Applied Animation - Week 1

For this years applied animation we are to work in groups of 2 - 3 and create a documentary animation based on one of four themes, history, Sustainability, science and Politics. It was recommended that we group with people who had an overlapping interest in these themes. This meant certain people who i had previously talked to about working with i wouldn't work with because we had different interests.lol

The themes i found mostly interesting were Science and history as they were ones where i felt it would be possible to avoid opinion based topics as to avoid offending/insulting people, i also find subjects such as politics incredibly dull as i don't follow politics very strongly.

I chose to work with Daniel Goodman as he is a talented 2d and 3d animator and really knows how to use maya so if we decided to work in 3d he could assist me in what i lack.

While talking to dan he wanted to make an animation that was very narrative driven and focused on an emotional pull which i agree with as when watching documentuarys you have more interest and investment when something feels personal so if we could make a story that makes people think, this could be me or someone i know, we think the animation would have more impact. So we discussed ideas that focused on telling a story which led to Dan mentioning about how his grandfather fought in the D-Day Landings and was always telling stories of the war. We thought these would make a great grounding for a narrative documentary on the second world war. we looked into research for the topic looking at old photographs from the library as well as trying to get in contact with elderly family members.

I thought my Granny had some medals from the war from family members so i asked her if she knew anything or remembered anything from those times, but unfortunately i was mistaken and she actually had stories that had been passed down from the first world war which unfortunately weren't quite what we were looking for.

Dan had a strong idea of how he wanted the animation to look with it being rough and sketchy hand drawn animation as it gives a much more personal touch to the animation when its hand drawn and we have 15 weeks to work on this project so we can put a lot of time into the creation of our animation.

Considering the animation style will be rough and sketchy as well as hand drawn it made me consider the time and detail that goes into the animations of Joanna Quinns and Glen Keanes animation styles and drawings. the extra lines the emotion and character as well as the pencil marks all leave further impact as well as make you feel the meaning being put into the message.

With this in mind i tried visualing how it could look very roughly.

Pencil sketchs with a lot of extra marks but enough definition to tell what is going on in the scene we also considered the possibility of working in charcoal as it would give an even rawer feel to the animation.