Evaluation

I was completely new to After Effects, or any digital media based animation software before this brief, so my knowledge and skills were incredibly limited, I feel though I have grasped the basic skills and understandings needed to create a successful animation as well as incorporating my own style of illustration and design into this smoothly. Although I feel I used the skills I gained effectively in conjunction with my animation, I wish I’d perhaps been a bit more ambitious with my animation ideas in the time given.

Researching into current digital media styles including animation allowed for a great amount of inspiration, especially when struggling with my ideas. My digital media blog was an important asset to research, or at least on screen based research and I soon began to use it as a valid tool within research, it was accessible and easy when searching videos, animations and screen based work to display and annotate.

My strengths were definitely the imagery of my work, I realised half way through and confirmed at the end of this module that I am not an animator, but I really enjoyed storyboarding my idea and putting it onto screen, successful or not, the storyboards I feel area definite strength of this project. I feel my online research including my blog was a strong point as a way of displaying my development and inspirations, especially when I could link my own animations alongside those of others in my research.

My weaknesses is my attention and patience when animating, thus taking from my animation. I found animation itself time consuming and a painstakingly slow process, I feel I work much better working at a fast pace, especially being used to creating images when drawing quickly, animation became the lesser enjoyed aspect of this project and in turn I feel this effected my outcome.

I would perhaps try to be more ambitious with my idea, but sensible still, understanding time constraints and how I can use my current knowledge to its full capacity.

I would also try and perhaps to put more stop motioning of my illustrations in, I used stop framing in the final transition of the animation as the healthy bacteria transforms, and I enjoyed being able to draw the transition on paper and place it successful and effectively onto screen.

If given the chance again, I feel perhaps I could attempt to work backwards, in the sense of choosing my sound initial and working my animation around the song, rather than finding the song towards the end then altering my animation to suit.

Final Animation!

Final animation, finally, finished.

My choice of colour remained the same yet I switched them around so the purple will stand out more and be more prominent, so in turn the characters of the bacteria stand out more too. Sound gave the animation much more depth rather than completely silent, I wanted something 'science-y' and quite trippy to suit the tongue in cheek approach to the animation. Enjoy.

Rudd Studios

Rudd Studios are the London based design company responsible for E4's fonts, logos, designs etc.

Here's what they had to say;

E4 was Channel 4’s new baby. It needed a brand that was recognisably young, rebellious and different, without rejecting its parent. It also needed to make a lot of noise in a crowded market place.We needed a new colour. We were pretty sure E4 should be a single colour brand. Orange and purple seemed to stand out as having the right feel and energy, but orange was much in use elsewhere. We chose purple, and E4 made it their own.We created a distinctive, edgy font and a series of sound stings to augment the logo. Together with the colour purple, this gave the new channel a powerful, unforgettable on-screen brand.The movement also gave real depth to what was happening on screen. It had the effect of drawing viewers in and making them feel that a world viewed through E4 was different from and more interesting than other worlds.

Stop motion animation research

I stumbled across this video through my research, I instantly loved it, being an illustrator myself I love seeing other artists take their 2d images and working 'outside the box' regarding drawing on paper, I'm pretty sure recent Carphone Warehouse adverts have a similar thing going on, wether the artist in question has been commissioned or they've stolen both the idea and music, I'm not quite sure.

Not only in 2d, but a response to this video was made using stopmotion and clay, amazing!

M Dot Strange Animation

While looking into and considering all forms of digital media, I recalled an interesting peice of animation by a director known as "M Dot Strange" below is the trailer for his full feature film, his first too, an interesting mix of japanese cartoon influence images combined with retro game style animation, I love it!

E4 idents

Looking into current and past E4 based and intended productions, here some of my favorite idents and stings.

WotW

Whilst watching War of the Worlds the other evening, I found the opening sequence particularly interesting and relevant, I love how the bacteria is broken

down into even smaller cells repeatedly.

So far..

Plodding onwards with the animation,  I'm not entirely confident about the colour use within the animation so far, I feel the lack of colour is perhaps letting it down.

Iweb Ideas

A small animation below for the welcome page of my iweb, the type is hand rendered in the same

style as the illustrations used for this project.

More bacteria vids!

Keeping up with inspiration throughout this project I found some more amusing videos featuring cells, microbes,bacteria imagery etc.

