Finished!

Here's the final animation. I'll conclude it after you've watched it .

(Apologies for the poor narration).

List of things I'm unhappy with-

• The voice over was a last minute thing (I knew I'd need narrations from the very start, but instead of recording my sound in the first few weeks in the booth at Uni, i waited until the last minute and used my headset which in turn means poor quality).
• The music although passable, isn't matched to the animation. Getting someone to watch my animation and write a piece of music to it would of probably been the best choice.

That's pretty much it, the sound side of things I'm stupidly out of my comfort zone and i have no real idea of how to work with it inside Flash (or outside).

I'm happy with the style that was eventually used, you can see it get progressively better through the animation, the first background for example looks worse than the second and third backgrounds. I doesn't look BAD, but the second and third backgrounds were better (in my opinion).

In terms of animation, due to me leaving it to the last minute (again) (as always) (idiot) i had to use a few shortcuts like doing less inbetweens than i would have liked to (or in some cases doing none at all (cookie jar/Stroppy cross arms).

All in all it's been fun doing this animation and if it had a little better narration (Which i may change in the future) it's done it's job. Numerous people have said "Aww, naughty baby" which was the reaction i wanted (which means it's done it's job). The moral i feel is there (not as forward as I'd like) but it's noticeable. I just feel pacing it differently would of been a better idea.

Next time i really need to stop working backwards and work the NORMAL way. It's used by animators world-wide for a reason, who am i to break a working methodology?

V-CAM! SAVIOR!

http://bryanheisey.com/blog/?page_id=19 

This little tool saved me a lot of hastle in the second scene.
 

Late addition!

Boiling.

I've known about boiling for a long time now and loved the way it looked, with boiling nothing is ever truley static. Big Trains - Staring contest is a absolutely PERFECT example of this. The "animation" is pretty much a still. Boiling makes it less static however and gives it some life.

Now although this isn't everyones cup of tea, i was at a loss when it came to still shots in my animation. I hate when nothing is happening on screen so i decided to add this boiling effect. Although it's a lot slower on Big Train and to be honest a lot more noticable there's still enough there to keep it "moving".

(Appologies for the weird twitch, Flash's exporting is failing a little).

Now i personally believe that it works better than having still frames, and in a way it a little nostalgic look back at hand drawn cel animation.

I work so backwards it's scary.

So yeah, during animating (THE END PROCESS) I decided that i wasn't happy with the background and went back into GIMP.

I produced 2 backgrounds (The 2nd BLUE one of which i'm most happy with) the problem came when i threw my character onto it. The styles did-not-mix at all...Not even a little. It's too late now to reanimate the character in a new style so i'll have to leave it but now i know not to work backwards (I knew not to work backwards before i started but i did it anyway....Self sabotuer?)

Scene1-ish

Just a little update on some of scene 1, all that's left (if you remember the scribblematic) is for the baby to hide the jar behind his back and act like nothing happened.

The narration will be done after as i'd rather work my narration around the character than my character around the narration. (I know sound is initially done first and then animated around it, but for narration i'd be more comfortable doing it this way).

Little tweaks.

As you can see from the videos i decided to go with the original first design i came up with. The "Animal hoody" baby just didn't seem to have the same impact. This baby could be calculated and smart where as i feel the other one just looked too innocent

Originally when i showed this to people the response was (So what's inside the box) ((Obviously i intended for it to be a Cookie jar (AMERICANISM) so i had to quickly add something (I was working in frame-by-frame though so i had to edit each frame..)

All i did was add a simple cookie design and it seemed to twig with people a lot easier (May be that i told them what it was supposed to be before changing it). Personally it does make it a lot clearer so i'm happy with it in that sense.

STYLE?

I originialy stated that my intent was to do a water-coloury "pooh" like art style...How wrong i was. I attempted to even remotely make something that looked good, and i failed, this is how far i got.

   Before facepalming and shaking my head. 

The art style wouldn't have worked in animation (For a more experienced and practiced animator maybe) but for me and the time-frame i gave myself, it just really wouldn't have worked. Maybe i can come back to it on my second module? Who knows.
 
COLOURS?

There's an interesting piece of journalism that i came across when researching "colours".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4474725.stm

Now although this is talking a lot about babies (4-9months) i feel that it's still an interesting point. Are children favoured towards certain colours? Are boys favoured towards blue and girls pink? The article discusses it.

  Colours in childrens animation are very important, before i chose the final "light blue/baby blue/sky blue" that you can see above i did try a few more pale colours. 

 The reason for chosing blue wasn't for any other reason than it worked best with the background.
 
Green - It was ok, but didn't really do anything.
Blue - The chosen colour and i think suited the "innocent" baby thing perfectly.
Purple - Same as the green, it was ok..But not quite there.
Yellow - Clashed with the yellow background.
 Red - Just wasn't a fan.
Pink - This was 2nd favourite next to blue 
Orange - Clashed too much with the cookie jar.
Grey - No. 


