pick up the first game ever again. It’s always been fun, but the looooooong years’ gap actually did wonders to the gameplay.

The keyblade form changes are fun and keep things fresh, you can do flashy triangle button shit every other minute, and shotlock is still insanely useful without being a game-breaker.

It seems easier than the first two main games, though?

The gummi ship is still a pain in the ass to steer, but I do enjoy the open world-like travel options (even if there’s not… much to discover except heartless lasering the shit out of you). I’m also eternally grateful that they kept the gummi ship thing from KH2 where you can just use a new gummi ship once you got the blueprint and don’t buy actual fucking legos as in the first game.

Thank you, Square. Not thanking you for the dumb cherry flan game, though.

The Caribbean being basically an open world stage was delightful! Apparently what our resident island kid needs is a big ship and tropical islands to plunder.

VISUALS AND STUFF

PRETTY LIGHTS EVERYWHERE

The long gap between the games also did wonders to the visuals.

There’s finally, FINALLY a few towns with actual NPCs you can talk to. Why it took the team so many years and the Gods know how many games is beyond me. The magic effects are beautiful, the animations smooth (honestly you can hardly tell apart cutscenes and fully rendered CGI scenes in this day and age of the PS4. I’m probably the only person still amazed by this because the only games I played on PS4 before were a few hours of Child of Light and of course Tales of Zestiria and Berseria. No, I still haven’t played FFXV but that’s a topic for another day). How far videogames have come.Even space finally looks like space, lol. Not really high-end what the PS4 can do I assume but god, it’s such an amazing and much needed upgrade from the terrible textureless colourful tubes you flew through before.

No excuse for the terrible battleship thingy before the Keyblade Graveyard, though. I got lost and beaten up so many times and crashed against more walls than I can count.

Nothing beats the World that Never Was, but the Keyblade Graveyard also has creepy cool potential, as does the beautiful but ghosted City in the Sky.

Still not getting what’s with JRPGs and very Definitely Final Dungeons (TM) that are basically space. …………or heaven. Or nothing. I’m getting the bad kind of original NGE TV series ending vibes. But. Okay.

The soundtrack is splendid

.……I miss Traverse Town and Radiant Garden, however.

Which brings us to:

THE WORLDS

I guess I can live with no more Final Fantasy characters being there (although I always loved that), and the meta jokes in Toy Story world really got me. Seeing Disney characters calling the KH villains call out on their shit was delightful. …the KH characters lampshading their own games’ sloppy dialogue writing was delightful.Still, those Disney worlds are always so much more in my head than what I actually get to play. This has been bugging me ever since the first game and it still does. I do not expect or want to replay the entire movies, but would it hurt to give the cutscenes some goddamn background music? Whenever there’s cutscenes, either the world’s usual BGM keeps playing or the music stops altogether. Together with the shortened dialogues and generally drastically shortened plots with odd cuts, that leads to scenes that are awkward at best. They never even remotely have the impact the movies had. You just sit there and think “oh wow that is so silly and awkward”.

Dancing scene in Corona? My favorite scene in Tangled. Zero impact on me without the lovely BGM (at least they made it a minigame so the moment isn’t over after 3 secs). Just for example. You can ask me like, world by world, but I can think of only exception off the top of my head and it’s not helping:

Let it Go of course. Listen guys, I actually love the song. But it’s so overused (and Frozen is an overrated movie at best that doesn’t deserve its hype in the slightest) that I can’t even really enjoy it being there. Like.


IF THAT’S OKAY WITH YOU,WHY DIDN’T YOU INCLUDE LITERALLY ANY OTHER ORIGINAL SONG FROM THE ORIGINAL MOVIES. Instead of BGM just not being there entirely, or in odd, cringey re-renderings that nobody wants to listen to (*cough* Atlantica *cough*).

Why torture me and not give me the one good scene from At World’s End (the up is down scene) when you had the chance?Kingdom Hearts is also prone to super lazy level design and wasting chances at wonderful scenery for no apparent reason other than I suppose empty cliffsides are quick to render. All games before did that, and KH3 is, sadly, no exception. We get to see a bit of Corona and Athens and they finally have NPCs, too, but you cannot even get near Arendelle. You cannot enter Elsa’s palace. You spend the entire time there climbing around in the snowy mountains of Norway, and unfortunately it looks less interesting than one would expect from the lovely concept art that the film unfortunately never used.You cannot enter Rapunzel’s tower although Sora can apparently parkour his way up even without her help.

………In short, the places you can go are, again, very limited, and a lot of interesting places and scenes you never get to see.

And to follow the plot you still only need the stuff that does NOT happen in those Disney worlds because they’re all beach filler episodes. It’s always been like that, but I keep wondering whether I’m the only one bothered by that. I’m also still salty they didn’t introduce a single new world from a 2D animated movie.

Also, as I said, I miss Traverse Town, it felt so warm and welcoming and beautiful.

And I get behind The World that Never Was missing although I loved it there, but why not give us back Radiant Garden? Destiny Islands since they’ve been restored? Disney Castle?

As much as I love the series, it never fucking lives up to its own potential. Idk whether it’s made more difficult by copyright issues or whatever, I just know that it bugs me.The first two games also had like twice as many worlds.

PLOT

I mean it’s never been deep; however, it’s complicated. No analysis or whatever from me because plot analysis and meta writing bore me like seven hells, just my emotional reaction: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH 
Okay, bad news. I got into it expecting nothing, and still got disappointed. I don’t actually enjoy the prospect of writing essays about it, but here’s my tea with it; in not particular order:

1) the pacing is terrible. Nothing happens for like 30 hours and then suddenly like 20 characters’ arcs are (naturally poorly) resolved within the last few hours of cutscenes. Build up anyone? At least they actually did pick up Maleficent and the box thing again. …In the epilogue.

2) Speaking of build ups, Sora’s breakdown could have been developed nicely and steadily over the game to feel natural, and instead it’s hinted at in the beginning by everyone picking on him, but then it’s never further developed and comes out of fucking nowhere. Like. For real? It felt terribly OOC.

3) Why on earth have they shown 90% of the plot in the trailers already, and why are those scenes so massively disappointing in context

4) Kairi. Oh god, Kairi. What are we gonna do with you. I want to love her, I really do, but she’s a prime example of shittily written female leads. Mostly because she’s not leading. It’s not her fault. She’s just a fictional character. But honest to God, Nomura, why. Her screen time is almost nonexistent, and she’s entirely use- and helpless whenever she’s on screen (which isn’t often). Her ONLY point in the plot is being rescued because she is fucking useless. Why. Just why. Why waste her character like that. All we know is that she’s shoehorned into being the token love interest, but she has zero plot relevance and there is even less build up of her relationship with Sora. It’s all tell and NEVER show; and not even much telling, either. She has literally zero direct interaction with in the entire game before they share their paopu. The question remains: why are straights like this

5) On a related note: look, I don’t even ask for (or expect, or even hope) my ship to be canon. Squeenix doesn’t exactly have a rich history in queer representation. I’m totally fine with Sora and Riku being best friends. BUT. Building up Sora as the most important person in Riku’s life (and arguably, vice versa) over the course of several games, just to then hardly have them interact in the finale and then SUDDENLY bring back Kairi into the equation, who hasn’t interacted with him since the ending of KH2 (except for one unsent(?) letter) is just piss poor writing, period.I actually love Cray’s suggestion she gave me over Discord: let Sora, Kairi and Riku all share a paopu together (and let them group hug, too, you cowards). It would have been the perfect message to send (Sora as truly all-loving hero, and loving all your friends equally; romantic love isn’t more important than platonic love and doesn’t need to be singled out). Really sad that this isn’t what happens. Apparently that wouldn’t have been no homo enough.

LET THE DESTINY TRIO GROUP HUG YOU COWARDS


Do Riku and Kairi even interact once in the whole game?


HOW IS THIS A TRIO, IT’S JUST A SHITTILY WRITTEN LOVE TRIANGLE

6) Time travelling is a bitch, Christ. It doesn’t solve plotholes or can be played for drama, it just adds MORE plotholes. It just got WORSE. The cloning blues and people not aging doesn’t help, either.

7) Just so you know, I care absolutely zero for wild fan theories. You’re not Nomura. I want a statement from the man who wrote this shit himself why on bloody earth Sora dies when he apparently successfully found and brought back Kairi (and since nobody aged a day, apparently it didn’t even take that long lol). DUDES, THIS IS KINDA PART OF THE PLOT, AND YOU DON’T BOTHER TO EXPLAIN IT INGAME???? And how was Ienzo/Zexion able to revive Naminé while Kairi was still missing/dead/whatever…?

Okay so in short the writing is worse than ever and that’s saying something.

However, let’s try to find something good in this trainwreck; it wasn’t all bad. There’s some really nice scenes which sadly are better enjoyed without any context at all.

So, guess my favourite scenes.You had time enough, here’s the solution:

1) Purifying uhm er rescuing Aqua. Poor girl. She deserves the rest. Poor, poor Aqua. The only properly wirrten female in the whole damn franchise. Also the only person other than Riku who fucking gets shit done.

2) The Gayblade (TM)

3) Happy Axel in the reunion with his kids. Oh god, the poor chap deserves it so much. Thank you, Nomura. I don’t care that it makes pretty much no sense. Make him happy. Give him his friends back. Just give Axel all his friends and let him happily set things on fire. Hi I love Axel

4) The party at the beach cutscene before the credits roll. Axel and Xion get clothes. Half the organization is on our side now. I almost teared up at the Wayfinder trio saying goodbye to Eraqus’ forceghost. Hey come on he’s the voice of Luke Skywalker

5) Sully yeeting Vanitas

6) Woody calling out Xehanort that nobody loves him

7) Jack Sparrow bad breathing Luxord

I wish we had gotten:

1) justice for Kairi

2) a happy Zexion, the poor emo kid. Well maybe now he will be, with all the orga members who changed sides now, lol.

