Upon looking back at my video, an element that I feel should be updated is my character design, although, I’m rather pleased with the art direction I went with in the original video.

I think an element of inconsistency that needs to be better improved on, is my main character staying on model, as often from the video tiny details of the character keep on changing around, such as the eye size the hair the nose and the body size.

Especially the character s weight and body size.

I feel that the bigger his stomach is he looks far older than he should be, so a good thing to nail down is to have a model sheet of the main character.

A model sheet it’s a finalised sketch of your animated characters, so that way the animators can constantly go back to the model sheet making sure that their re-sketches of the characters still resembles exactly how they should look.

In terms of story a criticism I had was that some of the jokey sections went on for far too long, the feedback from my course colleagues that maybe it was just a tad too descriptive.

While some of the sections did offer my mates a good laugh, they just feel overall that it didn’t benefit the story that much, a piece of advice that they gave me was that maybe save some of the jokey bits for the darker elements of the story.

The sections in the story when the moments get a bit too stale for the audience to watch, it made me take a step back and really think out the story more realising that maybe each section of the story should have some major purpose towards it as some of those feeding back suggested a bit long and some parts felt like filling in time rather than moving the story along.

Another one of my mates made the comment that the story really should be more emotional and inspirational to make it far more impactful to the audience, to really hit hard as this is supposed to be a story to help people better understand Neurological conditions such as Autism.

My reasons to why I meandered along with a series of random jokes in my video originally, was because in my original source of inspiration from the short films of Adam Elliott, he had often listed a series of facts about his characters, mainly for the humour, but this only really takes place in his older films, while there are still a series of jokes and facts in his most recent films they’re not quite as long and as extensive as to what he used to do in his older short films.

Maybe the facts are more to learn in depth about the characters which lends itself better in a feature length film.

When redesigning my characters, I was considering my main character having a more rounded softer design while the secondary characters especially the negative characters to have a squarer appearance with sharp edges to make them appear far more intimidating.

A critique I had first time I was making the video was that the more intimidating characters didn t look villainous enough. But my thinking was that not all villains or baddies in life look like villains and body language is hard for me to read so then having them look like every day people is realistic because of the real life setting and it s autobiographical content.

With this project being a remake on my older film from years ago, I first decided to see on how well the original stood up, so I invited my colleagues in for a screening of the original and get their feedback, on the overall impressions on the film, and what assets could be improved upon.

(Final Major 2019 Blog: 2)

Reviewing the Older School Reflection

School Reflection 2017

Rough Sketches

Upon refining the design I wanted to make sure that each sketch I did in this video remain consistent, and I knew looking at the original characters hair had a great number of lumps the number itself never been the same in each scene you saw the character in, so between two separate scenes he could’ve had between 20 or 40 lumps for his hairstyle, looking back to designs of the early Simpsons they seem to also have a similar issue where they just randomly draw loads of points for the hairstyles of the Simpsons such as Bart or Lisa in many of the earlier short films that they had, but once the main series was created they seem to have a certain number of spikes on the hair properly to keep consistency between scenes and it makes the design looks far more refined, so I decided to take that into consideration and it only a certain number of lumps for my main characters hairstyle, I decided to do the top of his hair in the shape of an eight with two lumps on top of each other, followed by three other lumps either side, making a grand total of lumps for the main characters hairstyle being six, and I set down some other rules and guidelines of how the rest of the phase should follow and be drawn, when the character is drawn facing forward the nose should be a perfect cylinder shape, with the eyes arranged just on the outside of the top of the shape of the nose, and when the character is facing sideways for the nose to be pointing out a little bit but not overly too much.

Every time I drew down a sketch of my characters I would put numbers alongside the numbers of lumps they’ve got on there hair so I would know how many I had to draw while doing the animation, so trying to keep it at a minimum number such as five or six would be ideal.

I also decided it would be a good standard to have a model sheet, by having this I would be able to look over a standard sketch of my character and be able to use as a source of reference to make sure that the amount of lines and bumps I was sketching onto my character was standard and every single picture at least looked like it was the same character, The two characters that I spend most my time sketching out was the main lead and Mrs Sugar as they would have the most amount of screen time out of all the other characters so they were my priority on keeping the design is just right.

