Animation Fundamentals - Final Project: Action Animation

1.7.2024 - 8.8.2024 (Week 9 - Week 16)
Vanessa Kei Kurniadi / 0360525
Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Animation Fundamentals - Final Project: Action Animation

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fig 1.1 Animation fundamentals final project instructions

In this task we are required to try and use our previous knowledge to make a 5 seconds action animation. We gotta pay attention in the details, making sure we are able to properly convey the emotions to the audience. We can also use different shots and camera angle to enhance the visual story telling.

With my character that I made during project 2 that has some valkyrie looks to her, I tried to look for an older time and place settings so the character won't be out of place.

I suddenly have this idea to give her an old castle looking background, where she's gonna relax and watch the beautiful night view. My goal is to create a calming view with a bit of fantasy touch to it.

Storyboard

fig 1.2 Final Project Storyboard, week 14 (22.7.2024) 

To explain this storyboard briefly, the character will be walking through the pathway when she saw the beautiful scene out there. So she stopped and jumped on the railing to get a better view. When she saw it, her eyes lit up and she smiles as she enjoyed the view from there.

After the storyboard is finished, I proceeded to work on the animation. This might be a big gamble considering I am very tight on time, and I never had any prior knowledge or experience with this app, but I decided to use procreate dreams for my project.

fig 1.3 working with procreate dreams progress 1, week 16 (1.8.2024)

Unfortunately due to me working on my other modules and this module's previous projects as well as my personal events such as flying back home, etc, I was losing a lot of time and I still had so much to do. 

I might've brought myself more trouble when I decided to take a gamble and used a completely new app that I've never used before to do the biggest project I have done yet.

While working on the project, I looked for tutorials here and there, all while trying to experiment and figure out what to do and what to not do.

I managed to do my project there but the trial and error also made my tracks quite messy. I also have figured out all the strength, as well as some of the most annoying and frustrating weaknesses of this app.

fig 1.4 working with procreate dreams progress 2, week 16 (2.8.2024)

I started off by using as little layer as possible. The first scene was a mess. other than the sketch, I did all the coloring in the same layer as lineart (except for shading because I need to use a different blending modes), giving myself a hard time and frustration because I had to color them very slowly. This might also be the effect of me doing some animations in Procreate, where everything has to be done in a single layer. (Though I learned afterwards that you can do that by grouping layers. It's a good option for simple projects, but not too useful for big projects because the amount of layers will pile up very quickly)

So in the second layer, I tried to utilize more of the features there and uses more layers. This time, I separated the lineart, the flat coloring, and the shading layer. This resulted in a more neat work result, so I continued to use this method.

One thing that I kept from the start until the end of the project is that instead of coloring with normal colors and then using the color dodge and multiply to change it, I just color pick all the colors in the final result of my layout design. It feels a bit weird at first since it feels like my valkyrie has changed job into avatar, but I just try to trust the process, and they actually turned out quite nice. The shading might be a tad bit darker than original because I used the multiply on top of the avatar color, but it still goes well with the overall result so I just keep it that way.

fig 1.5 Coloring the character straight to it's environment-affected colors , week 16 (2.8.2024)

Having to go back and forth, sometimes drawing and coloring most of the time, and some other time I have to drag, stretch, or group the frames together. It took me some time to get used to it, but after several days of using it, I started to be more comfortable in using it.

While I was working on this project, I also had to spare some time in drawing more backgrounds for the scenes for different angle.

fig 1.6 Background for scene 2 time-lapse, week 16 (3.8.2024)

fig 1.7 Background for scene 4 time-lapse, week 16 (4.8.2024)

It also took me quite a while to come up with a good perspective and coloring for the backgrounds, but I'm glad I managed to create decent ones.

After the backgrounds are ready, I continued with the animation, adding new sketches, making the linearts, and finally add colors and shading.

Here is a progress dump when I was working on the last 2 scenes. For the final scene, I just used a zoomed in version of scene 4's background and call it a day. It works really well too so I have absolutely no problem with that.

fig 1.8 Progress dump, week 16 (8.8.2024)

Final Result

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fig 2.1 Final Storyboard PDF, week 16 (8.8.2024)

fig 2.2 Final Animation .mp4, week 16 (8.8.2024)

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FEEDBACKS

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REFLECTION

Experience

This project has been one hell of a stressful ride for me. While I enjoyed the process, I did not enjoy the fact that I was rushing the heck out of it due to the deadline, to the point where I strained my arms and had to go through sleepless nights. It could most likely be from my own failure in managing my own time, but in my defense, I was horribly mentally burnt out this semester. There was so many things happening in my life these past few months and I honestly barely remember how I could go through all of it until today. While I learned a lot in this project and the previous ones as well, I'm honestly glad that I can rest for now because I really need it very badly.

While working on this project, I had to push my limits both in drawing and physical ability. Not only I had to learn new poses and angle drawings, I also had to fight the urge to sleep in order to finish this project as soon as possible. The time when I was falling asleep had me messing up the coloring progress, so sometimes I have to go back and check and see if I was doing it properly.

Observation

While looking through the internet for references and guides on animation, I realize that there is quite a lot of people indulging themselves in animation which I learn a thing or two from. I can see how they work on their animation and see if I can also implement it in mine.

Findings

After using procreate dreams for this project, I have realized some of the strength and weaknesses to this app.

Strength:

• Unlike Procreate, it seems like Dreams doesn't really have any layer limit, which is nice for bigger projects.
• You can easily move around your drawings or assets on the canvas, and you can also duplicate or mask the whole track.
• The tracks and groupings are very useful for me during the making of the animation

Weakness:

• I cannot understand for the life of me why so many of the drawing tools are taken away from Dreams, such as the lasso tool, the reference layer feature, the individual adjustments of brush stabilisation. The missing lasso tool feautere has been a huge obstacle for me because I either duplicate and erase the parts that I don't need then adjust them with the transform tool, or redraw them manually. It was such a problem for me and it also kinda slowed down my workspeed.
• There needs to be more information on what you can do with the app, like navigations, track editing, etc, because there is so many things that you can do in there but they are basically hidden until you found a particular tutorial video for it.