3) I will never trust mobile games ever again so I don’t want to play KHUX but I would have loved to learn about the Keyblade Wars :;))))


WHAT WAS THE KEYBLADE WAR ABOUT CAN WE SPEND MORE TIME IN THAT COOL CITY IN THE SKY WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH MIKLEO
I MEAN THAT EPHEMER KIDDO


WHAT’S WITH THE MASKED DUDES AND DUDETTES FROM THE MOVIE


WTF WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM AFTER THE MOVIE???? WHERE THOSE KEYBLADE USER NAMES ACTUAL MOBILE GAME PLAYER NAMES??? Next game? PLEASE?

I really, REALLY hope the epilogue means we will get Xiggy/Luxu as our new big bad and we learn more about the five dudes and dudettes from the movie. Please. PLEASE. I’m so up for it. Them finally pickung up the bit with Maleficent and the mysterious box again? Hell yeah.

The secret movie was really unexciting in comparison, although I laughed very hard at the “Verum Rex” scene in Toy Story world. Maybe that’s why it was much cheaper to unlock than in KH1 and KH2.

4) give Ven a drink

DLC ideas I would actually pay for because I’m a sad human being: 1) more Disney worlds 2) Japanese audio 3) at least one of the following as permanently playable characters: Riku, Kairi, Axel, Ven, Aqua. At least as a guest member as in KH2. THIS SUCH A BIG STEP BACKWARDS I’M FUMING

FINAL THOUGHTS

Kingdom Hearts 3 is a hella lot of fun, beautiful, and also moving when it sets its mind to it. Unfortunately it doesn’t always do so. I don’t feel like it wasn’t worth the wait; it was. However, I’m very salty how rotten the writing is. I do not mind logical fallacies, I do not mind the cheesiness and cringeyness; however, I do mind how so many interesting characters do not get the screentime they deserve, and Kairi is a very bad joke.

I’ll probably find more to nitpick about (Gods. Just. Don’t come up with dub excuses why Sora is lv 1 in each game. JUST LEAVE IT BE. You don’t explain why Donald and Goofy are lv 1 again, either. JUST. LEAVE. IT. BE. The sacrifice was dumb and not even moving, I’m just still furious that Kairi’s ONLY point in the plot is being so useless that it’s literally getting herself KILLED and she needs constant rescuing to the point that Sora has to sacrifice himself for her, effectively. Kairi deserves better, Sora deserves better, I deserve better than to think about this absurdity.…I’m just… gonna cherry-pick the good bits from the lore and try to pretend the finale didn’t exist, I guess. GODS.

[fuzziekins]

6. What made you realize your current labels fit you?

if it’s ok i’m gonna combine this with question 10, which is when did you realize you weren’t cishet, since when i think about it i usually group the two ideas together. And because it’s a long story and i have no idea how the hell to shorten it i’ll have it under the cut.

So my current label i use is demi-whatromantic asexual [with a slight aesthetic preference toward females]. I include the aesthetic attraction in brackets because sometimes i use it and sometimes i don’t, and maybe that’s because my label in general makes attraction confusing to me or because i’m just plain obsessed with Elsa from Frozen. But because that’s a lot to explain, i usually just say i’m ace or queer. Even if people still don’t know or understand asexuality, sometimes saying i’m queer is just enough to get the point across without needing to go into a needlessly detailed explanation. And while i know everyone has their own personal feelings about queer, as a label or as a word, i like the inclusivity of it. It’s enough for people to know i’m not straight, but it also leaves the door open if people want to know more. There was no specific moment that made me realize queer can fit my just as much as demi-whatromantic asexual; just the occasional tagged queer content on tumblr and the reassurance of some posts that the community has reclaimed the word and whatever each individual’s relationship or feelings are to that word, it’s perfectly ok and valid. I’m allowed to use that word for myself if i see fit. The rest of my label is slightly different.

I figured out first that i was asexual. Except i didn’t realize it until maybe 6 or 7 years after first even seeing the word. I saw it for the first time here on tumblr with the most basic description and i just thought, ‘ok that sounds like it could be me.’ But ultimately i decided it was a problem for future me because i had school to worry about. And even after that it took some times to realize that’s what specifically fit me. And i can’t just say that i had this light bulb moment where i looked up more details about asexuality and knew it was right for me, because that feels like it negates all the steps it took to get there.

After my dad passed, art became a sore topic for me to the point where i couldn’t even enjoy it for myself. But being a creative person, i had to do something. So i put my focus into writing, specifically roleplaying, which is something i hadn’t done since college. And honestly, i wish it didn’t take that to make it the first step because i know had i been able to realize any of this sooner and gotten the chance to tell my dad, he would have been more than accepting and i really hate that’s a moment i missed out with him. Anyway, i happened on a roleplay group kind of my accident but it gave me the chance to not only revisit a couple of OC’s i created back in high school, but also create new ones. The first LGBT+ one didn’t come around for me until a year later; before then the characters i made were straight because i didn’t think much or know better. But the more i roleplayed with these characters, the more i got to explore. When i created more characters i really got to think, ok does this person have a preference?; can i imagine this character eventually in a relationship?; is it ok i just automatically think this character is a lesbian? And the first thing with that, that really hit me, was with the first OC i ever created. My online friend and i were plotting, trying to figure out which of our characters might be friends. And she had just created one similar to one of my characters. Another online friend, he shared a birthday website as kind of a joke and kind of inspiration to help with relations; there was a date compatibility thing or something on the site. It turned out to be funny because some of the characters with pre-existing relations based on that were totally accurate and others were way off. But with two specific characters my friend and i were looking at, the site said they’d make a great couple. And at that time, that particular OC of mine had gone from being hetero to simply open-minded, since she never thought of relationships before and i never particularly saw one for her. But as soon as we read that, it clicked. And not only did the plots and inspiration start coming, but it led to so much character development for my OC. A character i created in high school to basically be a one-dimensional bookworm who was now not only questioning her newfound friendship but her sexuality. And as i wrote her discovering that, i noticed i was putting some of my own tendencies into her - her awkwardness and the way she reacted to certain topics, for example. My friend commented my character was probably ace in addition to realizing she was a lesbian. I didn’t think much of it then, but that was kind of the first piece.

The second piece came in the form of the show The Bold Type. Admittedly the show hasn’t been as good since its first season, but that’s beside the point. But from the first episode we’re introduced to this one character, Kat, and in her interactions with another character you could feel the chemistry between them. And part of her arc for that first season was coming to terms with her feelings for that woman and realizing she wasn’t straight. And for me, someone who was only a few years older than her 20something year old character, that was something i didn’t know i needed to see. I’m naive, childlike, and oblivious. Even if i had known anyone who wasn’t straight up until then, i wouldn’t have noticed or asked anything. But seeing that on screen, someone in my age group who actually didn’t know who she was and was starting to figure something out about herself, it gave me permission to question. Even if that question was, why the hell am i enjoying this so much?

But what really did it for me was the show Andi Mack on Disney Channel. It was one of the few shows i actually enjoyed at the current time on Disney Channel, even though by all accounts i should’ve been done with all that ages ago [except i’m a disnerd]. And after the first season ended and season two was rapidly approaching, the big question and anticipation was in the form of a character’s coming out. Fans have been picking up that one of the characters may have been gay and were waiting for confirmation. And that confirmation came in the season two premiere. And, if memory serves, there was a reason why it was met with acclaim the way it was. The scene in question involved two characters, Buffy and Cyrus, sitting at the diner. And there was that slow build up, just knowing that Cyrus needed to tell Buffy something. And when she asked if he liked another boy, Jonah, Cyrus nodded sadly and said “I feel weird. Different.” Ultimately, she ended up promising him in the most comforting and encouraging way, “you’ve always been weird. But you’re no different.” 

And for me, even as an adult, hearing those words just made everything click. I had no idea how much it meant to hear that. I always knew i was different from other kids growing up. I was treated different. I knew i was weird. And for the most part, i accepted that. But i didn’t understand what made me so different. At that point, i had the faintest basic knowledge of a few different sexualities courtesy of creating OC’s. Only one of them, at that current point, had identified as ace by choice. And suddenly i looked deeper into the meaning of asexuality. And just about everything about it fit for me. Why i didn’t experience attraction the ‘normal’ why. A potential reason why i never had the powerful urge to date or why i pushed the idea to the side so much. It even explained my childlike nature; i’m a kid at heart, but knowing that a “stereotypical” ace is someone who is naive, childlike, etc, it made sense why that was such a huge factor in my personality. Because i was a stereotypical ace. I told one of my best friends about a month later, and then i think 3 or 4 months after that, i posted on my Instagram about being ace. It’s felt right ever since.

Sometimes i do get specific and say i’m a s-x repulsed ace, because the topic really makes me that uncomfortable. But even if i don’t use it out loud all the time i know, as far as the asexual umbrella goes, that’s exactly specifically what fits me. So since hearing “you’ve always been weird, but you’re no different” and learning the full definition of asexuality, that’s what made me realize that fits me.

As far as my romantic orientation goes, it’s more of a grey area and sometimes i still struggle with it. While i’ve openly identified as asexual officially for two and a half years, i’ve had my romantic label for maybe no more than 6 months. When i read that asexuals can be anything from heteromantic to gay to bi to aro...basically anything...originally it felt like there were so many possibilities open. It made me feel good to know that i could basically be anything. But it also made me terrified because how the hell was i supposed to know? Now that i knew my asexuality basically screwed up my attraction to begin with, i also had to admit that it took a lot for me to get close to people to begin with. And, even more so, since my dad passed, the wall i already had up became bigger and stronger. I felt for a time like i lost a lot of support during that dark period and the last thing i wanted to do was let new people, or anyone in.

