Flash induction

Aww yiiis. We finally had a Flash induction. But it wasn't as informative as I hoped. We were introduced to the basic tools and motion tween. That's about it. Most people didn't like the programme but in defence of Flash it has more to it than that. Flash has masks like Photoshop. symbols that are really useful if you want to work quicker, also there are lots of commands you can use (though I'm not fully introduced to them, I hope to learn how to use them), also you can make buttons. Without the Motion Tween theres also Classic motion tween (let's you move things from point A to point B instead of drawing or moving it every single frame. Also there's Shape tween, which lets you turn one object into another. Actually I used the Shape tween to make this-

So overall, I would say the induction wasn't very useful, because it did not cover all he great assets Flash has.

Classical Elements: part two

Looking at my previously posted storyboard I realised that it is too long. So decided to round it up, because there was no way I could put all that in 20 seconds. So what I did was, I took out the middle part of the story and went straight to the point which is watering the flower. I'm really sad that I had to take out so much of the storyboard because I felt like it was a really good story.
Well anyway, I made a new storyboard and refined it a bit:

But there are still a few details I'm not sure about, for instance, if there should be any colour involved. However one thing I am sure about- the technique I'll use to make it- classic hand drawn pose-to-pose. I really liked it when we were trying it out back in the Animation skills module so I decided to pick that up and try to apply what we already learned.
After the storyboard was done, I went on making the animatic-

After receiving some feedback I decided to change the animatic a bit by extending the tween on the cloud while it reaches the flower and the zooming out shot when it water the flower. I'm also considering making the cloud grey, just so it could empty out like a cup while watering the flower and pop like a bubble when it's empty, because it might translate better the idea of the cloud sacrificing itself.

Classical Elements: part one

We were recently briefed with the new module called Animation:Process and Production. Basically the purpose of the module is to develop an understanding of the animation process and and practising it. We were given a task to create a short 2d narrative using one of the four classical elements- water, fire, wind and earth. We were introduced to the stages of creating an animated piece- pre-production, production and post production.
Shortly after the briefing we started researching and generating ideas. to be honest, ideas did not come easy to me so I decided to research all four elements. I chose water because I found a quote by Bruce Lee that really inspired me- “You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.” It really made me thing about the fact that water is so versatile in the sense that it adapts to anything. It can change shape, form, consistency, it can travel. In a way life constantly changes everything around you and all you can do is adapt, juts like water. If you do so you just might find your way and purpose. So I came with the idea of personifying water and making it go through a journey, adapting to to what ever comes in its way and in the end finding out what it's true purpose is- it's giving life.
So my next step was thinking of the processes water goes through for instance: water+heat=boil=steam=cloud+cold=snow=icicle+melt=puddle, so that was basically the basis for the narrative.

When the water is first poured in a cup its happy the way it is, but all of sudden a flame appears and makes the water boil and as a result steaming out of the cup and turning into a cloud. The cloud isn't happy with the changes but the it realises that it can travel around, what it could't do when it was in a cup. Ads the cloud travels, it gets cold and starts snowing, it ends up becoming an icicle that gets picked up by a kid. The kid starts licking the icicle and the icicle melts into a puddle. The puddle is angry with the kid so it turns back into a cloud and tries hit the kid with lightning.  The amused cloud continues to travel and discovers a wilted flower. The cloud then decides to sacrifice it self to flower by watering it and therefore giving life.

Here is a rough storyboard:

Flip book animation

This was a task we had to do for the Animation Skills module. We had to practice stretch and squash  by drawing pose to pose on flip books. Then we scanned everything in and using Photoshop made a gif. At first I did just a bouncing ball-

then a bouncing ball in arc trajectory  -

and then a bouncing character-

I feel that I could have done better with all three. The first one could use and extra frame when the ball is at the top, otherwise it looks like it is melting, not bouncing. Same goes to the second one. And as for the bouncing character changes volume and it is just not that fluent. But this exercise was very beneficial in terms of practising timing and spacing. It is really hard to get those both right in the first time, and flip book allows you to see how the animation looks in motion and quickly edit it. 

