My first step was to see my base level of skill, and I achieved this by animating my four chosen elements - smoke, fire, water and lightning. For this practical response, I was wary of spending too much time re-doing everything, as the animation needed to be a true reflection of my current skills rather than something I spend an inordinate amount of time on. I decided to just use roughs rather than clean it up for this reason. I feel that doing these were very useful to me, both as a base to be later compared to as well as due to how much it identified my weaknesses. I realised that I definitely needed to study smoke and fire in much more detail, and that all of my drawings needed to be improved, as I was lacking the proper shape language and not understanding the forms.
This led me to a mini-practical of observational drawing. Here, I was focusing on capturing energy as described by Joseph Gilland, as well as trying to understand each element’s form better. At this point, I had decided to focus on three of the elements due to time and length of the project, therefore I scrapped fire. With the drawings I did, I felt the smoke ones were the most successful at capturing the energy and I found I was much looser with them, thus making them feel more dynamic. With the water splashes I was much tighter and that showed as they looked quite stiff, inadvertently proving to me the importance of energy within your drawings. I feel like I should have done more drawings, as this would have helped my skills even more as well as further highlighted common mistakes/weaknesses.
I then realised the necessity of understanding the fundamentals of shape design specifically targeted for fx, thus I carried out that research. Within this section of my project, I think I should have included more drawings to demonstrate my understanding of these concepts as well as practice them, however I did not have enough time. Studying other artists was a satisfactory replacement, but both would have been better.
During this section I also did another mini-practical of creating a smoke effect in after effects with particle generation. I had previously used this technique before in an animation last year therefore I was familiar with the method, however now it showed me the differences between hand drawn 2D and computer generated fx animation. With the latter, it’s very quick and easy to do and the result gave a convincing movement, however where it suffered was the lack of customizability you had with it compared to the complete freedom you have with hand drawn fx. The smoke was also a bit lifeless and had no exaggeration or overlapped timing (core principles of fx animation) nor was the style something that could be altered too much.
From here, I moved on to learning the theory behind each of the three elements and then I observed this theory in practice with live action reference, as well as studied other animator’s work to see how they simplified and stylised the elements. I then animated the roughs for each element (lightning being cleaned up as it was much shorter and the glow adds a lot to the overall effect). I think these were very successful as the improvement of these from my original animation clearly showed how important theory and studying were, and you can see a lot of the concepts learnt in practice. During the animation of each, not only was I focusing on getting the physics right, but I was trying to exaggerate the shapes and timing so that it had more energy. There were still areas I could have improved on in terms of both the animation and actual drawings, however it is a lot better than my first attempts.
I do recognise that there are many more aspects that go into making an effects animation appealing (namely the cleanup style and colour), however as a beginner I could not move onto that without having a strong base first, and the project would be too long if I covered that as well. The practical did show that even without fancy cleanup and lighting effects, you can have an appealing looking animation.
Despite this, I briefly covered the importance of style for aesthetic appeal, also undertaking another practical in which I used my base smoke animation and did several different versions of cleanup (using the same colours so that you could focus solely on the style). I think this practical was effective to a degree. It showed that you can make minimal changes and still have the effect look different whilst having a different emotional response, however I think if I had more time I could have done more styles that were vastly different. Moreover, compositing them into the same scene would have given it more context, and would have allowed for a deeper analysis. Finally, I had planned to do a questionnaire for other people’s opinions of the different styles however I didn’t have enough time, but I still think that would have benefitted me.
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