The obvious answer was that i was probably, if anything, demiromantic. Because if it took so much for me to open up to actual friends in the first place, to get close with them and develop a friendly bond, how much more time, effort, and energy would it take to get close to someone romantically? I thought about using that label for a little bit, but it didn’t fit. And, as someone who feels her emotions so strongly, powerfully, and, to a point, near uncontrollably, i questioned what the hell could be wrong with me that i couldn’t knowingly feel a basic romantic attraction? Aromantic was probably much more accurate, but from what i recall reading online, it’s also perfectly normal for anyone who is aspec to feel broken or like there’s something wrong with them because they’re missing something so “important”. And especially when i already hated so much about myself, finally feeling comfortable with myself about one thing - my asexuality - and knowing that it was right for me and that there wasn’t anything wrong with me about that, the last thing i wanted was to put myself down and feel more shame about who i was. 

I think it was sometime last last year, in 2019, that i first started seeing the word quoiromantic pop up. I think it was on one of the LGBT+ blogs i follow, or maybe an asexual or aromantic specific one. And another word for quoiromantic is whatromantic, since quoi means what. What is romantic attraction? What’s the difference between that, aesthetic attraction, and sexual attraction? What makes someone know they feel that specific attraction? And as someone who naturally asks “what?” or “what’s that?” albeit jokingly, it felt plausible. And it felt like a reasonable explanation for why i really didn’t know anything for sure. Because, even when i tried to think back to when i was in school, did i ever really feel attraction? Was it so faint i didn’t even recognize it? Was i mixing it up with maybe platonic attraction? I had no fricking clue. Simply saying “what” summed it up so simply for me.

I don’t include anything gender related in my label. As far as i know, i’m cis. My body is female and, to my knowledge, i’m comfortable enough that i don’t think i need to identify as anything else, save for really not being comfortable in dresses or heels. But if someone called me dude instead? I don’t care. I use dude as a term for everyone regardless of gender (unless someone tells me otherwise for the sake of their personal comfort). My gender doesn’t feel like something that needs to be changed or defined, unlike my sexual and romantic orientations.

When i saw my whole label together, i think about it, and i connect all the dots, it makes sense for me. Sure, i could simply say whatromantic asexual and leave it at that. But whether it’s platonically or maybe it really does have the faintest connection to romantic attraction and it’s so faint and confusing i wouldn’t know it if it slapped me across the face, keeping demi felt right. Quoi- or whatromantic, to my current still-baby LGBT+ knowledge, is generally seen as a microlabel. It’s something under the aromantic umbrella that is so super specific that a lot of people wouldn’t understand why it needs to exist. It exists to bring a sense of comfort. And that’s exactly what it does for me. It’s the main romantic label for me while demi serves as the microlabel. And ultimately, as someone who has the overwhelming need to always explain themself, i want to have a label that encompasses everything. Even if i don’t always explain my identity or simply say i’m queer, i want to know the details for my sake. 

And i think ultimately, the more i say it to myself in my head, and think of all the ways i may have to explain it to people, the more i know it fits me. 

[1400762-personal-showcase]

Weekly Journal

Week 1 (September 26th -30th)

Over the summer holidays I got a headstard on my idea. I want to do a story about a little Prince trapped in a tower who gets rescued by a female knight. I was thinking how sad it must be for princesses that are trapped in towers and how alone and depressed they must be, and I thought that their struggles must be as tough as the struggles that the knight endures to find her, but no-one ever thinks about how the princess feels. The gender reversal happened just because I thought 'why not? What's stopping it from being a prince instead?' then I thought it would be a sad twist that the reason why he doesn't get rescued is because he is not a princess. All the strong knights want pretty princesses that they can marry and flaunt, not a little boy to save. So I stated to make an animatic for it very early on in the summer, because I knew that this would be a big project. I really want to do an animation which tests my storytelling skills and the point of that is having enough time to create a story and tell it. I don't just want to rush everything and tell the story, I want to learn the best ways to tell it, concerning visuals, sound, timing, 'show don't tell', all of that. From the briefing it seems as though I wont have enough time to do the full animation but I will see what I can do, I really want to create something that can test my narrative skills, not just the animating skills.

Week 2 (October 3rd – 7th )

I went to see Peter to show him my animatic and see what he thought about it. I don't think I will be able to animate the whole thing for the deadline. I didn't realise that only half of the year was dedicated to our personal showcase so I'm a little disappointed that I don't have the whole year to focus on it. Peter really liked the animatic I had so far and really liked the story, but he felt that something emotional was missing. The basics were there, showing the princes lonliness but I wanted it to be more sad, darker, I really want my audience to sympathise with this prince. He advised I go see Helen Schroeder as she has a lot of knowledge on storyboarding and is working on the storyboards for Watership Down. Helen mainly had questions, which is a good thing because if I'm to learn how to tell a story to an audience, I don't want the questioning things they don't need to. The first thing she thought was 'where is his food coming from?' I'd thought about this but didn't bother to think about it because I hoped people wont notice, but I suppose that if I noticed then anyone could. If I figure out a way to show how he gets food then it will likely make the character and the story feel a lot more real. She also said I should come up with a backstory about why he's there and where he's from. The audience doesn't need to know this but it will help me understand my own character better. Nice advice, I will have to think about it and improve my story.

Week 3 (October 10th – 14th )

While thinking about my animatic I've also been working on a walk cycle of my prince. I'd also like to do one for my knight but I will have to see if I have enough time. I like it so far, I love animating a characters sketch work, I have so much fun and I can really feel the movement. But I struggle so much with the clean up and colouring, something about my animation syule feels inconsistent. I don't know if it's me being sloppy or it's normal but I want to work on it because every animation that I've done, I've loved until I've gotten to the colouring, and then I just feel as though I mess it up because I'm an incompetent colourist. It's strange through because I love colouring still images and comics, I'm actually quite proud of my line art and colouring when it comes to comics, I don't know why I struggle so much with animation. I went to see Lynsey to talk about my dissertation thoughts and look at the kind of chapters I want to write. She said I should get down what I want my chapters to be and then start writing the first one just so that I have some words down. My essay is about cartoons and other pieces of media sending bad messages to an audience so I'll look at what things I want to discuss specifically and see if I can put them into relevant chapters.

Week 4 (October 17th – 21st )

I showed Helen my walk cycle and she also agreed that I need to work on the consistency of my animation. She said that things like the legs were thicker in other frames and thinners in others. She also said that his head is bobbing up and down too much. She said that it was good, though, which is why she is 'nitpicking', so that's reassuring. I went in to see Phil Archer in the sound room also and asked him for some advice on music. I have never touched music writing in my life, I once tried to play guitar in year seven but never kept up and I have no idea how to make music, I don't know what chords are, I don't understand how people put notes together in a way that sounds appealing, but apparently I thought it would be a good idea to write my own song for my animatic. I think knowing the basics of making music is a really good skill to have, especially in animation where sound can go a long way, and I feel as though one of the things that could hold me back from making more films is the fact that I can't make backing music. So the idea of making my own music for this animatic is really exciting to me and I hope will give me some good skills. I went in to see Phil and he was kind enough to give me a lesson on the beginning of the basics, he explained chords and notes to me and I really enjoyed myself learning something completely new to me. I went back home and now I'm actually trying to write my own song on FL Studio. So far it's very basic but it has the kind of 'happy' Disney tune to it that I want and considering I've never made a song before, I'm proud of myself. I will go back to Phil again for another lesson and hopefully he can take a look at what I have so far.

We had our briefing for the Collaborative project and have decided our group. I worked with Tia and Adzie last year for the final project and we had so much fun and really loved what we created, so we agreed to working together again, but we have included Jordan and Catherine. Tia, Adzie and myself are all 2D artists, Catherin is stopmotion and Jordan is 3D, so we were thinking about creating something with mixed media similar to 'The Amazing World of Gumball” style. We are hoping to meed up often so tat we can discuss our idea and our job roles.

Week 5 (October 24th – 28th )

I changed up my animatic. It focuses a lot more on the Prince growing up in the tower and trying to cope than the knight finding him. I realised that the majority of the last animatic was time spent having the knight take the prince away, when more focus and time needs to be on the prince himself. I've resolved the issue of food and created an outside presence that sends him food under a hatch in his wall which he gets daily. I showed this update to Peter and he felt this was a lot better, he felt he connected better with the character in this animatic and that it shows his struggle, isolation and loneliness in more detail. I'm so much happier with this version, I still have yet to finish the new ending but so far I find myself also being more attached to this character than I was before. I haven't shown Helen yet, but I hope to soon, when I went to see her she suggested that I start work on an animation test. I've decided to animate the clip where the prince picks up the opened lock and looks at it in shock. I've chosen this clip because I feel as though something simple means that I can pay closer attention to the character acting and expression. I went to see Phil again to get advice on my song and so far he thinks it's a good start. I told him I wanted it to derail into something sad, so that as the animation goes along and gets darker the music goes with it, but I was struggling to understand how to put chords and noted together to make it sound sad. He helped a lot and I've managed to find a musical rift to go to the sad moments of the animatic.

We went in to see John about our collaborative idea. At the moment we had this idea about creating a world that leads to different dimensions, which would mean we can add different types of media easily. I thought the idea of a hotel would be good, in the kind of style like 'Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends'. Sort of wacky, funny, quirky and strange. Adzie would like to do the character design but overall we like the ides of this character being a small monster who is on vacation, he gets given his room for the hotel and then goes to explore the other rooms. We have yet to decide on an idea or a reason for him to look around the hotel, but we are piecing the world together.

