annamarialy2

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*NEW SUBMISSION* This is my submission for the elements project. It isn't fully coloured in yet but at least the animation is all done and partially cleaned up. I was working on the colouring however tv paint was acting funny and it wouldn't let me do nothing but erase colour. So I had to leave it as is. I really want to finish it off completely in the future and add other elements such as the soup splashing on his face and facial expressions. And as a final touch, the shadow of the table.

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FOR DOCUMENTATION PURPOSES ONLY This is the animatic that I was dissapointed with in the 250 word reflection. This is just to see where I have come so far and my progress of this idea.

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*SUBMISSION* Link to all of my life drawing, labelled in folders with dates.There is also a folder with life drawing from Aldous' sessions.

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*NEW SUBMISSION* Animatic for the 2 Minute Film. It took a while to put everything together but I'm glad that I used that time because I tweaked around with the timing a lot and I was able to get it right. I first acted out the interview myself with the help of my friend and classmate who acted the interviewer part and from there I took snaps of the stop motion puppet. I quickly drew the flashback bits that will be animated with pencil and cel animation.

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My signed timesheets. I included two of them because two out of the three third years I helped out signed the same timesheet on their own. The total is around 30 ish hours, a bit more than that.

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250 Word Reflection for 2 Minute Film

What a journey this has been. I made my first pitch while I was still in Greece. It was a very melancholic idea which was influenced by my environments and my feelings. I was feeling very melancholic at the time as I was very isolated in my hometown, the weather was very windy, cloudy and stormy all the time and a few other more personal things were happening at the same time. When the time finally came for me to move in the UK, I realised that what I was trying to make wasn't truly coming from me but my frustration and sadness that I was experiencing at the time. I changed the concept again to something much funnier initially but it transformed into a more serious story. Throughout the Christmas break, I was preparing the story, developing it, scribbling down diagrams, notes, taking inspiration from the projects I was working on at the time and chipping away at it slowly. I even made a script for it, worked it, tweaked it many times until the time came to present it as an animatic. My involvement with film workshops definitely influenced my art direction. Having access to a rich library also meant that my inspiration and research expanded even more. I discovered that I am very drawn to 16mm film and analogue media and photography in general. I learnt to shoot, develop, edit and enlarge analogue film mediums and work in the dark room, which still makes me feel like I'm going to outer space. It was a fantastic experience and the greatest part of the journey was the people that I met and their willingness to help me out through trial and error and learn with me. My animatic was poor. The timing was too quick and the message wasn't getting across to the viewers. I was disappointed. I was advised to take a break from it and rethink the structure. It just wasn't flowing out of me naturally. It felt incredibly forced. The night of the same day, I found the solution. Inspired by the youtube channel Soft White Underbelly, where people whose voice isn't usually heard like social outcasts, criminals, drug addicts are interviewed and they get to share their life story, I decided to follow a similar structure. I was really liking this new direction and it finally felt right. I twisted the roles of the post man and the desert figure. I turned him from an empathetic and kind person to a psychotic and delusional murderer. And the desert figure into the victim of an obsessive murder. I recorded myself performing the dialogue of the psychotic post man as he was interviewed and my friend Elin asked me the questions. with the puppets I made, I took snaps of the post man in different positions and quickly worked to produce an animatic. At the same time, I recorded some piano tracks. I also came into contact with an incredible voice actor who absolutely elevated the film. Everything was flowing naturally and it still is as the film isn't 100% completed. Through my conversations with other artists and people, I learnt a lot about the creative process and I finally found a way to produce animation that didn't feel forced. I finally have found my voice and I'm now very comfortable making films of any duration. This has been an unbelieavable journey not just because of how I changed myself but also the people that I met and supported me through and throughout, were patient with me and took me under their wing in a way so I can too become as free and satisfied artistically as them. Animation for me used to be a foreign language that I was strugling to speak it properly. Now, animation is my native language and will continue to evolve.

