[Animation] The Amazing Thin Man

This was a project I did at University, we had to do the pre-production of an animation. We where given a Script called "The Amazing Thin Man" written by Ina Fischlin a student studying at Leeds Metropolitan University. Because we had to do the animation from scratch we had to start with the Proposal and Treatment, working our way up to doing the Storyboards and then finally Animatics, below is the animatics:

A scene from the animation is below, This is what the animation will look like if I decided to animate it fully:

Unlike my other animations, I found doing these animatics easier than doing actual animations because the images aren't moving on screen. Because these are mock-ups to give a better impression of what a scene will look like when animated I think it will really help me if I ever do them before actually animating. The question of whether I will finish the animation for "The Amazing Thin Man" is still out there, now that I have finished the animatics I may come back to this project later and finish it off. I got the music from incompetech.com in the Royalty Free Music section, I think the music fits really well with the animation as it is happy and up beat. I Emailed 2 voice actors to narrate the script; Joshua Tomar and Arin Hanson two widely popular voice actors in Flash animations on the internet. Although neither of them got back to me after 2 weeks so I ended up doing the Narrators voice myself.

Although the animatics where easier to put to video than a actual animation, drawing them all was quite a task,  we where all given 2 weeks to create the full pre-production of "The Amazing Thin Man" which is a reasonable amount of time. The storyboards took a total of 12 hours to complete over 6 days, I got sidetracked easily which is why it took this amount of time, the drawing quality could be improved and to me seemed a little rushed. Instead of re-drawing them for the animatics I scanned the Storyboards and cropped the panels with the drawings in, stretched them to fir in Adobe Premiere CS3 and then used them. Personally I think that worked and was a clever way of getting around re-drawing all of the scenes, although the drawing quality seemed to decrease by doing this. Doing the voice work was also hard to do, I don't own any voice recording equipment and because of this I had to use a voice recording software from my computer, although this also captured all of the background noises as well as my own voice, but using DeNoise on Adobe Premiere CS3 I successfully got rid of most of the background noise.

The main focus of the animatics were to show and practise pre-production techniques; I designed Concept Art, a Storyboard, and did the Proposal and Treatment to show the pre-production. Finally after doing all of this I then began to create the animatics for the animation “The Amazing Thin Man”. By having all of this for show I feel that I have completed the focus well, although couldn’t upload the concept art to the blog due to handing over all of my written and drawn work over to the creator of the script Ina Fischlin.

The main characters design was influenced by a character in the Flash animation, ‘The Greatest Idea Ever!’ by animator Max Gilardi. The character has a square shaped head, wears glasses, black hair and has ears larger than normal persons. I liked the design of this character as he looked smart, which is how I wanted Archibald Crane to look, although I did want Archibald to look different and more like a business man than a scientist.

The intention of the animatics was to practise doing the pre-production of an animation instead of going right into the animation. It was to give us practise doing storyboards, proposals, treatments and then to show us how to do animatics. It was also intended to show us what the animation would look like animated instead of being in the form of storyboards, the animatics allows us to use voiceovers, audio and even SFX and show us where in the animation they’ll be placed instead of guessing when it comes down to actually animating it.

The next time I do animatics I will take time with the drawings so it is easier to follow and looks the highest quality. To do this I will try to either re-draw all of the scenes larger, or draw the storyboards larger so there isn't as much distortion. I will also try to get voice recording equipment the next time I do voice work like on the David Cameron Stop-motion animation, by doing this I will make it more clearer and easier to understand instead of having to put subtitles in so you can understand more clearer.

[Animation] A Day in the Life of Rudy Burton

This is a project I did in College, and is also my first ever completed Flash animation. I am uploading it to this blog as I have used it and compared it several times in these previous animations comparing how I animated before University started. This animation was made from scratch using; Storyboards, Treatments, Research, Proposals, Scripts, Concept Arts and even Character Narratives. Below is the animation:

I really like the animation I created; it is original and has a few good jokes in it to make the animation more of a comedy horror rather than just a horror. I like the character as he is original and easy to recognise, he isn’t hard to draw or animate which made it easy to have him move a lot in the animation. Personally I think the best drawn and animated thing in the animation is the backgrounds, using effects I could give them shadows, give the effect of a draw distance and a more realistic feel to it by making them blurry and moving the objects that are further away more slowly to show that they are further away, and the sky which I created in Photoshop works really well with the genre of the animation. The name of the animation 'A Day in the life of Rudy Burton' is the animations second name, given to it after double thinking the original name, the original name was 'Another Zombie Film' due to it being about Zombies.