As for drawing the secondary characters since they wouldn’t be on screen as long as the main character and Mrs Sugar there wasn’t as much as a priority to get their designs right, but in order to understand as to what my style of character design is like I had sketched up many of my colleagues in my course if they were to be in my film, knowing them what kind of traits do they have in their own personality that can bleed through if they were to appear in the film, while maintaining the style.

While making the original film I set up two rules followed by when it came to character designs, roll one apart from the main lead every other character need to at least had a square shape in their design, The reason why I went for this mindset is because I wanted a certain element to pop out from the main character to show on how he doesn’t quite stand in with the rest of the crowd, and as a clear visual element to show which one was supposed to be the good guy in the story I gave my main character rounds shapes to appear much more friendlier and gentle and as a contrast to the much more angular appointed other characters.

This technique is actually been used in many other cartoons, such as the power puff girls The girls in that show are made up by around shapes and a contrast to the villains that made out with angular shapes, as a contrast between good and bad.

Pixar films have used this technique as well, in the film up with the old grumpy man Carl Fredricksen, looking at his basic design shape he is made up by squares, this represents his personality as he is not a very outgoing chap when he’s an elderly man who is closed off from the rest of the world and appears to everyone else as a grumpy man, and Russell the second dairy lead and the young chap that get stuck with Carl on his journey Russell has a polar opposite personality as he is very upbeat cheerful outgoing and is always excited and enthusiastic regardless of the task, his character designs represents his own personality as he is made out of round shapes.

And yet again and inside out where the characters such as anger to represent his angry personality he is quite literally a cube shape with sharp edges to reflect this personality discussed has a squarish head, reflecting on her personality as well and sadness and joy, Joy of course her name gives away on her personality in the story happy cheerful outgoing, and she has a roundhead with the shape reflecting that of kindness and sadness while being quite sad she is quite sensitive and emotional with the round shape perfectly representing this as well.

And the second thing about my character designs is that for at least the secondary characters they have no pupils, I got the idea after looking at Calvin & Hobbs Books for my original, and how the illustrations they don’t seem to have any pupils in the eyes, while not been a criticism of the character design I thought this would be a great thing to include for my own design so for the characters that the autistic lad doesn’t quite understand that he can’t see eye to eye with no pupils should be an easy indicator to help the audience to understand as to when there is a character that the autistic lad doesn’t quite understand as a perfect visual representation.

This can apply in real life because there are autistic people that find it difficult to make eye contact, with other individuals.

Mrs Sugar has so far been the hardest character to remodel, just as I was doing test animation I re-sketched a new model to make her to seem much more intimidating, with spiky and messy hair along with a much more seductive looking body I felt like this was a good direction to go into but it still needs to be refined just like the lumps on my main characters hair.

So I began trying to redefine the sketch on keeping it nice and simple, from advice from a mate he suggested that I should give Mrs Sugar some devil like horns, I wanted to keep the horns nice and subtle, I recall watching a story time animated the other day about her abusive X, and when I re-watched it I realised that the sketch that she did of her ex had some devil horns but they were in the style of his hair, so it was a very subtle implement to the design.

I attempted to replicate this but I just felt like that my one was a bit too on the nose and wasn’t subtle enough, and I couldn’t get it to the stage that I was happy with.

I attempted to abandon the devil like horns with the hair in confiscation I gave her a very square like head and pointy hair, but she had no nos and then after doing the test animation I realise that she appeared too much like an alien, ultimately I decided just to go with the second airy design as while that design still has many curves, I felt like giving her a tall stature her body curves and her spiky hair all act as a good confiscation to make her appear intimidating, and a bit of adjust position as while she is a curvy character but it’s through her hair design and her eyes that gives away that she is a rather uncomfortable character from the main lead

Inconsistency with the Hair

The Original Simpson

shorts 1987

The Simpsons

mean TV series 1989

Rough Sketches

Powerpuff Girls

Up 2009

Characters Outline - Carl Fredricksen

Russell - Characters Outline

Inside

Circle

Square

Calvin & Hobbs

School Reflection

Mrs Sugar

Original Design

Test Redesign

illymation (ex) Boyfriend

Third Redesign

Finalise Lock

Animation Puppet

Jaden Animations

Things that Happened While I Grew up

Sitting down and thinking about as to where my original score reflection video best fits in a genre category, the closest I could conduct would be storytime animators, as the set up is a narration on top of an animation which visualisers the story that they’re describing.
A lot of their videos are usually personality driven and the stories can usually quite get personal, describing how certain events in there life have change them as a person, little quirks that they can’t help it do, and their overall thought process on how they perceive the world.

