Description:
After some consideration, I have decided to try and use the method of cel animation for my animation final outcome as it was a method used in the Golden age of animation before After Effects or Photoshop came into the picture. I decided to do the animation style as it fitted into my new approach, which was to trace the bin from one of my city photos on Acetate and use that same shape for my project and the background as a back plate a shot without any animation,(the making of Prehistoric Park DVD) then all I need do was draw the expressions and lip movements of the characters. I traced the first few cels using a sharpie marker, on the bin and drew in the eyes this first frame would be a simple eye blink so I coloured in the eye lids in different positions on the eyes and use them again in reverse. These were then painted on the reverse side with cool grey 5 and white shaded acrylic paints in two layers so that there weren’t any gaps in the character and so the colour would be more bold. These were then scanned into my computer as strips then isolated in Photoshop so that I could import them into Animate CC for the animation process.
When imported I positioned the cels onto the background and tested the animation and it seemed to work very well. However I discovered that the bin didn’t seem to match up against the background or wouldn’t move in time with it. The answer was to compile the background and cels together in Photoshop then import them into Animate CC for the animation. However there was still an issue and that was resizing the piece into the canvas as it was too big so the scaling did take away a lot of time. Thankfully there was a solution to this and that was to alter the canvas settings to the size of the frame which was achievable in the Modify document option and scale it to contents so I could import frames at will and not scale them down. To place in the keyframes I selected insert blank keyframes as it would allow me to import the new frames for the next movements, unlike insert keyframe which duplicated a frame. With the eye movement cels in place the next frames were the lip movements of saying the line “Uh good morning”.
This was done by studying lip synching movements from a video tutorial:
which was then translated onto the cells. These were then scanned in and everything was going well but it seemed not much progress was made on the animation itself. Thats when I realised the downside of this method and that it was time consuming so I edited a cel in photoshop blanking out the eyes and lips in their respective colours and then used that as a back plate and lip sync with the tools provided in animate.However some instances I painted on the wrong side of the acetate however this wasn't a huge crisis as I could mend it by the image adjustments flip horizontally in Photoshop (see below) By the end of the day I had progressed onto the end of the starting conversation and onto the next, and with hope I would be able to get it completed by the deadline.
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Feelings:
When I started this animation I was feeling excited that I would be using an old method from the golden age of animation and that it was a good idea to use the back plate idea that film makers use in films or tv shows like Prehistoric Park. When painting the cells and expressions on the bin it made me think that something that I painted could be used in an actual animation and these were the first few steps on my journey into animation. When the frames and background didn’t seem to work together I was getting worried about why this was happening and the time it was taking me to finish it. However when I found the solution in using the cell and background as one frame it made me feel relived that I was back on track with my work.
Although over time that I was animating I was feeling that I wasn’t making significant head way in my animation and that by now I should be into the next conversation and realised the downside of this particular method and that was it was time consuming painting and drying the cels in the animation hence why digital methods were later introduced on a blank template as I felt the appearance worked with the colours of the background photo.
Evaluation:
Looking back on the experience it was good that I was trying out a method of animation that I was recently learning how to do and the downsides of using it in terms of time and scaling. However this was the point of using the method and the process of animation making mistakes and changing ideas of how to further proceed. In terms of the issues in the animation process they seemed only minor issues that were quickly resolved and adapted for use in my animation process.
Analysis:
I could make sense of the situation in terms of the time taken to produce animation cells by hand and tracing them on acetate then colouring them, as this old method of animation was time consuming as Annabeth told us when we were introduced to multi plane rostrum animation in After Effects. I realised that this was time consuming but I just wanted to try the method and see how it works, and its viability in my course project. One element that was easy to understand was the issues that I was facing in animating within Adobe Animate such as working in separate layers like photoshops or the difference between keyframes and blank keyframes.
Conclusion:
In conclusion I would think that the animation is off to a good start and that by finishing the first line it was the first bridge crossed in completing the animation but given the time needed for an instagram post which was 60 seconds long which was about a minute long which meant I would need to consider cutting out a few scenes before finalising my animation for submission.
Action Plan:
In future I would think that before deciding on a method for my animation work I would possibly seek a second opinion into the matter to see the ups and downs of using the animation style to help me best make my decision. This would help cut down the time needed to animate my film and start the production of the short itself.
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