software – movingpic

19th January 202119th January 2021

Failure (or?).

The personal reflections on Children Society project.

I should admit, I failed. I failed to finish the Children Society (CS) project on time of the deadline. Not even half of the film is completed.

Well, I thought a lot lately about why this has happened and what I’ve learned during this project.

When we went for summer holidays, the project was in the pre-animation stage. Storyboards and animatic were finished, and I could start to animate it. What I actually did. I helped Kat with her graduation film at that time and began to work on CS film a bit. So, why I didn’t manage to finish the film on time?

First and foremost, I didn’t know my capabilities. In other words, the lack of experience to plan this type of work. I knew that I could do that quality of animation, but didn’t realise how much time it would take, though. Although I saw the first sights of how complicated my planned animations are, I didn’t pay attention. And even decided to take a break of animating at the end of August and September.

I learned Maya, sketched a lot, painted, studied storyboarding, watched shorts and attended online webinars, conferences and animation festivals. Even got a chance to visit some exhibitions, like Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk (wanted to see how Japanese depict and simplify flowers shapes in their art) in Victoria and Albert Museum, Among the Trees in Hayward Gallery and Andy Warhol in Tate Modern. Additionally, I thought about to make changes in the Children Society film style by adding the real flowers instead of drawn ones. So, I took a lot of photos at that time.

Now I see if I would proceed work on the CS project during these months, I could finish it indeed, even with this complicated animation quality. Or might be I would reach one of the tutors to get a piece of advice to find out how I can simplify my animation in that early stage.

Thus, the lack of proper planning and experience was a critical problem during film production. Accordingly, I’m going to make everything to avoid these mistakes in my graduation film.

Also, another obstacle was that I chose to do animation in Toon Boom Harmony instead of TV Paint. At that time, this software was only slightly explored by me, I just watched a couple of tutorials. However, I knew that Toon Boom is one of the major soft in the animation industry. Therefore I decided to do the film in this programme simultaneously learning it. So, animating took more time than usual for me. Simply because I spend a lot of time watching online tutorials and exploring all different ways to work with Toon Boom and which one works best in my case at the same time.

Although it might look like a disruption in work, especially at the beginning, yet, I learned a tone! Really struggled with brushes. Since they are vectorised, it was hard to adapt to drawing after the TV Paint. However, I managed to overcome it. I’m now more familiar with Harmony’s interface, can easily navigate through it. I can use Node View and add Nodes. I learned how to use an integrated sound manager to move, cut and dissolve or increase track’s audio. Also, I clearly see the advantages of working with Toon Boom. It is like a combination of TV Paint for 2D animation, plus Adobe Animate for cut-outs and Adobe After Effects for VFX. And this is great! I could make fadings-in and out, transparencies and apply blur effect easy. Add masks and camera movements and many more without switching to AE. Everything can be done in one software.

Clearly, this experiment was worth it. And the best way to learn any software is to make an actual project in it. Furthermore, I’m going to proceed to learn it and currently doing an additional short course.

On the whole, this project was a constant studying experience. I shoot many references, even did a 3D ref in Maya, learned a lot, and tried different ways to animate. Even tutors saw significant progress in my work. Also, not only speaking about the technical side. Besides, I know more about my abilities and weak sides and about my work approach now. Therefore I can avoid these mistakes in my future work.

After all, I want to add that I will work on it bit by bit and hope to finish it this year.

31st October 202024th November 2020

Personal project

Autumn Fires
by Robert Louis Stevenson

In the other gardens
And all up the Vale,
From the autumn bonfires
See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!

As for a person who always struggled to express and describe her own thoughts and feelings with words, poetry was a lifesaver starting way back from middle school years. So, poetry and often music helped me to reveal clear meaning and convey ideas and mood.

Hence, then autumn just started to touch leaves with yellow and red colours, I felt a deep need to find words that will represent my inner thoughts about changes that happening around with nature. Additionally, I collected some leaves during long walks in surrounded parks.

Moreover, then I discovered this beautiful poem from R. L. Stevenson, it gave me an idea to make a stop-motion animation using natural supplies that could be found outside.

So, this is a final result

I would add that it wasn’t the most straightforward task. Since we had no access to the university building and use the studio’s resources for stop-motion, I needed to figure out how to make it at home with tools available. Luckily I had a small tripod with flexible legs that I can adjust to basically to everything.

You can see my tricky camera setup. I used a Stop Motion Studio app for the phone. I decided to get a paid version since it gives more flexibility to working on a project.

But the most challenging part of making this animation was the lighting. In the beginning, I tried to set up a station in the room using two desk lamps. However, the artificial light changes colours of leaves and other supplies drastically. Therefore I decided to use natural light and set the station on the windowsill.

Even though it helped a lot, however, pictures still had to be edited to get rid of unnecessary shadows. So, I transfer them to Photoshop to edit.

The next step, I uploaded all materials to After Effects, composed and add some finishing touches, so the colour will be even for the whole video.

Evidently, it turns out not the easiest and quickest “project for a day”, as I planed. Despite this, I enjoyed working on it. I successfully overcame all small challenges and recalled how to use Photoshop and After Effects. And I really like the final result of the work.

20th January 202020th January 2020

Tradigital tools

Today I want to share the latest episode of the Bancroft Brothers Animation Podcast, where they discuss all-around tradigital animation and all available software these days.

They went through their experiences working on professional software like Toon Boom and TV Paint, Photoshop and Animate CC (flash), additionally mentioned the newest feature in Procreate 5, a well-known app for iPad. They talked about all the advantages and disadvantages of all these digital tools.

Also, they mentioned all new 2D animation features and series that came out this year. And what if it is a fresh start for traditional animation to reborn and be competitive in this digital 3D era.

Please enjoy.

19th January 202019th January 2020

Field Trip

On Wednesday, 8th of January, I enjoyed our field trip to London’s Natural History Museum with Mrs Maryclare.

We had two tasks for that day.

The first one of course- draw everything around you. But not only sketching objects, people or animals themselves, but most important was to depict them into that environment and in perspective to show that they are in the museum. So we must be included all surroundings elements to our sketches.

The second task was to find a story around one of the artefacts and provide a short storyboard of at least not less than five frames. Frankly speaking, I thought this would be the toughest one since I always lack in stories. However, during my short tutorial session with the teacher, I ‘unexpectedly’ uncovered one :).

I was so tired at the end of the day because I stood most of the time during sketching, but I very happy with the results and also these museums in South Kensington are my favourites.

28th December 201919th January 2020

Toon Boom Harmony

During these holidays I’ve finally dug deep into Toon Boom Harmony.

Firstly, I want to mention that this is not my first approach to this software. I tried it back in 2013-2016, I suppose. And I must confess I didn’t get it at that time, video tutorials were quite complicated and always ended up with ‘use Help and Support to know more’, that was a bit disappointing. So, then trial version expired I didn’t purchase a fool version of the program, and they did not have a subscription back then.

Secondly, since I want to work in animation professionally now, I did research a few months ago about what kind of software is used in studios for in 2D production. And I found that TV Paint, Toon Boom and Animate CC (flash) sort of lifers in the industry.

Since we cover TV Paint and Animate CC in college, I’ve decided to study Toon Boom on my own. I discovered that its possible to subscribe to soft. And I chose a Harmony Advanced version that is a mid version of the program.

Well, I want to say that I like it so far. I think its a mix of Animate CC, then you can make motions between K-frames and Cut-out animation and TV Paint for like they called it Paperless 2D.

I use their official website Learn.Toonboom.com for study.

So, there are some results.