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[leannezhang]

Week 14– Monday 22th August

Job list: -Editing and compositing the finished animation footage

So far I have seven versions of my animation saved, each one recording the progress of the animation over time.

At this stage I have finished my personal animation and the thing I need to do now is to collate all the shots. My personal habit is to export and put each shot into premiere for editing after I've done it. So so far my animation is pretty much done. All I have to do now is to check and adjust each shot.

In the process of checking I noticed that the background music wasn't connecting to the video very well because of the frequent camera movements. So I need to reconnect the background because of that. I also checked that the sound effects and voice-overs matched the picture. After adjusting the music to match the animation, I repeated the video, mainly to hear if the sound effects were too loud or too low. If this is the case, the audio needs to be adjusted to the right size so that it doesn't feel jarring when watching the animation. When working with sound, it is my habit to put the sound effects, voiceover and background music on separate tracks so that they can be adjusted later in the animation.

After this, it is important to check that the transitions in the video make sense. My video had a lot of mixes in it, so the animated transitions looked a bit strange, so I adjusted the footage as a whole and removed some unnecessary mixes.

[leannezhang]

After completing the animation of the shadow's violent argument, I began to consider how to convey Kathy's fearful emotions. Firstly, I transformed the scene, with the colours of the scene indicating Kathy's mood at the moment. Afterwards, the head was twisted according to the direction of the shadow's argument.

Additional shots. In this shot I felt that the end was a bit sloppy and did not convey Kathy's fear very well. I thought long and hard about how to convey the fear better, and finally I thought of moving Kathy's parents' shadow to the middle of the frame and zooming in to highlight Kathy in the middle, but Kathy can't just stand there, she needs to do something to express her fear. I can think of a way of holding the photo over her face and shaking.

我希望可以通过这个镜头表达出Kathy想要靠近父母却又害怕的退缩的感觉。所以我给Kathy设计的动作是向前走几步，立马向后退。看见父亲走了之后向前追他，但是想到了伤心的母亲又马上跑向了母亲。同时我也想表达出在Kathy父亲走后母亲向前走了两步，但是看见Kathy父亲走了之后却没继续追而选择伤心的停下。在Kathy拥抱母亲后，环境就从灰色变成现实家里的环境了，这样做的目的也是为了凸显出母亲对Kathy的重要性。

I recreated a set of transitions animated in this shot. Because the fight between the parents' shadows is more intense in this shot, I also switched to a more fitting transitions animation. Again, these transitions are composed of simple irregular shapes. For the parental shadow fight shots I tried to make them as quick as possible so that they didn't look boring to the shot.

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I added some transitional motion animations consisting of some simple irregular shapes in the shadow movement section.

[leannezhang]

The main purpose of this shot was to convey the heated argument between the parents as they transformed into monsters, and I also wanted to create a shot that was more viscerally depressing. So I worked on my reference animation again, and after going over the shots of the shadows arguing, I realised that it wasn't just a case of the two shadows playing the same action over and over again, but that I needed some transitions to convey the intensity of their argument.

[leannezhang]

Week 13– Monday 15th August

Job list: -Animation production -Animation changes

The main purpose of this shot is to express the happiness of the family getting together for a group photo. So in this shot you need to show the emotion of happiness. So my idea was to have two children doing the yeah thing at the moment when the shot was about to be taken. The character design for this shot was done in procreate, first I layered the five characters in procreate and then imported them into adobe animate to create the animation. When creating the movement of the characters, the hands changed as the two children had to say yeah, so it was important to keep the movement consistent and to prepare for the switch between the different arms. I also designed a zoom shot, which means that the image is bokeh when it is not in focus. Then the shutter sounded and the frame was fixed. In this shot, the main inspiration was the camera's photographic process. The process of taking a family photo is done by bokeh and focusing. After the group photo was taken, the two sets of photos (of Kathy and her parents) were placed together.

