Feedback

Throughout the animation course, I received a lot of feedback on things such as my ideas, the animation, and how to animate it. This played a large role on how the animation turned out, and really helped the progress of it all.

My peers were very positive about my ideas for Evee and Bentley, which gave me the confidence to stick with them. My animation teacher, Mr Haycocks, gave feedback by furthering ideas on different ways of how Bentley could be animated, such as interesting ticks and amusing habits he could have. One of these ideas was for him to move his thumb and finger like a mouth when he talked; unfortunately, as there was no talking during the animation, this idea could not be used, but it helped more ideas for Bentley's movements to spawn. Another improvement Mr Haycocks helped achieve was the way Evee moved, by thinking of more interesting ways she would walk.



Stuart Messinger gave feedback on the actual animating of it; as an experienced animator himself, he suggested that I use keyframing, which really helped me create smoother animations more easily, particularly the walk cycle.





Spencer, a technician at the school, suggested that I use Anime Studio - a program on Mac - to animate Bentley. This would have made things a lot quicker and easier, but it didn't suit the style of Evee and Bentley so I decided not to use it. However, I did use his and Adam's suggestion of using Final Cut to put it together.



Various other aspects of the animation were altered due to comments and feedback received by peers and teachers, such as music, repeating backgrounds for the walk cycle, and reusing the walk cycle to both fill time and to show it off.

Transferable Skills

Throughout the project, I needed to apply skills outside of animating to help me progress. Drawing, a skill developed through art lessons, was needed most greatly for animating and developing Evee and Bentley.

Acting as a skill was needed because knowledge of how reactions of the characters might ensue was needed. Furthermore, knowledge on physical reactions of arms and hands rather than facial expressions was greatly needed, as this is the only way that I could portray Bentley's emotions. Having previously done amateur dramatics out of school and drama lessons in school, plus some talented classmates to learn from, I felt I knew enough about acting to apply it to my project.



Writing was another transferable skill required, in order to filter ideas for Evee and Bentley; to write them down and solidify them. Animating Evee and Bentley would be impossible without any solid foundation of ideas to push them into entertaining situations. Having written stories and ideas down before, plus honing this skill in English lessons, it was easy to use this skill for animation purposes.

ICT skills were also required, but as I did not know everything I needed in this area, I had to learn throughout the course of the project. I feel that throughout the project, I learned a lot about ICT and using the computer to help me animate.

Animaton Stuart Messinger's Notes

Animation Standard Risk Assessment Form and Production Schedule

Animation Development

Quite a few elements of my production have changed or developed, influencing my final work. The use of the computer program "Final Cut" was brought in in the later stages of production to put together my animation, despite my original intentions to create an animation entirely by hand. It was used to make the walk cycle work better, the overall line quality of the frames better, and a function to create repeating backgrounds was used to increase the quality of my animation. Overall I have acquired many transferable skills through ICT and using the shooting/camera equipment to shoot my animation.

Animation Evaluation

Overall, I am pleased with my completed work. I feel that I got the hang of animating pretty quickly and so was able to enjoy the process of animating the story of Evee and Bentley; however if I was to do it again I would make much more of an effort to manage my time efficiently. I decided the sequence was successful as I feel it kept fairly well to the animatic and ideas I had in my head.

I have learned a lot during the whole process about how to animate certain things, plus how to vary speed in animation and such, and learned I should really be more organised. I have also learned to use various equipment and software on the Mac, which was difficult as I am not accustomed to using Macs.

My ideas developed steadily, although admittedly not by much, but overall in a way I am satisfied with. I used a hand-drawn technique with as little computer aid as possible to keep it as close to what I had always wanted to do as I could. I'm pleased to say my work portrayed most of my original ideas and intentions, although some had to be simplified for various reasons such as time and effort. I kept to the original storyboard, although I had to cut quite a bit out as it was too long and complicated for me to animate in such a short space of time.

I got my ideas for the animation from characters I had already invented, purely from imaginings of what might go on in Evee and Bentley's day-to-day life. The hardest part of my animation sequence was starting each scene off, but as soon as I had got started it was usually fairly easy for me to get into it. Drawing the walk cycle was the most difficult thing for me, and I had to reference an animation book in order to be able to complete it. The easiest part was coming up with the ideas and storyboard, as I already had a lot in mind for Evee and Bentley. I made sure to keep safe and professional within working practices, although I did avoid the assigned control measures for risks such as wearing gloves to prevent paper cuts, as I did not feel they were vitally necessary.

Animation Developing Ideas

How did you develop your script, characters and environment?

For my animation, there was little need for a script as most – if not all - of the Evee and Bentley animation is visual. Evee and Bentley are characters created by me that already existed before I decided to use them for the animation project. However, they went through a few design changes for the animation: Evee was not only made younger, but her whole design was simplified greatly, mostly to make her easier and quicker to animate. The environment changed merely to fit around the antics of Evee and Bentley; for example, halfway through the animation I wanted them to play catch, so I decided to take them to a park to give them a suitable setting to do so, whilst still fitting in with the storyline.