LAST BLOG b4 dedline omg

I finished the film which is good. I didn't let my team down which is good. I was educated for the first time the other day about tv safe areas. This is a scary concept for me as I always thought that whatever I made would automatically fit wherever. It prompted me to look back over the film and consider whereabouts the content might be cut off for those poor bastards with 4:3 tvs in this modern day and age. Regardless, it made me certain that I MUST consider the TV safe area in future. The more I learn about camerawork the more difficult I find it.

Anyway, my animated uni logo looks tight as heck:

COMPIN

I've been compin' this final animash!

I'm really pleased with how this looks. Kate's sets are bare peng and I'm glad she suggested this to begin with as it lends the film an absolutely distinct visual style. I would definitely go for someithing like this again and it's broadened the variety of work in my portfolio.

Finishing da animashun

I've been winding down with animation on this project. I'm glad I got the more nuanced or labour intensive shots out of the way first, allowing me to burn through the rest quite quickly. I don't regret animating the film on threes as I believe the animation is dynamic enough that it isn't uncomfortable to watch. It's also allowed me to meet the deadline.

Currently, hand-drawn animation is my strongest suite and I've done better at adapting to Andrew's character designs than I have previously, hopefully proving myself to be adaptable. In fact, this year has greatly improved the breadth of animation styles I've employed.

However, I want to further explore whether I'm over-animating some shots. Cutting on character movement keeps up pace, but in earlier versions of shots I've left very little room for stillness. Sometimes less animation is more, but I'm inherently prone to exaggerate my characters and keep their movement stretching on through every frame of the shot. This can lead to a scene seeming to lack breathing space. I've amended this to a degree as I've progressed, but I still feel as though the film's pacing could be improved upon, and a factor of this is the animation.

Colour Grade

Colour grading the backgrounds was easier than I expected it would be. In many cases, adding a little saturation to bring out stronger shadows and colours worked fine. I'm really happy with how they look now, especially the indoor shots. On the outdoor shots, I added a little green tint to the Sossidge Cafe side of the screen to emphasise the grossness compared to the Gloop Cafe.

Gross, innit. Here are some before and after shots

Above is pre grade and below is post grade. Added some greeeen tint and brightened the image, making it look a little crisper

Brightened the image











My concern is that since the outdoor sets were lit very differently to the indoor sets (and exported at a different quality) there will be some dichotomy between the way they both turn out. I want interior shots and exterior to look as though they're in the same universe. In future, I must keep my lighting consistent but for a first attempt I think they have come out well.

Reviewing Gloop Cafe - all my script revisions

I've started making my production booklet for Gloop Cafe, which has given me a good opportunity to review this project from the beginning. I'm looking back at all my pre-production work. What's stuck out at me significantly is the amount of revisions and rewrites I've gone through. Seven script drafts, four storyboard drafts and three animatic drafts got me to this point, which is far more amending than many of my coursemates have done. On one hand, the fact that I started on pre-production very early was for this exact reason - I wanted to have wiggle room and the ability to change things early on when I received feedback from my peers.

However, I really struggled to clarify the story and message of this film until late into February, when I was making large changes to the animatic at the last minute. I need to be more concise, and my biggest worry about the film is that I've tried to cram too much into too little time - still. The film could really stand to be a couple of minutes longer. For me, the takeaway is clarity. Clarity of plot, clarity in shot framing and pacing, clarity in animation. These are all things I must improve upon.

I really started making good strides with this film when I was forced to consider the essential element of it, which was Sossidge Cafe angry at Gloop Cafe for using sausage in their recipe. Once I consolidated this, I removed the relationship in the film and put more effort into writing the build-up for the fight scene.

In future, when I make a short film I will first consider the CORE theme and write around that, always going back to it if I am unsure whether something fits or not.

Live Brief 4 - Video Mapping in Lille

I had a mad time in Lille on my second excursion out there. I really enjoy it because it's a chance to do something different with animation, it looks diverse on my reel and I work with people I don't ordinarily work with. I'm pleased with the end result but next year I could push it further in terms of spectacle and originality. Looking back, some elements of my animation this year were resemblant of last year's, such as the music I chose and how I used parts of the opera house to project onto. I'd love to go back next year, register as a PROFESH and be BOLDER in my ideas. I worry that I may fail to be as adaptable as certain other animators.