Animation changes. Based on the feedback it became clear to me that the footage still needs to be optimised. It was not possible to use long repetitive shots, which would have bored the audience. The monster was not well portrayed, it looked a bit like a bird and it was not possible to distinguish between the sexes, so I changed the graphics. To differentiate between men and women, I made a distinction between the hair of the characters. After that, I also made some optimizations to the monsters' movements. The main thing is that the monster's bickering doesn't loop as it did before.

[leannezhang]

Week 12– Monday 8th August

Job list: -Animation Animation revisions

This week's work involved animating and creating characters/scenes, as well as making animation changes.

The main focus of this shot is the grandfather putting a birthday hat on Kathy. The main focus was to create a sense of joy and happiness, so the main focus in this shot was on having fun. When the grandfather is putting on Kathy's birthday hat, he has to bend down and lower his head. It is also important that the direction of the hat is kept constant while the grandfather's hand is holding it. After the hat is put on Kathy, there is a rising motion.

Lily looks out of the window. In this shot the main scene shows Lily looking down from the window of her grandparents' house. So the colours and style used in this scene are the same as the scene in front of the grandparents' house. The materials that need to be in the scene are mountains, trees and clouds. The areas to look out for in this shot are the shading relationship between the mountains and clouds and the shading relationship between the view and the window. In drawing the figure, I layered the hands and feet of the figure, as layering is essential as there is a walking shot. I also drew the expressions and blink keyframes in Procreate to make it easier to animate.

Animation. Lily looks out of the window. In this shot, the main idea is to convey the image of Lily looking out of the window at Kathy who is deep in thought. I wanted this shot to show that Lily was having a hard time seeing this scene. Therefore, the action of Lily's character is set up in such a way that Lily is looking at Kathy and her grandparents downstairs, sighing and thinking deeply. Kathy and her grandparents are walking towards the house with their heads down. The important thing to note in this shot is that Kathy and her grandparents are not walking on the same level, which means that there is a range. However, as the three of them are holding hands, there can be no overlap, so it took time to check that each frame was properly connected.

Making the animation part.

Mum holding Kathy sad. In this shot I mainly drew the character and scene in Procreate and separated the layers. This was then imported into Adobe animate for the animation. In this shot there are two main parts, the first part is the mother hugging Kathy and talking to her, and it is the mother's sad expression that needs to be shown (medium shot). In this shot I mainly animated the mother's sad expression and the winking motion. The second shot needed to show Kathy's sad expression (close up shot). So to animate this shot, I finished the first shot, duplicated the layer and enlarged it into a second shot, and then continued to animate Kathy's sad expression and movement in this shot. In this shot I set Kathy's movement to look up at her sadly after hearing her mother speak.

In the process of creating this shot I noticed that the second shot after zooming in was blurry. This was something I hadn't noticed before (I hadn't chosen the right clarity when creating the painting template to cause the problem), so I remedied the situation. I repainted the blurred parts in procreate and layered them, and once this was done, imported each layer separately into adobe animate for image replacement.

Then, I started to create a shot of the parents fighting and transforming into a monster. I drew the keyframes for the monster transformation in procreate, then imported them into adobe animate and organised them into a single component so that they could be played back in K-frames. In this shot I set the two monsters to fight with each other, so I looped the mouths of the two monsters in the process. Kathy is scared and helpless in the face of her parents' argument. So I designed Kathy to look up at her parents and then look down at the photo in her hands.

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Shot of the mother pointing at the father arguing. The problem with this shot is that the mother is pointing her finger in the wrong direction at the father and the direction of the arm needs to be changed. I have also adjusted the rise and fall of the arm to match the break in the voiceover. This would have enriched the scene and rationalised the shot.

