Last lesson we began getting properly into the animation project, starting the day with some Flash work. I've used flash before, but i'd forgotten how to differentiate between when it is correct to use a shape tween and when I need a classic motion tween, etc. so this session was really useful catchup / memory jog, along with learning how to create a movie clip that works on it's own repetitive time-loop while still working on the main timescheme, pretty darned useful.
After we had concluded this, I got a chance to mess around with a Bamboo tablet before break, which turned out to be a disaster on my behalf. Apparently my tablet at home is far better calibrated and far less hyper-sensitive, meaning after god-knows how many years of me becoming accustomed to it's pen-to-paper-like attributes I am hilariously bad at using this one. I am considering finding the item number on my tablet, downloading the driver software to the school computer I use and bringing in my own tablet to work with, for fear I completely mess up the project with my un-calibrated mess of art I am capable of at best with those tablets.
Either way, after break we were introduced to the author of the story we are basing our animations on, Ian Burton. After some persistent questioning from Skye and some insightful responses, he moved on to discussing our ideas with us. I was a tad nervous about putting mine across, fearing perhaps that i'd interpreted it too far and taken away from the initial meaning of the short, but after a brief explanation of our idea and a whistle-stop tour of my character designs, he seemed to be pretty happy with the idea and took a shining to the Fangiyap design. I was actually really happy about this, possibly because i've worked with other people on my own ideas before in other contexts, and it's always a difficult and uncomfortable process, so I was proud to have done his story justice. (especially seeing as I enjoy the original story a lot myself.)
We managed to fit in some planning time, in which we decided upon our final section we are going to animate, the running scene. We also decided there would be a switch into hand-drawn pictures recorded shakily with a handheld camera and edited using Premiere Elements, to give the 'daydream' effect of Kow-one's fears chasing her as she flees the herd.
After lunch we had a professional animator, Sam Morrison, come in to talk to us. I was expecting tips on animation, some step-by-step walkthroughs or something of the like, but I was pleasantly surprised to find he actually had come to talk to us about different ways of angling things and using different cuts to create effect and set mood. It was a really useful talk, the movie clips were good and it helped me to think about something I had never really taken into consideration before. At the end we did a brief storyboarding task to end the day, using a specific genre and adapting a scene to fit it.
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