Week 6 (October 31st – November 4th)

I've updated my new animatic and went to shot Helen, she much preferred it but there are still some things she picked up on. She felt that the introduction could be shortened if I needed to save time, I could cut out the part where he pulls the lantern under the sheets, the scene where the books are piling up doesn't make much sense. I said that it meant he was leaving them untidy and abandoned but I suppose it still shows his depression with the plates piling up. And then there were a lot of things concerning the screen direction and film language that need to be tweaked which I have written about on my blog. She said that the general story comes across well, but there are areas of detail that could make it a lot better is fixed. I feel really greatful and honoured to have Helen's advice, she has taught me so much and I am so willing to change anything in the storyboard to make it perfect. I really want to learn how to execute a visual story successfully, I knew from the beginning that I would be changing a lot of my storyboard so I had no worries about being given criticism. (That's why I wanted to get the basic storyboard done before I came back to the first term, so that I had time to change it). This project to me is more about progressing my narrative skills as well as my animation skills, so the majority of my focus in based on all of the development I'm putting into my storyboarding rather than focusing so much on one animated clip. Having Helen around to criticise my storyboarding is so beneficial to me, I feel like I am learning so much from showing her what I have, receiving her comments, and then changing it. I can see it in my work that from the first animatic, I have improved the feeling of the story so much more with her help and perspective. I'm starting to figure out what I want to specialise in in animation, I think I want to specialise in storyboarding and character animation. Helen also recommended that I start working on my animation test, and as I've started to do so, I realise how much I also love to do character animation. Story and character is where I want to go. I also went to see Helen Piercy later this week to show her both animatics and see what she thought. She felt more emotional towards the second animatic but she preferred the ending to the first animatic. I then sat with her and showed a classmate, Lila, to get her thoughts also. Lila felt a lot more connected to the second one and also preferred the ending.

There was a Narrative and Character workshop for the Collaborative project. I wanted to go in but overslept and so I turned up later to meet with Adzie and Catherine during the second half. They were doing a character design activity, and weren't focused much on the collaborative project, just on creating their own characters. I said that I would meed them next week for the Narrative workshop, then we could discuss the story for the project more in detail.

Week 7 (November 7th – 11th )

I finished the sketchlines of my animation test and went to receive feedback from Helen and Robin.

Firstly they felt it was a well made animation with great expressions. Robin really liked the way the eyebrows were drawn and said they moved well as a unit with the eyes and face, which pleases me because expression is really important to me and one of my favourite things to draw. Helen felt that I needed to look more on my overlapping and secondary action, and a lot of it moved at the same time and it would look better for it to almost go in a wave, the whole general motion moving in an arch. I'm pleased with this advice but she also said I need to watch my time and that I should try to get it finished. I want to hopefully finish this test soon then get straight onto animating my showcase. As the animatic is far too long to make into a full animation, me and Helen discussed the idea of taking just a segment of the animation to animate. Most likely a part that has a basic beginning, middle, end to it. I wanted to make a trailer possibly but I think I would be able to show my still better if I took a scene from the animatic and animated that. I can't decide which part though, because I don't want the scene to look out of place without a story to it. I might do the end scene or a part where he's growing up.

We spoke more about our Collaborative idea and we are still trying to give the character a reason for leaving his room. We're unsure of the ending as we feel that it's too simple, or is not the right moral for the character to go back to his comfort zone. We are planning to go into the Narrative Workshop next week so we can get some advice from Helen on it.

Week 8 ( November 14th – 18th )

For my animatic Helen felt that I needed some scenes of the prince trying to escape, which makes a lot of sense. It's so clear to me now that after he realises he's not being rescued, he'd try to escape the tower himself, anyone would. So I'm going to add two scene, I've got one where he tries to bang on the door and get whoever is there to let him out, but then food just comes in and he is ignored. Them I'm going to do one where he escapes the window. I couldn't decide what to do with him, because he needs to not actually get out of the castle so I'm thinking that either he is too scared or it's too high for him to get down safely, or there's some kind of spell keeping him trapped in, like an invisible wall or something. I'd like to do the invisible wall but when I suggested it to a few people who had seen my animation, they felt it might be difficult to portray, including Helen.  I'm going to go with a magical chain that suddenly appears on his arm when he tries to escape, so that his efforts to muster up his courage proves to be pointless. I finished colouring my animation test but I'm not sure I like it. I really struggled with colouring. I managed to find a tutorial to draw clean lines with the polyline tool and then use the paint bucket tool to fill but the animation looks too jumpy at the same time. The shape of his face is inconsistent and seems to change in every frame, making it look quite jarring and jumpy. I think what I'll do in my actual animation is have more layers and leave unmoving parts still, but hopefully I can still animate the whole thing overall to not look too still.

We attended the Narrative Workshop this week to discuss our ideas and learn some things. We answered some questions about our project, and found answers for what the character does and his motives for doing it. We did have the idea of him being bored with the 2D room he was given so he goes to look at the other rooms, then he becomes so creeped out by what he doesn't understand that he goes back to being happy with his comfort zone. When we spoke to Helen she suggested that that might not be a very good moral to a story and we should think up something more. We started thinking that maybe he takes something back with him from one of the rooms, so that he's happy with his comfort zone but is not opposed to exploring and the unknown. One of us suggested that he should be a kleptomaniac and steal things from the hotel, it would start with mini shampoo's and a shower cap and a dressing gown, then he would explore the other rooms and leave the hotel with his back full of weird objects. I like this idea, because I find it funny in the context of being a hotel guest and how we all take the mini shampoos and stuff, but I'm not sure about it completely because I really liked the innocence of the little monster character.

Week 9 (November 21st – 25th )

I've had to change some other parts of my animatic and decide on what I'm animating. I've decided I'm going to do the scene where he gets caught by the magic chain while trying to escape. Firstly Helen felt as though I need a better angle to establish the hight with he's on the window ledge. I changed the angle so that the camera is from outside of the tower, below the prince and pointed up at him while he looks down. I also went to see Sarah Harris earlier where she suggested that the character needed a closer acting scene. He needed to show his disbelief that the chain appeared, so I added a scene where he inspects his hand where the chain appeared. I changed a few other bits in my animatic where Helen felt the camera direction could have been improved, such as the scene where the scene where the plates pile up, I've combined that scene with the scene of him in his bed. Now the plates pile up and the camera cuts to show him in his bed, clearly ignoring the food, suggesting time has gone by. This is to cut some time short. I've started working on my animation. I've been taking some video references for myself, one of my tying something around my waist, one of my pulling something tied to a post and one of me stepping up onto something as if onto a window ledge. All of these references have been so helpful to my animation and have made my first scenes look so realistic. It's made me realise how important taking reference is, I know that I would have been very frustrated if I was to animate that all from my head.

We mainly focused on our personal work this week but we did meet up to do wome collaborative work together. I created a style frame, Adzie created the character sheet, Catherine worked on the PDF and Jordan began work on the appearance of the hotel. We had a good day that day and got a lot of work done.

Week 10 ( November 28th – December 2nd )

I've done more for my animation, including the first scenes and the scene where he's out on the window ledge with his clothes and hair blowing in the wind, then he cowers in fear at the side of the wall. So far I'm really pleased with, I love doing the under-sketch work for the animation. I feel a lot more free when I'm sketching and I feel that comes across in the character movement. Helen had some suggestions for changing my animation to make it a bit better. We discussed some different camera angles and felt that when he puts his hand out of the window, there should be an outside profile view. I kind of wanted to keep the camera inside the tower to keep the audience 'trapped' with the prince also, which she understood, but I think this is a much more dynamic camera angle than what I had before, so I'll go with it. She also suggested I add a last frame of him from inside of the tower, showing him collapse on his bed in defeat, framed in the centre of it. I think this is a good idea to end on, I can try to make it quite dynamic, which is good because she felt that I did not have enough wider shots in my animation, which I agree with. I went back to see Phil Archer in the sound room, this time for help in my sound design for my animated scene. I said I really wanted a nice sound to go with the chain appearing so that it could sound all sparkly and mystical, basically to make the point that it's a magical chain caused by a spell. He put together some cool sounds. He reversed the sound of a chain clinking, so that it sounded unnatural and a bit mystical, then he added a kind of reverb and 'sparkling' effect to it to make it sound shiny and magical. I'm really pleased with that he helped me come up with. He also helped me get together some basic sounds like the wood creaking on the bed post and the wind blowing.

Me and Catherine went in to speak to Jon this week about our updated idea. I explained that I liked the kleptomaniac idea but I was also unsure as I wanted the character to remain fairly innocent, and not as though he had a mental disorder, I wanted the animation to be about the wacky hotel, not the monsters mental disorder. We started thinking from a different angle and came up with the idea of the Hotel actually being a simulation that the monster can go into to experience a holiday. It would be a twist that the weird and wonderful hotel didn't actually exist and almost be a statement on our entertainment. The Monster takes the VR helmet off when the experience gets too weird for him, he goes home to his boring room and wonders whether his reality is better or not. At first we were going to make it a human, who uses the monster as an avatar in the VR but we realised that would include finding an actor, filming, sets and props, which we wont have time for.

Week 11 ( December 5th – 9th )

I've changed my animation, adding shots of Helen's suggestions, not the animatic shows him leaning out of the window from a profile view and there is a last shot of him in his room. I've also updated my animation. I've essentially finished the first half of the sketch work, getting up to the shot where he jumps out of the window. I've also painted some backgrounds for all of these scenes. I'm really pleased with my backgrounds. Last year I did a lot of colouring practise for comics and backgrounds and I've really been trying to improve my paintings so that I can create better colours and perspective. From doing the animation test, I'd found the best way to make backgrounds so that they still look good but don't take too long. These backgrounds aren't as detailed as the one in the animation test but I feel that I have been able to produce more in less time by painting them this way and they still look acceptable to me. Aside from the lines and colouring, the first half is done.

The rest of the group seems okay with the idea me and Catherine had for the ending. We've decided Job roles. Catherine is the producer, I will be storyboarding and creating the animatic, Adzie will continue with the character designs and expressions, Jordan will create his 3D room and Tia will create her room. Catherine is also making a model puppet for the stop motion scene. I'm excited to keep working on this, although I also have a lot to do. This idea and concept excites me and I really hope that we can pull it off with quality. I started the storyboard during our meet up on some post-it notes, I will digitally re-draw them later.

