Earlier this year I wrote my project proposal, proposing the idea for my FMP that I had imagined. The original idea is different in a few ways but ultimately the final product reflects the proposal’s intentions. Other than my admiration for the 1930′s aesthetic which I wanted to achieve, I also wanted to improve my skills outside of my “comfort zone”. I planned this through having a live action side to my animation. This was the part which I knew would create the most challenge, and I can safely say it was. I had to prepare what settings I would have the camera on, create a filming environment that was suitable for the animation and include tracking points. I succeeded in creating the environment I wanted to film in, and I even thought my camera movements came out smooth. This was all from the help of tools I practiced with such as the glide rail. This helped get a smooth panning camera shot I needed of the table. Aside form what when well with this portion of the FMP, I would definitely improve the contrast in which I filmed in. The light bloom of the room gave an overly saturation scene in some cases and this makes it very hard to motion tack using after effects. This is what I am most disappointed with. The tracking in some scenes brings the characters I have drawn, out of the world as they slide because the tracking is unstable. Despite this however, I have gained experience in media creation that I wouldn’t have if these subtle difficulties weren’t there, because then I wouldn’t needed to have found out how to improve them.  I’m now more knowledgeable of Adobe software like After Effects and Premier Pro because of this. Specifically with my interest in animation, I would now be able to more carefully prepare myself when composing animation over a live action scene. With learning about software and cinematography, a lot of my aspiration was based on the appeal I have of old era animation from the 1930′s. I wanted to recreate the fluid movement and pioneered techniques that are all but unseen in today’s industry. At the time of writing my proposal, I was unaware of how many rules an set backs this level of animation restricts you to. This is where my first major turn in the road had to be realised. I would not be able to perfectly recreate the style of animation with the resources I had. And this was okay, it just meant my animation would be more a homage to it. This was due to me using a computer for animation, as it would be impractical to hand draw within the given time. However, despite digitally creating all the animation I found I can still create the fluid and smooth motion. I found out that among the society of classic animators (Because there are animators who purely use tweening and bone tools etc.) there are 12 rules that following will bring frame by frame animations to life. This is what I decided I would follow as closely as possible while animating, even creating a practice animation in preparation. I had eventually re used this animation after much more practice and changed it ever so subtly, however it had a big impact on the realism of the movement. The most important thing to me, even from the proposal was learning what I now know to be “form”, moving a 2 Dimensional character believably in a 3rd Dimensional way. Now that I’ve come to the end of the project time, I’ve been given perspective on how long this animation takes and why industries have elected to using quicker less costly methods that sacrifice quality. A great help for me during the lengthy process was actually critically watching over animated shorts and films. I watched a lot of Studio Ghibli movies while making the FMP and listening to the studios methods. The films animation is so fluid and believable. Creator Hayao Miyazaki, gives a lot of credit to “people watching” saying almost every movement is based on the way he’s seen others move. This gave me a lot of thought and motivation to keep drawing even when I had little motivation. Time became the biggest obstacle in the end. As I plan on still producing the rest of the animation in my spare time, I discovered ways to make it feel less of a chore. In my original proposal, I had about a month of time allocated to production. While this seemed like enough, I didn’t factor in all the bits that get in the way. For example, keeping up with blogging. I needed to explain everything I was doing and learning through out. This is because while I was producing it wasn’t just drawing, I kept making each key framed drawing based on knowledge I had from the principles of animation. Each key frame I wanted to have Arching Motion, Slow Inns and Slow Outs, Squash and Stretch, and finally Exaggeration. The biggest incorporation that took more time than expected was anticipation and overshoot. This is having frames before and after slowly build up and release the momentum of an action. These were the main principles I focused on. Having to consider each one with each drawing made it much more lengthy than I had intended. I see this as good in a way, because if I was speeding through, then all the high level animators who say frame by frame takes years would false. Although, I have complete just over 50′s which is around the length I had originally intended. My miss sight was with story. Where I had wrote the story of the animation, it would’ve been impossible to fit it all in a minute. This lets me know I had carried myself away with a complex story that had a beginning, middle and end. I should have stuck to a simple plot, maybe not even having the second character “Shaker” who didn’t make it into the FMP (as of hand in). 