And since the majority of YouTube animators are usually quite young people, they have a rather positive and fun outlook in their videos, with the type of people that are positive and happy and a fun outlook usually appeals to would be that of children teenagers and young adults, it’s not to say that the haven’t been any rather emotional and empowering videos for any YouTube animators haven’t made, but it’s safe to say a large quantity are often quite a positive, oh so YouTube animators have a knack of taking on what sounds to be on the surface quite upsetting stories, but upon looking back on them on a reflective nature there able to take the humorous side of things, such as for example joking about on how they were that person.

Take for example Jaden animations, a number of her stories from when she was a little girl, she would do a number of different things where she was being stupid in her actions, and if the animation was played out straight without her narration and as a clear re-creation, the affect wouldn’t be as funny, because then we just be watching a little girl doing just random things without any kind of rhyme or reason, but it’s by her additional narration given the thought process of what she was thinking off, and presenting the story as a hindsight of her looking back and saying how stupid she was that’s how she is able to make it reflectively funny.

What I will be doing in my remake of School Reflection is to do a very similar look back describing my thought process at the time, but act as a insight showing people and what kind of consequences they could be if an autistic lad was not given the right support at school, such as why did the teacher treated me like everyone else didn’t help.

Carrying on with the story timeframe illymation her story time video about her abusive ex-boyfriend is perhaps the closest video I could find in the genre of storytime animators that I ideally want to make my remake along the lines of.

In the video she discusses about her X had manipulate her over the years, and the type of ways that he was able to do so.

In her video how I left the injected humour is very few and far in between the only true ounces of humour is at the very beginning of the video before she gets into the story, and the only other humorous bit I can think off the top of my head is the section where she discusses on how she first met her ex and how puny and weak he looked and that she can believe that she could kick his butt, this comes in at a much more karma section of story just before we get into the dark manipulated stuff that he did, and that video itself it’s very deep and scary on the topic that she goes into, so it was most appropriate to save most of the joke is near to the beginning of the video so it will act as a contrast to the much more serious topic that would be discussed upon later on in the video that being about abusive relationships.

Comparing the imagery of what she does in this video compare to many other videos she has done, the beginning of the video it’s colour palette seems to be quite natural the colours not really defining any factors in the frame, with the exception of illymation herself and her family having white skin while every other character illustrated in the animation is presented with normal skin colour.

It’s not until that moment that she first meets her boyfriend that we get an introduction to much more darker colours, such as the moment that she first meets her ex it’s at twilight hour, with a rather red sky almost representing a setting of a very dark relationship about to onefold, when they go on the first date they go to the cinema and come out at night, the setting being in the cinema in a dark room and being at night in the dark with a dark colour palette to go alongside, it’s an appropriate set up for these are the scenes that we begin to truly see the cracks of the monster that her boyfriend is, with elements of the colour is getting darker and darker, first at the cinema with a dark red but then by the time that we go with the both of them in the car, and the horrific thing that he might of done that as suggested in the film we then have a very dark and cold blue.

during this video we get imagination imagery of a rather sketchy and rough animation on a black background but the outlines of the animation being white, this represents on her describing her unsettling thoughts going through an abusive relationship, a defining moment in the animation is when she decides to leave her ex, she dumped him by text, but she’s rather terrified as to what could happen to her perhaps being harm by him because of leaving, as she is contemplating this in her bedroom there are no lights apart from the lamp behind her.

This illustrates the spotlight situation almost like being on stage the nerve rack on the dialogue you could say could very easily tip over.

But once we get the scene of where she dumped him, while it’s not a return to full grace and joy in this video, as she is still recovering from the relationship, there is a noticeable relief from after this experience such as when she’s illustrating her thought process, while she is still un settled, The sketches this time are black outlines on a white background, a opposite contrast unlike what it was like earlier, while she is still not in a stable spot by reversing the colours like this it’s illustrates to the audience that there is recovery going on, things are slowly but surely getting better at least she is free from any more torture, with the white representing heavenly and hopeful, after this section in the video she shows as to where she is in life which is in a much more better positive place, and the colour is finally stabilise as to what they would like at the beginning very natural and normal, and near towards the end we get her personality finally returning with a her jokey self with this positive and hopeful ending it makes the video much more inspiring and empowering to any other people that may have been in a similar situation and give some hope, not making the video a complete depressing experience.