Week 12 ( December 12th – 16th )

I've updated my sketched animation to him leaning out, all of the movements of the body are completed but I have yet to include his clothes, hair and face. The final frame is just his tiny body collapsing onto the bed so I only have a few frames there to show that, that won't be a difficult scene to complete. I also added a bit to a previous scenen. Helen said that when he's is about to jump, that would be the point where she would check the tie again to make sure it is still sturdy. I think she make a good point, so I added a action where he does that and suddenly he seems so much more real. I've been working on the background for when he falls back onto his bed, camera from out side of the window. Previously I'd made some floor plans so that while doing the storybaord I'd be able to know where everything is positioned in every frame. For this shot, with the camera being from the outside looking in, taking reference from the floor plans I made was a really big help for painting this background. Once I get the animation sketches done, which shouldn't be long, I'm going to start thinking about colours.

I began to digitally draw over my storyboard but I'm worrying about finishing both my dissertation and personal animation, so I am currently focusing on that. Catherine has offered to do some storyboarding but I assured her that I would be fine to continue after Christmas. I feel as though I know exactly how to storyboard this, the shots and everything, as I've spent a lot of time on my personal project storyboarding, I can see this in my head so well. I'm excited to start.

Christmas Break ( December 19th – January 9th )

Over the Christman break I focused mainly on my dissertation but did also get much animation done. I was able to finish a background where he leans out of the window to look at the chain appear and I started working on my colouring. In Toon Boom I discovered that you are able to make more than one palettes so that if you use a specific colour, then change that colour from your palette, it will also change it in the animation. This is good because it means that if colours need to be changed then I don't need to refill every frame with the bucket too, I can just change the colour from the palette. I realised that it would be cool to have a slightly different chade of colours for when he is outside of the tower and for when he is inside, just to give a bit more atmosphere to his environment. I updated the colouring to where he is when he is standing on the ledge.

We mainly focused on our personal projects over Christmas, as we all had a lot to do, we agreed to leave the collaborative work for when we were back in Norwich.

Week 13 (January 9th – 13th )

I've continued to colour but also have been focusing a lot on my dissertation and trying to get that done. Lynsey has been a big help and has been able to review my work when I've needed her to. As for the animation, I've really just been trying to get colouring done as soon as I can, I don't know how much time I'll have left to get it all done but I still need to finish my blog and complete my Research Report. I'm not sure what else to update on, really, I can just feel myself clicking into overdrive and I feel very determined to get all of this done.

This week I completely finished the animatic for our collaborative project. I had more fun doing it than I thought I would and I realise that after doing this storyboard, I really would like to specialise in storyboarding, as well as character animation. I'm really pleased with what I've created, I feel as though I can present it as something professional. Keeping the title safe zone for each frame was very helpful also, I was able to see it all in perspective and I think I've created something that reads very well. The responses I got from the group were good also. I really wanted it to come across as quirky, even a little funny, and the group felt I'd achieved that. Mt plan was to create the beginning and end of the storyboard so that we could fit in the sections where we have individually made our rooms, but I needed some more transition shots of the character walking through the hallways and looking into doors. Catherine was a big help with this and she offered to make some of these connecting shots, we also discussed the best angles to shot it. Me and Jordan put the animatic together with everyone's work and we're very pleased with it.

Extension ( January 16th – 27th )

I've requested an extension due to some struggles and depression over Christmas. I'd spoken to Peter about it and after having been open to him about my feeling and situations throughout the years he agreed to an extension. I am using this extension to really push what quality I can under the pressure I'm feeling. I was able to finish my Research Report and I'm quite pleased with it. If I have time to go back I would like to add a section about Bojack Horseman but it already took a lot of cutting to achieve the wordcount and not go over, so I think it would be difficult to add extra information. I really don't know the best way to colour. I'm not sure whether it's just better to draw the whole frames on one layer and use the bucket tool to fill, or whether I should do a layer for the body, layer over the body for the clothes, layer for the face, layer for hair (etc) so that I can look at the overlapping and secondary actions separately. I'm doing it with the separate layers to be safe but I feel as though it's coming out a bit messy. I think the movement itself looks fine and I think that I've fixed the problem with it looking too jumpy by having the different aspects on different layers (the problem I had with the animation test) but the painting feels a bit messy in some places. Such as when he is standing on the window ledge his clothes wave in the wind but the colouring looks messy. Whenever I try to clean it up on the layers, there always seems to be a problem. I think I've made the right choice in having each aspect on separate layers but I think that I may have created too many layers and now I've confused myself. With the extension I've been able to finish the animation. I've done the colours so that when he is outside of the tower the colours are brighter and when he is inside they are darker. I want this to create more of a subtle sad reality to his situation, he can't even get to the light. I had some problem with the chain. Firstly I discovered that in Toon Boom I'm able to create a glow affect, which is fantastic because it's exactly the effect I want. I was able to do this with the first chain I drew but then I wasn't able to recreate it with the rest of them. It seemed as though the drawing of the chain wouldn't show and instead there was just a transparent glow in the shape of the chain. I was frustrated at this to begin with but I'd resolved it by learning that I had to duplicate the layer and keep one of the layers normal and the other with the glow, this is what I'd done with the previous chain. It proves my point that I had created far too many layers in this file for me to keep track of. I've finished my entire animation now and all that's left to do it put the sound together. I'm really pleased with what I have created. I'm mainly pleased with the undersketch animation but that is what I prefer to do and is in my comfort zone. The colouring came out better than I thought it would, and better than it did in the animation test in my opinion but I felt that it could be cleaned up in some places. I will probably clean this up after submission. My plan after submission is to continue with my full animatic story and create a short film of a few minutes that is partly finished and partly WIP. I would like to come away with a piece that shows my skills in character animation and storyboarding, so I really like the idea of keeping the majority of it as professional storyboarding and sketched character animation, with only a few parts looking completely finished.

[rudieltonrowley19]

we were given the task to create an idea that would teach children to do something, After brainstorming ideas and concepts I came up with the idea to have a sort of vending machine which you had to complete tasks and then you would be rewarded with something out of the vending machine. After researching about learning and how the brain works there was one experiment were a monkey had to remember number patterns and number orders and when he got it right he was rewarded with some sort of food every time he got it right, we are using this same concept but for humans. We mainly focused on making this vending machine idea to do with math but essentially it could be used for multiple learning activities. How it works is there is some sort of box with a touch screen on it and you would complete mathematical questions and then either a compartment with a reward in it would open or like a vending machine it would drop down.

Here are the sketches for the design.

The main ideas we had for the system and design were that 

1 there are multiple choice questions

2 the machine can be refiled with anything that will fit so for example if your trying to teach your child math the parents could fill the vending machine with things like raising and nuts or whatever you fancy.

3 the unit has a large library of topics and subjects

4 It will be touch screen and touch and pressure sensitive so you can wright on it or draw answers.

5 it has intelligent ai so the machine knows what its user is writing and if its getting the questions wright.

6 it also has a keypad

7 it can also use imagery for learning.

I then went into illustrator to make this idea look a little more real.

We then had to pitch idea to the class to gain feed back and to help build on our design, unfortunately I was in London looking at universities so I couldn't make the presentation but one of the group members said it went well and the audience understood the concept and idea.

In terms of feedback apparently people liked the idea and there was no bad ideas but there were some suggestions such as,

1 make the machine bigger for older children

2 make larger versions and put it in supermarkets so children could play on them whilst there parents went shopping like an arcade but the children could win free food. this is a good idea because sometimes dragging your children around a supermarket can be annoying and not helpful but also depending on what age the machine is targeted at which would probably be around something like 3 to 13 you do not want to be leaving your three year old on there own whilst you go shopping and you also do not want to wait for them to finish playing on the machine so you can then go shopping.

3 Get in partnership with companies like Disney to create machines with there branding and imagery from films to make the machines look more fun and appealing.

After this the group got together to and talked about the tasks we needed to complete to help us make a final advertisement. The first thing we did was agree on what the machine would look like so we had one final model, one of our members had some good drawings of the machine so we agreed on a final look and gave her the job to create a piece of artwork which showed the machine and listed the things it did and how it worked, I then brainstormed names for the company that was supplying the machine and the name of the actually machine.

The name that I came up with for the machine was Vendi its essentially the word vending like in vending machine shortened down to vendi. So the company name is called vendi and then the machine is called vendi learner. Me and my my other group member rhea brain stormed some slogan ideas which were:

Learn and win 

Rewarded Learning 

Get it right get a prize 

Don’t like school try this tool

fun learning

We decided to go with don’t like school try this tool as our product slogan. I personally am not a huge fan of the slogan as I feel it could be a little long for a slogan. After this I started making a logo in illustrator for the company and rhea started looking at lay out for our final advertisement.

Was your team effective? Why? Who in the group came up with the best ideas?

I think towards the end we worked as a team and did lots of group decision making but at the beginning no one was really taking charge so I was the only person really putting down ideas and trying to get things to happen. The hole concept of the machine was essentially my idea as there is an experiment were monkeys do a task and they learn and get rewarded with nuts, I decided to create something similar for humans so I thought there could be some sort of vending machine about the size of a mini fridge and it has a screen on it or something to interact with so you can complete tasks and get rewarded with the outcome hopefully being that your learning. I also came up with the company name, slogans and drawings and illustrator work for the beginning model of the machine. One of are group members holly did her own drawings of the machine and created a similar but improved build/model of it that we as a group preferred so that was also a good idea. Our team was effective because there is a product idea and advertisements and a brand identity so work was done but there could of been more material if everyone was doing both ideas and designing as It was just me and holly doing the actual work in software and rhea contributed more on the pitching and helping with ideas and giving her opinion to help build the brand but if rhea also did some designing more work could have been made.