​

The research I did throughout my FMP was the foundation to everything that I made the film on. The live action cross animation was heavily inspired from the video made by “PWow” on YouTube, entitled “How to make the space jam effect in after effects”. It walked through using after effects to track the motion into a null object and us that tracking information to move the animated character. This had a large impact on my project because it’s literally what let me compose characters into a world as if they are sitting in that plane and moving with it. Obviously like I said this effect I didn’t use to its best ability. With more carefully thought out lighting and use of objects. Something through research I found, in Rodger Rabbit, a film I used as inspiration for it feature length use of pioneering animation and live action, they had used objects in the live action footage that mimicked the 3D space of the character that would be imposed over the footage. This let the artists know how they would appear in that space, how the light might affect it and also, if the camera moves, the animator will know exactly where they should be. I think if I recorded live action for animation again, I would do this. It would’ve allowed me to make a much smoother tracking scene for him, by drawing over the top of the cup in real life, following its shape as the angle changes and the camera pans. I even might have just skipped the camera pans all together. Saving myself the trouble of having to track could’ve given me more production time. This would have given me more time, however I learnt a lot of how after effects works and interacts with information to create motion, and that will lead me to being able to create better things in the future. I said in my proposal that I might use a mood board to remind myself of what research I had done and what from it I should use within my animation that I would reflect on. I actually found that the aesthetic comes with simple and appealing character design and the animation itself cant just be a reference to a mood board, it requires more critical thinking. This is where my research lead me to the most useful influence I had when drawing, these being the “12 Principles of animation”, which I originally discovered from Allan Becker, a legendary YouTube self made animator, but written originally by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas. These were two Disney animators who wrote this in the book “The Illusion of Life : Disney Animation” in 1981. Not quite the 1930′s but the principles were based off all Disney learned of animation over the years of making movement look as though it were living movement. While it made my animation appear much better than I would have expected, I think it would have helped if I had delved into each one, with practices and experimentation on them. I could’ve done quick sketch animations that would individually go through them. I said how I wanted to post a lot of my research based on YouTuber's and entertainment that inspires me, I think I did well keeping to this and it still remains one of my favourite ways to motivate me. I never feel more like animating than after watching a well animated short of film. However, I do take all my inspiration from similar things. Studio Ghibli and Disney classics both use flowing hand drawn frame by frame and the YouTube Animators I watch also take inspiration from them. This actually worries me because a lot of people who take their inspiration from one source end up creating “unintentional rip offs” which end up becoming someone else’s work through your hands. And that way there no creative thinking to the production. With this in mind, my future animations will be less an homage to a style, and more of an exploration of my own animating style and being more experimental, so there’s less restrictions limiting me to possibly become tunnel visioned when animating. Something that came out of my survey was a reassurance that my proposal to bring homage to the rubber hose style was working. However, my intention wasn't to pay so much homage that I develop my style to be a copy of classic animators work. This is why I've decided that I need to make sure I'm developing my own skills from a range of sources.

​

Taking all that I can from this project, I’ve been left in a better place than when I started for sure. Though my actual animation hasn’t reached its conclusion, all that I have gained from it is more than worth it. I’ve never had an incentive to be overly interested in cinematography, however, I wanted to experiment regardless to see if I could create a believable character in a believable world. Not believable as in it were real, but believable in the sense that its weight, appeal and body language could make sense if it were int he world its presented in. This was the goal I wanted to achieve. All these came into factor when I was researching. Aside from the composition, the second thing I wanted to achieve was the aesthetic. This mostly came into play when choosing character design and the frame by frame animation. There where a few secondary features I used to add to this, such as the film grain (dust and scratches) that I layered over the top of all the footage. These were commonly present in movies of the 30′s because all films were physical strips that could be damaged. All these attributes I believe made the 30′s aesthetic. I’m very pleased with how it looks and I think it was successful. The main thing that brought the believe-ability away was the poor tracking in some cases, where you can see the tracking slide along surfaces. This is something I will take steps to avoid in the future, hopefully to make an even more believable character. Overall, my appreciation for the style is stronger than before, I know how difficult and thought provoking frame by frame can be. Tracking might be something I use scarcely in the future and live action backgrounds can be a refreshing break from animation. For my aspiration of becoming an animation artist (in-between animator and higher) these things will certainly bring me closer to being able to fit into that work environment and understand the process behind it so that I might one day direct my own feature animation.