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This is my edit of the character voice of the group film.

It was hard for me to know what people are exactly after when they have no sound effects on their sequences. We were supposed to send our play blasts with sound affects on them to Juan two weeks ago. And I was the only one who did mine. And now hours before the deadline most of them still have absolutely no sound in their sequences. That put pressure on me especially that I was asked to record my voice and do the edit two days before the deadline. I shared this with the group and they were happy with it. I can see how that can improve the sound editing of the film and make it more coherent.

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This is the film edit done by Alex. 

I believe there is so much to be improved in it. I send my feedback. But the problem is that some of the group members still do not have a final version of their animation or render even though it is hours now before the deadline!! I find that very frustrating and stressful. So much has to be improved, especially with the intro and some transitions (between my sequence and Isabelle's and between Thomas and Stefania) and that cannot happen if we cannot get a second edit version soon!!

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This is the map for the film Intro except that it has to be animated with text on top.

The last meeting we had as a group was supposed to be to take decisions regarding the credit, the intro and the transition edit of the whole film. We were already late with taking decisions and for the meeting that only people who showed up were me, Stefania, Isabelle and Thomas. None of the rest notified us with their inability to attend the meeting. Which was very frustrating. We managed to take the decision between the four of us. Thomas was a bit behind because rigging took him longer that he expected and Stefania is way behind everybody else so it was all on me and Isabelle to take on the work without even having a choice. I came up with the map idea. I thought it was a great way to connect the sequence together and make sure the audience know that that character is the spirit of animation. And we also decided on the credit. Isabelle had to work on that and I was left with the intro. I still wanted to engage the rest of the group with the intro so after Thomas has updated them on Discord, I asked each of them to send me their drawing or their stations. So I can put together the map for the intro. Everybody sent their drawings on time so I managed to do it early enough.

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This is my rendered film put together with sound.

Very happy with it. But I might still do some little tweaks before I submit it.

Doing this project despite the long sleepless and stressed nights was the most fun I had in years!!! I got soo into the character, the narrative and visual development of it that I started to dream about it the whole month before the submission. This is the first time in this course that I do something that actually represents me. And on top of all of that working in a collaborative group was very beneficial for me not just in terms of the creative process and inspiration and feedback but also in terms of my mental health. Having constant support from the group on Discord made this whole project very special and enjoyable. In the past month there has been constant share of updates and feedback that made it encouraging to keep pushing forwards. Also having calls while working with Stefania and Isabelle was very useful because we manged to not just share art and feedback but also discuss different possibilities of improving something in the individual films. 

I am very satisfied with how my final version of the film turned out to be exactly like my planning (all the design/composition/colour pages). I think that I even pushed harder than I thought I could and pushed this more than I even planned. 

My favourite part of this film is definitely the last scene! there is nothing in it that I could have done better or differently. But with the rest of the scenes I think that there are more noise in some rendered scenes that I wanted to be. Which is a little frustrating.

Even though splitting the scenes was a great idea to apply the feedback better and keep pushing but it made it much messier for me, especially with all the experimentations I did and with the many files in the submission folder. I also have used Maya, Premier and After Effects for each scene and in many different versions. I feel very lost and confused about my files and I am scared that I confused or missed something. I created too many versions for each scene and way too many updates that it is overwhelming to deal with and organise in the submission folder. 

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And this is the visual development of my final scene. I am extremely happy with it. I love it ! The colours are very pleasing to see. 

I did some colour correction to it to make it warmer at the beginning and then it gets colder as it goes. It worked much better with the colour flow and the narrative. especially that the character that comes out at the end is blue. I also added many effects to give it some more depth and to make the ball has a nice glow and look magical. I also played with some effects to make the ball at the end look a bit fluffy. It contradicted with the beginning of the film and made the narrative clearer and the scene more magical. It emphasized especially at the end of it that the character is being born somewhere very magical and sacred like in the clouds.

Though there were some digital lines in the background so Jon suggested I add some noise to the background to decrease them. Which I think worked very well.

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I did do quite a lot of colour correction with this one to make it less blue and more purple. Which definitely works better in the colour change of the entire film.

Also one of the feedback I received from Helen about the visual development is that the fish look blank. They need some sort of texture. SO I took it again to After Effects and I tried playing around with noise and textures. But I felt that textures on the fish can take away the attention from the main flowers. So I decided to take on the feedback but think of a different way to apply it. So I tried a glow in affect to give the fish a little bit of dimension and make them look more exciting but at the same time not take away the attention from the flowers. And I feel that it has worked very well.