Below is an example of what i meant (Compared to the background).

 BACKGROUND?

My original idea for a background was pretty much the same as my idea for the art style of the animation "Water-colour". Once i realised i really couldn't do what i wanted in photoshop i quickly threw myself back over to something i knew, Flash!


With this in mind i still didn't want to do something vectory and none experimental, although what i came up with wasn't out there and wacky i think it worked. I tried to remember when i was a kid and the way i would coloured things in colouring books. Was pretty much scribble but it somehow worked because of the lines around the scribble, this is what i went for, and personally i feel it worked.

A drastic colour change for the background of scene 2. I did this because the pale colour didn't work in contrast with the hand-prints. Also as the second scene is intended to be a living room, i don't feel pale colours would of worked as well.

I added a simple boil to the paintbucket as it's the foremost object in shot and it looked a little static.

First ideas?

  In terms of a story, it's a lot like my other projects in that there's no real brainstorming or much "Thinking" about it at all really. I just came to me, and seemed like a good idea, Asking a few other people they confirmed that it was a good idea.

A few early doodles - (Excuse the quality).

Pay attention to the 2 different "baby" designs below. I originally planned to use the "Flower head" design but after looking over it again, i'm not sure. I think the whole "Animal hood" has a bigger factor of adorableness (Which will help push the animation forward, i believe).

I'll have to decide over the next few days.

There's just ONE glaring problem....I don't know how it will end.

It starts with the character (below) Sitting in a room with the camera slowly panning across. Stops on the character central and zooms in. The character has its hand in the cookie jar but realising that the "camera" (Audience or narrator or parental figure) is watching it, it quickly hides the cookie jar behind it's back. "Were you eating those cookies (Name)?" To which the character shakes his head to suggest "Nope, wasn't me". To which the Narrator/parent replies "Ok...I believe you".

(A quick SCRIBBLEmatic of the first "scene" so to speak).

I want it to kind of be a take on "The boy who cried wolf", but there's differences within the story that don't make the end punchline work. I originally thought of doing something drastic but then realised it was a CHILDREN'S animation so i had to restrain the idea. I still have no idea how to end it, 5 weeks left. I'll have to keep thinking.

Examples?

Once again Pocoyo is at the fore-front of my vision for this animation. The white background is something i'd like to carry over to my animation (Although i plan on having a pale watercolour-esque background).

Simplistic is the word i think i'm looking for.

MORAL : Well...There isn't one. Steven shoe horns "Laughing is good for you, even if you aren't sad to begin with", which isn't a Moral.

I originally had lip syncing as one of my goals for specialist study one, but i feel that for what i want to do an over-all narration would be the better choice. Can you imagine Pocoyo with voice overs? (Obviously Pocoyo himself has a few squeaks and giggles, but not proper "dialog").

MORAL : Patience is a virtue maybe? I'm not 100% once again if there is an actual moral or not, but this was a little less confusing than the first.

While watching back a few of these i realised that Pocoyo has something that i don't really intend to put into my animation....Viewer interaction. You sometimes hear Steven asking the viewing masses "Can you tell Pocoyo what he's doing wrong"(Or any other variation). I don't plan on having this interaction with the audience, but i do plan on the audience knowing something the narrator doesn't so they do feel that sense of "I know!" Alot like Pantomime's.

Another thing if you watch through the videos are sound effects and how key they are for Pocoyo. Each step of the characters has a sound effect on. Each head turn, each jump,each arm movement. It plays a huge role in Pocoyo and i'll have to keep looking back and testing my animation to see if it would gain something from having the same idea.

Winnie the pooh!

A few days ago i ordered (And am still waiting on) ;

 "Winnie the Pooh: Complete Collection of Stories and Poems"

The reason for this is so that i can try and get into the mind of a child, how they read (Or in most cases listen) to stories like this. The point is to try and deconstruct the stories and the way they are told to cater for a younger audience. I hope it will help me with my story writing in terms of how to write it but also how to word it so that it doesn't fly over the audiences head.

Emotion?

What makes a person feel for the character? Be it sympathy/empathy, hatred/love, sad/happy the list goes on. What is it about the character that makes a person connect?

As always the looks are important, it'd be very hard to make people connect with a stick man (although it is possible, to some extent). A person needs to be able to see how a person moves, the way they ACT.

If they're hunched and walking slowly, something is obviously wrong? They're sad maybe?

 

This guy for example, by the way his back is arched and his arms are hanging down you'd assume something is wrong? (Granted it's highly exaggerated but that's the point, no one would do this in real-life - a more restrained version maybe). Is he sad? Is he depressed? What's happened in his life to make him like this? Did he lose something/someone? It makes you QUESTION the reason the character is in the state it is.