Who in the group didn’t contribute enough?

I think everyone did pull there weight it was just in different ways as I came up with a large amount of the ideas and a logo and then holly did lots of illustrations and artwork for the advertisements and rhea led the first pitch as me and holly were away and she also gave her opinion on the logos I made and said what she thought looked best. I think the person that put the least amount of time in was rhea as she didn't really do much designing work and she only gave her opinion on what she liked and disliked whilst me and holly spent lots of time in class and at home making all the design elements. Also for the final pitch we were all there but only me and rhea talked whilst holly sat down but we didn't discuss if we should all talk so I think we all contributed in our own way but me and holly put in more work and time than rhea did.

Would you approach the process differently if you did them again?

I think we could of managed our time better and planed everything out before hand so we had a time skedual and that everyone worked together and did the same amount of work.

Have you improved the product much and do you think it is a good product now?

We didn't improve the product much as we were not given a lot of feedback in the first pitch but holly did do some drawings of the product with more imagery on it like footballs and rainbows which is something that was suggested in the first pitch.

pitch two

What feedback did you get from the focus group in pitch 2? Do you agree with it? Why?

the feedback we got was to make a specific logo for the product that fits the color scheme better and not just a adjusted version of the company logo for the product logo. I agree with this as they should be two separate things and we could of made the product logo look a lot different from the company logo and still make it fit the brand and this could of made the advertisement and product look better.

Someone said that we needed to make sure kids couldn't brake the devise and steal the prize and this is something we thought about but never went in detail with within our product drawings but essentially there could be some sort of key or password the parents use to replace and lock the prizes away.

Someone said to turn it into a app.

I disagree with this as the hole point is that there are fiscal prizes put in by the parents which motivate the kids to use the machine and learn if its in a app this cant happen potentially making the learning experiences less appalling. Also if we made an app it would probably be cheaper than the vending machine so parents would prefer to buy the app possibly preventing sails.

Here is the logo I made and its development.

Here is the final advertisements that i made and the group helped with layout, colours and text effects by giving there opinion so the end product was something we all agreed on.

[temmaha1996]

Justice League

Justice League is a 2017 superhero film directed by Zack Snyder. It stars Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill and Jason Momoa. The film is about the impending doom of Planet Earth, caused by the evil Steppenwolf. It is up to Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash and Cyborg to bring Superman back and save the world together.

I’ve always dreamed of seeing these bunch of heroes together. I grew up watching Justice League on Cartoon Network, and when I finally got to see my childhood heroes on screen, I should have been blown away and amazed. The only trouble is, I wasn’t. There has been criticisms of this film, some warranted and some not warranted. But what is undeniable about Justice League is that it is in many ways, a mess. This film came out way too early, and had way too many people interfering with it’s final product. This should have been DC’s version of The Avengers, but instead it came out looking like a cheap rehash or rushed mess. It’s not bad, but it’s nowhere near good. To put in short, Justice League does well enough to entertain with new additions such as Flash and Aquaman, with some glimpses of a good movie, but it was ruined by a rushed story, laughable editing, hilarious CGI and easily the lamest villain of the year. It’s such a shame DC has yet again failed when it matters most. Justice League is average, but it should have been great.

Let’s begin with the positives.

Firstly, new additions. Flash and Aquaman fit in this movie perfectly. I absolutely loved Flash’s lines and for the most part his role as comic relief worked. He was the most realistic and comedic of the entire team, and he was definitely a breath of fresh air. Ezra Miller captured Barry Allen perfectly, and I cannot wait for his solo film. Also, Jason Momoa proves me wrong as Aquaman. He is badass, funny and somewhat charming as the aquatic superman. These two were by the far the best part of the film, and I just wish we could have seen them in their own solo films before Justice League.

Also, the smaller scenes. I enjoyed scenes with the group, dressed as their normal selves, arguing back and forward against one another. There was a certain joy or entertainment to be had in them settling their differences having a heated or banter-full conversation with one another. There is some chemistry there. I just wish there was more, as for the most part we get recruitment scenes or over-the-top action sequences displaying their super abilities.

Here comes the negatives.

To begin, duration. This film is way too fast, and I had no idea what DC were thinking shrinking this film into 2 hours long. This was supposed to introduce us to the big threat, Steppenwolf, the world of the Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman. Perhaps it’s also DC’s fault that so much story and characters is crammed into 2 hours, but as a result it affects everything. The editing is absolutely awful and there are at least 2 or 3 full minutes missing from a lot of the scenes. Also, the storytelling becomes really lazy and filled with exposition. The final fight lasts about a good 2 minutes, and so much stupid decisions are made by the characters before the fight ensues.

Also, CGI. A lot of the CGI in this film actually makes me curious as to how this movie actually got released to the public. If they needed more time, they could have easily rescheduled the release date, because some shots in here are so telling it looks cheap as a result. Steppenwolf looks like a 3rd grade PS4 character, Cyborg looks almost as fake as an animated Disney character and so many sets and scenes have the most noticeable greenscreen. Some scenes aren’t even lit continuously and remained unfixed by the color grading. Would it have been that hard to invest in some more practical props? But the funniest atrocity by far would have to be Superman’s CGI-removed beard/mustache, as his face becomes as stiff as a botox patients’. 

In addition, villain. By Marvel’s standards, Steppenwolf would be awful. By DC’s standards, Steppenwolf would still be awful. He is nothing more than a Shakespearean drama queen who recites how powerful he and his army is before getting brushed aside like a little baby boy by the end. He has little to no motivation other than the cliche and generic “I want to rule the world and become a god” and even his dialogue was lame. He’s worse than Wonder Woman’s Ares for all I care, and I can’t believe he is the one deemed dangerous enough for all these superheroes to assemble. He was more of a joke.

To conclude, despite some nice new additions in The Flash and Aquaman, along with some good scenes with conflict and argument between the League, I can’t help but feel somewhat disappointed by the shortened duration, bad editing, hilarious CGI, lazy story and awful villain. It’s not a bad film, but by no means is this more than average. Take their sentimental value out of the equation, and this movie would be even worse than it already is. The reason I didn’t talk about Cyborg is because I didn’t particularly enjoy his character nor Ray Fisher’s portrayal, and there are way too many characters like Mera, Commissioner Gordon, Henry Allen and some others I will not spoil who are just crammed in here as DC rushes to compete with Marvel. Let it go DC, and concentrate on making quality films and leave the films itself to the hands of the directors. Justice League is a mess, resulted from over-intervention from studios and Warner Brothers and DC’s obsession with competing with the MCU. All hope is not lost, but I am sure DC cannot afford any more flops than this. Justice League receives an 6.0/10.

[1400762-collaborative-project]

Weekly Journal

Weekly Journal

Week 1 (September 26th -30th)

Over the summer holidays I got a headstard on my idea. I want to do a story about a little Prince trapped in a tower who gets rescued by a female knight. I was thinking how sad it must be for princesses that are trapped in towers and how alone and depressed they must be, and I thought that their struggles must be as tough as the struggles that the knight endures to find her, but no-one ever thinks about how the princess feels. The gender reversal happened just because I thought 'why not? What's stopping it from being a prince instead?' then I thought it would be a sad twist that the reason why he doesn't get rescued is because he is not a princess. All the strong knights want pretty princesses that they can marry and flaunt, not a little boy to save. So I stated to make an animatic for it very early on in the summer, because I knew that this would be a big project. I really want to do an animation which tests my storytelling skills and the point of that is having enough time to create a story and tell it. I don't just want to rush everything and tell the story, I want to learn the best ways to tell it, concerning visuals, sound, timing, 'show don't tell', all of that. From the briefing it seems as though I wont have enough time to do the full animation but I will see what I can do, I really want to create something that can test my narrative skills, not just the animating skills.

Week 2 (October 3rd – 7th )

I went to see Peter to show him my animatic and see what he thought about it. I don't think I will be able to animate the whole thing for the deadline. I didn't realise that only half of the year was dedicated to our personal showcase so I'm a little disappointed that I don't have the whole year to focus on it. Peter really liked the animatic I had so far and really liked the story, but he felt that something emotional was missing. The basics were there, showing the princes lonliness but I wanted it to be more sad, darker, I really want my audience to sympathise with this prince. He advised I go see Helen Schroeder as she has a lot of knowledge on storyboarding and is working on the storyboards for Watership Down. Helen mainly had questions, which is a good thing because if I'm to learn how to tell a story to an audience, I don't want the questioning things they don't need to. The first thing she thought was 'where is his food coming from?' I'd thought about this but didn't bother to think about it because I hoped people wont notice, but I suppose that if I noticed then anyone could. If I figure out a way to show how he gets food then it will likely make the character and the story feel a lot more real. She also said I should come up with a backstory about why he's there and where he's from. The audience doesn't need to know this but it will help me understand my own character better. Nice advice, I will have to think about it and improve my story.

Week 3 (October 10th – 14th )

While thinking about my animatic I've also been working on a walk cycle of my prince. I'd also like to do one for my knight but I will have to see if I have enough time. I like it so far, I love animating a characters sketch work, I have so much fun and I can really feel the movement. But I struggle so much with the clean up and colouring, something about my animation syule feels inconsistent. I don't know if it's me being sloppy or it's normal but I want to work on it because every animation that I've done, I've loved until I've gotten to the colouring, and then I just feel as though I mess it up because I'm an incompetent colourist. It's strange through because I love colouring still images and comics, I'm actually quite proud of my line art and colouring when it comes to comics, I don't know why I struggle so much with animation. I went to see Lynsey to talk about my dissertation thoughts and look at the kind of chapters I want to write. She said I should get down what I want my chapters to be and then start writing the first one just so that I have some words down. My essay is about cartoons and other pieces of media sending bad messages to an audience so I'll look at what things I want to discuss specifically and see if I can put them into relevant chapters.