Ladislav Starevich

Ladislav Starevich (1882-1965) was a stop-motion, puppet animator, who even though he was born in Russia, he was raised in Lithuania, Kaunas city. In Lithuania he is proudly considered to be a Lithuanian animator, although there is only a hand full of work he did when he lived in Kaunas. He was offered to work at Disney but refused it because he did not want to be consumed by a company and wanted to shine as an individual.  His animation featured insects and animals, actually he made his famous short film called the Cameraman's Revenge by replacing insects legs with wire and attaching it to their thorax with wax. he came up with this idea while working as a director in the Museum of Natural History in Kaunas. At the time everyone was amazed by his animated insects and called Starevich "The Beetle Tamer". Starevich's animation is considered to be on of the catalysts for Soviet Russian animation.

Margaret Mathison and The Fox and the Mirror

This piece was animated by another CalArts(J.g. Quintel, Pendleton Ward) student Margaret Mathison.
"I did it because I am currently attending CalArts and every year we are expected to make a short film. I Have to say the people in the department are the most hard working insane awesome people before. I am just one of the individuals who accomplish this great feet every year. It’s Awesome! Only now can I appreciate the amount of work that goes into hand drawn animation. So much work for such a short thing. But it means so much! Now I feel like I can accomplish anything!"
It is a classic hand-drawn, pose to pose animation, made with mechanical 5HB pencils and animation paper. It was tested on a light box system, then scanned in, arranged on After Effects and edited on Final Cut Pro.
The short film is a bit abstract and has symbolistic tendencies: the butterflies symbolises the dream which we all pursue and the mirror represents our worst enemy- ourselves. Even though the short film looks like a rough sketch, it translates the message really well and it is easy to sympathise with the main character.

Adam Phillips

Adam Phillips is another Flash animator, who is most know for Brackenwood series, that are published on Newgrounds portal. Apparently he worked for Disney, but left in order to pursue his own interests and became a freelance artist. His flash animations are brilliant and professionally made, but what fascinates me the most, is that he portrays a great understanding of nature. The nature element in his animations is really nicely explored, it can be seen it in scenes with water or trees. The series include inhabitants of a small fictional forrest planet, the characters seem to be based on Irish mythology and cryptozoology. The planet itself is a natural paradise that varies from forests to jungles.

Not bad for a flash animation, eh?

Simon's Cat

Simon's Cat is a really charming cartoon series about a constantly hungry cat. Simon's Cat is animated by a british animator Simon Tofield and it is made on Flash, and it is hand-drawn on a Wacom tablet. It is really brilliantly animated and captures the funny characteristics of cats and their behaviour, even though the main character design is really simplified. The cartoons are black and white, single-lined and there's not much to it, but it capture the attention of millions of viewers and became a viral sensation. Even though there is no underline message to it, it is light, humorous, fun to watch and it features a cat! EVERYONE loves cats!

J.G. Quintel

J.G. Quintel is an american animator famous for the animated TV series Marvellous Misadventures of Flapjack and Regular Show, both of which are aired on Cartoon Network. He is a recognised professional in the animation industry and his signature style is very apparent in his work. Quintels first noticeable piece called The Naive Man from Lolliland was inspired by one of the CalArts (institute which he attended) exercises- apparently students would have to write down random words or made up movie titles and draw them out of a hat, then they would make an effort of creating a short film in 48 hours based on the drawn word. The main character from The Naive Man from Lolliland later on appears in Regular Show as a secondary character named Pops. The short is animated pose-to-pose and I personally like the drawing style in it. The second short film that followed was 2 in AM PM. It is also hand drawn pose-to-pose but what is the most interesting thing is that you can see the actual origin of Regular Show.

