welcome to my MyBlog page for the Exploratory Practice unit !!!
here I will be documenting my process in the creation of this units wonderful project. thank u very much for scrolling !!!
Week 1 : Exploratory Workshops and 3D Toolkit 1
This week we had our Exploratory workshops with Hannah, focusing on space and the body. I had a lot of fun in these workshops doing smaller more low commitment tasks. I made a dancing crab. We watched a lot of cool short films that I learned a lot from in terms of space and staging.
We had our first toolkit this week for Blender. It was difficult to get the hold of using a new software that isn’t incredibly intuitive but after spending some time fiddling with the controls it became a lot easier.
Week 2 : Project Briefing, Brainstorming, 3D Toolkit 2
This week we went over the brief for our new personal project. We were given the parameters and some examples from previous years. I felt very inspired by the films we watched, they all communicated their story extremely well and I felt encouraged to start brainstorming some ideas for myself. We were told to give a presentation for Wednesday on brainstorming and initial ideas. I worked in Pinterest to create a few large boards on the themes, styles, backgrounds, colours, environments, etc. I went into class on Wednesday and pulled up these boards and spoke about the influence I feel from them on the project going forward. The areas I hope to improve are in camera angles/movement, backgrounds, and general creativity with story and style.
On Friday we had our second toolkit in Blender. This week we furthered our skills in the software and focused on using grease pencil and improving on the basic skills we worked on last week. I had a tough time at first with grease pencil since the transition into blending 2d and 3d aspects in this way is quite new, but still am glad I tried something new. I really enjoy using Blender and feel very satisfied with even the basic work we’ve done.
Week 3 : Rigging Workshop, Creative Writing, 3D Toolkit 3
I didn’t attend class on Monday which focused on rigging in ToonBoom Harmony, unfortunately. Attendance this term is very important to me and going forward I don’t want to miss any classes. I spoke to my academic advisor about how I felt about missing class and she told me that it’s okay to miss a few classes and to not put too much pressure on myself, which felt very reaffirming. On Wednesday, we had Darren tell us about creative writing. I really enjoy creative writing and character development. We did some exercises on getting to know our characters better outside of our story. I learned a lot writing about my character and feel more confident about integrating her into my story.
In the Blender toolkit this week we worked on lighting. Joshua was really good at explaining the difficult subjects and talking us through the impact of lighting and camera. I feel more confident in using the software every week and get more excited about creating because of that.
Week 4: Storyboarding, Creative Writing 2, 3D Toolkit 4
Our class this week was focused on creative writing. We talked about character through action, time space and metaphor, genre, story & structure and log lines.
This week we submitted our statement of intent. I was feeling stressed about getting this done, but felt more clear after writing it. Putting down onto paper some information and intentions that I have with the current project definitely helped me get my head together.
In the final Blender toolkit we focused on lighting, painting in 2d, and image planes. Overall, I’m very glad I chose the Blender toolkit. Im glad I’ve come out of it even with the most basic knowledge and understanding of the software, I feel like I learned a lot over the 4 weeks and am that much more confident in my 3d skills.
Week 5: Interim Presentation 1 & Storyboarding 2
This Monday we had our first Interim presentation for this project. I presented all the character sketches and beginning preproduction that I had prepared. I received a lot of positive and helpful feedback on the work I had shown, my main take aways being to keep working on my character sketches and put together a few storyboards to better flesh out my story. I wrote down a lot of my thoughts after I had sat back down and it gave me a lot of ideas for improving my project, including stylistic choices, narrative changes, and was given a lot of references to check out.
Week 6 : Personal tutorials, Lip Sync Project Intro, 2D Toolkit 1
I really valued Mondays personal tutorials class to just have an easy entrance back into classes after 3 weeks. It was helpful to talk with Darren and Sue Lynn on my progress after the break and where I needed to be when. I’m a bit behind where I’d like to be but am hoping doing a lot of work for the next few weeks will help put me back on track. I’ve been trying to spend more time in and out of uni on the project and its really important to me to complete and be proud of the piece I make at the end of the year.
On Wednesday we had a cl;ass with Steve may discussing a new project we’d be working on that focused on lip syncing. I’m excited to begin this project and plan on using an old character design to assign the audio to. Animating acting and lip sync is one of the biggest things i want to get better at before finishing uni so a smaller, lower stakes project like this is something I’m looking forward to.
We also had our first toolkit since coming back. I chose the 2d toolkit with Mario. He sat down with each of us and discussed our projects and gave us some good pointers and criticism.
Week 7 : Interim Presentation 2, Rigging Tutorial, 2D Toolkit 2
Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the Interim Presentation 2. It was interesting learning head rigging for my characters. It was hard to get the hang of it, but after getting some direction from Marcelina I had a clearer picture of how rigging works and how to best use it for character acting. I’m not very excited about using rigging in the future since I enjoy frame to frame animation, but i understand the importance of learning how to rig well.
The second 2D toolkit was a continuation of the first, just doing 1 to 1 and getting pointers on where to focus. I had a good conversation with Mario about where i am in the process and even though he tore me apart, it was a very good motivator to be working harder, more efficiently, and more often.
Week 8 : Sound Workshop, Editing Workshop 1, 2D Toolkit 3
I had a lot of fun in this weeks sound workshop. We were given sound kits and went in a group to the one of the lecture theaters and helped each other on the sound effects for our projects. Even though not a lot of them were really usable i was still a very good introduction to using sound equipment.
I wasn’t able to attend the 3rd 2D toolkit
Week 9 : Personal Tutorials, Editing Workshop 2, AE Toolkit
Our Monday class this week just consisted of scheduling tutorials with Su Lynn and Darren to help give us a direction for the rest of our projects. Im behind, still working on my animatic, but Im trying to get that as far along as I can to be in my best place when I begin animating. Ive organised getting some help from other people in my class and am planning to help them out as well.
The second editing workshop was a lot of fun, just messing around with premiere pro and getting used to certain controls, short cuts, and learning what we can so with the software. We made short videos and presented them to the rest of class and we all had a good laugh looking at the bad work we had made in an hour. I found it very useful to have a better understanding of editing and compositing.
We had our first After Effects workshop today, focusing on 2.5D. It was confusing at first but a really helpful class in getting reintroduces to after effects after having not used it for quite a few months. I find editing and compositing to be something I’m not very confident in or knowledgable about so I think its very important at the moment to be working in the software and working with Mariana to get more used to it.
Week 10 : Bank Holiday! Compositing Tutorial, AE Toolkit 2
Honestly, I was annoyed we didn’t have class on Monday bc I needed to do hella work.
I found the compositing tutorial very useful. I got a lot more comfortable with the controls of After Effects and what I’m capable of doing in it. I find AE to be intimidating at times because there’s so much you can do with it I don’t want to mess it up. But after this workshop I feel a bit more confident in my compositing skills and knowledge.
In this weeks toolkit we continued our 2.5D practice. We worked in After Effects to create lighting and depth to our backgrounds. It was a little frustrating at first when the software just decides not to work as it should, or “playing around” with the controls doesn’t work the way you want it to. But when I got a better handle on it I was happy with what I had learned. It was encouraging to focus on lighting when watching other animations and when working on my own.
Week 11 : Personal Tutorials, Compositing Tutorial 2, AE Toolkit 3
Week 12 : Final Presentations
Week 13 : Submissions
Week 14 : Lip Sync presentations