I'm beginning this blog a week in advance, so opinions may change over time. I'll be finishing this sooner than the deadline, and it's crunch time now. No giving up, no room for failure, no space for any wasted time-- all that I can do is believe in myself and pull through. Anyway, the only person who can make this happen is me.
When I began thinking for this project after being introduced to the prompt, story samples include Delle (the doe) spelunking in some ruins to find an amulet, and setting off a ton of traps in the process, to a story of self discovery, with little to no musical influence, describing River's (the kangaroo) experiences with dysphoria and finding themself through the influences of their friends. These initial ideas came from my personal experiences and my Inktober work from last October, but I believed those ideas were too loose or complex to coherently animate. You see, in the beginning, I was basing the story on the songs that I hadn't used for my independent study. In each of these songs, I try thinking of a musically driven story with these three. I've got solid ideas for Buttercup and Two Time by Jack Stauber, Still Feel by half·alive, Find My Way by Khai Dreams, along with a ton of others, some more action-influenced than others. I want to work on one of these through the summer up until February of next year for my SVA portfolio, but we'll see how far I can shoot with these ideas. Eventually, a cohesive story sprouted when I was listening to the ghostly tune of "Hypnotize" from Psychadelik Pedestrian's "Best Bytes" album; A story of revival. I really wanted to experiment with visual effects again like I did with my flour sack animation, but this time with my OCs. I thought this would be a great setup to have a hazardous situation with heavy consequences if something were to go wrong in order that my characters could embody the tension of the situation and bring it to life. I'm unsure how effective this really was, though. With the paranormal pursuit solidified, I began research on the logistics of the Ouija board, gathered references and started the storyboard. In the end, Savannah helped me with voicing Delle and the animation process was kicked into gear.
The principles of animation were more or less enveloped as a natural occurrence instead of a planned one. Arcs were used throughout this project, mostly in dialogue and transition animations along with the magic bits, to show natural movements and action, although they could've been better set up from the get-go. Staging was implemented by the establishment of Blitz's placement in the chair, but not much else helps the setup. The staging aspect in this project is briefly present but vanishes, since there's no transitionary animation between core actions. Anticipation is very apparent after River drops and the gem falls since we know that's what's going to keep Blitz alive, and once it's back in place, we're left wondering if it's working or not until, finally, he wakes up with a steady heartbeat. Straight-Ahead and Pose-to-Pose were involved when making up the magical portions of this and the general actions. The use of straight-ahead can be seen clearly in the animation of the candle in the title screen and in the "Widja Board" magic transition to show the items from Beyond. Pose-to-Pose is used when River is dragging the gem along the table. Timing is emphasized in exploring the sheer weight of the gem, as explained when River is dragging it and when it falls off of the table. Most of the weight comes from the ghostly ice encasing it, which is why it so easily flew in the air after Delle shattered the ice with her Reflect magic. Exaggeration was used in the expressions of my characters along with a few of their movements.
I think the scenes where River and Delle brought Blitz's soul-gem into the mansion from beyond worked well animation-wise, but the storytelling could definitely be clearer. I enjoyed playing around with perspective, although the background ended up as an inadvertent focus instead of the characters. These elements were inspired by the various anime-like VFX scenes I've watched over the years, and I wanted to try something new. Looking back on the setup of the story as a whole, I realize that the introduction, instead of just having them drop Blitz on the bed, could've been much better if it opened up with stills showing what happened to Blitz, then showed River and Delle running up to the mansion pushing him in the operating table and going through the doors. The hectic nature of the situation didn't shine through at all, whether it be by the expressions or dialogue or voice acting, but what could be done? We're all still amateurs, but this is just something that'll be revisited in college, maybe when my comic comes to this plot beat.
For one, time management could have been much better on my part. I spent an entire week bouncing over what the mansion and surroundings would've looked like that I was too intimidated to start animating until halfway through the allotted time. I do like that I was pushed by the talent show to get it done to a viable stage, but I will rest assured I could've done better, more, pushed myself to fail forward, to give myself an actual challenge instead of floundering for the first quarter of this project. The deadline wasn't impending, so why bother, right? I wish there were more in-progress checks from the beginning instead of waiting for the second half to begin. I don't mean to whine here, and I know this is my problem entirely, but from the critique, I noticed that nobody finished to a point they were comfortable with. Adding more time isn't the answer here, but a more guided experience might be. Allowing free reign over project timing to teenagers with the penalty of neglect being a weird look of concern here and there doesn't seem effective. To improve my personal skills of time management, I plan on making independent animations, looping or story-based, with my own set deadlines. There will be no moving them, with the only guarantee being a revision slot if it's going in my portfolio. Experimenting more with animation, whether it be short motions or dynamic storytelling, can only help me in the future. Right now, I'm working on a looping animation based on my thaumatrope. It's been a day, and I'm already near done with the lines on all frames. I'm getting there with this whole "managing myself" thing, but it's a process and I have to treat myself along it to keep up the work.
To be frank, what held me back earlier in the year was laziness. I didn't wanna draw every frame-- what, are you crazy? I took all the shortcuts I could find; hiding objects behind scenery, cutting crucial motion just to pan to another area, keeping the subject in one area throughout... This all eventually led to my failure in the independent study (I got a whole 60) because I was too focused on mentally piecing things together instead of actually executing those actions. Had I done so, I would've likely failed, but I would've failed forward, learned something new. This is, undoubtedly, the first time I actually truly "animated" a character of mine for more than 2 seconds. In my 11 second club, it was just semi slick pegging and phonemes with that one short action-transition River performed. No actual, flowing animation. This time around, it's different. I was dedicated. I could bring this to fruition. I was the only one who can actually do this for myself. Was it effective? We'll see.
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