I think there are a good amount of strengths in this animation, the background for my animation is a huge strength, and this is because it is really well drawn in so much detail for something that isn’t even important and is blurred out so you can’t see the full detail anyway. This makes the animation seem like it’s in top quality and very professional, also it gives a realistic view of the buildings making the objects further away more blurry because you can’t see them anymore, this effect is called draw distance as it is the effect of making things further away more blurry or disappear, also giving the 2D animation a 3D effect. Although if I had to improve my animation I would improve facial expressions, because my character is usually facing the side it is hard to get facial expressions across and often than not looks bored. I would also improve hair movement, when the character walks he moves his arms and bounces when he walks, in a more professional cartoon the hair might sway a bit more to make that animation seem more realistic.

After creating this animation I have taken alot of things from it, such as how to create backgrounds in photoshop, how to add blur effects and how to do minor movements. Like I stated before, I uploaded this so as to compare my latest animations too, in contracts to an animation I created in early 2011.

[Animation] Loops #1

This small loop took a total of between 5 and 6 hours to complete, I wanted to test my skills at key framing as I haven't used it at all, alot of my animations contain entirely motion tweens and because of this a walk cycle would be hard to accomplish unless I practiced. I usually animate walking by having the character bobbing up and down with his legs hidden off screen, an example of would be the animation I did for college; A Day in the Life of Rudy Burton. It is 8 frames long and the character is based on myself, I wear a checked shirt regularly along with checked vans shoes, I wear glasses and have a metallic bracelet I often wear on my left arm. My hair is curly and styled into a miniature afro, although is exaggerated in this cartoon version of myself.

I used a tutorial to help me with this walk cycle, having Flash open on the left hand of the screen and the web page open on the other side I easily did a basic outline of the character animated. After I added the checks to the clothing frame by frame, after adding colour to the image. I then shaded each key frame to add the effect, I usually use filters for this, but I decided to do proper shadows instead of artificial shadows created by effects on Flash. I think this worked well as it originally make the animation slower if I added effects due to it taking more memory up, so this not only looks better, it works better too because of it.

In the future I will try to key frame alot more, it looks alot better than motion tweening everything. I will also try to add shadows without using filters, I think by doing this it will improve the animation quality and also make it smoother and look alot better. I will practice doing key frames loops in the future with hope that it will improve my overall animation skills. Below is the animation with a background: 

                    

[Animation] Redbull

This is a animation for the Red bull Canimation competition, the competition is held between the 3 October 2011 until midnight on 15 November 2011. The animation must be between 2 minutes of length and feature a redbull can as the main theme. There are three main categories; Stop Motion, CGI, and Drawn/Flash, I have chosen the Drawn/Flash category as I am most familiar with Flash and will be able to submit a decent animation in the time space using it. Below is the animation: 

This animation took a total of 8 hours to complete, it is so far one of my favourite animations I have created. It is the first time I used key frames instead of motion tweens, although there are a few scenes that are still tweened, such as the screen moving the the left and the rabbit hovering away. Originally it was going to end when the rabbit floated away, ending with the same text as the current ending, but I thought the Redbull can didn't make much of an appearance, so I added a little bit extra to the end to show the can at the end. I tried something that I haven't done before in Flash and that is draw without the pencil lines, if you notice in the animation there aren't any pencil lines, did this as I wanted to try a new drawing style which makes a shell shaded style of animation. I think this has worked really well and works well for the backgrounds, in the forest and outside the forest too.

