A reflection on the past year.

Once again, it's that time of year. Student's stressing and panicking the last few days before final hand in, people continuously buzzing in and out of the library and studios in hopes of making last minute adjustments to the work they've had all year to do. They're all the same, but this time I don't fall into the same category as everyone else. The difference? The difference is that, come September these panicked students will be forgetting the stress of their may/june hand ins and will be happily making their way back to university feeling refreshed after the break of the summer. Ready to get stuck in and embark on a new academic year.

Myself however, will be thrown straight into the depths of the job hunting world. Not to say that I'm not ready to go out there and get myself stuck into a new and exciting job however, it might not be one I spent the last few years specialising in a subject for. This project has taught me something about myself, not only do I not work well to deadlines, I don't work well to my OWN deadlines (something I still need to work on). I was my own director, storyboard artist, concept artist, background artist and animator for my film. I didn't employ the help of others, I didn't want 1st years or 2nd years helping me to do the inbetweens and colouring (although it would have helped greatly if I weren't so adamant I could do everything myself), I knew that if I couldn't work to my own deadline, I would just drag the others down. However, I completed my film in the end albeit it being in the wrong format... I still made sure I had everything done 5 days before the actual deadline so that I had those days to play it back to myself, get feedback from tutors and friends.

I've stated before that I solely love 2D animation, my love grew for it even more after watching Lizzi Akana's 2D animated short ‘Marvelous Keen Loony Bin’ that I'm sure I've mentioned numerous times now. She inspired me to find and pursue the field of work that would fully satisfy my talents, I'm a creative person so it would be a shame to put such creativity to waste, the only thing is, I just don't enjoy animating. I find that when it comes to doing a project, my main area of focus will always be in the pre production field. I enjoy the process that has to be undergone when developing characters and environments and visually interpreting scripts. I excel in doing concept art and easily able to portray what is needed through layout designs, character concepts, sketches and more. I tend to experiment with my work be it by hand drawn sketches, painted, mix media or computer software such as Photoshop or Flash. However, this is not necessarily what I want to do and that is when it dawned on me, I didn't have to solely take the animation route into a job, there were many different aspects of art I could go into. During my years in education, I've done Fine Art, Photography, Graphic Design and Illustration, there are plenty of opportunities out there to combine these skills, it's just a matter of finding what would best suite me.

Once more, that is when it dawned on me again I don't enjoy animating however I do enjoy drawing, painting, illustrating, concept work, etc technically the stationary side of things. This whole idea of doing something different cemented when I took a visit to see my baby cousins the other week, after hours of fun and play, bedtime was around the corner and there it was, sitting right in front of me, a potential career I could go into. As I picked up this book and opened it up, it became even more apparent that I could potentially search for a career in being a children's book illustrator, and that is exactly what I have been looking into over the past few weeks. Not only that, I've teamed up with someone who's looking for a job in publishing and over the next few months I will be working on illustrating her short stories for submission.

I understand that most work will come as freelance and nothing happens straight away but even with this, I have taken the initiative to look into such illustration agencies as Plum Pudding and Beehive Illustrations to gain a better understanding and to give me an insight into what I need to do to potentially get me somewhere in the future. I plan on building my creative portfolio and developing it further as well as liaising with others who are hoping to get there written work published and hopefully something will eventually come from that.

The final outcome.

... and here it is, I present to you, 'Magic Bubble'.

Synopsis:

A young boy innocently enters a Magic shop, as he goes in and stands by the door, there on the other side the magician is waiting for him with a present. He gestures for him to come forward, as the boy reaches the magician, he holds out his hand to reveal the mystery before him, a normal tube of bubbles, or so the boy believes. The room fills up with bubbles and the boy is delighted, playfully dancing and parading round the room, unbeknownst to him the ever growing bubble coming slowly towards him. Before he has a moment to realise what is going on, the boy is engulfed and slowly floats upwards. The extent of the magic bubble is revealed; as the boy looks down from the bubble, things come to life before him, exploding into shot and bedazzling him. He soon floats down, as the bubble floats closer to the magician, he then pops it, throwing the boy straight back into reality with an almighty bang. As the boy lays speechless and confused on the floor, the magician reveals his true agenda, he places out his hand for money and awaits the boys response.

Post Production

All the shots have been imported into Premiere and over the past few days I have been working on the sound design. Most of the sounds have been recorded by myself and the three sound scores used for the title sequence, main animation and ending credits were taken from royalty free resources and slightly edited to my taste. As I've had to lengthen a few shots and shorten a few bits down, I've had to edit the music so that it is back on point. I am pretty glad now that I left myself with enough time for mistakes and errors such as this during the post production stage.

Final shot.

And thus, it is complete! Now to add the sound...

Shot 22.

In the original animatic there were suppose to be two more scenes after Shot 22 however, playing the scenes back to back, I realised there was no need for the extra two scenes to be added in as this one seemed to tie the whole film nicely. As well as this, with the sound added the animation seemed to end better on this shot rather then on the shot that was planned (the boy walks out of the magic shop). About 10 seconds has been cut from the film, but the scenes would only seem like I'm dragging out the film.

Shot 19 - Scene of Magic.

The shot before shows the boy in the bubble looking down, in this shot I wanted to emphasise the magical powers the bubble holds as it shows that when you are in it, things come to life. Essentially, this is suppose to be quite a surreal and trippy scene. This is also perhaps one of my favourite scenes as I am quite proud of how smoothly I've managed to animate it. As you can see as well, the colour tones still stay the same.

Shot 19.

Close to completion.

Just about getting there, all shot's bar shot 19 (lengthy explosions with dancing bear and flying books) and shot 22 (Ending shot) have been completed. With shots 17 to 21, I have done the bubbles in the scene differently to shots 15 and 16, as stated before, this is to show the division of what is real and what is not. So when the boy gets taken up in the bubble, the floating bubbles surrounding him become a bit less realistic.

Shot 15.

Shot 17.

Shot 18.

Shot 20.

Shot 21.

Note: It took me a while to figure out how I could animate something that would resemble floating bubbles in Flash but with much experimenting, I figured it out. To create the floating bubbles seen in shots 17 to 21, I first created a circle which I then converted into a symbol, I then converted that symbol into a symbol which I then named 'Bubble_Animation'. This essentially meant I could command my symbol. I marked a position on the timeline and changed the alpha to 0, this would make the bubble fade which in turn gave the effect of a popping bubble. I then went onto tweening a curved path I wanted the bubble to follow, this helped in creating a float like effect.

With shot 21, I didn't use the technique I was trying to master with the popping bubble, I scrapped my After Effects version and went onto re-animating the bubble pop in Flash instead. 

Working on the Title scene and ending credits.

All the animation is pretty much complete, all that is really left to now is to tweak a few scenes and to crack on with the colour. I will upload the rest of the animation once the scenes have been coloured.

Here I have been working on the opening title and deciding upon how I'm going to have my end credits, whether it'll be a rolling credit or just a fade in/fade out one.

Created in Photoshop.

Title - Edit 1.

Title - Edit 2.

Unsure to which opening title to use, I turned to a few people for some advice and as I expected, most said to use 'Edit 2' to open my animation with as 'Edit 1' was a bit too static. 'Edit 2' opens up the animation nicely and comically.