WEEK 6 SUMMARY

WEEK BEGINNING - January 21st, 2019

WEEK ENDING - January 27th, 2019

MONDAY - Maya introduction

Original blog post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/01/cgi-introduction.html

- "Overall, I'm really happy with both the animation and the introduction to Maya in general! Being completely honest, I was not expecting myself to find Maya as (for lack of a better term) easy and user friendly as it was; I actually understood it, unlike After Effects. Everything is laid out how I would've expected it, and things do what you want! It shares traits to other programs I've dabbled with, but in a way that makes the translation from 2D to CGI usage easy to understand! While I'm happy with the animation that came out of this session, I think I want to go back and add in more details; model in a barn, a background, and more cows to make a more interesting animation!"

TUESDAY - Narratology: Animation is a Uniquely Visual Medium

Original blog post: https://ncarolannua1b.blogspot.com/2019/01/narrative-animation-is-uniquely-visual.html

- "And that was the final lecture on Narratology! At this point, we should have a film in mind, or at least have whittled it down to 2 choices. I'm sticking with Who Framed Roger Rabbit? for my film; it fits into my chosen question format too well. From here, I need to settle on a plan of action for the essay, and do deeper research."

THURSDAY - Stop Motion introduction

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SUMMARY

This first week for a couple of things, and I loved one a LOT more than the other.

The CGI / Maya introduction was the one I really liked! CGI was my introduction to animation, and watching films like Toy Story and Shrek really inspired me to go into animation. I learnt later on that CGI was allegedly very difficult, even the simplest things. But now I've done the simplest things and discovered that they weren't too difficult, it puts my mind at ease a LOT. Despite only having one session on CGI, I feel like I've absolutely fallen for it; definitely a medium I'm looking forward to doing more of!

Stop Motion... isn't as enjoyable as I imagined, or as I remember from past experience. The process is a lot more fiddly and complex than I recall, and you really need a good sense of patience when you do it; and I'm willing to admit one of my faults is lack of patience. Maybe this session with the bouncing ball was a one-off? Things kept falling apart, and injuries were almost sustained (luckily, no-one was actually hurt). When we move onto armatures, hopefully it'll be less... personally frustrating.

We've ended our traditional lectures with Lynsey now, and this last one was somewhat helpful. It covered a few points that I could apply to my Who Framed Roger Rabbit themed essay, but nothing overly helpful like last week. The presentation was more so on how animation tells a story visually, but not handy in my essay exploring how animation is used in conjunction with the plot itself. If anything, this session was most helpful in solidifying that, now everything's concluded with lectures, I should really sit down and put my points down in concrete.

Sketchbook project this week has been a bit down, a combination of being busy with the work this week and, being completely honest, a lack of motivation. I feel like I burnt myself out on it the past two weeks getting things done, that I've subconsciously gotten tired of the sketchbook. I still pick it up every so often for a little scribble on the page, but not much else. I'm sure the motivation will come back.