Module 3 - Lion and Mouse Evaluation

Lion and Mouse evaluation

For this project I have created an animation based on a theme that I have chose for myself out of a selection of themes presented to me. The theme that I selected was over coming the monster. To assist me in the development of the concept and ideas for my animation I looked at stories previously created relating to the theme of over coming the monster. I selected my favorite story relating to the theme, the story was one of Aesop’s fable the lion and the mouse.  

For the outcome of this project I created a fully animated digital animation composed of developed scenes and a visual story driven animation. 

                 For this project I combatted a lot of my known weaknesses in order to improve my workflow and time management. I had found that in previous projects I had easily lost track of my work by having my files unorganized and not having them easily accessible. This negatively influenced my time management because something that would take me half the time to do instead took me double that amount and I had to rush much of my work.

Taking this all into consideration during the development of this project I specifically went out of my way to create an organized folder structure with a separate appropriately named folder for every file. I found that this helped a great deal and shortened the time it took me to do my work. So by doing this I have took the opportunity to ease my workflow and stopped the threat of becoming unorganized.

 I feel that reflecting back on my previous projects has been very important in taking a proactive approach to this project and made this project far easier on my time then it would have been had I not made so much effort in the organization of my work.

i feel that this has been aided by the use of S.W.O.T analysis.  by using this self evaluation system i have been able to quickly revise past issues and succesfully combat them.

To finish the development of my assets after scanning them in I imported them into an image editor program, adobe Photoshop, and proceeded to draw over my sketches to create clean colored up line drawings of my backgrounds and characters. I used a variant of different style that u had leaned over the duration of the past few years of being in animation and used the opportunity to show how much variant I can have in styles of drawing.  To edit the drawings I used a basic variant of Photoshop’s tools to aid the creation process. Tools such as the brush tool and layer to keep my line work separate. Also using the separate function of layer blending to create overlay and multiply layers in my artwork to help my shading and lighting to create to right atmosphere for the scenes in my animation.

As a part of experimentation with my work I tried creating some of my larger structure based assets in 3d, however although they worked well as an object themselves they clashed with the rest of the visuals and looked too out of place. I have documented the creation of the objects but they are not featured in my final animation.

 

To show and display a range of skills I used several types of animation. For the staring scene I used a pose to pose style of animation . to do this I created four separate images of my mouse character each showing a progression of step movement for each leg. Normally I would have created a lot more frame between 8-12, however for this animation I am emulating the style of a motion comic. This means that the movements are a lot more clunky and spaced to give the feel that you are reading the frames of a comic book. To create to actual movement of the character across the scene I loped the four poses and positioned the character and key framed it each time. 

                           I think that I was very successful in this module with my work. By being able to look back on my previous module and sitting down to assess what my issues had been in those projects consecutively I was able to pin point out my most prevalent weaknesses that were hindering my work each time and stopping me from doing as well as I wanted to and having unnecessary difficulties in the management of my work. My most prominent weakness was that by being so unorganized I often got into a panicked state that I wouldn’t be able to complete the work required, which in turn was even more of a negative impact on my work because by being panicked I was wasting even more time.

By removing the root issue of being unorganized I did not get into a panicked state so I did not waste time. By doing this I found I had a much easier to manage workload because I didn’t have work to do that I had forgotten about or lost.

Benefits that came from this is that I had more time to sit and learn the use of a, unused by me, program. This has further extended on my range of skills and the utilities I need to know how to use to make me more successful in animation.     

                        Reflecting back onto the completed animation for this project there are some aspects that if I could go back and alter I would. Originally my animation was to be a silent animation to make the meaning of the story the main focus and more prominent however looking back on the animation and watching it several times I think that although not strictly needed it would benefit from some audio.  Background noise would give a sense of location and add to the character of the settings that the animation is placed in. I feel that this would enhance the visuals for anyone viewing the animation. Although there is this drawback to the animation I feel that it is very successful in what I wanted it to do, which is to be a modern retelling of the tale of the lion an the mouse. The finished product has a beginning, which sets the story, a climax of a fight in the middle of the story and a resolution and conclusion to the story, all, which successfully interlink with one another and transition from one scene to the next without loosing the viewer anywhere.