In this week I have been organising the main part of the sound effects needed for animation. Music in animation is a great way to render emotions, so music is very important for animation. As my animation is mainly lyrical, I have tentatively set the background music for the animation to a lyrical melody. After that, I divided the soundtrack of the animation into three main sections. These three sections express the emotions of desolation, sadness and hope. After confirming the main melodies, I then linked the three different soundtracks in Premiere according to the plot. Once the soundtrack was complete, I began to look at preparing the different sound effects. For one of the scenes in the animation where the parents are arguing, I set the theme of the sound effect to be the sound of a monster screaming, in order to convey the frightening nature of the parents arguing on the child. In addition, I also looked for sound effects such as walking, boiling water, closing a door, and a camera. After selecting the sound effects, they were put into PR for audio editing and linking, the main tools I used were audio fade and audio gain.

[leannezhang]

Week 11– Monday 1th August

Job list: -Animation modifications -Sound production

This week's job list focuses on animation and sound production.

Revision shots. A shot of the dad talking on his phone. Based on the feedback, I understood that there were a lot of weaknesses in this shot. Although it looks like a talking shot, I need to think about the emotion that is being conveyed through the animation. The problem with this shot was that the movement was too one-dimensional and the expressions didn't make sense. I needed to think about what the father's real state of playing with his phone and impatience would be like, and I worked out a general idea of the character's movements through a realistic interpretation. Firstly, I changed the way the father holds the phone, changing the way he holds the phone in one hand to a two-handed motion, and removing the lowering of the phone (so that the angry lowering of the phone could be shown in the next shot). The reason for this was to show the angry drop of the phone in the next shot, and to make the head lift when speaking, in order to respond to the other person and to make the movement look more natural. The same applies to the overall body preparations when making the head lift.

Mum talking/turning around. The problem in this shot is that the overall character movement is too mechanical and the angle of the turn. Based on the layout of the scene, the character is turning in the direction that they should be turning to the rear. To address these issues, I needed to think about what the correct movement of the character should be during the speech, as well as the mannerisms. Because the whole shot is of a ball being held to decorate the Christmas tree, I added a movement of holding and releasing the ball. In doing this, it was necessary to switch between different angles of the head. In order to keep the movement sensible, I chose to blink while the character was lowering his head to change the angle.

In addition, the turn in the other dubbed shot needed to be adjusted. As the turn should be towards the back, I added another character turn figure. Animating the three character turn charts to over-animate them made the animation more coherent, and I needed to pay attention to the preparatory movements that were articulated in each movement, something I spent a lot of time tweaking.

In addition, I added an environment image. I drew the environment image in procreate and exported the jpg image into adobe animate, set the image as a component and modulated it to film clip mode and then adjusted the filter to increase the blur (x&y: 40). The aim was to defocus the scene behind it to bring out the focus.

[leannezhang]

Week 10– Monday 25th July

Job list: -Scene drawing -Animation

When I was drawing this shot I was thinking about drawing the grandparents' backs as well. I did try, but the results didn't look very good. In the end I decided to make the scene so that only Kathy, Lily and Kathy's mum were visible. As I was animating I was thinking about whether mum should stand or walk a few steps. Because the later shots show Kathy running towards her mother while she is standing still. In the end I decided to have the mum walk a few steps, which would enrich the image and in my opinion create a sense of running in both directions with the shots behind her.

To create the action of the mother walking I mainly divided the screen into three elements, the first element being the overall picture. The second component is the scene with the three characters. The third component is the body component of the mother. I created the Walk cycle in the third element and moved the mother's position in the second element. This makes it possible to create the walking motion well.

In this shot Kathy is very happy to be holding her mother, which is what I had set out to do in the animatic at the beginning. The reason for this is that I wanted to convey the feeling that Kathy is very happy to see her mother. In my opinion, children's happiness is very simple, in their world they are happy to see their mum and in their minds they will never think that one day they will be separated from their family. This shot was mainly drawn in Adobe animate, and the character's movements show a happy look. I set the character's movements to a happy twist of the head and closed eyes to show a sense of happiness and contentment.

[leannezhang]

Week 9– Monday 18th July

Job list: -Scene drawing -Animation

This week I have been working on the animation of the finished scene/character file.

