Animatic

So spent the weekend teaching myself Audacity which was incredibly user friendly and Flash. Trouble with the ins and outs of Flash but I'm sure that practice will only make me better, faster and smoother! I completed a rough animatic of my project and will keep plugging along!

Progress?

Working on soundtrack today. I have gotten a few sketches done and was inspired at the Tucson Meet Yourself yesterday. There was a lot of Danish cut paper art displayed and got me thinking about design. I am aware that this style has been used before and am thinking about how I may want to incorporate some of the symmetry and detail in my own designs. As usual I need to keep it simple as when I was sketching I kept thinking of things that I wanted to add. I was gently reminded of the time constraint and that a simple image can be more powerful and more easily read. I am reminded that more can be just more and perhaps more confusing.

Timeline Revised

Revised version of production timeline. Most notable change is the addition of experimentation time to figure out which technique will give me the look that I want. I am going to see which result I like, either under the camera or animating in After Effects. I also removed keys & in-betweens and will work with straight ahead animation.

I want to work with some synchronization of music to the animation so I am listening to music and working to have the soundtrack completed before animating. May need to add sound effects at the end for punctuation of action. Also still working on designs at this time.

Production Timeline

Preliminary timeline, not sure if an animatic would be necessary for this project. Will update after getting feedback.

Research! Yea!

Next step after deciding concept is put together a time line to plan out the project. Of course I went straight to research! Decided concept on Wed (9/23), pitched in class on Thurs (9/24), and Fri, Sat and Sun I was looking at anything on cut paper animation on the web, watched Masters of Animation, read sections of Kit Laybourne's, The Animation Book and cracked open the Walt Stanfield books that I got earlier this year "Drawn to Life". Also listening to music to get ideas for soundtrack. Feeding my brain with possibilities is one of my favorite parts of the process. Time to get out of that! Mon & Tues (9/28-29) spent in my head thinking about possibilities. Wed. 9/30 created blog to document the process and today I will complete my production time line and start sketching concepts. Have been distracted by Ken Burn's "National Parks" series this week. Will try to do some sketching while watching it tonight.

My goal this term is to spend at least an hour a day in my sketchbook. This is more for me and my confidence in owning an "artist" title. I have spent most of my life excelling in various careers and dabbling in creative endeavors on the side. This journey has been the second most difficult thing for me to pursue yet may be the most rewarding when I find my voice.

Concept

Back tracking to the beginning of this project, I wanted to document the process of Concept and the value of workshop/spit ball sessions. I had not had the opportunity to bounce ideas off of a group of creative brains. Unsure of my own ideas, I was hesitant to throw the inner workings of my mind out into the open for review and perhaps criticism.


The task is to develop a bumper for the school to be played after demo reels, etc. for promotional purposes. First task, come up with 3 ideas to bring to workshop session with 5 of my classmates and instructor to explore and perhaps further develop. Thinking we had about 4 seconds to convey a message, I worked on ideas for quick animation. First idea was a paint splatter and reveal perhaps animating a screen print of the logo, or dripping paint to reveal logo. As I was swimming I watched bubbles drifting to the surface and thought of underwater possibilities with bubbles. The swoosh in the logo could possible come to life and lasso a rowdy batch of "word cattle" (word groups of each degree program.) Could possible use the swoosh as a lightning bolt. Lots of possibilities.

As we were going through the ideas, other came to mind and while we were discussing underwater possibilities of squid inking or other creatures creating the school logo, I thought what if the school birthed something... Which led me to my concept "Art School Factories". The amount of time was increased to 15 seconds which allows for more animation and exploration.