Week 4 (October 17th – 21st )

I showed Helen my walk cycle and she also agreed that I need to work on the consistency of my animation. She said that things like the legs were thicker in other frames and thinners in others. She also said that his head is bobbing up and down too much. She said that it was good, though, which is why she is 'nitpicking', so that's reassuring. I went in to see Phil Archer in the sound room also and asked him for some advice on music. I have never touched music writing in my life, I once tried to play guitar in year seven but never kept up and I have no idea how to make music, I don't know what chords are, I don't understand how people put notes together in a way that sounds appealing, but apparently I thought it would be a good idea to write my own song for my animatic. I think knowing the basics of making music is a really good skill to have, especially in animation where sound can go a long way, and I feel as though one of the things that could hold me back from making more films is the fact that I can't make backing music. So the idea of making my own music for this animatic is really exciting to me and I hope will give me some good skills. I went in to see Phil and he was kind enough to give me a lesson on the beginning of the basics, he explained chords and notes to me and I really enjoyed myself learning something completely new to me. I went back home and now I'm actually trying to write my own song on FL Studio. So far it's very basic but it has the kind of 'happy' Disney tune to it that I want and considering I've never made a song before, I'm proud of myself. I will go back to Phil again for another lesson and hopefully he can take a look at what I have so far.

We had our briefing for the Collaborative project and have decided our group. I worked with Tia and Adzie last year for the final project and we had so much fun and really loved what we created, so we agreed to working together again, but we have included Jordan and Catherine. Tia, Adzie and myself are all 2D artists, Catherin is stopmotion and Jordan is 3D, so we were thinking about creating something with mixed media similar to 'The Amazing World of Gumball” style. We are hoping to meed up often so tat we can discuss our idea and our job roles.

Week 5 (October 24th – 28th )

I changed up my animatic. It focuses a lot more on the Prince growing up in the tower and trying to cope than the knight finding him. I realised that the majority of the last animatic was time spent having the knight take the prince away, when more focus and time needs to be on the prince himself. I've resolved the issue of food and created an outside presence that sends him food under a hatch in his wall which he gets daily. I showed this update to Peter and he felt this was a lot better, he felt he connected better with the character in this animatic and that it shows his struggle, isolation and loneliness in more detail. I'm so much happier with this version, I still have yet to finish the new ending but so far I find myself also being more attached to this character than I was before. I haven't shown Helen yet, but I hope to soon, when I went to see her she suggested that I start work on an animation test. I've decided to animate the clip where the prince picks up the opened lock and looks at it in shock. I've chosen this clip because I feel as though something simple means that I can pay closer attention to the character acting and expression. I went to see Phil again to get advice on my song and so far he thinks it's a good start. I told him I wanted it to derail into something sad, so that as the animation goes along and gets darker the music goes with it, but I was struggling to understand how to put chords and noted together to make it sound sad. He helped a lot and I've managed to find a musical rift to go to the sad moments of the animatic.

We went in to see John about our collaborative idea. At the moment we had this idea about creating a world that leads to different dimensions, which would mean we can add different types of media easily. I thought the idea of a hotel would be good, in the kind of style like 'Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends'. Sort of wacky, funny, quirky and strange. Adzie would like to do the character design but overall we like the ides of this character being a small monster who is on vacation, he gets given his room for the hotel and then goes to explore the other rooms. We have yet to decide on an idea or a reason for him to look around the hotel, but we are piecing the world together.

Week 6 (October 31st – November 4th)

I've updated my new animatic and went to shot Helen, she much preferred it but there are still some things she picked up on. She felt that the introduction could be shortened if I needed to save time, I could cut out the part where he pulls the lantern under the sheets, the scene where the books are piling up doesn't make much sense. I said that it meant he was leaving them untidy and abandoned but I suppose it still shows his depression with the plates piling up. And then there were a lot of things concerning the screen direction and film language that need to be tweaked which I have written about on my blog. She said that the general story comes across well, but there are areas of detail that could make it a lot better is fixed. I feel really greatful and honoured to have Helen's advice, she has taught me so much and I am so willing to change anything in the storyboard to make it perfect. I really want to learn how to execute a visual story successfully, I knew from the beginning that I would be changing a lot of my storyboard so I had no worries about being given criticism. (That's why I wanted to get the basic storyboard done before I came back to the first term, so that I had time to change it). This project to me is more about progressing my narrative skills as well as my animation skills, so the majority of my focus in based on all of the development I'm putting into my storyboarding rather than focusing so much on one animated clip. Having Helen around to criticise my storyboarding is so beneficial to me, I feel like I am learning so much from showing her what I have, receiving her comments, and then changing it. I can see it in my work that from the first animatic, I have improved the feeling of the story so much more with her help and perspective. I'm starting to figure out what I want to specialise in in animation, I think I want to specialise in storyboarding and character animation. Helen also recommended that I start working on my animation test, and as I've started to do so, I realise how much I also love to do character animation. Story and character is where I want to go. I also went to see Helen Piercy later this week to show her both animatics and see what she thought. She felt more emotional towards the second animatic but she preferred the ending to the first animatic. I then sat with her and showed a classmate, Lila, to get her thoughts also. Lila felt a lot more connected to the second one and also preferred the ending.

There was a Narrative and Character workshop for the Collaborative project. I wanted to go in but overslept and so I turned up later to meet with Adzie and Catherine during the second half. They were doing a character design activity, and weren't focused much on the collaborative project, just on creating their own characters. I said that I would meed them next week for the Narrative workshop, then we could discuss the story for the project more in detail.

Week 7 (November 7th – 11th )

I finished the sketchlines of my animation test and went to receive feedback from Helen and Robin.

Firstly they felt it was a well made animation with great expressions. Robin really liked the way the eyebrows were drawn and said they moved well as a unit with the eyes and face, which pleases me because expression is really important to me and one of my favourite things to draw. Helen felt that I needed to look more on my overlapping and secondary action, and a lot of it moved at the same time and it would look better for it to almost go in a wave, the whole general motion moving in an arch. I'm pleased with this advice but she also said I need to watch my time and that I should try to get it finished. I want to hopefully finish this test soon then get straight onto animating my showcase. As the animatic is far too long to make into a full animation, me and Helen discussed the idea of taking just a segment of the animation to animate. Most likely a part that has a basic beginning, middle, end to it. I wanted to make a trailer possibly but I think I would be able to show my still better if I took a scene from the animatic and animated that. I can't decide which part though, because I don't want the scene to look out of place without a story to it. I might do the end scene or a part where he's growing up.

We spoke more about our Collaborative idea and we are still trying to give the character a reason for leaving his room. We're unsure of the ending as we feel that it's too simple, or is not the right moral for the character to go back to his comfort zone. We are planning to go into the Narrative Workshop next week so we can get some advice from Helen on it.

Week 8 ( November 14th – 18th )

For my animatic Helen felt that I needed some scenes of the prince trying to escape, which makes a lot of sense. It's so clear to me now that after he realises he's not being rescued, he'd try to escape the tower himself, anyone would. So I'm going to add two scene, I've got one where he tries to bang on the door and get whoever is there to let him out, but then food just comes in and he is ignored. Them I'm going to do one where he escapes the window. I couldn't decide what to do with him, because he needs to not actually get out of the castle so I'm thinking that either he is too scared or it's too high for him to get down safely, or there's some kind of spell keeping him trapped in, like an invisible wall or something. I'd like to do the invisible wall but when I suggested it to a few people who had seen my animation, they felt it might be difficult to portray, including Helen.  I'm going to go with a magical chain that suddenly appears on his arm when he tries to escape, so that his efforts to muster up his courage proves to be pointless. I finished colouring my animation test but I'm not sure I like it. I really struggled with colouring. I managed to find a tutorial to draw clean lines with the polyline tool and then use the paint bucket tool to fill but the animation looks too jumpy at the same time. The shape of his face is inconsistent and seems to change in every frame, making it look quite jarring and jumpy. I think what I'll do in my actual animation is have more layers and leave unmoving parts still, but hopefully I can still animate the whole thing overall to not look too still.

We attended the Narrative Workshop this week to discuss our ideas and learn some things. We answered some questions about our project, and found answers for what the character does and his motives for doing it. We did have the idea of him being bored with the 2D room he was given so he goes to look at the other rooms, then he becomes so creeped out by what he doesn't understand that he goes back to being happy with his comfort zone. When we spoke to Helen she suggested that that might not be a very good moral to a story and we should think up something more. We started thinking that maybe he takes something back with him from one of the rooms, so that he's happy with his comfort zone but is not opposed to exploring and the unknown. One of us suggested that he should be a kleptomaniac and steal things from the hotel, it would start with mini shampoo's and a shower cap and a dressing gown, then he would explore the other rooms and leave the hotel with his back full of weird objects. I like this idea, because I find it funny in the context of being a hotel guest and how we all take the mini shampoos and stuff, but I'm not sure about it completely because I really liked the innocence of the little monster character.

Week 9 (November 21st – 25th )

I've had to change some other parts of my animatic and decide on what I'm animating. I've decided I'm going to do the scene where he gets caught by the magic chain while trying to escape. Firstly Helen felt as though I need a better angle to establish the hight with he's on the window ledge. I changed the angle so that the camera is from outside of the tower, below the prince and pointed up at him while he looks down. I also went to see Sarah Harris earlier where she suggested that the character needed a closer acting scene. He needed to show his disbelief that the chain appeared, so I added a scene where he inspects his hand where the chain appeared. I changed a few other bits in my animatic where Helen felt the camera direction could have been improved, such as the scene where the scene where the plates pile up, I've combined that scene with the scene of him in his bed. Now the plates pile up and the camera cuts to show him in his bed, clearly ignoring the food, suggesting time has gone by. This is to cut some time short. I've started working on my animation. I've been taking some video references for myself, one of my tying something around my waist, one of my pulling something tied to a post and one of me stepping up onto something as if onto a window ledge. All of these references have been so helpful to my animation and have made my first scenes look so realistic. It's made me realise how important taking reference is, I know that I would have been very frustrated if I was to animate that all from my head.