I found this project easy to do as I have a good amount of knowledge in Flash about me, I jotted down very rough notes about what I wanted to do in the animation, and then following the noted did it from that right away after University. I like how simple the animation is and how effective it is because it is so simple, it hasn't got a massive amount of movement in it as the characters mostly move by hoping up and down, because of this I found it easy and quick to animate. I am disappointed that I couldn't a get a voice over for the end, I think the animation would be better if when the writing appears on screen it also said what was written down. By doing this, if the animation receives the opportunity to becomes an advert it'll be alot more clearer what it says. There isn't much sound really, mostly sound effects, no music what so ever. This works as it helps towards to Royalty Free problem I was facing (Which has also been solved after remembering the name of a site which lets you download royalty free audio for free; Freeplaymusic.com). Although because of this, it is a quiet animation, whereas most Redbull adverts are full of energy and over the top, this one is quiet and normal. Another thing that worries me about the animation id the whole story line, people could argue that the story line may offend the creators of Redbull, showing that Redbull is represented as urine after the rabbit drank it and then grew wings, personally I think that it is nonsense and as a cartoon animation it is humerus to see an inanimate object take a wee.

If I had to do the animation again, I would probably add more music or make the animation a little more upbeat and over the top, although I do enjoy the animation as it is. I would also consider tweeking the story as so nobody would be offended if they think that I tried to make it out as Redbull being urine, instead I would have the redbull tip over and pour some on the floor, although this would not have the same humerus effect as it does now and would totally destroy the current joke.

[Animation] Telekinesis

This is a week project I did in University, we had to make an animation which the theme had to be gravity using pixel animation. To do this, at some point in the animation we would have to give the effect of defying gravity either by floating in the air or an inanimate object moving on its own. Below is the animation:

This animation is one of my favourites so far, it is smooth and follows the theme of gravity well. I like that this animation has a story, a beginning, a middle and a end. The beginning of the animation is really well set out, showing a boy bored on the internet who types in "how to get telekinesis powers" in which he gains the power of telekinesis. The middle of the story is the boy using the powers, moving pencils, drinking his drink with out moving and making it go from day to night in an instant. The end of the animation is the boy getting tired and using his powers flies to his bed in which he claps his hands to turn the lights off.

I found this project fairly easy to do, from the experience of having a broken tripod during the last project; Time lapse I took a tripod out from the University as well as a Camera, but because of this I only had a limited amount of time to get the animation done before I had to return them back to the University. Due to this, the ending of the animation seems abit rushed in my opinion. The scene where I fly to my bed was the worst part of the animation in my opinion, I cut off my legs so it doesn't even seem like I am flying and there aren't enough frames to make it look smooth, instead it jumps roughly to each frame. During the scene when it gets dark and I turn the light on, the light in the room isn't enough to show my face or the room, and instead still looks as dark as it being turned off, this made about 10 seconds of animation really bad as you cannot see what is happening. Although during the flying scene I noticed that the setting on the camera where wrong, so I changed the ISO settings, the shutter speed and aperture settings so the picture would look more clearer and less blurry when I jumped in the air. The music used in this is not Royalty Free, the first piece of music is the Original Soundtrack used from the video game 'The Sims', the second piece of music that is used is another Original Soundtrack used from the anime series 'Lucky Star'. I used this music as I think it matches the animation really well; the first song is smooth and flowing, quite a normal song to represent the characters normal life, until the second song kicks in when he gains these telekinesis powers. I chose the second song as it is epic and has power, just like the main character at the time, which is why I think the animation and the music work well with each other.

The theme for the animation was gravity and I feel that my animation covers that greatly. Most scenes in the animation defy gravity; examples would be, pencils moving across the desk freely, a computer mouse moving on its own, flying across my room and spinning on a chair with four legs. I cover the main focus really well in this animation I think, there were other things I added to the animation such as cola being drank without drinking it, doing a transition from day to night, and even closing the curtains without touching them. I wanted to give the animation a storyline that revolved around the theme, instead of meaningless jumping and floating, so I came up with the idea of finding a website that teaches you ‘how to use telekinesis’ and ‘how to defy gravity’. Although there is no voice acting, I think I get the story across really well with the actions on screen.

I was influenced greatly by the Walt Disney animation, ‘Fantasia – Mickey the Sorcerer’s Apprentice’. Walt Disney’s animation is about Mickey Mouse who finds great power and uses it to help him do chores, I did something similar but chose to represent it differently; In my case the main character found great power on the internet and use it to help himself in my everyday life, grabbing pencils, moving a computer mouse and drinking his drink. Although in the case of Fantasia it all goes horribly wrong in the end, whereas in my animation I represented it helping the character all the way to the end. One thing that I wasn’t influenced on was the choice of Audio I used, being it smooth and calm in the first half and then grand and epic in the second half. I think this is because I wanted to get the point across that the first half is his everyday life, smooth and calm, whereas later with his power it becomes epic and dangerous.

