EXPOTEESSssssss...sss

After a somewhat tough couple of month in terms of work, I've received good news. I, along with 100 of other students studying in my year, have been chosen to get our final year projects showcased by the Expotees program at Teesside University. This is good because I will have a chance to show off my finished work to possible employers, as well as other folks in the animation industry that I wish to impress. Subsequently I've had to put together an image to be published in their annual handbook, which will go along side a photograph of me with a brief text description of what I am doing (this blog but very very very abridged). This is what I put together:

I'll admit it was a breath of fresh air to be able to draw something that wasn't a stick figure for once, in what feels like a long time.

Full FYP Stick Animatic

When I started this method of planning I thought it would be one of the easiest parts.  This however was not the case. I found early on that this was the hardest for this particular project. Just with getting the timing right, figuring out what could work where and overall fitting everything with the song so that the animation did it all justice.

What follows is the result of 4 weeks of frustrated days, consisting of very basic drawings. This is the entire animation as it will look with stick men and it works surprisingly well based on the reactions I've received from people I've shown it to. The process involved much trial and error, moving scenes around, scraping set pieces, re-drawing the stick men again and again to get the right emotion and timing. Whilst the finished rough still leaves room for improvement in later stages, I'm very proud of it and think it is a good sign for things to come.

 

While I've fallen a little behind schedule I think that the bulk of the work is behind me. Next I've just got to draw the final drawings and insert them in the places of the rough, which is far from as time consuming as this version of the animatic turned out to be. In the end its better to do the wrong drawing with a crude stick man then it is to have to redo the final art again because something was off. I still believe the choice to plan the animation this way will benefit me more and more in the future and ultimately save me a huge amount of time...Plus if all else fails I can just submit this as my final year project ;).