We mainly focused on our personal work this week but we did meet up to do wome collaborative work together. I created a style frame, Adzie created the character sheet, Catherine worked on the PDF and Jordan began work on the appearance of the hotel. We had a good day that day and got a lot of work done.

Week 10 ( November 28th – December 2nd )

I've done more for my animation, including the first scenes and the scene where he's out on the window ledge with his clothes and hair blowing in the wind, then he cowers in fear at the side of the wall. So far I'm really pleased with, I love doing the under-sketch work for the animation. I feel a lot more free when I'm sketching and I feel that comes across in the character movement. Helen had some suggestions for changing my animation to make it a bit better. We discussed some different camera angles and felt that when he puts his hand out of the window, there should be an outside profile view. I kind of wanted to keep the camera inside the tower to keep the audience 'trapped' with the prince also, which she understood, but I think this is a much more dynamic camera angle than what I had before, so I'll go with it. She also suggested I add a last frame of him from inside of the tower, showing him collapse on his bed in defeat, framed in the centre of it. I think this is a good idea to end on, I can try to make it quite dynamic, which is good because she felt that I did not have enough wider shots in my animation, which I agree with. I went back to see Phil Archer in the sound room, this time for help in my sound design for my animated scene. I said I really wanted a nice sound to go with the chain appearing so that it could sound all sparkly and mystical, basically to make the point that it's a magical chain caused by a spell. He put together some cool sounds. He reversed the sound of a chain clinking, so that it sounded unnatural and a bit mystical, then he added a kind of reverb and 'sparkling' effect to it to make it sound shiny and magical. I'm really pleased with that he helped me come up with. He also helped me get together some basic sounds like the wood creaking on the bed post and the wind blowing.

Me and Catherine went in to speak to Jon this week about our updated idea. I explained that I liked the kleptomaniac idea but I was also unsure as I wanted the character to remain fairly innocent, and not as though he had a mental disorder, I wanted the animation to be about the wacky hotel, not the monsters mental disorder. We started thinking from a different angle and came up with the idea of the Hotel actually being a simulation that the monster can go into to experience a holiday. It would be a twist that the weird and wonderful hotel didn't actually exist and almost be a statement on our entertainment. The Monster takes the VR helmet off when the experience gets too weird for him, he goes home to his boring room and wonders whether his reality is better or not. At first we were going to make it a human, who uses the monster as an avatar in the VR but we realised that would include finding an actor, filming, sets and props, which we wont have time for.

Week 11 ( December 5th – 9th )

I've changed my animation, adding shots of Helen's suggestions, not the animatic shows him leaning out of the window from a profile view and there is a last shot of him in his room. I've also updated my animation. I've essentially finished the first half of the sketch work, getting up to the shot where he jumps out of the window. I've also painted some backgrounds for all of these scenes. I'm really pleased with my backgrounds. Last year I did a lot of colouring practise for comics and backgrounds and I've really been trying to improve my paintings so that I can create better colours and perspective. From doing the animation test, I'd found the best way to make backgrounds so that they still look good but don't take too long. These backgrounds aren't as detailed as the one in the animation test but I feel that I have been able to produce more in less time by painting them this way and they still look acceptable to me. Aside from the lines and colouring, the first half is done.

The rest of the group seems okay with the idea me and Catherine had for the ending. We've decided Job roles. Catherine is the producer, I will be storyboarding and creating the animatic, Adzie will continue with the character designs and expressions, Jordan will create his 3D room and Tia will create her room. Catherine is also making a model puppet for the stop motion scene. I'm excited to keep working on this, although I also have a lot to do. This idea and concept excites me and I really hope that we can pull it off with quality. I started the storyboard during our meet up on some post-it notes, I will digitally re-draw them later.

Week 12 ( December 12th – 16th )

I've updated my sketched animation to him leaning out, all of the movements of the body are completed but I have yet to include his clothes, hair and face. The final frame is just his tiny body collapsing onto the bed so I only have a few frames there to show that, that won't be a difficult scene to complete. I also added a bit to a previous scenen. Helen said that when he's is about to jump, that would be the point where she would check the tie again to make sure it is still sturdy. I think she make a good point, so I added a action where he does that and suddenly he seems so much more real. I've been working on the background for when he falls back onto his bed, camera from out side of the window. Previously I'd made some floor plans so that while doing the storybaord I'd be able to know where everything is positioned in every frame. For this shot, with the camera being from the outside looking in, taking reference from the floor plans I made was a really big help for painting this background. Once I get the animation sketches done, which shouldn't be long, I'm going to start thinking about colours.

I began to digitally draw over my storyboard but I'm worrying about finishing both my dissertation and personal animation, so I am currently focusing on that. Catherine has offered to do some storyboarding but I assured her that I would be fine to continue after Christmas. I feel as though I know exactly how to storyboard this, the shots and everything, as I've spent a lot of time on my personal project storyboarding, I can see this in my head so well. I'm excited to start.

Christmas Break ( December 19th – January 9th )

Over the Christman break I focused mainly on my dissertation but did also get much animation done. I was able to finish a background where he leans out of the window to look at the chain appear and I started working on my colouring. In Toon Boom I discovered that you are able to make more than one palettes so that if you use a specific colour, then change that colour from your palette, it will also change it in the animation. This is good because it means that if colours need to be changed then I don't need to refill every frame with the bucket too, I can just change the colour from the palette. I realised that it would be cool to have a slightly different chade of colours for when he is outside of the tower and for when he is inside, just to give a bit more atmosphere to his environment. I updated the colouring to where he is when he is standing on the ledge.

We mainly focused on our personal projects over Christmas, as we all had a lot to do, we agreed to leave the collaborative work for when we were back in Norwich.

Week 13 (January 9th – 13th )

I've continued to colour but also have been focusing a lot on my dissertation and trying to get that done. Lynsey has been a big help and has been able to review my work when I've needed her to. As for the animation, I've really just been trying to get colouring done as soon as I can, I don't know how much time I'll have left to get it all done but I still need to finish my blog and complete my Research Report. I'm not sure what else to update on, really, I can just feel myself clicking into overdrive and I feel very determined to get all of this done.

This week I completely finished the animatic for our collaborative project. I had more fun doing it than I thought I would and I realise that after doing this storyboard, I really would like to specialise in storyboarding, as well as character animation. I'm really pleased with what I've created, I feel as though I can present it as something professional. Keeping the title safe zone for each frame was very helpful also, I was able to see it all in perspective and I think I've created something that reads very well. The responses I got from the group were good also. I really wanted it to come across as quirky, even a little funny, and the group felt I'd achieved that. Mt plan was to create the beginning and end of the storyboard so that we could fit in the sections where we have individually made our rooms, but I needed some more transition shots of the character walking through the hallways and looking into doors. Catherine was a big help with this and she offered to make some of these connecting shots, we also discussed the best angles to shot it. Me and Jordan put the animatic together with everyone's work and we're very pleased with it.

Extension ( January 16th – 27th )

I've requested an extension due to some struggles and depression over Christmas. I'd spoken to Peter about it and after having been open to him about my feeling and situations throughout the years he agreed to an extension. I am using this extension to really push what quality I can under the pressure I'm feeling. I was able to finish my Research Report and I'm quite pleased with it. If I have time to go back I would like to add a section about Bojack Horseman but it already took a lot of cutting to achieve the wordcount and not go over, so I think it would be difficult to add extra information. I really don't know the best way to colour. I'm not sure whether it's just better to draw the whole frames on one layer and use the bucket tool to fill, or whether I should do a layer for the body, layer over the body for the clothes, layer for the face, layer for hair (etc) so that I can look at the overlapping and secondary actions separately. I'm doing it with the separate layers to be safe but I feel as though it's coming out a bit messy. I think the movement itself looks fine and I think that I've fixed the problem with it looking too jumpy by having the different aspects on different layers (the problem I had with the animation test) but the painting feels a bit messy in some places. Such as when he is standing on the window ledge his clothes wave in the wind but the colouring looks messy. Whenever I try to clean it up on the layers, there always seems to be a problem. I think I've made the right choice in having each aspect on separate layers but I think that I may have created too many layers and now I've confused myself. With the extension I've been able to finish the animation. I've done the colours so that when he is outside of the tower the colours are brighter and when he is inside they are darker. I want this to create more of a subtle sad reality to his situation, he can't even get to the light. I had some problem with the chain. Firstly I discovered that in Toon Boom I'm able to create a glow affect, which is fantastic because it's exactly the effect I want. I was able to do this with the first chain I drew but then I wasn't able to recreate it with the rest of them. It seemed as though the drawing of the chain wouldn't show and instead there was just a transparent glow in the shape of the chain. I was frustrated at this to begin with but I'd resolved it by learning that I had to duplicate the layer and keep one of the layers normal and the other with the glow, this is what I'd done with the previous chain. It proves my point that I had created far too many layers in this file for me to keep track of. I've finished my entire animation now and all that's left to do it put the sound together. I'm really pleased with what I have created. I'm mainly pleased with the undersketch animation but that is what I prefer to do and is in my comfort zone. The colouring came out better than I thought it would, and better than it did in the animation test in my opinion but I felt that it could be cleaned up in some places. I will probably clean this up after submission. My plan after submission is to continue with my full animatic story and create a short film of a few minutes that is partly finished and partly WIP. I would like to come away with a piece that shows my skills in character animation and storyboarding, so I really like the idea of keeping the majority of it as professional storyboarding and sketched character animation, with only a few parts looking completely finished.