2D Animation and Process

When I discovered my passion for animation, I knew that I wanted to try both 2D and 3D animation in order to widen my knowledge of animation. I am continuing to practice in both 2D and 3D after I graduate in order to improve my skills and widen my knowledge of the two forms of animation.

Second year film: Creature of the night

Story Synopsis:

A young adventurer has heard rumours of a strange creature in the mountains near his home and goes to investigate. He seems to have a strange connection with the creature as he has seen it before and is anxious to see it again, figure out where it came from and why it was here.

The Young adventurer seeks to build a friendship of sorts with the creature but the creature is wary of others and will not hesitate if it feels threatened, so the adventurer has to try and convince the creature that he is not dangerous, but will she listen?

Storyboards

The making of Creature in the Night

Animatic

I wanted to create a mysterious yet peaceful atmosphere for this short clip. Creating interesting shots to show the distance between the two characters was my main goal, which is why through most of the shots the creature looks down onto the human character until the end when they are seen together, hinting they are getting closer. The voice work is mine, since I couldn't get the voices I wanted due to circumstances outside my control.

Backgrounds

This was the first set of backgrounds that I had created. Since I was going to set the scene in the mountains, I knew a lot of greys and brown would be used but I did use some greens and made the sky purple blue to help break it up. I only improved my background from this point on as I got feedback.

Animation and color

The process of making the animation, I used the animatic as a template and created the key animation for the film before adding in the inbetweens. I then went over all of the line work to clean in up for the finished look before adding in the colour of the characters.

Rough

Color

Final thoughts on Creature of the Night

This was my first film that was created from scratch and I was very pleased with the final result. I pointed out that my backgrounds needed a lot of work and I made an effort to improve over the summer break. I do enjoy what I created but as time has gone on, I do see where I can improve and I am currently planning on redoing the animation with the new knowledge I have. It will also allow me to see how much I have improved.

Third year film: Just Tattoo of Us

Story Synopsis:

In a tattoo shop, two axolotls tattoos, Spike and Sprinkles, live as they wait to be tattooed onto their new owners. The two of them have a deep bond and fall in love. However, one day, Sprinkles is tattooed onto someone as is separated from Spike, much to his dismay. Spike also gets tattooed, now without his soul mate. The two are miserable until one day, they see each other but with their owners living two separate lives, how can they be brought back together?

The Making of Just Tattoo of Us

This was my first team project that I was a part of. This allowed me to understand how to operate in a team setting. My main roles in the team were time management, the animatic, layouts, Inbetweens animation, colour, compositions and editing

Animatic: Just Tattoo of Us

After the storyboards were completed all of the boards were handed over to me and I created the animatics . I ended up doing 4 versions of the animatic, getting feedback from my tutor, the rest of the team and even professionals in the industry that the University had invited in. The music heard is temporary. Once the Animactic was given the ok, we could move on with production

Inbetweens examples

After i had received the key animations from my team, it was my job to inbetween them. I also ended up reanimating certain parts from scratch but my main job was to inbetween the animations for the project. Here are a few examples

Before

After

Coloring and compostiting

After the cleanup was completed by the other members of my team, it was up to me to do the colouring, compositing and the editing of the final film. I used tv paint to colour, after effects to the compositing and premiere pro to do the editing. Here are some examples of colouring and compositing work. You can view the full film at the top of the page.

Color

Compostiting

Final thoughts on Just Tattoo of Us

I was very happy with how our film turned out. Both me and my group worked extremely hard on this film and I learned a lot of skills during this project including learning how to use programs I had never used and improving my skills in the ones i was already familiar with. I experienced creating a project within a team and was very happy with the experience and the result.