Weeks 4 and 5.

Just a quick blog detailing the progress that's been made over Weeks 4 and 5. After coming up with my possible tools idea, I've continued to run with the idea. I've continued to sketch possible characters and thought more about the plot which will be needed to explain within the promotional advert animatic if it is indeed what I decide to do. After having pitched this idea to other students who I will likely be foriming a group with, I feel my idea has been successfully understood. Upon explaining the concept and what my plans are, others have already begun to pitch small gags and ideas so it's very possible this will continue on for the final assessment.

As well as thinking about possible animatic ideas, It's also been made clear to us that we should try and take ideas from whatever we can. It's important to gather ideas from personal experience and be influenced from already existing works to come up with our own ideas.

The lab work over the last two weeks has once again helped to get used to the new ToonBoom and revisit certain animation principals such as Squash and Stretch which is the technique used to emphasize certain actions by manipulating the pysical form of an object or person. Using the Squash and Stretch technique can really aid an animation.

By drawing walk cycles on ToonBoom it enabled us to create believeable movement in characters and by looping one series of drawings allows for a character to be seen as walking. The timing and movement of a person is very important and can convey a lot of thing about certain characters. I felt by revisiting walk cycles it furthered helped my knowledge of how they work and how important they are. It also helped to get into my head the idea of pacing.

Another Lab exercise briefly carried out in Week 5 was using the lip sync tools in ToonBoom although I feel this is one area in ToonBoom which I will have to learn more about as I am not entirely sure about using this tool at this time. Timing a characters mouth to move at the right time and make the shapes they should be making is another very important element to a successful animation so it's vital I get to know this tool.