Nearly Finished!

Ok, so, throughout the week, I tucked my head down and worked really hard to my animation done.

I found pictures of a mother panda holding a baby panda in its mouth on the internet, imported it into animation-ish and traced it. However, the hind leg of the mother was hidden behind the bush so I couldn't copy it so I had to draw it myself, but, I think it was alright....

Initially, I was going to have the baby panda rolling and messing around in the foreground but after finding 4 pictures on the internet:

I drew it and was hoping to loop the scene, but because the actions were so spaced apart, the panda looked like it was jumping around in different spots instead of rolling in a smooth action. In the end, I decided to take this scene out of the animation and moved onto preparing my background for night time.

Background Changed

Ok, so remember how I talked about my friends criticizing that my background looked weird? Well, I've got to admit, it kind of does......I've realised that I can't actually COPY and trace the real picture because it will just look unreal. Like, the brush and shade of colours on Animation-ish can't compare to the colours in real life so I can't just depend on matching the colours and hope that it looks good, I actually have to think and decided which colours to use to make it look better.

Also, last time, I just coloured in the ground without filling in lighter areas and shadows etc. so it just looks like a big blob of paint that was carelessly thrown on.  So, to fix this, I rubbed out the entire ground and chose two colours that I was going to use for the ground. I used two light shades of green, both lighter than the bamboo colour and the other more yellowish than green. In order to make it look 'real', I decided to colour in the lighter areas with little brush strokes and the darker areas with the darker colour. I had to debate whether or not I was going to colour in the entire gound or just do little 'strokes',  I tried the 'strokes' out and in the end, I decided to use it.

Finished Background, Restarting Panda

After about a lesson this week, couple with the lessons last week, I've finished my background!

Halfway through the week, my background looked like this:

Initially, I wanted to fill the whole screen with bamboos but I quickly realised that it will take forever and will probably look unreal since I won't get that good '3D' effect. I was quite iffy with how I was going to draw the leave at the top right hand side of the screen:

 

Then, I decided to use the green I used for the bamboos to draw the base and then use a green that's lighter than the bush to give it 'highlights'. I didn't stare at the original picture and tried to copy it, instead, I drew it how I thought it would look good and I think the end result is pretty good :)

In the last lesson of the week, I forgot my USB and couldn't extend on my animation so I just started the last scene of my animation. I decided to change alter the last scene of my animation, because I thought it would be a good idea for the rain to still fall when the message appears instead of disappearing and then fading to the message. There isn't going to be any music played, except for the sound of rain falling.

Working on the Background

So, I really want my animation to be detailed and I'm going to start drawing the background. I found a picture from the internet of a bamboo forest that I started tracing. After about the first lesson also, I had only done a little bit of bamboos and the background was full of bamboos. As a result, I copy and pasted some of them, flipped it, and put it somewhere else so that it didn't look like a duplicate.

That worked for some of the bamboos but since I want my background to be detailed, I had to draw individually the ones that had unique shapes which interlaced each other.

At first when I started, I covered the floor with a layer of green until it reached the bottom of the bamboos. My friends started critisizing it and saying that it was weird so I'm going to change it....

But I have no idea how to draw it because the smallest brush in Animation-ish is still really big so it's really hard, coupled with the fact that the shades of green don't match...so, my OCD side is going crazy

Starting My Animation - Week 1

So now that I've got my storyboard ready, I can start my animation!! The first part of it would be to get a general drawing of my baby panda so I can manipulate him the whole time. I started tracing the the part with the baby panda on the mother's belly today and below is what I am up to.

Finally Finished....sort of....

Ok, so I've finished my storyboard! But, I don't know if I should continue to expand further on my story because really, it can be led as an open ending or I could continue on. I want every frame of my animation to be detailed and carefully-constructed but I'm scared I'll run out of time so I've made my storyboard to the point of the mother getting captured and I will continue it if I have time when I finish the first part. Basically, the first part can be a stand-alone but I could also make a 'part 2' to tell the story of the panda after her mother is gone...

Here are the remaining pages of my storyboard storyboard (it's a bit sad but...hehe):

Storyboard!

So far, I have been working on my storyboard and expanding on it. It's actually quite fun to draw because you can just plug in your headphones and start planning someone else's life......

Anyways, I think my story is heading into tragedy and I'm debating whether or not to kill off my main character, the baby panda. I don't want the story to have a stereotypical happy end (because it is there to help stop the suffering of animals) but I also don't want it to be overly tragic. 

So, without further ado, I have my second page finished (took me quite a while to draw).