Blog Post 3: The End

Hey, it’s me, Reeve, and we’ve come to an end of the Transmedia Project, and there’s still quite a bit left for to talk about that’s happened since last update, as well as my general thoughts on the project.

My first animation since last update was meant to depict the birds’ hypothetical journey from the Canary Islands to London with an Indiana Jones style map transition. It was fairly simple to do, as it was basically just a map layer on the bottom, and then a number of layers featuring a slightly lengthening red-line, all of which having a drop shadow. The end result (until today, that is, but that’s a story for later) is below:

Next, I worked on an animation depicting Stephen’s theory on how many birds there should be if the belief regarding Jimi Hendrix allegedly releasing 2 parakeets on Carnaby Street. I animated the birds to pop in as Stephen counts them (as in 2 appearing at a time, and then 4, and then 8, and so on), which thankfully meant that I didn’t really have to animate this image, with each layer popping in with no extra movements or any slick and snazzy effects or anything like that, but it still meant I had to draw well over 30 birds. And so I did. The first 16, arranged in a sort of “U” shape to allow for Stephen’s body to appear more “integrated” with the animation, are the “typical” needlessly detailed birds I’ve spent most of my time drawing, while the latter *insert number* are relegated to the back rows, with simpler designs. I only drew the first two layers, and then duplicated them for the latter 4 (while darkening them to give impressions of depth). This took forever, like most of my animations, but below is the finished result:

Next up was my multi-part animation epic depicting a bird going on holiday to London and telling their mates about it. The first part depicted the bird on his holiday, “riding” the London Eye and viewing the flat, barely detailed landscapes on London. This part was rather cumbersome, as trying to animate the slightly rotating machinery of a ferris wheel while retaining some degree of “smoothness” took long, was difficult to achieve (which I didn’t manage to do), and wasn’t too fun. Drawing the London landscape wasn’t that great either, as I couldn’t find any pictures that matched the (possibly unfeasable to capture?) angle my animation took place at. Thinking of a way to drastically simplify to look of the London view wasn’t much easier, so I think the only decent looking building I drew was Big Ben, I guess?:

Next was depicting the bird flying home. In a case of taking inspiration, as well as lacking original ideas, I also depicted birds flying in a plane like Lizzie did, sorta implying they’re the same birds. I had the bird typing up a text message to their friends. Don’t question how one can send texts in a plane. Anyway, the “animation” is really just the birds feathers/”fingers” scuttling around their screen. I spent an unusual amount of time on the background, for some reason:

And the last part was a fairly accurate recreation of the iPhone Messages interface. I spent far too long (a bit of a running theme, innit?) trying to get all the details just right, and I think it turned out alright. For some reason, I couldn’t export it as a .gif, so just watch the film to see what it looks like, I guess.

And, to bookend my animations, I ended it all with the one that started it all; Bird Circle. As expected, it took a long, long time to do, as it’s based on my earlier, less evolved “style” of animation, where the birds were smoother, plumper, and had bigger eyes. Because of this, the look of the birds is somewhat inconsistent, but it’s also inconsistent quality-wise because I had to rush half of it in one day, due to lack of time. The challenge of trying to match up each bird with the previous frame while trying to ensure that they end up in the specific pose they need to be in for the animation to loop was very difficult, resulting in some rushed and sloppy looking movements, and it was not that much fun at all to do, but at least it’s finished now:

That’s it for my animations, but my work didn’t end there! I also did a not particularly small revision to the editing, as I’m a significantly better editor than animator. On top of some basic changes, I made some changes to the compositing of our interviewees in most shots, as well as replacing most animations in the video with .psds (Photoshop files) to allow for transparent layers. I also made some “amendments” to how much of my animations were incorporated, as I had an idea of how I thought my animations would be edited in, and they tended to not match my mental image, so I played around with them a bit, though toying around with my bias for my own work may have been a bit of a dangerous move, though we shall see if it pays off.

Overall, I am pleased to have worked in this talented and supportive group. We collectively managed to create a short film/documentary that explores imagination, and working on this project managed to spark a bit of imagination in my own cold, desolate soul. However, I can’t say I’m too keen on my own work. I feel much of my animations are either sloppy in various ways, not up to my standards, and in a few cases, obviously incomplete. There are multiple reasons for how my animations ended up in the state they’re in, such as already having been a very slow artist/illustrator who struggles with art deadlines (which influenced my decision to not continue doing Fine Art subjects post Secondary School), having minimal animation experience (choosing the animation pathway was effectively a “why not?” decision rather than a “I’m good at that” decision), and struggling to keep up with both my animations, my Media Frontiers work that basically allowed me no time to do any animations prior to the holidays, and an essay I also had to write over the holidays which was neglected mostly for my animations, but then my animations were neglected so I could do that, and I essentially spent much of this pathway stressed and doubting whether I made the right choice, or if I was letting my group down. I got through it in the end, and looking back, maybe I am being a little too hard on my animations, as I couldn’t bring myself to resent them as much when I was editing the video today, and I have my reasons for they ended up as they did, and I also could’ve done worse, but maybe if I had managed my time a bit better, or if my other modules even allowed me to do that, maybe they could’ve been better. As previously stated, my animations don’t look too bad when in integrated in the film, compared to being viewed isolated, so I guess I got the job done.