The intention of the animation was to show how I can use pixel animation to create something that gives the illusion of defying gravity. The whole animation was based around the main character finding out that he can use telekinesis to move objects and defy gravity; I think that I got my intentions across to the audience. The main character was intended to be an everyday teenager, browsing the internet and typing in nonsense into it, and think that the main character pulls this off well.

The movie only uses music and sound effects; there is no dialogue or voiceover so Semiology is a key thing to understand the plot. The character goes on the internet and goes on a website called “How to get telekinesis powers”, and because of this indexical sign we know that he is going to learn how to use telekinesis. This animation follows its own conventions; a place where you can use psychic powers even though it is set in the present. Even though it is set in present times the main character is still able to use powers that do not exist in today’s time. I can manipulate the film form to represent what the character can and cannot do in the present time.

“There are no absolute principles of form that all artists must follow. Artworks are products of culture. Thus many of the principles of artistic form are matters of convention.” (Bordwell & Thompson: (2007), p.65)

The next time I do pixel animation I will make sure that all the settings are correct on the camera, by doing this I will get the best quality photo I can which will result in a better quality animation. I will also use a camera man instead of using a remote to take the photo, by using the remote I become less focused on the role of the actor and more focused on the camera.

[Animation] Bread

This is a week project I did in University, we had to make an animation which the theme had to be light using time lapse animation. To do this we had to get an object or a view of something and take a photo of it every second, minute, 5 minutes or even hour, the time difference all depends on how smooth you want the animation. Below is the animation:

Well my animation didn't turn out the way I had hoped, I took photo's every hour for 4 days, although 2 of those 4 days I was at university for 3 hours and I went to sleep for 9 hours so I couldn't take photos during those spaces of time. Because of this the animation is very short and jumps about a little bit, although you can see the bread getting staler and staler. I think at some points there are some nice transitions from night into day and at some points the bread's movement is really smooth.

I found this project fairly difficult as I didn't discipline myself to stick with my hour photo taking schedule, If I had done I think this animation would be alot more smoother and alot more longer. The bread also didn't do what I expected it to, originally I wanted to show the bread turn moldy over time, but instead it went stale and curled up. To me this is an improvement as it gives the effect of movement over time and also shrinks. I also put cheese on the bread with hope that it would change colour, but alas it stayed the same as when I placed it on the bread. Another thing that proved difficult was keeping the camera steady, the tripod I had used was broken and wouldn't keep up right, due to this the camera slowly started to tilt forward after leaving it for a while, changing the location of the plate on the photo. The music in the animation was added for a joke effect, making it sound epic even though it is very short, the music used is Beethoven's 5th Symphony as it is recognizable which makes it funny due to how out of place it is.

The animation’s focus is to show light within the time lapse; I don’t think the animation has that much to do with light although it defiantly shows the transition from night to day and day to night. I made it do that to get the light focus in the animation as well as added another focus into it, to show something getting older. Although as you can see it didn’t turn out the way I expected which disappointed me. However, the day to night transition works well in my opinion so in the end I still completed main practical focus. Also because of the light you can see a nice shadow under the plate appear and disappear; I think this is a nice effect as it shows the strength of the light at the time because of how visible the shadow is.

I was influenced by a short YouTube video, although the YouTube video had nothing to do with light it showed Food decomposing, the video was called “Fruit and Vegetables Decomposing: Time-lapse.” I wanted to do something similar but not with fruit and vegetables, so I chose to use bread, butter and cheese. Of course, the outcome was exceptionally different; this was due to the length of time that was spent doing it. That and the bread never went mouldy, only stale. Also by the look of the video it seems he did his in a room with only unnatural light, I chose to do mine by the window so to get a nice transition with natural light from day to night.

The intention of the animation was the show the transition of day to night and vice versa while going over decomposing bread. Although the bread didn’t go mouldy I was still able to get a nice video of the light going across the food. The music added was intended to be funny, it isn’t expected in the video not does it fit and because of this it adds humour to it.

