The really unusual thing about taking all year to animate this was the countless times I wanted to go back and change something because I had decided I wanted to push that scene a bit further, push the acting a bit further or had learnt something in the later part of the year that would have really helped me when I was animating earlier. Honestly that happened so freaking often that I couldn't even tell you. I'm going to pick out a few scenes to talk about that were difficult at the time, some I've learnt about and so on.
These below two scenes I am going to talk about because I learnt things when animating them. Or there animation was just significant enough to discuss.
This scene here I did part way along the process after I completed 10x10x16. I ended up animating the lightbulb moving just by key framing the drawing of the lightbulb in premier because it was far easier than hand drawing it all out. I really wanted this animation to be smooth and that allowed me to do that. This was definitely one of those points where I learnt something because there were so many points in my film I would have loved to have done this from the get go. I would really have loved to animate the entire thing in after effects to be honest but I didn't have that figured out at the beginning of the year. And I had really wished I'd done it after Francesca told me about the plug in they were using for their collab this semester. But hey what're you going to do.
I've also noticed his hand got cut off in this scene and that's a little annoying... I'm sure you don't notice it when you watch it.
This next scene I want to talk about much earlier on in the process. I hand sketched this out when I animated it. I did this in Flash so it was rough but I could see the results really very fast. I can't imagine having done this any other way because I revised and changed this scene so many times to get the head movement right. I was really fortunate the day I animated this that I had megan in the department using the other end of desk to work because her department was a no go area for a while. Every so often I would just get her to turn her head in a disapproving manor and that real helped me perfect this movement. Now It's probably my favourite scene in the film.
These next two examples are examples of times when taking so long to make a film caused me difficulties and inconsistencies that I really notice now the film is completed.
So all of the above images are connected to the same point I am about to make. I spent such a long time at the beginning of the year deciding on shapes and semiotics for this film (check sketchbook) to make sure nothing was confusing or misleading but I'm annoyed at myself that I didn't take that as far as to continually make sure the ?'s were consistent in the final film. I wanted to make them as bold as the rest of the mathematical elements like the ticks and the hearts which is why I thought yellow because it feels like the colour you only choose when you can't make your mind up or are trying to stay on neutral ground. Then when I put it in the whitish bubbles I noticed it wasn't too clear so I outlined it in black but now it just feels messy and inconsistent with the other yellow question marks, which all work fine. Then occasionally when they aren't part of a mathematical equation I just leave them black. That was deliberate because I didn't want them to be associated with the maths but I don't know if its even worth it or if that's just as confusing as having them yellow would have been.
I'm not sure what to do for the best without asking a whole bunch of people seemingly nit picky and random questions about it. Which I don't really have the time nor the enthusiasm to do anymore. So I guess it'll just have to bug me a little.
The other inconsistency that I notice is the way I've chosen to represent the bar itself in this film. When I saw this film play out in my mind way back at the conceptual stage of the process I saw only hints of the bar space they were in. It wasn't really relevant past a typical access point to these types of situations. We've already seen the dance floor and now we just needed to see the bar. And in the final film I represent it in a few different ways. I wish ultimately that I had just stuck to the first representation of it I show you. I love having it represented by a darker section of the screen. I think it's clear, I think it's stylised and I think it functions. There's really nothing else you need it to do. But That was the last incarnation of the bar I came to work on. I wonder if it really only works because of the angle it's at makes it look like we're seeing it from the top down. Which we are meant to be I just wonder if I could have made it work for the other scenes.
In the two examples down from that I use a simple line to represent the bar because the camera is at eye hight with the bar. In one of those scenes I also add some bar stools because the character is sitting down, an element I emit from my favourite version of the bar. It's fine but every time I see that scene swing onto screen in the final animation I wish I had thought about it differently. I would at very least change the opacity of the chairs to 56% which is the opacity of the bar top in the later scene and the ground of the opening scene.
Finally the last scene where the bar is present you can see I didn't include it at all! The characters arms are bending as if they are leaning against it but I didn't put it in there at all.
Given more time I'd like to have figured out a way to bring the later three incarnations closer to the one I liked. Ideally I would have had this figured out before I started the animating but to begin with I was up against a deadline and sometimes you can only see an issue in hindsight.
So that's all my pros and cons of the animation process for GMH. I unfortunately can't show the animation on my blog because although the animation is finished I still didn't hear from GMH or Waverly care on which branding element they wanted from the final film and I obviously can't release it without that information. It will be in my dropbox for assessment though. But for everyone who is not one of my course leaders. You're going to have to wait. Sorry!
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