I also had fun playing around with the blur effect. I got different elements on different layers (Cryptomat) in After Effects and the I started to apply the affect differently according the the camera movement. So I make everything around the flower blurry at the beginning but as the close fish starts to come across the camera focus go on the fish and the flower in the background goes blurry. But then as the fish passes the camera focus goes back to the flower and that is when the camera moves closer and closer to it. Playing with that was amazing!

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With the visual development of this one, I also worked on using a blur effect to make the concentration on the centre of the screen. But once the camera gets closer to the sucking flower even the plants that were in focus they get blurry and the only thing left in focus is the sucking flower. And I emphasized on that with a little out glow effect that appears gradually as the camera is getting closer to the sucking flower. I really like it, especially the way the colours work to visually make the connection between the scene before it and after it!!

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In terms of scene 3 it took me quite a while to keep changing colours and effects until I managed to get the right colour flow throughout. In my head I planned it to go from orange to pin as it goes but I could achieve that completely in Maya. The colours in Maya did not look as livelihood as I wanted them to be. And that is when I am grateful for After Effects!! The development is so obvious with scene 3 and I am extremely happy about that. I also managed to use different blurring effects on top of cryptomat layers to get different elements of the scene blur at different times according to the camera more. It helped to give depth to the scene and helped to emphasize on the shell more!

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This is the final version of scene 2.

I am happy with the textures but I am not sure if the first scene looks like it is in the scene set as this scene. So I tried using the lumetri effect to keep changing colour until I got it to the closest it can be from scene 1. So I am happy about the development of it. 

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This is the final edit of scene 1 after I did the visual development in After effects. 

Very happy with the look and the TV noise. It took quite a play in the setting to get it to look that way and move throughout the scene. 

The question to ask is are these screens too blank for the film? 

I have tried different statics before. I thought maybe I could add some styled tabs on top or some sketches I did for this film. But I did not think that would work very well with the narrative. As the screens are supposed to reflect on the empty uninspired heads of the characters. So I think blank with some static would be best to illustrate a not working imagination. 

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This is one of the amazing advertisements that I will be looking into analysing for my dissertation. I am thinking of gathering many and choosing 3 out of them to analyse. 

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Just manged to write the first draft of my research proposal based on the notes I shared earlier. The notes were very helpful that it did not take me long to write.

I also worked on making this visual chart in photoshop to represent my timeline. 

I just still need to read it again and come up with a final draft then proof read it a final time!!

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After so much research I came to decide on so many aspects of my dissertation. These are my rough notes prepared for my individual meeting with Carla. There I have the most useful resources written down out of many I read. It has information about the chapters that I am going for. So what the essay will include.

The red writings are my notes based on my discussion with Carla. It was very useful! I manged to tweak the chapters content and make it more relevant to the question and coherent. She also suggested a very good reading to me: Animation: Genre and Authorship. 

I also managed to confirm with her that it is going to be an extended essay and that its question will be How can storytelling be used effectively in advertising. While the title will be Storytelling in Advertising. 

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My notes from the presentations we had with Anna and Carla. Very useful to know on an early stage so I can direct my research towards the right direction.

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After reading some more, I found some of the resources much more useful than others so I started taking rough notes while reading through. Which will be very helpful for me when I write the background and the research method sections in my research proposal.

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After researching and watching many advertisements, I realised it is time I dig deeper. I wanted to read a lot about advertising before I choose what exactly I want to talk about in that area. There is so much that I am interested in but at the same time I should be aware of choosing something that would help me personally in my future career or studies. 

And the perfect solution for that is a lot of reading which can make me be more sure of what I want to do. After a whole day of research I finally made my list!!

I managed to read just a quarter of them so far. But that was enough to give me  a very clear idea of what I want to do!

After the read I was very sure that my essay should talk about storytelling in the animation advertising industry. The more I read about the history of advertising the more I found it very fascinating in its rapid change and its constant need to be up to date and follow the trends. And what even makes it more fascinating is adding the animation industry to it. A recent industry that also stays up to date and its updates are very connected with technology as much as advertising in the digital age. 

After taking that decision I had to choose what type of animation and what type of advertisements. And I found the most helpful personally for me would be CG animation as it is my specialty and video advertisements as there is a lot to talk about in terms of direction and storytelling, especially that I want to specialise in directing.

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This is the final updated version on my character animation. After I submitted it to render I received feedback from Helen and Jon. So I went back to it and updated it as I wanted to keep pushing until last min. 

I worked on moving its tilting its head up a little when it moves its eyes up. I worked on adding an extra blink in between to make the performance more natural. And I also made the ears move at different times.

much happier with it now.