The next time I do a time lapse animation I will make sure to discipline myself properly so as to not forget when to take the photo or just leave a frame out. This will massively improve the overall quality and length of the animation. I will also shorten the time difference in the animation from 1 hour to 5 minutes or so, this in my opinion will make the animation alot smoother. I will also take out a Tripod from the University as the tripod I used was broken, this will keep the camera steady and make it look alot better not not jumpy.

[Animation] Pacman

This is a week project I did in University, We had to make an animation which the theme had to be metamorphosis using sand or salt animation. Using the sand/salt we created characters and backgrounds in which we then animated in a stop motion style of animation. It works by having sand or salt on a piece of glass (or a few pieces of glass if you want a layered animation) and then putting a back light in so the sand or salt blocks the light creating dark figures. Below is the animation:

The project I decided to make was about the retro arcade game 'Pac-Man' as it is simple to make and works with sand/salt easily due to lack of movement. Pac-Man is a game known worldwide so people will easily recognize the animation, along with all the sound effects added, such as the death sound and movement sounds.

I found this project to be quite difficult as it was the first time I had ever done animation using sand or salt, (It was also the first I had ever heard of such an animation technique) The part that had proven most difficult was the fact that instead of sand I used entirely salt making the characters and backgrounds look alot lighter than it would in sand, if I had used sand then the animation would have looked alot more crisp. That aside I think the animation came out good considering that I only used salt.

The animation is to show metamorphosis, to show this I used Pac-man as he is a character that morphs into something else when he moves; from a ball to a ball with a slice taken out of him. The character isn’t complicated to create in sand at all so I thought it would be the perfect choice to make using him. Although Pac-man is easy to create and move using sand, the animation doesn’t really use the technique of metamorphosis; he doesn’t really transform into another creature, although you could argue that Pac-man moving and turning into a ball with a slice taken out of him is metamorphosis.

I was influenced by the video game Pac-man, the game revolves around a small yellow creature called pac-man going around a maze collecting pac-balls where ghosts roam around trying to kill pac-man, one pac-man has been touched he dies by slowly imploding into himself. You could also say I was influenced by “The owl who married a goose” as it was the first ever sand animation I had ever seen. Because of this I learnt how the animation would look one completed.

The intention of the animation was to show and practise my skills at sand animation by creating a metamorphosis themed sand animation. It was also intended to show video games in a new style, such as sand, sand animation isn’t really popular in the animation industry so I thought it would be original to show a video game in that style as it may very well be the first or one of the first video game related sand animation.

The animation doesn’t follow the conventions of the actual game, instead of going around a maze the character continues in a line until dying at the end. I represented Pac-man like this because it is different from what the game is usually like having sprites to create the characters; using sand in my opinion is a unique outlook of Pac-man. Although the character is made of sand you are still able to recognise him as Pac-man, the sound effects used in the animation are Iconic symbols of the game Pac-man, and because of this we are able to easily read the ball of sand as a symbolic version of the character Pac-man.

“A Symbolic symbol is a sign whose connection with its object is a matter of convention, agreement or rule.” (Fiske, J: (1989), p. 51)

As the shape of the character is like Pac-man, along with the sound effects from the game, we can agree that the character must represent Pac-man.

The next time I do sand/salt animation I will consider using both sand and salt, this will help create lighter and darker tones in the animation. I will also take each frame myself and not reuse frames; this will make the animation look alot less looped and more flowing. If I was to re-due the animation, I would re-think the main story; Pac-man isn’t the best way to represent metamorphosis due to it not being really metamorphosis related, unless he was to transform into another creature.

[Animation] David Cameron

This is a week project I did in University, we had to make an animation which the theme had to be politics using stop motion animation. The stop motion animation could have been made using glass layered on top of each other in which I could have used if I wanted to add backgrounds. Below is the animation:

Using newspaper cut outs for heads and drawings for bodies, limbs and backgrounds I created an animation based on an article I read about David Cameron wanting citizens of Europe to help slash the number of illegal immigrants entering the country, I do not know much about politics so I chose the first article I found that was politics related in "The Guardian" newspaper.

