Project proposalFor my final project, I want to make a short 2d animation on flash. I want to focus on the design and the look of the animation. I would like to go into traditional animation/Concept art as a future career. For the look of the animation, I want it to be cartoony and feel like something from cartoon network or nickelodeon. Im taking a lot of inspiration from Over the garden wall, a cartoon on cartoon network, with the character designs. I want to work with simple shapes and character designs. While I want to line art to look clean, I want the whole thing to have a bit of a rough look, and be loose and a bit free. As the project is set in Victorian/WW1 times I want to use a lot of browns, with bits of colour striking out, to give it a mood. For the mood I want interesting backgrounds that are pleasant to look at.For the story, I want it to be quite simple and not too overcomplicated, but end on a tragic note. The watcher can draw their own meanings from the story and what the messages in it are. As I am working on my own it will be an ambitious project, as I have to create the storyboards, concept art, animatic, do the blocking, animate, line, colour and do the background and compiling alone. I am hoping to focus on the look more than the animation as I may not have time to completely do all the in-betweens for something so long by myself. I may go for simple movements to avoid it looking too stunted.

Production diary and Research PortfolioMy initial idea was to create a music video and have an animation timed to the music. From there I thought of a couple of ideas in my head. I knew from the beginning I didnt want something set in the modern period, so I looked at different time periods to see which I would like my animation set in. I considered ancient Egypt, the Middle East and Victorian era, but decided on Victorian era. I knew I wanted to do something with a timeline progression, where the characters aged but I had no idea what characters. Originally I wanted to do two siblings, but went for something more romantic later.For inspiration I looked at the movie UP and the montage they had at the beginning. I liked the fact it was just music and no speaking and I wanted to do the same for my animation. I designed my characters, trying to envision what they should look like. For the design I wanted something similar to the characters in Over the garden Wall. with basic shapes and strange noses. I also tried out a more realist style and a more loose messy style.

I then made a stoary board to try get my ideas on paper. I wanted the story to end sadly with the boys death.I began doing concept art for backgrounds during lessons. I had trouble with composition and good angels so I looked at screenshots from over the garden wall and redrew them to try get a feel so what makes a good composition.

I then made an animatic based of my storyboard but with better composition.

For colours, I at first wanted to do everyting sepia tone with touches of colour, but I decided against that once I started doing backgrounds as I felt the colour versions were a lot nicer. For inspiration and reference for backgrounds I looked at a couple of differerent sources. I looked at Steven Universe and Gravity Falls for composition, colours and lighting. I looked at 101 dalmations concept art for things that fit the time peroid and architecture. I also looked at real paintings.

I then drew out the basics of my backgrounds and imported those into flash so I could start animating the key frames. I separated everything in 30 different files for 30 different scenes. On each one I draw out the basic anatomy in relation to the background. I had video footage I recorded of my friends for reference for a lot of the scenes.Once I had done that I went and added in clothes and features and exaggerated some of the poses. I then spent time colouring all the backgrounds, as well as creating transparent pngs of parts of the backgrounds that would be in the foreground in front of the characters. Next I did the in-betweens on flash. I imported in the backgrounds into flash and started doing the line art based of the colours in the scene. Once all the line art was done I started block colouring in the characters in their lightest colours, then later added in the darker shadow colours. I used about 10 layers for each file.During the making of the animation, I got in contact with Harpreet Baht who does music. I explained to her the project and she made some drafts of some music that would go with it. I wanted to go with a guitar initially, but later changed my mind to piano to fit the time period. She send me a combination of different piano files she made with different moods to them which I compiled together to fit the animation. The original plan was to send her the animation and for her to put the music to it, but her exam period started as I finished the animation so it was not possible. After her exams we may make a new sound track for the animation, with high sound quality that works smoother.Once I had finished all the animation, I exported them as swfs into Aftereffects. My computer would not play QuickTime and premier does not accept swfs which is why I used Aftereffects. I realised my files were too small and came out fuzzy, so I made all my flash files bigger. Unfortunately they were too big and none of the files would play. I spend 2 days trying to find a way to export my work in a way that I could keep the quality but it would also play smoothly, and eventually found one that I was still not pleased with, but was the only one I could find that partially hit both requirements.

Final resultI am pleased with the final result of my project, although I didnt finish everything, due to the amount of work. I underestimated how much work I would have to do for inter-disciplinary group project, which interfered with my final project. If I could change anything to overcome this problem I would have urged my group to start the intergroup project earlier, leaving me time to work on this project.Half way through the project I changed my ideas on the colours and moods I wanted. I originally wanted a vintage Victorian feel with lots of sepia and browns to fit the time period. However, I later decided I wanted lots of soft gentle colours, to set a romantic mood, while the later scenes in the trenches would have more browns and green and darkness. For the backgrounds I looked at the backgrounds from Steven Universe, 101 Dalmatians, Over the Garden Wall and Gravity Falls for inspiration on composition design and colour. I also looks at old landscape and scenery paintings by artists around that time period my animation is set in.I feel the final thing still needs a lot of editing. The timings of everything are too fast and scenes end too abruptly. Although I like the cut-out style of a lot of the animation, it could still use some more in-betweens. Some of the shots look slightly odd as well, such as shot 7 where the boy and his stuff is cut off at a weird angel and everything is too far left. The music quality could also be better, but there is nothing I can do about this as the person who made the music for me is busy with exams and cant work on it, and I dont have a piano. I think the explosion in the later half also needs to be slowed down and made bigger. Some of the artwork needs to be redrawn as when I drew it, I drew it with a mouse instead of a Wacom as it was all that was available to me. I also had to cut out a few scenes for time. Although they are not necessary for the plot, which is why I cut them, adding them in would improve the timing.I had 30 different files for each scene to prevent freezing. Although they hardly froze, I still think there were too many separate scenes to be manageable and I should have put them into 10 files instead. Exporting and editing all 30 files was a large task and took up a lot of my time. If I had the files together I may have found to easier to control the pace of the animation and realise it was going too fast.I would not have minded going in a group to work on this project, as the final product itself may have looked more finished, however I wanted to make something that was purely my own. I will be able to continue working into at a later date to make it the best quality it can be with no distractions.