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250 Word Reflection for Grad Assist

I found this project incredibly useful. I worked on three projects overall for which I had to do different things so there was definitely a variety. I worked on stop motion sets and puppets, background designs and cleaning up line art and colouring in toon boom harmony. Harmony seemed quite daunting to me at first and it still looks very complicated however I'm glad that I forced myself to use it so I could become more familiar with it, another skill under my belt. I painted backgrounds in Photoshop with the guidance of my third year's layouts, which was a nice exercise. I mainly focused on the stop motion sets which required the most amount of my time and were the most physical ''job''. A drawback to that project would be that sometimes there wasn't a very clear sense of direction and there wasn't enough time to assist with things like cinematography and animating the puppets which I originally had hoped for. Cleaning up line art was very satisfying to do in harmony although the coloring took a lot of time to do and it still isn't completely finished. I also learnt what things to do and what to avoid as a director. Directing may sound easy but in reality is very challenging and I learnt some very valuable lessons. Technical aspects aside, my third years would take some time to respond to my messages but that is understandable as they were very occupied with finishing their films. Overall, even though I didn't have the chance to practice certain things, I'm really glad that this experience brought me closer to my seniors and I got to meet them and spend time with them as prior to this I wouldn't really see them much. I hope in the future I don't loose touch with them and get on to do more cool projects!

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NEW SUBMISSION Compilation of all the exercises + animated sketches to final result. I also included the pull exercise which is important since it is not playable in its own post, at least for me. Keep sound on for the last exercise!

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250 Word Reflection for Internship Project

Although I wasn't the most successful in getting many responses (because if I'm being frank I didn't contact that many people) the one good response I got was enough to make up for all those that didn't respond. I managed to arrange a video call with very a very inspirational artist by the name of Leo Crane. I truly learnt so much in our video call that I haven't even heard of before as I explain in more detail in my presentation. In short, I realised that in reality, these artists and animators are not these untouchable demi gods of art or at the very least, if they act like it they are probably not worth contacting in the first place, but they are approachable and social people who like having a casual talk about their work and things in the industry. Leo specifically, encouraged me to contact him again in the future which I found really nice as I can't imagine how busy he must be. This experience definitely gave me the push to contact more artists in the future, especially as I approach graduating and perhaps establishing some contacts in the field and making more animation friends!

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250 Word Reflection for Advanced Animation Skills

This project started as a very technical exercise of a bit more advanced movements. I was really happy with the first set which was the pull, push, lift, even though my character was quite rather boring looking. The quadruped set took a lot more to perfect and I needed to do a lot of research and take reference videos. At that time, a project came up which required me to be away for the majority of the day so I would slowly work at it each night before I fell asleep. Aside from the technical side of it, it's a nice memoir of that time. I was happy with how I was able to manually animate all the legs seperately and not duplicate the set of legs as I did originally in the animated sketch, to see what the movement looked like and how the two set of legs connect. When it comes to the obstacle course, my first try of it wasn't very succesful but there was some nice animation in the two movements I was able to animate and I had in my opinion too many obstacles. My second and final try, (Lonely Town sign) I decided to go all in, with full colour and sound effects. I really liked the atmosphere and the ambience of it, it really relaxed me while I was working on it. I actually got inspired by a song title of a band called Vulpeck. The song is called Lonely Town and I'm sure they have taken the inspiration from somewhere else but here are the first lyrics of the song which gave me an idea for the setting:

He's the mayor of Lonely Town, population, one

Population, one

Stare in a hole in the ground, staring at the sun (oh, woh)

And I'm starting to feel like he might be real

Like he's something I might become

Running for mayor of Lonely Town, population, one

Maybe one day it will develop into its own thing, but I tackled movement within perspective and I think I did fairly well, it definitely made me not be afraid towards challenging animation and I can see that I have definitely improved in that aspect.

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Pages from my sketchbook, all over the place with times and days.

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An attempt to keep a production diary, where I wrote about updates in my production. I initially kept it because I wanted to keep track of my process so I wouldn't loose track and stop believing in my ideas. In the gap between the days I was busy with doing the animatic, which gave me a good understanding of the timing and composition.

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Final submission for the Obstacle Course exercise. I changed entirely the layout of it and I added the zipline obstacle to it. What I find interesting about this is that I maybe got too much into the background and the atmosphere of this layout. It could be used for a future project. I quite like the atmosphere of it and the sound of Lonely Town.

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Part 2 of my presentation for grad assist. I will be following it up with the 250 word reflection

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Part 1 of my presentation for the internship project.

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And this is the result of the clean up. I believe this took me around 4 or 6 hours.There is also an issue with the camera zoom in and zoom out as I tried fixing it but it didn't work.

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For this sequence I had to do the clean up of the line art. This is before I worked on it.