I found this project alot easier than the previous animation technique; Sand animation as when you move the cut out images to a new place to create a movement effect it doesn't change what it looks like, whereas moving sand and salt proved difficult to move as it'd change shape when moving. I think the sound quality is quite bad in this animation as it requires the volume to be turned up to the max to hear it, and even then it is still a little bit hard to hear. Although the sound quality is low on volume there is no background noise which I think really helps the sound as it is clear. One thing that lets the animation itself down is the brightness, Instead of using natural light I used a back light which made the back of the images bright yellow and made the faces of the characters unclear. Although using After Effects I lowered the Saturation and Lightness to make it look a little bit better.

The animation is to show a ‘Political event’ or ‘Taking a position on a recent news event’, so I chose the first recent article at the time, headlined; ‘David Cameron launches immigration crackdown’. The article was about David Cameron making it harder for illegal immigrants to enter the country; in the article it states “David Cameron, who wants people to report suspected illegal immigrants to the UK Border Agency.” By using this line I created a short animation based on him asking citizens of the United Kingdom to help stop Illegal immigrants by reporting people suspected to be illegal immigrants to the UK Border Agency. I think I show a political event very well in the animation, it is easy to grasp the story of the animation as well as the news event.

The story itself is original so cannot be influenced; I tried to re-create a South Park style animation with the arms flailing and not much leg movement when walking. I was influenced mainly by the side cartoon in South Park; Terrance and Phillip. Terrance and Phillip is basically a cartoon show within a cartoon, about two people who talk and makes crude jokes to each other. I was influenced by their lack of common sense, but ability to get a story across, even if they appear for almost less than a minute on screen (particularly in the 1–3 season of South Park) Their animation style is different from the South Park universe, all of their joints move and I although in my animation the arms are all one joint I tried to get that across in my animation. Although the humour that I used in the animation was not taken from Terrance and Phillip, the entire script was improvised so any jokes that where made where from the top of my head.

The intention of the animation was to joke at Cameron’s wish to have citizens of the United Kingdom report suspected illegal immigrants who enter the country, while he does nothing about it. Obviously this is making fun of his statement and focused on that alone instead of other things he may or may not have done to help stop illegal immigrants. ‘David Cameron urges people to report suspected illegal immigrants instead of doing it himself’ was the intended joke.

I chose to represent politics to fit my ideology also, my animation was based around a news article of the time, ‘David Cameron Launches Immigration Crackdown’. In my animation I made it seem like Cameron wants everyone in the UK to stop Immigrants from entering the country, because in my understanding of David Cameron he doesn’t know what he is doing most of the time. I represented him as someone who mumbles his words, forgets things and wants other people to do the dirty work for him. Whereas in contrast, the Media represent him as a great, handsome person. To represent him as this to the public the conservative party spend hundreds of pounds on Photoshop to make him look handsome. This animation follows its own conventions; you wouldn’t see David Cameron jumping out of nowhere to beat up an illegal immigrant. Using the film form I subverted the traditional form of the news story to allow David Cameron to do such things. I wanted to have him do this as I thought it would add humour to the animation.

The next time I do cutout animation I will not use a back light and instead try to get light facing the images to make them alot more clearer. I will also make my voice louder as so people can hear the voice alot better, or get a new voice actor.

[Animation] Autobiography

This is a week project I did in University, we had to make an animation in which the theme was an autobiographical animation which we had to make using in medium we wanted. I had a few ideas for this project, originally I was going to do me at uni having flash backs to my early life, but I thought that'd be too much of a big project for our week deadline, so I ended up doing something simple with not much animation in it, drawings of me from age 0 to 18. Below is the animation:

The animation didn't turn out as good as I had planned it to be, I wish there was more movement in it, after all it is an animation project. I think that as an autobiographical animation it gets the point across well showing myself from ages 0 to where I am now, showing what I am like and what I look like in cartoon. The music fits really well, although it isn't royalty free as it is an Original Soundtrack from the anime 'The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya'. The sound effects used in it are from the classic 'Super Mario World' for the SNES console, I used these because when it came to getting alternative sound effects my internet had died and the only sound effects I had on my computer where from games, so I made due with what I had and used them. Personally I think it worked quite well with the animation as it shows I have a love for games.