In this shot I used the environment design of the grandparents' kitchen layout as a reference image. I had to think about the angle of the environment design during the drawing process, which was something that bothered me for a long time, but in the end I chose this angle for the drawing.

The animation of this shot is relatively complex. Not only is there a walk in this shot but there are also four characters turning their heads at the same time.

I made five keyframes for the walk and looped them in a walk cycle

Then, in the shot where Kathy's mother calls Kathy and the family turns back together, the four people need to be turned around at the same time. This shot needed to be done with a lot of attention to continuity of movement and body rotation. I had to adjust this shot a number of times, as the four people had to turn their heads at the wrong time, and not all at the same time when they heard the sound.

[leannezhang]

Week 8– Monday 11th July

Job list: -Scene drawing -Animation

This week I have been working on animating the finished scenes/character files, finding sound effects and creating sound effects.

The shot of Kathy and Lily going to the living room was a walk using the environment design from last term and the back of the character design. I built the scene in three layers, the first being the overall layers, the second being the layers of the characters and the scene, and the third being the distribution of the layers of the characters. I generally like to use the second layer for the movement of the character and the third layer for the walk.

[leannezhang]

Week 7 – Monday 4th July

Job list: -Scene drawing -Animation

In this week's work I have been working mainly on animating the finished scene/character files. Also, working on some new footage drawing.

Lily getting Kathy up. In this shot I needed to use the rotating cut in effect, so I needed to draw the scene more fully when I drew it so that I could zoom in on the head shot later.

Regarding the animation of the shots, the main thing that was needed was to create a quick fanning effect. So I mainly increased the speed of Lily's arm as she fanned the card. I didn't put the hand on the same layer as the card when making this shot, because the card also needs to follow the arm.

In the subsequent shot, Kathy is woken up by Lily and to convey Kathy's anger, I chose to use sweat shaped lines to convey Kathy's speechlessness. I used the alpha tool for the sweating motion, first setting it to 0% and then adjusting it to 100% before setting the animation interval.

Lily handing the card to Kathy In this shot I drew the environment based on the colour scheme of Kathy's room and the layout in the animatic. I layered the character movements needed for the animation in procreate to make it easier to create the animation, and the words and drawings on the card in Lily's hand were more cartoonish because Lily is not very young, so the drawings were more abstract. It is very touching to see how hard she has worked to prepare a gift for Kathy!

The main thing to consider in animating this shot was the link between Lily looking down, looking up and handing the card. When designing Lily's movement I had the idea that Lily would be shocked to see Kathy wake up, but then I thought I could just hand the card to Kathy, so I created a movement for Lily to pick up the card. The expressions on her face range from shock to happiness. As you can see from the picture, I switched between layers many times each time, which is something I always think about when animating. This is something that I always think about when animating, because each time you switch layers you need to make a logical connection between two different movements, and consistency of movement is a very important aspect of animation. For example, when you lift your head, it's not just your head that lifts up, your body also undulates with it.

In this shot, the angles were adjusted and drawn from the environment design of Kathy's room. There is a head-down movement in the animation, so it was created in the same way as in the previous shot, with attention to the connection of the character's movements and the preparatory movements.

[leannezhang]

Week 6 – Monday 27th June

Job list:

-Animation

-Environmental drawing

In this week's work I have been working mainly on animating the finished scene/character files.

Kathy parting with her mother. This shot shows the mother dropping Kathy off at her grandparents' house and then closing the car window to leave. The main issue I had to think about during this shot was the position of the character after turning, so I drew some simple diagrams before proceeding.

For the animation of this shot, I set the characters' movements to show the grandparents comforting Kathy and bowing their heads and sighing. The mother rolls up the car window and prepares to leave. The main thing in this shot is to set a mask layer on the car window. The purpose of the mask layer is to show the image you want to show in a defined area.

Kathy's mother leaves and Kathy is sad. The main focus of this shot is to show Kathy's sadness at seeing her mother leave. I layered the shot in procreate and then imported it into Adobe animate for animation. The action set up for this shot was simple, mainly to highlight Kathy's sadness, so a zoom in shot was created with Kathy's head down.