Iweb pages

Here, my initial layouts, screenshotted for the iweb design, I have tried to keep in the same style as my animation, crudely drawn, as well as easily navigable, with a small animation at the opening page.

Animation begins!

Here, the first few sections of my animation, these need developing and more adding to but you can begin to get the idea where it is going.

Iweb Ideas

To digitalise my research and development, I will be creating a site based on my project featuring all the information gathered and tests from start to finish, below some ideas

.as.

Storyboards

Here, are the storyboards for what I hope my animation to look like, although I will have to probably make modifications as I go along baring in mind time and technical knowledge of the software at hand.

Disease Origin Research/Dev

Below, I researched the origins and spread of all the diseases featured in my list, the red on the world map represents the most affected areas, and the blue represents the origins.

Bacteria Image Dev.

Below, imagery on which I've begun basing the images for my animation, almost cartoonised, I have attempted to given the different cells and bacteria a persona and characterised them, for humourous irony, what should prove interesting for the actual feature animation.

Actual Bacteria Footage, Research.

Bacteria moving image development 3.

Same video, just playing around with backgrounds. More to come.

Bacteria moving image development 2.

My second attempt, this time making the little critter much more animated and moving, which looks alot more flowing and organic than the first attempt. Although I think the 'eye' or nucleus should be less 'googley'.

Bacteria moving image development!

After being unhappy with my first attempt, inspired by the Spore video below I used 

the same technique to create the little fellow you see before you, I feel it works better slightly,

but needs much more work.

Lovely bit of animation

I forgot how much I loved the opening sequence to The Powerpuff Girls, now with a more design aware eye I never realized how simple yet effectively made it is!

I like the contrast between the pastel colours and black vector style silhouettes, as well as how in many of the frames the images in the foreground are almost

completely still while the background carries the frame amazingly well.

Inspiration at last!

Struggling to work out how I can successful animate such a fluid and organic subject as microbes and bacteria, while researching animations and digitised imagery

using such subjects I was suggested to look at the Spore video game, in this case the Ipod version, below is the short trailer for the game.

As you can see, the main Spore itself is simply made of 3 circles, each of them growing with each frame differently to give the image of a fluid organisms.

This method is something I will try immediately to better my animation!

Test Piece

My first attempt using the bacteria design E4 Logo I created to test how to make the image move

organically like that of a really microbe.

Bearing in mind this is the first attempt at this, I realize I need to slow the movements down to make it look more

creditable.

I want to develop my ideas on how to make the microbes move legitimately  without looking so awkward. 

E4 Logo Ideas

Animation Idea Dev.

Research cont.

The idea of characterizing germs/bacteria that cause disease and illness has become quite the interest point for me, rather than focussing on the obvious things regarding the diseases such as

symptoms, I think using the bacteria as imagery will give me more room to experiment with colour, shape and movement, since bacteria and microbes themselves are so fluid, so should my

ideas and animation should be!

A small promotional clip ala Cartoon Network here, showing the amusing characters The Amoeba Boys from The Powerpuff Girls.

Research

The idea of diseases gave me the idea to look into current digital media that focuses on health, germs, bacteria, epidemics etc. 

Below are a few finds I wanted to document.

Here, an amateur animation based on infection and germs in the human body, I like the linear line-art illustration on the human, and the lack of colour on the outside of the body in comparison to inside.

Below, an obvious choice but interesting none the least, the Toilet Duck advert, which contains characterisation of germs/bacteria, something I find interesting/

Again, another household product advert using animation of germs and bacteria.

Final Video ; Silent Movie.

Here, below the final outcome for the initial After Effects based brief entitled 'Silent Movie', as you can see I have attempted to communicate the three words ; Disburse, Transform and Zip using my basic knowledge of AE and using experimentation during the time given.

I felt happy with the result until I viewed other students attempts, which made me regret not experimenting as much and pushing the ideas further than the simplest ideas, although I feel that in communicating my selected words I was successful, this is something to take heed of for the next brief.

Storyboards for Silent Movie.

Top Ten Best/Worst.

New brief in relation to the digital media module, so over christmas I began looking into lists of Best/Worst, I soon found that the 'worst' lists were more interesting personally, I soon found myself looking/creating  lists based on health due to the amount of reliable data & stats, as well as interesting facts that can back up my research.