It turned out everyone had a distinct opinion of how the character should be. For a more efficient production, we divided into 2 groups: one for background and the other one for character design. Kreesha and I am for character design. And our main character should be a reckless and clueless guy based on the storyboard. I made a bunch of tests on the face of the character.

After the storyboard got approved, we moved on to character design and background design.

That is the first draft of my version of character design.

group members:Sabrina, Danielle, Kreesha

At the first time, we chose some words from the word cloud: time, decay, foreshadow, solace, etc.

We wanted to make a time-loop animation at first, and we created a storyboard together. However, it didn’t turn out well. The start was too long due to the tutor Ben’s advice.

That one was too ambitious for a 20-second animation. So we discussed again about the storyboard, based on the 3-part method of a story.

At last, the new version of the storyboard(The bathroom fight) got approved.

We went to tate morden for observation drawings today.

First we drew some face sketches, as below:

Then we were asked to draw some people with scene sketches.

I was happy with this practice. I found possibilities of story in my drawings “Pepole with scene1” and got inspired for the 3 frame storyboard drawing task.

At out first lesson, the tutor Izzy presented the purpose of a storyboard, which was to communicate the story and the idea/emotion, to plan the budget, to produce cheaper, etc. Then we were shown some cinema pictures as examples, we got to know how to make our storyboard look like different emotions in each frame. For example, the use of diagonal lines, horizontal lines and vertical lines. Horizontal lines give a peaceful feeling, while diagonal lines give an unsettled feeling. We also got to know the rule of thirds, which meant the character is the most focused point when they were in the position of one third or two third in the picture.

Then we did an activity on class which to choose one theme from five below:

a/running away from a monster

b/knocking down an antique vase

c/a surprising discovery

d/running late for a job interview

e/encountering the worst nemesis

I chose the first one, running away from the monster and here’s my work below:

(Actually we only had to draw one picture but I didnt hear that so I did five)

Comparing to other’s work, my storyboard is lacking change in perspectives and not clear enough for what I want to illustrate/express. Ive always wanted to show uniqueness while producing something but fail to tell the story first. In the future productions I would aim to improving on perspective sketching and story telling.

After we done the draft of the storyboard, we started to think about the texture and the colours for the paper we would like to use.

After that, we started to build the stage and prepared to shoot.

we cut newspapers to be the speech bubbles-which were to show the conversation happening in the cafe. Also, we created the spotlights to give a noisy expression with semi-transparent paper and crayons to paint on them.

After the first practice, we are asked to create with sounds. We are provided with 4 different sounds from the tutor. Our group chose the first sound, which sounds chaotic and noisy, like in a cafe. And we drew a storyboard as a plan of production.

The first scene was filled with many small crumpled paper balls to represent a mass amount of customers. Then the paper balls would spread into speech bubbles to show the conversation. After that, the speech bubbles change into different shapes to show the changing of subjects. They guadually form a huge bubble that takes up the whole screen. In the end, the irragular shape(a person) came in the restaurant and kicked away all paper balls.

I have never created a stop-motion animation before. Two methods of stop-motion were presented by tutor Chris. The displacement animation and the replacement animation. The replacement animation means that it is an animation with many shapes or objects to change that form an illusion of animation. While the displacement animation is the use of puppets or dolls that can be changed to different positions already.

We are divided into groups and told to make a displacement animation transaction with three shapes: round, triangle, and square. We chose from the three shapes and were asked to make a transition from the previous shape to the shape we had.

That’s what we eventually made.

I ran into difficulties when I tried to make my part look more 3D. I made a cone with a round shape, but it turned out not to be what I expected it to be: it looked quite flat in the camera. I learned that this is not the right way to create a 3D-looking motion in replacement stop-motion animation. If I want to make 3D things with stop-motion method, I should do more experiments before the shooting till I find the right way of doing it.