Daily Reflection #24

This weekend was nothing but animation hell.  I am exhausted.  For this last reflection before the Final Reflection, I just want to post my speech for my project defense.  I am ridiculously nervous.  Ugh.

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Hi.  My name is Jennifer Choi.  I’m a senior, obviously.  And this is my senior project, A Tale of One Story.

My goal for this project was to take an original short story of mine, storyboard it, and animate a short 1 minute scene from this storyboard.  Now, before I even start, I’d like to show you my film.

(I can't actually post the video because it exceeds bandwidth...)

Doesn’t seem like much, does it?  I mean, it’s only 60 seconds… No color, no sounds; it’s just lines moving.  Well, in all actuality, that 60 seconds was absolute hell to produce.

What most of us don’t realize when we watch say, The Lion King, Atlantis, or even Tom and Jerry, is the sheer amount of creativity, drawing, editing, and time that goes into its production.  I didn’t fully realize how difficult my project was going to be either.

My dream with this project was to produce a full color, 3 minute, Disney quality film, with possible sound effects.  Thankfully, Mrs. Morgan and I compromised a bit on my goals or I would pretty much be dead right now.

So, I’m sure some of us are wondering why on Earth I’d want to animate something?  Well, throughout my life, I’ve always had two passions, writing and drawing.  About two years ago, I finally realized that animation was an amazing combination of the two.  It bridges the gap between the literary and visual.  And, it also draws influence from all my other addictions.

But, if you’re still a little perplexed.  I found a great quote that summarizes exactly how I feel about animation.  I’m not going to read it but, basically I love animation because it creates an unreality where anything can happen.  And by having complete control over the visual aspect of the movie, animators really have a great medium through which they can really force you to think or feel or believe.

The actual process itself is easy enough.  The story I chose is actually something I began writing in Mr. MayBeaver’s Creative Writing class. And actually, something Mr. MayBeaver always talked about was “if we were to film this story, what would the audience see?”  This was the exact question I was trying to answer while translating my short story Twins into a storyboard.  To help with that step, I created a screenplay.  I would actually go through my story line by line and write out what the audience would see.  Like, "Mark walks across the chapel."

With this screenplay, I began the process of storyboarding.  This is where I faced my first obstacle.  Perspective.  I mean, have you ever really thought about how many different ways you could show something as simple as someone walking across the chapel?  You could show it from the side walking across, the front walking towards you, the back, above, below, basically at any angle you could imagine.   So, after much struggling and trashing of the same scene in multiple angles, I went back to my screenplay and wrote more specific scene directions.  Like, "Mark walks across the chapel, side view, see nose to elbow."  This limited the infinite number  of possibilities down to a more manageable couple that I could choose from.  This limitation helped smooth out the transitional process between screenplay and storyboard.

The second obstacle merged about twenty or so panel into the process.  I realized that the audience couldn't see the thought or emotions that my character was having.  My story is wrtten from a third person limited point of view.  Which means we're following my character MArk and garnering access to his thoughts and feelings through his actions.  I had also been doing a third person perspective for my storyboard to emulate this, but I realized that animating the film from Mark's eyes would actually create a clearer connection between the audience and what Mark was actually seeing and experiencing.  So considering this, I was able to finish my initial storyboard.  However, the editing process did not end there; I constantly edited both my initial storyboard draft and the final storyboard you see here.

Now, from this storyboard, I animated one scene.  And I faced the most challenging and time-consuming obstacle #3.  Bringing these pictures to life.  When you break it down, to have a 60 seconds of animation, I needed a total of 720 total frames.  720 of anything is a lot.

What makes animating so difficult, is the pacing.  Pacing is what makes movement realistic.  For example.  This is a screenshot of me animating the door that Mark opens at the beginning of the film.  Using a technique called onion-skinning, you can actually see all the frames it takes to animate a door.  In order to create the illusion of the door opening I had to draw each frame of the sequence while also keeping in mind how many to draw.  By inserting more frames, you slow down the motion, while by spacing out the distance the door moves with less frames, the door moves quicker.  As you can see, I have more frames at the beginning of the door sequence in order to convey weight.  There are less frames as the door opens wider because the door moves quicker.  This process of animating frame by frame is called keyframe animation.

Tweening is another type of animation where one manipulates one keyframe subtly to create the illusion of movement.  I used tweening for all the moments Mark is walking.  And if you're wondering about the side to side motion during the movie, that's done intentionally because when you walk, what you see does in fact move side to side.  I am still in the process of making this movement smoother and more realistic.

There were many changes that occurred going from storyboard to animation, some things I added was the lighting.  If you noticed, when Mark walks into the chapel, the lighting goes from black to grey, because his eyes are adjusting from daylight to the more dim chapel.  I decided to make the chapel grey because it is a funeral, and it was a compromised way to convey the heavy atmosphere without color.  Another thing I added were the moments in which Mark closed his eyes to compose himself.  This was to help with the pacing and show more of how Mark is feeling as he attends his brother's funeral.

The biggest change, however, was the length.  If you look at my storyboard, you can see that I only got through the very first line.  But that line took me over 30 hours of animating.  My eyes are still sore from it all.

But despite the fact that I still can't put in my contacts due to retinal agony, and despite the fact that there were times where I sat for lengths of eight hours in front of my computer, I loved every minute of animating and just the project as a whole.  And while some moments were pretty painful, I don't think I am masochistic for enjoying it, because I was doing something I love to do.

Which is what makes the Senior Project so great.  You get the opportunity to do what you love and you definitely grow a lot throughout the process.  I’ve grown artistically and creatively, but I've also learned a lot about myself.  I’ve tested my endurance and really learned how to prioritize.  The hardest part about this project was letting go of unrealistic expectations when the time called for it.  And even if I did only get through a line of my storyboard, I’m still proud of what I accomplished.  Because this is definitely not the end of my project.  I’m going to continue to push myself throughout the summer and hopefully by the end have a 3 minute, fully colored, Disney quality film with possible sound effects.

Thank you for listening.  Thank you, Mrs. Morgan and Mr. Newman, for this opportunity.  And thank you, Ms. Fetters, for you encouragement; I couldn't have gotten through this without your support.