I think this is a very important aspect to take away from this video and apply it to my own, I want to be able to illustrate as to how difficult life can be with somebody with autism with the full process and how they struggle making relationships and connection with the rest of the world, but it needs to show the positive side with autism as well as the negative as well I do hope the video will be informative and will make people more sympathetic to autistic people so they will make people hopeful with family teas or relatives or individuals with autism, and before watching this video I didn’t put much for and the colour palette as it was just going to be on a white background but after watching this video I may have to reconsider it and really put in the colour grading and lighting to really make the scenes much more fairly affective.

(YEAR OF THE ANIMATORS: VidCon 2017 Recap!)

How I Left

How We Met

illymation Family

Colours Scene

Colour Pallet

Sparing Jokes

I initially wanted to contacted one of a storytime animator I attempted to contact them by email but unfortunately I was unable to get a reply from the majority of them and the ones he did got back to me unfortunately separately were unable to participate in the interview.

but thankfully I had a colleague who had attempted to make its own storytime YouTube channel but only after crating his first video he had ceased production on creating any more, after discussing with him about the possibility of interview we sat down we decided to have a general chat not just on about his storytime YouTube channel but I say about his other accounts that he still has and there are still up and running, his storytime YouTube channel was called no more ink.

Upon taken a look at the only video for the account I would be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised they didn’t continue onwards, in terms of the visual his current designs are basic with a circle for the head an oval for the body and apart from two black darts I like any other detail within the body shape, and every of the character being a copy and paste of the exact same main character after the main character wearing blue, now simplicity seems to be a common trait with storytime animators whether designs are not overly complex, this mainly fixing with the rather innocent approach that many of these uses bring across to the videos with no real emphasis of anything adult going on mature content at least in the sense that these videos can be viewed my general audience and by everybody in the family.

To the simplistic nature is fine but by having every character looking exactly the same it does make it increasingly harder to see an identity the main character in the story as the common trope of storytime animators is that the main character often stands out from the rest of the crowd, never quite true spitting in with the situation is that they’re putting but by having every character look the same it doesn’t quite fully reflect this visually to the audience, but putting the Visual work aside as he discussed in the interview the many flaws in the video.

The narration it’s overly fasting quick the video only cocking about a minute long it is hard to keep up as to what’s been told in the story and the most important thing when it comes to a narrated story is been able to follow as to what’s going on, and speaking so fast it seems very unnatural which is really bizarre because in the actual interview he’s confidently always making witty remarks being quite cheerful and coming across as a positive person being more himself, so is unusual viewing his animation work that being behind the microphone seems to be a bit of restraint for him to reflect his personality, I personally think that the video and if you would have me any more still could’ve been good if you carried on with the visual approach grandchildren better off if you could change it but has lost the storyline could’ve been enjoyable it could’ve been an aspect that could be overlooked, as he stated in the interview he says an important aspect is to get the story right spend time on the tablets now that you’re going to descries and overall spend more time on your actual video as he admits in the interview that he generally rushed the video, with animation been such a time-consuming aspect time is vital that you spend on it. I very much view no more rink as to how not to do a u-tube storytime channel I don’t mean to insult my mate are interviewed but we benefit met that generally the video could have been so much more better but it’s good to reflect on what not to do when you’re creating a video and we still need examples to reflect and upon avoiding what not to do, so when it comes time to meet to stop script writing process I want to ensure that there is enough time to fully describe and explain for the storyline and what is un folding especially since my ideal timeline for this video is five or three minutes long.

(No More Ink Interview)

Email Conversation

Character Design

The Story

Email conversation with odd ones out

Timestamp questions

The Name Huffulduck 0:53

Your inspiration for no moring for no more ink 1:23

Why do you enjoy these animations 2:13

What was your process 2:42

Do you still animates 3:52

Could no more ink come back 4:24

What advice could you give to somebody who wants to do animationWhat advice could you give to somebody who wants to do animation 4:49

If anything needed to be refined from the original film that would have to be the animation, at the time not having any prior knowledge on how to do 2-D animation, my attempt of animation was just to sketch out the picture, with a pencil and paper and just photograph it and use that as the final picture in the film, there was a late attempt to make the picture look more unique by adding a sketchy filter on top of the image, just to make it appear more lively than originally was, apart from the ending been in colour the sketches were completely in black-and-white.

