Thank you to the few people who look at my blog from time to time (and who commented on the aesthetics for me!) . . sorry I've neglected it lately. The good news though is that I have progressed in a more overall way since I last posted.
AESTHETICS
This (above) is what I've decided will be the aesthetics of "Fly, Baby, Fly", which is noticeably, none of the options I had proposed earlier. I've gone for this scratchy yet clean look - which is a result of running my drawings through a filter called "Live Trace" in Adobe Illustrator. It is an inbetween of the clean Saturday morning cartoons and the raw look of my original drawings (which I love). I showed this to my Honours Paper class and they commented that the look kind of hints at my presence as an animator. I really like that idea. I noticed when watching a lot of old school animations that in the really early days (1900s) that the animator would 'star' alongside his drawings . . as an actor. I don't want to be sharing the screen with my animation - but I like the idea of still having some presence in it - even if in the form of "dirt".
I feel this look kind of accomplishes that. :)
SCENE 4
Hendy got back to me soon after that last post and commented that somehow, the ending with the kitten was not as satisfying as the ending that featured the Stork. Having the Stork around brought more closure . . Getting caught up in trying to remove Scene 4 far from its original state I'd forgotten how much I had liked the idea of the Stork coming back and helping the Baby "discover" walking. So I rewrote the beginning of Scene 4. The scene now opens in a park setting . . the Baby climbs a tree to reach a bird . . but just as he slips the Stork comes to his rescue as per original ending. That scene summary sounds kinda dry, I know, but it does seem to work.
ANIMATION
Hmm . . I've fallen off track with the drawing in a bad way. Not entirely out of tardiness . . but rather, I had been neglecting a lot of other things I had to consider for this project (like aesthetics, the paper etc) and tending to them have disrupted my alleged timetable. The good thing is that the timetable was probably more generous than I needed, so I just need to knuckle down again and it should be good. I just have to animate Scene 4 now . . and re-animate a few dodgy things in the other scenes . . and the Stork playing with the Baby in Scene 1 . . it seems the more I avoid it the worse it seems. Hmm . .
PAPER
I'm collecting the feedback for my draft Honours Paper tomorrow, so I'm yet to see how it genuinely is going. But at a class presentation the other week Lynne seemed happy with my progress . . and I felt a lot better and confident speaking about my research area. The paper angst it seems (and I sincerely hope) is over . .
I can't believe this will be over in about 2 months . . I don't know if that's good or bad, whether to be happy or sad. I'll be glad to have accomplished this . . and yet sad that these days of being able to focus on producing my own little animation are over. Oh well, no point thinking about that now . . . got to get back to working!
Posts