Where as (Quick sketchy drawing...Apologies)

This character is standing up straight, he seems fine. Not sad, not depressed but also not happy. Happy would be a huge exaggerated body shape or walk cycle showing this, a hop in it's step maybe. The point is, besides looks it's important that the way the character carries itself is recognisable by the audience.

I'd like to take Rocky as an example. The film opens with him fighting in some rundown club against "Spider Rico". You have NO emotions for him at this point, just a little confused as to what's happening. As the story progresses you find out more about him, you find out that he's a little slow so you sympathize with him in that sense. It's human instinct to root for the underdog in a story. Rocky picked up on this and the film (in my eyes) is one of pure genius. You feel for Rocky when he's fighting, you feel for the Rocky/Adrian relationship juggling. You FEEL for Mick's passion and determination.

That's the point of an actor/character in both animation and film, to make the audience FEEL something. Be it hate for an "obnoxious, egotistical" character, or happiness for someone finally reaching their "goals". If i could (And i should there's no maybe) make people FEEL these emotions when watching my animation, my job as an animator is done. It's not all about flashy visuals, it's more about the part of "immersing" yourself into something for a brief moment of time.

3 fingers of Scotch please barkeep!?

After de-constructing the characters i stumbled upon something that's easily noticeable, but seems to be common in all designs for animation nowadays.

3 FINGERS.

  
After watching animation for most, if not all of my life, i never really picked up on it. Sure I noticed that most characters had 3 fingers, but i never understood why? Was it a simple case of making the animators job easier? (I think the answers yes), or was it just a mistake that was praised and stuck?

I did a little research, and i would type it all out if it wasn't so eloquently put in another blog;

 

Who invented 3 fingers?

This got me thinking, i originally drew my "baby" character with 4 fingers.....But looking back at it, 3 fingers may be the way to go...If it works for everyone else, there must a reason they're doing it...Right?

De-constructing?

Yeah, i thought it'd deconstruct a few characters to try and truly understand what goes through character designers minds when coming up with character for children's animation.

A simple Pocoyo De-construction.

A simple Bob The Builder De-construction.

 

Looking at lots of other character designs (These 3 mainly) they share a lot of similarities.  Facial features seem to be one of the over-riding similarities. Most of the characters i looked at all have incredibly simplistic facial features. No photo-realistic eyes, not even any looking remotely like Human eyes in many cases. I think it's a simple case of if you throw them into a silhouette and they can still be recognised you've done your job for a child friendly design.

Designing for children? Different?

In one word, yes. When it comes to animating for the younger audience things have to be taken into consideration. For the most part character designs in children's animation are alot simpler than their older brothers.

A thing like Peppa Pig is a prime example of this -  2 colours (Pink and Red) and a none complicated design. Another would be Pocoyo (Although not AS simple as Peppa) it's still simple.

When designing my character I'll have to take this into some serious consideration. I have an idea already and it's somewhat simple, so i may run with that but I'll have to mess around with it first.

In terms of colours i found they were also very important, I've known for a while that bright, primary colours hold children's attention. The problem is that I rarely see children's animation with the kind of colours i intend to use.

The pale colours that come with watercolour-esque art may turn the child's attention from the clip, i may risk it or i may find that the colours need to be changed. Either way I'll be going for something like this -

 

 I absolutely love E.H. Shepard's visuals....Just look at them....Stunning. I'd love to create a small animation using this art style as i feel it'd work incredibly well in children's animation and for the children that have read the old Winnie the Pooh books (I fear it may be few too many) it'll be on comfortable ground for them.

It's all part of growing up - Learning aim.

Aims

By the end of this module i plan to complete a short 40-1 minute animation aimed at 3-6 year olds in addition to family and carers. The animation will have a Moral woven into the story along with full narration and various sound effects.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the module i intend to be adept at basic story writing, aswell as being confident with using different art styles. I also plan on being knowledgable with Cross-platform animation and to know how to do this effectivly with as little time wasted as possible. The sound side of things (although not my prime concern) i plan on having a knowledge of the usage of sound of when and where it's not/is needed.

__________________________________________

When you're a kid you're very open to taking things in, be it language and culture or the difference between "good" and "bad" you'll build the foundations of these through your childhood to use and understand later in life.

With that in mind my aim for this module is to produce a short animation with a moral carefully stitched into the fabric of the story. The idea is to make it simple, but also not too simple to leave older audiences (Parents) in this case knowing what's going to happen from the first frame. Although the short will be aimed at the younger audience (Early learning) i still want the parents to "enjoy" it as much as possible.

In terms of the art style, as stated in the video pitch (Should be below) my style has been vector for the most part. I really want to stray away from that, and am currently working in photoshop giving the art a more painted water-coloury feel. I feel it'd work immensely well for this type of project and it's also adding another style that I'm comfortable working with.