My goals for this semester is to work on any task that Mr. Leeming requests from me. If there are none, I will dedicate my time into finishing my Monument Valley Animation. Having been working on it from my other class, it is mostly finished but I have been requested to create a WildCat T.V Intro, so I will have to put aside this assignment to make room for that animation process.

I want to demonstrate my improvement in my ability to not only create assets within Illustrator, but also animate them to a decent standard. Having animated before, it is nothing new to me but using this program will challenge me due to my minimal understanding of how it works.

If time allows, my 3 end-year projects will be to finish my Monument Valley Animation along with making smaller animations such as: Shooting Stars, Waterfalls, Leaves Flowing in the wind, Dust/Fog, Y’know – the naturey stuff.

The types of software that I will be using to complete this goal are Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects and a bit of Adobe Premiere. I am required to start building an asset within Adobe Illustrator and due to the nature of After Effects, grouping assets is crucial to making a decent animation.  I will need to make sure that everything is in order along with easy-to-see lines differentiating one piece from another. If done properly, the  files within After Effects will be able to process and work properly along with smooth animations with no choppiness. If you feel that you must compare my animations so something, I’d recommend comparing it to the short clip “Frozen Fever” just so that we can both suffer. I’m just joking about that last part, I’m not trying to imitate Disney’s style because that would be time consuming. I’d say that as long as I actually use tools within After Effects (I.E liquify, loop, all that fun stuff) correctly and apply them to my work, it should be noticeable, too, if I didn’t.

Well, it’s been a whole year of me avoiding After Effects like the plague because it’s not necessarily stop-motion animation but I guess I could only avoid it for so long before someone told me to use it. Alas, that day was a few months ago and I guess I’m kinda-not-really taking other ideas as motivation and then later realizing that I could have made something so much more simpler. I am being sarcastic here, I got my motivation from a game (Monument Valley) and my Aesthetic from another (World of Warcraft, FF, ABF) so.. Game + game = animation motivation and I think that is beautiful.

 

I have spent my time creating assets within Illustrator, *cough*catchingpneumonia*cough* and making sure that my layers are in order before I throw them into After Effects so that they can be slightly animated for approximately 10 seconds. You see, the key to having a good animation is to watch as many how-to videos on youtube as humanly possible within the 1 ½ hour classes that we are given so that you can then apply the effects not only to your small object but every object you want, which is cool and makes everything seem so much more easier than it was like 4 minutes ago before you applied the effect.

Since I am so harsh on myself and that I have done better animations (As previously mentioned to be stop-motion animation [Y’know, draw a new frame each frame! It’s fun, trust me (2-minute 30-frame hell was the good ol’ days)]) so I’d  give myself so far 2 eye rolls out of 5 because I can do better! I will do better! We will see it get better! You will see. I tend to use my time wisely and I am always on task save for when Leeming wants me to do other projects. A struggle that I have been experiencing thus far is that sweet sweet time. I feel that these classes are actually 7 minutes instead of 2 hours so I’m gonna do an exposed video later about it (No promises).

My main source of inspiration will always be Whinecraft – Now Omoshiro-i – because she is such an amazing artist and she also followed me back on Tumblr but that’s not the point here, the point is that her art is really well done and that I love her art style. She knows how to make things pop out, knows colour theory, knows how to make a piece engaging. Another source of inspiration is Setheverman because not only is he as unserious as me but he implies this unseriousness into his work and I think that’s beautiful.

Omoshiro-i’s work has always been bold, colourful and clear with one main focal point for the eye to be drawn into. Her art mainly focuses on people and her colours always have a certain theme to them (Colour theory obv., autumn, ice, trees, water, exc.) and they are never too busy to look at. Omoshiro-i has been my main source of inspiration since I was 12 (wow!) and honestly, she was one of the reasons why I continue to draw and create obscene projects. I mean, she draws World of Warcraft and final Fantasy, which are my two favourite games (Final Fantasy will count as one game and not the 14.5 that there are) so naturally I have always enjoyed the kinds of content that good ol’ Omo has to offer for our viewing pleasures. Poor art, pah! Poor art might be considered as stress doodles, quick sketches drawn out of boredom or out of tension relief. Sometimes, they’re really low quality but as we all know, low-qual. is best-qual. (Do not follow this tip, it’s just a joke) so fight me. These sketches are probably the “worst” thing that has been produced by this beautiful creator.

Seth has my slang and my odd sense of sarcasm so immediately 10/10 inspiration points.

 

• The things that worked in my project really well for me is the colours. None of them are an eyestrain to look at and also, everything is nice and easy to see. Another thing that works within my project is me following the tip to really break your layers. I tend to layer everything and then put it into a Master Layer™ but due to the nature of how Adobe After Effects works, you need to throw that Grand Layer in the traysh because he is not welcome within our humble household anymore.

 

• The two things that I would add or improve if I ever did this again would be to:
• Read this whilst thinking about banging two trash can lids together;
• Stop! Making! Everything! Perfect! When! The! Project! Is! Not! Finished! – I need to improve on actually finishing the project instead of finishing a 30+ hour tiny drawing that you can barely see for the #details.
• Another thing that I need to work on is: *Cough*stopcatchingcolds*Cough* to plan what I’m going to do and actually stick to it. I have made a plan for this project and my WildCat TV Intro animation but guess who’s not following their own plans? > This guy is not following their own plans.

 

• One thing that I certainly did not do well at all was that I made everything too darn small, so you can see the parts that I animated but it’s not in high-res, it’s in like 4-p or something so you can’t see all the detail and care that i put into drawing and animating certain assets. I gotta make these things bigger so that you guys can actually see them.

 

• Difficult things, eh? Okay, back to that divided layer thing, my goodness, instead of 5 layers, you now have 57 and unfortunately, I can only come up with odd names for so long before I start naming my layers Ebyssian-Us or Wrathion-This (True story).
• Another thing that I found kinda odd was that my After Effects keyframes would just decide to stop working at fun times and I’d have to go back into the root of all layer keyframes just to find that one point where it decided to be abstract and “Do it for the vine” instead of just, y’know, being a keyframe.
• An easy thing for me at this point is knowing how to make what I want to make within Illustrator efficiently and without a bunch of errors telling me that a line is not a shape and that I’m not allowed to fill a certain asset in due to this problem. That doesn’t happen anymore because I have learned from my mistakes. Only took me half a year but i learned. Yeah, easy stuff, woo!

 

• The most fun thing about this project? Just making this was pretty fun, I dunno, I think I’ve mentioned every fun aspect of Illustrator times and times again in other self-reflecting sheets but After Effects wasn’t that bad.
• Frustrating things? Honestly, I do not like using this style of animation at all. I’m an old-school kiddo, I actually enjoy drawing out each frame even though it took way longer to dish out a decent video. I feel that if I used After Effects more than I am now, I might actually enjoy using the program. And like I stated earlier, After Effects isn’t that bad at all, it’s actually pretty interesting but I was so used to using FNH/FNSM that I got confused at where everything is along with accidentally clicking other options where they would normally be in FNH but not in After Effects.

 

• If I were to do redo this project from scratch I would definitely make a smaller animation, oh my goodness. I just ran in here head first and hoo boy, was that ever a mistake. Yeah, smaller projects that would be wwwaaayyy more simple than what I am trying to do right now.