Close-up shot of the pot In the drawing of this shot I was thinking mainly about the colour scheme. The induction hob and the pan are dark grey and light grey respectively. One thing to note is the need to differentiate between the colours of the lid and the pot. In this shot I set the animation to show the pot boiling, the grandmother opening the lid with her hand and the pot giving off heat. So in this shot the main thing is to make the shot using repetition. The lid is flipped horizontally and moved repeatedly to create the impression of boiling. The same goes for the boiling soup. I animated this shot in two ways, using Procteate for the first time to create the shot frame by frame. However, I had the problem that reaching into the frame was not smooth in the frame-by-frame process. So I gave up on the frame-by-frame opportunity and created it in Adobe animate instead.

Grandparents cooking a meal When drawing this shot I needed to think about the colour palette, and the layout of the space. As the main colour palette in my grandparents' home was set to pink, I designed the walls to be pink anyway. And the overall kitchen utensils were also set to a red tone. The cake was based on Kathy's birthday cake from last year's photo.

This shot is a zoom out shot, which is a link to a shot of the lid being removed to bring the scene into the medium shot, thus showing the layout of the kitchen. This shot was created frame by frame using procreate to show the grandfather placing the dishes on the table and the grandmother removing the lid.

[leannezhang]

Week 5 – Monday 20th June

Job list:

-Animation

-Environmental drawing

In this week's work I have been working mainly on animating the finished scene/character files. Also, working on some new footage drawing.

Shot drawing. Kathy's grandparents' house outdoors. The main animation in this shot was to sequence the individual layers and sort out the back and forth relationship. The part of the moving clouds foreshadows the time going on all the time, along with the clip of the car entering the frame. The grandparents need to make a greeting gesture as Kathy gets out of the car. The character designs for the shots were also created in Procreate.

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Outdoor scene design for Kathy's grandparents' house. What is in this shot is something that was not produced to last term, so what is there is only reference to the animatic shots. In this shot I needed to show a different style of environment to Kathy's parents' home. The setting is rustic, homely and with an open view. The theme of the house is coloured in pink to convey the homely feeling of being in this home. I found some reference images of country houses as my main drawing style.

I thought the countryside needed to have hills, trees, open views, and great weather. So based on these reference images I drew the scene design out. As the shot was set in the evening, I painted the sky a dark blue colour. I used procreate to draw the scene and in procreate I layered each part of the scene, which also facilitated the animation later.

[leannezhang]

Week 4 – Monday 13th June

Job list:

- Animation creation

This week I have been working mainly on the animation part of the project. My current plan is to finish all the animation shots first and then make changes to the animation.

Animation. Outside Kathy's parents' house. This shot was mainly a drawing of the environment in front of Kathy's parents' house and a picture of the vehicle. I found a lot of references to vehicles in order to draw pictures of their sides.

After referring to pictures of the vehicle from various angles, I drew the car in conjunction with the angles in animatic.

After completing the drawing of the vehicles, I started to draw the different angles of the outdoor environment and the character design based on the environment design that had been determined. The important thing to note in this process is that the design needs to be scaled according to the previously defined environment design. This shot was animated using zoom in to get a close-up of Kathy and the mother's expressions in the car.

[leannezhang]

Week 3 – Monday 6th June

Job list:

- Animation creation

- Animation modifications

In this week's work, the main focus was on revising the finished animation shots. And to create new animation shots.

Modified shot.

Kathy looking at the photo. This shot was an animated test done last term. in this revision, the main thing was to add a bokeh to the background. The purpose was to highlight Kathy with the photo on top of the table.

Shot of Kathy running towards her mother. Based on the feedback, the problem in this shot was that the mum's arms were too long and the resulting body proportions were out of proportion. This was something I hadn't noticed before and it made me realise that I needed to be more careful. So in this revision I resized the mum's arms to normal size and at the same time adjusted the movement in the shot.