Task 4 - Self Development [Reflection]

Brief: -
After learning 4 principles in animation, we were tasked to create an animation that implements those principles. Moreover, we were to identify and justify as to why we chose to use the animation technique of Pose to Pose or Straight Ahead for our animation production process. This task does not have a set context, giving us the freedom to create an animation based on anything we want.
Although the context of the animation can be anything, we were given the choice to create an looped animation that were based on shoes; mainly giving us an opportunity to participate in an animation competition that requires us to create looped animations according to a set theme.

Concept(s): -Thinking about the theme of shoes I had various ideas in mind;

1. Sports; a character with broken/worn out shoes that relays memories of him at his peak at different sports.
- Starts off walking and him hearing people playing basketball at the opposite side of the fence
- Looks down at his worn out shoes and sighs > flashes back to his youth where he played sports                       
- Character runs and has a tennis attire; swings racket to hit the ball. Transitions to Basketball where he jumps up and slams the basketball into the hoop; finally transitioning to football; kicks ball into goal                                     
- Flashback finishes and he smiles as he looks down at his shoe once again; revealing that he has a prosthetic leg; continues to walk down the street (off-screen) replays in loop.

2. Dance; a character hears music down the street and starts dancing to it; music changes and along his attire
- Character starts off with a sad sigh as he walks down the street and pauses; hearing music at the near park; he walks towards it
- As he walks closer, he starts to get in groove; he taps his foot and is surprised; smiles and stares at us
- Music transitions; with each transition of the music; character dances and clothes changes
- As he gets closer to the music, he gets blasted away by the music; flies through the sky and lands at the street of where he started; gets up and sighs

3. Late; a character wakes up realising he's late, rushes to get ready only to be stopped by his indecisiveness as  to which pair of shoes to wear.
- Alarm sounds, causing the character to get up from bed; he reads the clock and in a state of shock realises he's late for school
- He gets out of bed and cuts to him brushing his teeth; transitioning to him wearing his clothes; finally transitioning to him putting his socks on and proceeds to walk out the door to get to his shoe rack
- Looks at shoes (first person perspective) and starts to rush, checking the clock once more, he realises he is over an hour late and faints and thumps onto the floor blacking out. Scene resets to the start; of him in his bed.

After having a total of three concepts thought out, I decided to work on the first concept. However as I started to sketch out the key frames and scenes for the animation, I had a feeling of overwhelmingness; although I have a clear image of the animation in mind, I couldn't figure out nor sketch out each frame for each scene. This resulted me to abandon all of the concepts about shoes and branch off into creating an animation that would reflect on my process of struggling of this task. 

Branching off: -
Starting fresh, I decided to create something more abstract that allows me to illustrate my struggle towards this task as I wasn't able to sketch out or figure out my fully fleshed concepts that I had thought out. The animation technique that I used was Pose to Pose as I was able to work easier by just making minor changes to the previous frame. Animation principles that I used were timing; to try and make sense of the timing of the movement mainly to depict acceleration and deceleration and I also implemented a small section of squash.

Designing: -

Heavily inspired by my character created during induction week, I used that as a representation of my inner self. However for the animation, I decided to just use the head as I believe that is able to illustrate the idea of 'that head is my inner self' strongly. In terms of the choice of colours, I mainly used the indigo - purple range, as I believe that is able to give off the impression of it being a subconscious character.
Separating the animation in to 3 different stages of my struggle, each stage illustrates some change in the character, each being more dramatic than the previous.


Insanity
- Subconscious starting to awake; alerted by something that would eventually be a difficult barrier to overcome
- Eye starts to move frantically, illustrating the concept of insanity

Agony

- Subconscious feels overwhelming struggle, it tries to get rid of it's vision, to be 'blinded'/lose sense of sight so it won't have to deal with the struggle
- Mouth opens and it tries to 'eat' it's eye representing the sense of overwhelming struggle and that it is trying to get rid of it


Crisis

- In last ditch effort for trying to get rid of the sense of struggle, a hard reset occurs, allowing it to start over again
- It gets overwhelmed by the sense of struggle and it gives out; in the state of where it is trying to get rid of the struggle and where the pain and stress is overwhelming, both forces create a hard reset
- Goes black and white to illustrate the overwhelming force of both it trying to get rid of the sense of struggle and the overpowering sense of pain and stress of struggling

As it resets, the loop of these three stages creates a cycle, illustrating the endless conflict between how my subconscious will try to avoid hardships instead of facing it; however if I face any hardships that I can't overcome, the overwhelming sense of struggle surfaces resulting in an eternal cycle of conflict.


Eternal

Through this task, I wasn't able to create something ideal that I had in mind due to lack of direction and physical planning I had. Instead this animation illustrates the struggle I had with the concept of not being able to create something I had so clear in mind, in the end having to abandon it. However, this enabled me to create something that was more personal; allowing myself to develop and create an animation without having being constructed by any requirement in context.