The reason why the ending was the only section in colour was because it was a relatively positive ending towards the film, so in order to show that it was less dreary and not like the rest of the short film colour was brought in to show the difference, on how bright and lively his world is now, although I feel that the black-and-white scheme is a rather overused concept for a film, in order to show the contrast in the wilds between the doll and mundane and the bright and lively, I think I wouldn’t be challenging myself enough if I did the same thing twice, so I want to challenge myself into presenting A colour scheme in order to show the difference between the autistic lad life and everyone else’s life.

So I’ve created a five minutes animation test, by digitally tracing over my original sketches from the first school reflection film, creating them into PNG files, i’ve attempted to animate the pictures on using a key frame on my final cut pro software.

Original Sketch

Digital Sketch

The Original School Reflection

(Final Major 2019 Blog: 6)

Ainmation Tests

Final Cut Pro and graphic what the same two tools that are used for creating my road safety video featuring a badger, so I was already fairly used to the technology but as to terms of how long it was going to take me to do the animation was something that I could not predict, so carrying out my test I time myself to see how long it was going to take my a day to do animation, after doing the test I found out there took me about 20 or 30 seconds to do an animation on and off within a day but if I had to focus all my time into animating I could get to perhaps 50 seconds or minutes so I felt like that the project was achievable.

And while the budget video was for the most part animated by hand drawn researching the drawing every frame, this school reflection video I decided to do Flash instead, Flash animation is where you have a number of Digital drawings of your character such as a drawing of a arm then you overlay the arm on top of the body, do this with all the rest of the body shapes then you have a animation puppets that you can move around, people are often quite conflicted of what to call flash animation some people like to refer to flash for most digital 2-D animations, including that off much more traditional animation are you re-sketching an image again and again but just on a computer, but I mainly prefer referring to it being flash if it requires a 2D animated puppet.

In terms of animation techniques and tricks, I’ve been watching a YouTube series called scribble cable, which gives animation tutorials by analysing other animators mainly being animations from online as the examples, catering towards the current young generation animating digitally, some of my favourite videos and the ones that give me the biggest insight into animation at lease for myself animating, I’ve learned from the series and if acquired them into this animation project.

Is the blink animation where seven frames of the animation blink is necessary if you want to create a smooth blink, and if you want to give the blink and nice jumping bit of animation then at the end of the animation have the iris wake up a little bit more bigger, then have the Irish come down slightly once again, it then gives the effect of the eye jumping slightly with a blink.

I was initially considering on animating on twos with 12 frames per second, but after doing a small test within twos I ultimately prefer 24 frames per second instead, as I just like how much was smoother it looked

Hand Drawn Animation

Flash Animation

Blink Animation

0:00. Explanation on frames in seconds

0:44. Advising for any newcomer of animation to do 12 frames, and my experiments doing so

0:55 first experiment on 12s

1:20. 24 frames experiment

1:39 comparison

Script Writing

Draft One

Script Writing

Draft One

Research

Audience Feedback

Research

Audience Feedback

Research

Audience Feedback

(Final Major 2019 Blog: 2)

Reviewing the Older School Reflection

School Reflection 2017

Character Redesign

Rough Sketches

Inconsistency with the Hair

The Original Simpson

shorts 1987

The Simpsons

mean TV series 1989

Model Sheet of the Head

Model Sheet of the Head

Rough Sketches

Powerpuff Girls

Up 2009

Characters Outline - Carl Fredricksen

Russell - Characters Outline

Inside

Circle

Square

Calvin & Hobbs

Eye

Calvin & Hobbs

​

School Reflection

Mrs Sugar

Original Design

Test Redesign

illymation (ex) Boyfriend

Third Redesign

Finalise Lock

Animation Puppet

YouTuber Animators

Jaden Animations

Things that Happened While I Grew up

​

(YEAR OF THE ANIMATORS: VidCon 2017 Recap!)

illymation

How I Left

How We Met

illymation Family

Colours Scene

Colour Pallet

Sparing Jokes

illymation

Interview a story time animator

(No More Ink Interview)

Email Conversation

Character Design

The Story

Email conversation with odd ones out

Animation Test

Original Sketch

Digital Sketch

The Original School Reflection

(Final Major 2019 Blog: 6)

Ainmation Tests

Hand Drawn Animation

Flash Animation

Blink Animation