When Quintel got an internship at Cartoon Network he met Pendleton Ward, with whom he worked on Marvellous Misadventures of Flapjack, Ward would later on use his experience he gained while making Flapjack and go off creating Adventure Time. But the thing with Flapjack is it's very well styled- the textures used in the backgrounds give this creepy, rustic sailing adventure feel, the character design is very simple, but every once in in a while there are these disturbing close-ups of the characters-

This was probably Wards input because these close-ups continue in Adventure Time-

and the since humour is so disturbing, sometimes it makes you wonder "is this supposed to be aired on Cartoon Network?" 

 

But in general, you can notice a pattern of authentic style and humour and it's progress throughout Quintels work. Now he mainly works on Regular Show and it is easy to notice how the show progresses with every season.

Apply: part 2

So as I mentioned earlier that I chose to do the animation Flash and rendered it out with After Affects afterwards. To be honest, I think I could have done better, because the lines are inconsistent, the timing is off, the punchline is not as apparent. It just did not come together because it's not done throughly and I didn't take out more time to everything properly. But you be the judge-

Courage the Cowadly Dog

Courage the Cowardly Dog is one of those Cartoon Network series that my generation grew up with and there is a reason why so many kids used to watch it- even though it was scary as hell it was appealing. But I don't intend to talk about the whole series, just the pilot.
Actually the  pilot started out as a 7 minute short film named "The Chicken from Outer Space" and it was made by John R. Dilworth. The short was nominated as a Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 68th Academy Awards.
I love it that the short has a very unique and unrefined style to it, as a child, for me it seemed something different from all the cartoons, well maybe mostly because of the horror element. But for some reason the characters and color pallet make it really are appealing. And the irregularly shaped backgrounds give it this sort of "twisted world" feel. The character design is really clever, it makes you instantly fall in love with Muriel, sympathies for Courage and dislike Eustace, and as for the antagonist- that is one scary chicken!
Apparently it took 4 years for this pitch to make it into a series, but it was well worth it.

Apply: part 1

We had our final brief for Animation Skills which is Apply, that mean we have to apply everything we learned during this module in the final animation for it. As for the theme of this animation we were given to chose one from seven emotions- surprise, happiness, fear, love, hate, lateness, longing. I chose love because it is one of the most delightful emotions and it was the easiest one idea wise. Straight off the bat I thought of PDA (public displays of affection). It is really relevant because we've all been there- witnessing PDA, and it feels a bit like a smack to the face.

Well I took that last part a bit literally. So basically, the animation is about random people getting smacked by a happy couples PDA and one mighty hero manages to stand up for him self. I chose to do it on Flash, 12f/s, and no longer than 10 seconds.

Pixilation

Pixilation is a stop motion technique, the way I understand it, it is just stop motion animation but with people or actors. We were given a brief ad asked to produce a pixilation exploring one of these relationships-
Predator - Prey
Host - Parasite
Parent - Child
I personally had a really hard time coming up with ideas relating to these relationships AND involving people in to it. But finally chose predator- prey. In nature this relationship is a vital feature of the food chain and prey feeds the predator. But in a civilized sense I think of the predator as a manipulator. In that way, there are various predators in our daily lives, and sometimes we aren't even aware of it. In television for instance, there are subliminal message that manipulate people by leaving messages that only subconscious mind picks up. That makes viewer the prey. But I wanted to explore this topic in a comedic way so I made Subliminal Mexican. First of all I started with the storyboard-

then made the actual pixilation, and added the sombreros and what not on Flash. And after a few painful crashes and mess ups this is what I managed to put together-

Storyboard Refference: Back to the Future

I was interested to look into the pre-production  of this movie because it seemed really innovative for its time, it played a lot with the camera angles and in general the movie got universal acclaim when it came out back in 1985. The storyboard artist for this movie was Richard Lasley and it is interesting to see how well he captured all the characters actions and established really dynamic shots by manipulating camera angles. The drawing style however seems very static and the shading seems very strict and clean.

Storyboard Refference: Lilo and Stich

Lilo and Stitch is a 2002 Disney animated movie and I personally liked the character design and the water colored backgrounds in the movie. This storyboard was  drawn by Armand Serrano and it is really interesting to see that some of the scenes were slightly modified, for instance Mr. Bubbles witnessing Nani singing Aloha Oe to Lilo. This scene in particular is one of the most emotional scenes in the movie and it demands a lot of skill to portray such a tender moment. The drawing style is really clean, dynamic and refined. Overall I loved the movie, therefore I love this storyboard as well.

The Neverhood

This is a game I grew up with and it will always have a place in my heart even though it was terrifying as hell at some points.
The Neverhood was released in 1996, it was developed by Neverhood inc. and published by DreamWorks interactive. It's a point and click adventure game with over 60 puzzles to solve in order to progress in the story line. The game starts out with the protagonist Kleymen waking up in a land that may have never existed and explores the Neverhood revealing hints and artifacts about the history of his surroundings. In addition he discovers terrifying monsters, strange machines and just in general bizarre stuff. The whole game has a really creepy  vibe and the unique soundtrack adds even more bizarre feel to it. It is a really original game both puzzle wise and animation wise. Actually it's claymation which mean everything in the game was shot frame by frame with a digital camera. Everything in the game is animated really well and you can actually see some of the principals of animation take place- squash and stretch, anticipation, secondary action and such.
Even though the game creeped me out as kid, it also excited me because there were some unexpected twists to it and the claymation concept really stood out in the range of games at that time. It really is a brilliant and unique game. Or maybe it's just me. I don't know.

Journey

This is one of those creations that changes the way you perceive one or the other thing, in this case- games. I used to think that games are just for people who have an unfulfilled desire to be destructive (with all the action games and such) or for kids, or just to fill the time. Every game I tried felt like a waste of time and brings this guilt that I could be doing something productive instead. But not this one.
Journey is an indie game developed by Thatgamecompany (nice name by the way) in 2012 and I like to think of it as not a game but rather interactive art. The game allows the player to control both the main character and the camera angles, which is really beneficial to the experience because the background design is just mind blowing. There is no dialogue, destructiveness or losing for that matter. The game takes the player through a journey towards a shining star in the mountains, as the character goes towards the star, it discovers an abandoned city that once was a thriving civilization which is sort of a parallel to the protagonists journey. It is the kind of game that you come back to play again every now and then.

A Walk in The Woods

This is one of my favourite Flash animations and it's so wrong on so many levels but it's so good at the same time. I found it on newgrounds.com (which supports original Flash files and uploading to it saves the trouble of exporting to video format) and it was created by somebody called Weebl. There really is no underline message to it and it is one of those things that when you come across it, you just watch it and forget about it the next day. But the thing is, no one can watch it with a straight face and that is the single purpose of it. The plot is about a rabbit going for walk in the woods and get chased by a bear. It made my day, hope it makes yours-

MTV Idents

Back in 2009 MTV launched a series of Idents (stations or networks identifying themselves on air) that helped the channel gain a consistent look throughout the globe. MTV has 64 channels around the world in over 160 countries and with so many branches around the world MTV struggled to Identify themselves as and international brand. These Idents helped reboot one of the worlds largest TV brand. Most of these Idents are animated and all of them are short but really well made. They gave MTV this unique, modern and refined look that they needed in order to stay on top of the newest TV trends. I've noticed a while ago that MTV logo commercials were all different and unique and really well animated, well that is because they were made by different artists or collaboratives. These idents really define the new look of the channel therefore they really communicate that to the audience.

I especially liked "Group Hug" which was from the ident series of  2011 themed "Close and Caring". It shows these blobby creatures colouring the forrest with every gentle touch and it sort of warmly welcomes all the viewers to the new season. It was created and directed by Mate Steinforth. It is made in 3d animation and the software used for this was none other then Maya.

There is even a making of video in Behance-

https://www.behance.net/gallery/MTV-Group-Hug/3534139

Dumb Ways to Die

This animation started out as a advertising campaign for Metro Trains in Melbourne to prevent rail related injuries and accidents.  But due to its success it went off to be a viral sensation. In 2013 it scooped the Cannes Lions award for being the best TV advertisement campaign in the world.
The advertisement shows 21 different bizarre and stupid ways of dying using black comedy. It is really nicely animated and has a really catchy song to it, but above all else the message that it delivers is cleverly rapped up in such a (dare I say) cute and humorous way. Since it became I viral sensation, that fact alone is proof of the advertisement getting the point across and capturing the audiences attention. When I saw it, I didn't actually know that it was an advertisement campaign, so I assumed that it was a video clip for the song, so I didn't expect it to have Metro Trains message in the end, which really came across as an unexpected punch line.
But overall the animation does the job and does it well- it gets the message across various range of audiences, captures attention and actually made a change- "According to Metro Trains, the campaign contributed to a more than 30% reduction in "near-miss" accidents, from 13.29 near-misses per million kilometres in November 2011 – January 2012, to 9.17 near-misses per million kilometres in November 2012 – January 2013."

Illustrator induction

We got introduce to another useful piece of software from the Adobe family- Illustrator, to be more specific- the pen tool. To be honest I tried using Illustrator before and I found it useful that it works vectors, rather than Photoshop that works in pixels, but I just never got around to figure the programme out. As for the pen tool, I have came across it before but just didn't understand it and found it annoyng because I couldn't figure out how to stop it. But after this exercise I actually like it.

So we covered how to do straight lines, curves, curves with corners and such. Afterwards you can have some fun with the strokes by using the select tool, there is a variety of brushes you can select and play around with, so that's really useful.  This might come in handy if I ever had to design a logo, poster or any that type of thing.

Storyboard Refference: Moulin Rouge!

Moulin Rouge! (2001) is a cinematic masterpiece directed by Baz Luhrman, as it's usual for Luhrmans movies, in the center of attention is a love story, but what keeps it from being cliche is the creative approach. It is fast paced, a bit chaotic in montage, colorful, and character actions are well exaggerated, it has everything: it is extravagant and settle where it needs to be.
Moulin Rouge! is one of my favorite movies, therefore it was interesting to look into its pre-production. The storyboard artist for this movie is none other than David Russell. He is one of the top Hollywood's concept and storyboard artists and in all fairness he's the perfect artist for such a complex movie. This is the storyboard for Satine's (leading female character) entrance scene in the movie (which by the way is my favorite scene in the whole movie). It is really apparent that Russell didn't shy way from portraying complex camera movements, character action mapping and compositions. The drawing style is clear, the ruff lines bring more dynamic feel to the panels. It is just mind numbing to me, trying to image how he came up with such genius physical sequences.

Storyboard Refferences: Iron Man 2

I know I might be repeating myself a bit by blogging about Ryan Woodward again, but in all fairness his work is exemplary. I guess it is safe to assume that there is really only a handful of people that haven't seen Iron Man yet, that's why this might seem interesting even for those who aren't necessarily into animation or storyboarding.

I personally am not that fond of action movies and all Marvel comics seem the same to me (sorry), but for some reason I actually liked Iron Man, maybe it's because the main character doesn't have any supernatural  powers, he's just a genius, and for once there is a Marvel character that has some what realistic abilities. But anyway, my creative crush did the storyboarding for this movie so I am obliged to blog about it. Woodward is really consistent in his drawing style which is really dynamic, simple and some what cartoon -ish. Usually there isn't a lot or anything written on his storyboards, but there really isn't any need for captions. The panels are clear and have all the information needed- lighting, composition, camera angles. In fact, I believe they are so well drawn, you could pass them off as comics if any color was added.

Storyboard References: Origami Commercial

This storyboard was created for a TVC commercial and I am honestly am not sure what is advertised in it because there wasn't much info I could find about it. But still, I chose to blog about it because it had an interesting style to it.

It is created by Abed Marzouk, a Saudi Arabian creative director. What attracted my attention was the idea of animating origami figures. In the storyboard it seems crazy, because the animal figures he chose didn't seem that dynamic because of the structure they might have if they were made from paper. But actually it was created in 3d animation. The drawing style is really like basic academic drawing- strict single lines, clear shading, good composition, the first plan is visually separated from the background so that the most essential components would gather the most attention and it's not all over the place. It's just clean, clear and understandable. There is also a noticeable variety  of camera angles. Overall it's understandable even though it has captions in a language I don't understand.

As for the result-

http://vimeo.com/49626105

Thought of You- why it is the most brilliant animation I've ever seen

I was really excited to blog about this, because this piece is really special to me. It motivated me to stick to animation and it is something I wanted and still want to do- animated choreography.
I have danced hip hop for three years, and during that period I constantly wondered what it would be like to animate choreography, especially contemporary, because it is so fluent in body language and it just shows off the maximum capability of dance as an art form. My favorite choreographer is Sonya Tayeh, because her contemporary and jazz routines are not only award winning but she usually touches really delicate subjects and always brings out raw emotion. For me her pieces a greatly inspiring and always keeps me wandering  if I could animate it one day.

And not so long ago I came across Ryan Woodward's Thought of You. It was exactly what I imagined when wandered about Sonya Tayeh choreography being animated. Ryan Woodward as an animator is really well known, he has done storyboarding for various companies like Disney, Warner Bros., Marvel entertainment, animation for Pixar, animatics for movies like Spider Man 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Looney Tunes. But working for these big studios and projects doesn't leave space for his creativity to flourish at its best, whereas in the making of Thought of You he had the freedom to change, tweak or add something as it was created. I honestly think, the the amount of passion and sincerity put into an art piece, always translates to the viewer. But Thought about You in particular is the best thing ever animated because:

• It doesn't hide behind any tricks of cinematography like camera angles, close ups, changes of lighting. It is raw in its simplicity and provides this genuine experience to the viewer. What ever you feel while watching this animation, its not because it is manipulated through special effects, it's because it is actually sincere.
• I love the way the animator plays with timing, weight and silhouettes. One moment everything is quick, the other it is in slow motion, one moment something has weight the other it's weightless, there you see a full drawn character and there it's just a line. These diverse features create a surrealistic and light image.
• It is created on Flash. That fact alone gives me hope that I can actually do something like this in the future.
• It has contemporary choreography in it. I guess I don't need to explain why that is a great plus for me.

In a nutshell, this short 2d animated film is something that I keep coming back to, because it is the niche of inspiration and motivation and every single time I watch it, I see something different. For those who haven't seen it, SEE IT-

Animating pose to pose

This time we're kicking it old school!
I was looking forward to this, because I never had a chance to do proper hand drawn animation, and it was everything I expected- a lot of work but satisfying as hell. I love to drawing on paper, and in fact, I believe most of animators do, because why else would you draw the same thing for a hundred times. Anyway, the process is very simple- plan out and start drawing. We had to do the pendulum exercise, which was very beneficial because it's the most basic as it gets and it helps you understand the importance of properly planing out the timing and spacing. We were asked to make 12 frames of the pendulum going to one side and 12 to the other in total making a one second animation. Well I managed to fail with that. Instead I did 24 frames to one side, which meant I made myself double the work. But instead of animating the other half I just duplicated the frames and reversed them on Flash, and changed the frame to 24 fps rather than 12fps. As a result the animation turned out more smoother and now I'm actually satisfied I made that mistake.

For the other half of the pose to pose exercise we had to animate what ever we wanted as long as we applied the principals of animation and planned out everything beforehand.

 I made a jumping cat-

I'm really satisfied with the out come, but I guess I could have changed the frame rate to make it a bit quicker and put a couple more frames in when the cat is in the air with extended arms just to make it a bit more exaggerated. But basically everything I wanted is in there- squashing and stretching, anticipation, overlapping.
Overall, pose to pose animating isn't easy, mainly because you have no idea how the animation looks until it's actually rendered, but if it is planned out properly, it is satisfying to see the exact out come you hoped for.

Animating on Photoshop

Today during our session we were introduced to the ins and outs of animating on Photoshop. We learned how to use onion skins, layers, frame rates and how to export the file afterwards. I have never tried animating in Photoshop before so it was a pretty new thing for me. Although with my experience with Flash it seemed kind of similar, maybe more difficult and time consuming but the principals were the same. The differences that seemed most striking to me were that it is frustrating to animate on Photoshop unless you have been shown multiple times how to. You have to look for certain tools or actions in the menu bars (like for instance onion skins) whereas on Flash you can just point and click- everything is there on the screen. And what frustrated me the most was the fact that if you want something to stay the same for a few frames, you have to copy and paste it in every single frame, whereas in Flash you just press F6 and the new frame obtains the same content. And working with frames is impossible- deleting a frame, swapping, or inserting more frames without having to re-draw the rest of them… Well I did not come across these options. But don't get me wrong, animating on Photoshop provides a lot of good features- variety of brushes, blending options, etc. those can help produce a really good result and it is more efficient then drawing by hand. Well you can judge for yourselves-

The first one wast an attempt of getting used to animating on Ps. Basic pendulum, squash and stretch kind of principal. And the rope situation… well I don't even… eh.

The second one was a task we had to do- animate the four elements- fire, wind, earth and water and try to plan out our process before hand-making idea notes or sketches. Like this-

This was a third attempt to come up with an idea. And as I probably mentioned in previous posts- ideas do not come easy to me!!! We were told to just write down all the random words or ideas that come to us and work on the ones that we like, creating sort of an idea tree. To me, this was probably the most useful thing we learned today…

To sum up- Photoshop has some great advantages, but comparing to Flash it's unnecessarily difficult and a bit primitive as an animation programme. Well at least, now I know how to work on both, just in case.

Storyboarding

This one was fun! Our first animation skills lesson taught us the importance of storyboardining, and how to create a storyboard to begin with. We had to pick out a nursery rhyme and make a storyboard for it. It was fun to see everyone putting their individual twist on a well-known nursery rhyme, but above all else I learned to think about the camera angles, camera movement, composition. And in general storyboarding is new for me and I found it to be a more structured and clear way of working. So here's my story board for Little Miss Muffet-

As you probably noticed I couldn't help and put my own twist on it as well. As the spider approaches Miss Muffet, she realizes that she is intoxicated by the mushrooms in her curds and flies away. After this I made a colored version and a black and white version to experiment with tones-

In the colored one I used a combination of blue and pink to exaggerate the surrealistic experience and just to make a dead give away for the "being high" twist. In the black and white version I tried to work with tones and shading to work out what kind of lighting I wanted, whether it's soft lighting or make a greater contrast towards the "realization" part just to add more drama feel to it.
To sum up, this process was really useful because it helped me to understand how to organize my work in the pre-production stages of animation.

Photoshop Induction

I finally had the chance to have a proper photoshop induction. It was pretty informative and I have learned some new stuff. I had worked on Photoshop before, and the nuances of layers and brushes wasn't all that new for me. However learning how to make mask and what they are for definitly helped me to become more efficient on this particular program. At first we were trying out all the blending options and combining images together.

It was pretty fun to try and mess up images but it turned out pretty decent if I do say so myself.

Afterwards we tried blending images one into another using masks and adjusting them to create a single image, I also discovered Multiply and Overlay tools that really help in combining imagery. As and end result I'm really proud to present my Photoshop masterpiece-