The Final Animation

Here are the final animation for my project:

The Conclusion

During this semester, I have used Adobe After Effect and Metaio as my software to produce the animation especially Adobe After Effect. Both software is quite new for me as I just learned during this semester. However maybe is my deep interest of After Effect, I can catch up quite fast by watching the tutorial online. As for Metaio, it really surprise me when I first time using it. During the production of animation for this assignment, it really give me a headache when comes to character design, decide on which software to use for animate the character. But I glad that I've made the right choice of using After Effect. Even though the animation take me around two sleepless night for me to finish, but I having fun with it and I realize that I have improvement in my skill for After Effect. 

The pros while developing the animation are I'm able to finish it on time and I able to know more about After Effect on what they can do more. The cons here are my first time using Adobe After Effect to animate the full animation for 30 seconds really take me quite a long time.

My strength here are able to finish the animation on time, and the determination of finishing the animation.

My threats when producing this assignment are time management as I have a part time job to do at the same time, I also have to complete other assignment as well.

What I have gain while producing the animation is I've improve my skill in Adobe After Effect and know more about the process of making an animation is not easy.

My weaknesses are time management (as describe above) and laziness. Sometimes I get quite lazy and just want to rest for the whole day doing nothing.

Animation Tracing for Little Girl Skipping

After getting the animatics done, I then start on the animation of the little girl skipping. In my opinion, the whole animation, the challenging part will be the little girl skipping, licking the lollipop and the girl struggling part. I decide to work on the skipping part first, as this is the beginning of the story.

I start searching image of skipping cycle, so that I can trace on it. Finally, I have found one image which taken from deviantArt.

Once I have found the image, I then uses tablet to work on it, tracing them by using brush tool.

And here is the screen recording of the little girl skipping.

New Character Design for Little Girl and Stranger

After done with animatics, I try to figure out a way to animate the character in a much easier way. As I find it will be quite hard to animate base on a human figure size and I don't think I have sufficient time to finish the animation. Hence, I have come out with a new character design for both little girl and stranger, which the both of them will in chibi (small child)  form. Image 1 and 2 will be the example of original character and chibi form character.

Image 1: Original Character

Taken from: http://blog.opovo.com.br/bancadoanime/spin-de-magi-aventuras-de-simbad-ganha-ova/

Image 2: Chibi Form Character

Self-drawn

Then, I come out with the similar design for little girl and stranger.

 Normal human figure of little girl to Chibi form.

Normal human figure of stranger to Chibi form.

But after drawing it out, I just thought that the character design of stranger might not be suitable. As the animation suppose to give an impact on don't trust gentleman, but it turns out to be that the stranger became a kid and more cute.

I then ask for my friend's suggestion, and she suggest that just design the little girl into chibi form, whereas the stranger still remain the same normal human figure.

Animatics

After some comment from the lecturer, I have made some amendment to the animatics regarding the timing.

After the amendment and show it to lecturer, the lecturer said is good enough to continue with the production. However, it is impossible for me to complete the whole animation within 4 weeks, so he suggest me to do only the first 30 seconds of the animation, then the rest leave it as animatics.

Not Yet Perfect Animatics

Here is the animatics for the animation, it is not perfect yet, and I find it is about 57 second, I think is quite long for a short animation. After let lecturer have a look on the animatics, the lecturer comment that it is quite fast and doesn't bring out the dramatic part. So still have to improvise the animatics a little bit and make it slower.

Storyboard

Here are the storyboard for this short animation.