Final Project Blog

Interpretation

My idea for the script was to have two aliens discovering a cake dropped by an astronaut. I picked interpretation because I really liked the idea and it would allow an opportunity to reuse my character from the beginning of the year.

Principles

I utilized secondary action while Lulz (character 1) was tinkering with the cake by having Lil (character 2) look at some frosting that got on her hand whilst expressing concern over Lulz's actions. I also used overlapping action by having the frosting getting skewed by a tongue. I used a lot of straight ahead animation on the mouths to keep the flow of their words consistent, but I used pose to pose on the characters to help keep proportions correct and alleviate the workload. I figured exaggeration would be good for the reactions described in the script, so I had the object be mundane, but do miraculous things only to be stopped by another mundane object. I also used appeal in developing the characters, Lil is spontaneous and nonchalant as well as energetic and outgoing, so I made her skin a loud green and made her clothing very bright and colorful to help express her youthful energy and minor ignorance. Meanwhile the more toned-down Lulz who is quicker to recognize potential and outright danger as well as an ego I gave a more subtle skin tone and fashion sense that's upscale for his self image, but not something so flamboyant as to make him look adventurous.

Highlights

I feel I greatly improved on body language. Before I just did still images with moving mouths, but 've put more expression emotion in my characters that I am proud of, the best examples are the "I didn't know THAT would happen" and " let me try this" scenes. 

Improvement

I feel that the weakest part of my animation is the audio editing. There is a sudden cut at the "and how about this" line that makes me sad. There are also a few scenes, the "are you sure about that" scene most prevalent, where not much movement happens that leaves a stagnant feeling that I'm not fond of.

Overview

I think this my best work in 2D this year. While it's not perfect, I still like it and think its pretty good. My strategy worked very well considering this is my best 2D narrative and I finished ahead of schedule. Next time I'll do more work at home to prevent stagnant scenes and pay much closer attention to the audio.