I found this project quite easy to do as I have a good knowledge of Flash animation about me, although I feel I could have made it alot better if I had alot more time at hand. There are some unfinished scenes in the animation which I am disappointed at for not finishing, such as the scene when I am 6 years old, I was suppose to be in a family photo, but I ended up sitting in a room with another boy (Yet to be named) sat next to me. I used that scene to show my love for video games instead of the family portrait. The ending scene when there is a train going by was a quick way to end the animation, the train animation was taken from an earlier Flash animation I made, originally I wanted to create a whole new train scene, but ended up using the scene from my older Flash animation; A Day in the Life of Rudy Burton.

The animation is an introduction to myself, I show this by having myself from the youngest age to my current age. By doing this I used memories of my childhood such as my first haircut, the first day of school and other things, I also used things I used to enjoy doing too, such as playing games. I don’t remember what I looked like as a child or the clothes I used to wear so I had to guess on some ages. Although from the age of 11 I could easily remember what I used to wear due to it being my school uniform for most of the ages upwards until I went to college. I tried to make my hair a key factor in the animation, getting longer as the years went by, I rarely cut my hair so because of this it gets longer the older I get. At age 16 I gain my glasses, this shows I have changed due to my eye sight becoming bad. Another thing to notice after each year is that my ear stretcher gets larger, It took me around 3 or 4 years to get it to its final stage so I wanted it to get bigger bit by bit for a few years until it stops growing at age 16. I also changed the room I am in for most of the animation bit by bit, showing how it changed over time; first with the shelf, then with the TV, after than the VHS in which then later turns into a DVD player.

I wasn’t really influenced by many existing videos or animations, although I was inspired by the animation “Life of Homer Simpson” which is a parody of the original “Noah takes a photo of himself everyday for 6 years”. I was inspired more by the Simpsons parody than the original because In the Simpsons version it shows Homers life from when he was a small child all the way to where he is now, it also doesn’t go from age 1 to 39, it jumps stages showing a little clip of him at that age. Whereas in the original it shows himself everyday from the year 2000 all the way up to 2006. I wouldn’t be able to make an animation like that unless I had alot of time and alot of photos of my childhood, the Simpsons version of that video seemed more feasible to do so I tried it out on paper, I liked how it looked and started the animation process.

The intention of the animation was to show myself from a young age and to compare how I was back then to how I am now. I wanted to get the point across that I enjoyed games as a child and enjoyed having fun rather than studying and doing exams. I wanted to show that my hair (even as a child) was still pretty long, and even back then I didn’t want to have it cut. The sound effects used are from a video game, this is to show that I enjoy video games and try to reference them or use their sounds, images or videos to make parodies or fan videos. Although in this case I used the sound effects for the lettering, in which isn’t really referencing them as unless you played the game you wouldn’t know the sound was from a game.

My Autobiographical animation is represented differently to other autobiographical animations/films such as the YouTube video “Noah takes a photo of himself everyday for 6 years.” In the video he represents himself using photos he’s taken everyday for 6 years. There is no voice over but there is background music which is a piano piece, the music isn’t upbeat or happy but more serious. I used happy music to represent my happy life.

“Representation means using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people.” (Hall, S: (1997), p.15)

This quote relates to Noah’s video as in my opinion, he uses the music to represent his outlook on life as serious and not something to joke about. In the video he doesn’t smile or look sad, he has a serious look on his face. I chose to represent life in a happy way. The music in the animation is happy and upbeat and the colours are bright and cheerful. I chose to do my animation like this to represent my optimistic outlook on life. In comparison, Noah’s video uses serious music and represents his life as a serious one. However, there are some similarities that both the videos have, they both have different backgrounds as they get older and the camera shows the face and a little of the body from above. Although it makes him look more serious as we get a closer look into his face, as he pulls a serious, sad look into the camera.

The next time I use Flash as an animation technique I will be sure I have enough time for the project I have in mind, by doing this I can make the animation quality overall better. I will also try to use royalty free music so I can use my animations in the future without the threat of a lawsuit hanging over my head.

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Due to royalty free issues I changed the Soundtrack into something else using the website Freeplaymusic.com.  This was because I was asked if I wouldn't mind putting this animation onto the University website, I agreed to it but alas had to change the audio into copyright free music. I think it still is as good as it was although the previous music was fit to the animation, although in its own way also fits. I tried to chose the same genre of music being it happy and upbeat and I think works really well with the animation. Below is the second animation: