Animation Project: Part 2 of 2

Connie and Kyle gathering the shots for our animation, using cutouts using frames drawn by myself.

Gathering sound effects using my macbook pro while Connie and Kyle were working on the animation shots.

Screenshot of our final product, muscle ostrich and 2 female admirers (Scene 1).

Screenshot of gym scene, arms and weights drawn and cut out adding comedic effect.

Shot of Lenard nursing his injuries before resorting to a synthetic boost.

Screenshot of Lenard ingesting the steroids. Beak and pills cut out almost creating a 3D effect, Close-up camera view.

The first stage of Lenard's growth. He begins to increase in muscle mass, but appears to have taken too much help.

Lenard's explosion as a result of using too many steroids.

Ending scene, with Lenard tucked in the hospital bed with the female company he wanted from the beginning, so all was not lost.

The difficult process of creating a timeline of sound to sync with the video with no live visual reference, adding a fade effect to the cheering sound effect used at the start of our animation.

The finalised arrangement of sounds, trimmed and manipulated in accordance to the video.

Footstep sound effects noticeably manipulated to fit the rhythms of Lenard's walk in the first scene.

Pitch shift effect used within logic to manipulate the giggle sound effect used for the female ostriches within the animation.

Evaluation Summary:

Myself and my other group members made a  number of changes since our interim crit. In our interim crit we were advised by Chris and Tom to add more struggle to our story, as our initial idea was too straightforward with no resistance which subsequently made the story boring. My group and I still decided to stick with our original story but to add some struggle to our story before our character gets what he wanted in the end. We decided to choose an Ostrich that wanted to get big and muscular to attract the females, so made him go to the gym and carry out some weight training before injuring himself. After injuring himself he decides to take some steroids to help his performance and body. After he does so, in true cartoon fashion, he grows repeatedly before exploding. After the explosion the audience is brought to a scene with Lenard in a hospital bed, only accompanied by the two female ostriches from the beginning of the animation. We decided to end it with Lenard getting what he wanted as we aimed to create a light-hearted animation with comedic value and absurd scenes and reactions, in a vein similar to Tex Avery's work. My group and I also decided to create the impression of an unfortunate character, Lenard (name inspired by character from The Big Bang Theory) the weedy ostrich who yearns for female attention and company. We personified the ostriches by placing them in human environments (In the street, congregating outside the gym, using the gym, laying in a hospital bed, taking steroids etc.) The balance of humanism and absurdity creates a great comedic undertone for our animation. I managed to add the sound to our visual final product and was happy with how I dealt with the task after having the disadvantage of being unable to create a timeline of sound that can correctly fit the visuals while having a live visual reference at my disposal. I also created the background frames for the animation. I spoke with the others about our choice of sounds and our choice of gym song, with Tom saying we should use "Eye Of The Tiger" from Rocky, as that song is synonymous with training hard, creating a comedic halt when Lenard drops the weight and injures himself. I believe I did well with the sound, but could have improved them by creating them all myself. Moses assisted with the angles and shots within our animation to ensure the audience can see the developments in front of them with no confusion. Connie Kyle and Laurinda took the shots of our scenes and arranged the scenes using cutouts, also drawing the explosion scene by hand completely. I believe we could've improved our animation visually by adding colour to our scenes, had we not been under-manned at times we would have had the free hands to enhance the visuals for our audience. Every other aspect of our animation was also drawn by hand. I am overall very happy with our final product as a person with no prior animation knowledge and believe we worked well as a group and pulled our weight. This assignment has also opened my eyes more to the importance of story and its structure. I believe we had difficulty initially and with members of our group missing from class we were already at a loss, I feel we were fighting the clock from the beginning. We found ourselves under late pressure to submit our final video in time and it was uncomfortable to be under the pressure to add the sound, being so pressed for time I was not even able to see the visuals with the audio to confirm that everything was in sync. In future we could improve our project by assigning people roles within our group as it creates more structure and efficiency.