500 Pre-Production Summary

Pre-Production stage has now been completed. I would say that in all it had gone smoothly from start to finish and I’m altogether satisfied with pre-production. I enjoyed working all the character designs for my animation in particular working out the layouts and where things are on the street. I’m quite happy with the way the watercolours turned out although during the holidays I’m going to test a few more and perhaps work out what kind of detail I want to put in for the shops. I also have to work on the street background. I also had a lot of fun doing concept drawings for Cara’s characters, Machan and the Guard.

One of the inspirations for my animation is Studio Ghibli’s ‘My neighbour the Yamadas’. I just really liked the simple style and general outlook of the animation. All the lines of characters and sets are simple lined and faint watercolours are applied to them yet it is very effective in telling the story. So I’ve tried to do a bit of that for the set of my animation which is the street and shops. Another inspiration for my animation in terms of character is Studio Ghibli’s ‘Ponyo’. Looking at the ‘Art of Ponyo’ I really liked the look of the two children as my characters are around the same age as Ponyo. The movements of the characters in Ponyo are really amazing and one of the main things I would like to improve in my animation is better movements of the characters. I’m going to do more drawings for a shot so they consist of more frames.

All the written work such as film naming convention and data storage estimate was a lot to get through but it will be very useful for my production as I have organized all the naming conventions for all the shots and movements of the characters. Although long and at times difficult to figure out, I have found this exercise very useful and I’m glad I have organized it for production.

The most daunting thing would probably have to be the video block as we all had to act out our own characters and personally I don’t particularly like acting and being in front of the camera as an assessment. I filmed my video block on the demountables at building 22 and I think it served as a purpose as a set for the shops. I also got Ryan, Chris and Cara to help me with the other characters which was a lot of fun seeing them portraying my characters.

I have found Darren's comp classes extremely fun and helpful. All the different techniques such as z depth, blur, null and camera angles has definitely changed the way I want to present and animate my animation. I learnt from my previous animation that Sugarboy was rather flat because it was only accomplished in Flash. However, with Darren's help I feel like I can bring more to my animation especially with depth and camera angles which I wouldn't have been able to achieve in Flash.

Jack's 3D classes has also been a great help even though my animation is 2D. It has taught me a great deal about poses and weight and how my character (Timmy was modelled) is perceived in 3D. I could utilise Timmy's model to help me draw certain shots such as when he turns his head from left to right.