Scott Grant
A Simple Lookback At The Final Project
(Note that I talked a lot about my progress through the previous pages, as such it'll be best to look through them again for specific thoughts.)
When creating the project I was intrigued with how it was animation, something I've wanted to learn for years. It was also the first time of me learning a specifically animation software, Adobe Animate.
STARTING IDEAS
- Previously I had written ideas for stories, like an innocent sheriff entering a city of debauchery, monsters living in humanity, and a person fighting manifestations of aspects of their life. I was going to use the monsters idea at first, because it was the most family-friendly idea of them, but I had trouble making the character designs and eventually gave up on it when thinking of how to present it. Instead I used the manifestations idea, modifying it to become more wholesome.
- Character-design-wise I already planned to use shape language since the start, squares, triangles, and circles.
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PROBLEMS THAT AFFECTED THE CREATION PROCESS
- I haven't written characters in a very long time.
- The prospect of it being an "Animated Poster" majorly confused me for a while, trying to understand what that exactly took a while.
- Audio, I dislike hearing my own voice from recordings so I refused to record anything.
- Drawing Hu took a long time, and whenever I did I was really tired during it.
- Speaking of Hu, I was having trouble thinking of names for the characters.
- Animating/Drawing at certain points was annoying. Stuff like Exp putting their head on the sofa.
- Creating the small story in it was tough, as I also haven't really written stories. And I had no clue how to make an ending that'd work.
HOW I WORKED AROUND THE PROBLEMS
- For all of the problems with writing I solved it simply by putting whatever I was thinking of at the time, either through text or a story board, and whatever I made at the end, after rechecking it for safety, I'd make that what I'd do next.
- Audio was solved by using sounds and text. A lot like certain video games, specifically Undertale, they have characters speak through text boxes and having unique sounds to emulate talking.
Names were solved by taking what they represent (Laziness, Experimentation, and The Human) and shortened them (Laz, Exp, and Hu). I originally used them for the script because I didn't want to write their full words every time. But I got used to it and resorted to using them as the name.
- When drawing Hu I figured that one of the problems was drawing the legs and arm. To solve this I didn't animate their legs and turned their arm into a floating ball.
- When doing something like animating Exp putting their head on the sofa, I solved this by the simple technique of "eh, that's good enough."
- And with the ending I used a real life thumbs up and coloured over it in Photoshop because I thought it would've been easy and funny.
ISSUES WITH THE ANIMATION
- Pacing is an issue. I was making it as I went, so certain parts go too fast without having much time to set in. I got slightly better with letting things set in latter on, but when comparing Laz and Exp's segments. Laz has about 240 frames of sceentime, while Exp has around 365 frames for them. This is in an animation that is 805 Frames.
- During the zoom in segments I wanted to having multiple copies of Hu's voice to give the idea of the talking become overwhelming. It would've also made the smash cut into the normal scene better.
- Also a few more scenes may have had a similar unique posing like the zoom-in, prime candidates would've been the part after Laz left, and after Exp's zoom-in. I didn't do them due to time.
- Laz's voice isn't the best.
- Exp in general was annoying to constantly draw, having to make new layers just for them, having their colours constantly change, and even just drawing them became tough. Their zoom-in is horrifically off-model with the small eyes.
- During Laz's zoom-in there's green text giving their name and a short description of them. I put it in because I didn't have their name mentioned, however when I had Hu say "Laz?" I didn't realise that the intro text was redundant. The existence of the text itself isn't a problem, it's that the other characters don't get it, creating an inconsistency in style.
- When Laz disappears Hu doesn't make much of an attempt to look for them, and their shrug goes by too quickly without much set up.
- Not much of an actual issue but I would've liked to have the characters have a few extra mouth positions, just so it wasn't only open and closed.
How To Solve The Problems
- Laz's screen time could've been extended if I used my text method from later at the start. The first part had the text done on 1s, and later was made on 2s. If I had it on 2s then Laz would've had more screen time. Another option could've been having them appear at the end in some way.
- For the zoom-in audio, as I said before, I would've had multiple voices going on. And with Laz's voice I would've had another round of playing with sounds to get more choices.
- The green text with Laz would be solved by removing it.
- Adding the extra positions mentioned before would've made the animation a bit more visual interesting.
- Having Hu look a bit for Laz, then having their shrug, would've been much more interesting than a simple short shrug.
- The mouth problems could've been solved by, well, adding more mouth shapes.
- Exp would've been solved just by getting better at drawing them. And the colours probably could've been solved by making some sort of fail safe, like a small palette or reference image.