LAUAN504 - Evaluation

My evaluation of LAUAN504

Competition Brief:

The competition brief was a mixed experience. We chose the Burger King D&AD New Blood Awards for our brief. Being director AND producer for a group of two, it was quite easy to achieve my creative vision, and I believe that all in all the outcome of this brief was very good. Working together with someone who's strengths I knew was very helpful for the outcome of this brief. Initially there was complications, as we started as a group of three but one member left very early into pre-production. Because of this, we switched ideas to something slightly more suited to the both of us, alternating our style to something we both enjoy more.

old

new

With this idea switch we leaned onto something a lot more over the top. While we didn't produce too much work, I believe that the work we did produce was good enough or even very good in the circumstances. The time management on this project wasn't very good however, as I feel we could have produced more work for the time we had. I feel that this brief also improved my creative decision making, which I will be working on in the years to come. In addition, I have become more accustomed to online competitions now, which is incredibly helpful. I will be entering competitions where I can over summer. Overall, I enjoyed this brief, but it was quite frustrating at times.

Documentary Brief

First of all - due to the Covid-19 outbreak, I feel that the quality of this project was hindered due to complications of working conditions and being away from university. Some things were cut from the final project due to time constraints and limitations, despite the deadline extension. An example of this can be seen in some of my scenes:

For example, in this scene I wanted to also animate the roman logo on the banner, however I needed to move on from this scene by the time I finished this portion. This is one example of the hindrance I experienced during the creation of this documentary.

Despite this I feel that this is my best work so far with a group project. I enjoyed making the backgrounds and animated scenes, and I am very happy with the final outcome. Because of this project I have produced various background illustrations which I am greatly fond of.

This project has GREATLY improved my time management due to my role as producer. Admittedly, this is the first project where I've made a gantt chart, and I feel it's helped a lot. I will be using this method a lot more in the future.

LAUAN504 is, without a doubt, the hardest I have ever worked on animation projects in these two years. Compared to LAUAN404, the workload was far higher and in a shorter time frame, not to mention that I also had to work on another module simultaneously. Working on 2 different projects for this module has really pushed not only my animation skills, but my time management and producing / directing skills. In addition, due to the outbreak of Covid-19 and having to move away from university, it was quite a struggle to keep ourselves on track and to achieve our highest potential for this module, but in the end I feel I have achieved a lot.

LAUAN504 - Compositing, Final Animation and Press Pack

Over the past couple of days I have been finalising the compositing for the final production. I edited all of the scenes together with sound effect in adobe premiere pro. I also re-recorded all of my lines.

Compositing:

Final Production

Our final production is a 02:07 long animated documentary film about Boudicca, the Warrior Queen.

My contributions:

Producer

2D Animation (Scene 3, 4, 6, 10, 17)

Background Illustrations

Character Turnarounds (Romans)

Narrator

Compositor 

Press Pack

LAUAN504 - Journal

Over the past week I have been working on compositing all of our scenes together, including the music, sound effects and the various scenes and clips to create the final product of the animation.
I began by compositing scene 2 together. I made none of the animations, only the background, but I composited everything together.

Scene 2 Compositing:



I keyed out the green screened animations that my partners made and added them to the background. I then rendered the video.

Scene 2 - Rendered:



After rendering the video I scrolled the background, which will be seen in the final product.

Scene 17 & Credits.

I rendered a video for the final credits and scene 17.




What went well:

- Well composited animations and keyed out greens screens.
- Good use of timing with the credits.

What to improve:

- Timing of the upward pan on scene 17.

LAUAN504 - Journal

Over the weeks I have been working on my final scenes and the final background of the animation.

Scene 10:

For scene 10 I had to create various alterations of the Iceni warriors for the background:

I also needed to make roman warriors in a side-view testudo formation:

After creating these I added them to the road background and ordered them similarly to how the next scenes placed them:

Finally, I put the image in premiere pro and added a slow-zoom out for the final product.

Boudicca Statue Background

This is my final illustrative work for this project; the statue of Boudicca. First thing I did was get some references for the statue.

References:




I then sketched the basic shapes using this as a reference:




Finally, I cleaned up the line work and added colour and shading for the final production.






What went well:

- Well drawn and consistent anatomy on the Iceni and Romans.
- Good shading on the Boudicca Statue.
- Well constructed scene with the Iceni Warriors.

What could be improved?

- Tidy up the placement of the Romans.
- Add more variations to the Iceni Poses

LAUAN504 - Scenes Test

I decided to create a scene test with the animatic by adding the completed scenes together to see how it would look. I did this by combining the scenes in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Scene Test:




I made this scene test on the request of the director in order to see how the scenes look side by side.

LAUAN504 - Journal

Over the past weeks I have been working on my own animated scenes for our documentary. The scenes I've been working on are scenes 3 and 4. I decided to make scene 4 first because I felt it would have been easier to make.

Scene 4:



I created this scene using two different backgrounds:

Background 1:




Background 2:




I then animated a flag pole over the background.



I edited the scene in Adobe Premiere Pro.


Scene 3:



The first thing I did was create a walk cycle for the roman soldiers.

Walk cycle:






After that I altered the colour palette and duplicated the cycle, and then adding them to the background.




What went well:

- Well timed walk cycle.
- Well-composited scenes.
- Good movement on the flag.

What to improve:

- Movement on the roman.
- Colour of the roman.
- More detail on the flag.

LAUAN504 - Weekly Blog

Over the weeks I have been working on illustrating more backgrounds for our animation. I have created the penultimate background of the documentary, which is a forest that Boudicca retreats into. I have also finished scene 6 of the documentary.

Final Background:



References:






I think this background turned out very well, and suits the scene that it belongs to. I feel that I could have added more variety in tree sizes and shapes, but with the time I have I feel it's suitable.


Scene 6



This scene was quite easy to create, so I decided to get it out the way quickly to make time for my other animations. I separated the layers and combined them in TV paint to create this scene.

What went well:

Consistent colours and aesthetic for the background.
Well structured scene.
Fairly timed animation and good composition.

What to improve:

Lighting.
Variety in trees and rocks in the background.