Link to the Outcome Animation Video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/2QciOUKemv4
4 images and 150 words reflecting on your primary and secondary research, and how
this has been used to inform your ideas
I have done extensive amount of primary and secondary researches ever since the initiation of Transform project, and they had made major influenced that inspired me for the development of my final outcome. I always wanted to do an animation based on my real life quaker parrot pet Angela, so I took this project as an opportunity and made her as the starting point and develope extensively around with her personality and appearance. I was also inspired drastically by the various workshop session that would later become part of my develpoment for the outcome. These classes guided us with a vast amount of informations and idea inspiration, and the tutors were very helpful and encouraged us with many methods for the establishment of the outcome. Eventually, I would say that it was the Rio and Rio2 film that provided me with the most amoung of ideas what would allow for the sucess of this project. I took some of the style and morals of the story from the film and transformed them in to a version of my own. With the combination of my Angela character and a unique story and concept, the result turned out to be really unexpectedly stunning.
6 images and 200 words reflecting on your ideas. What is the most appropriate way to
execute your ideas and why?
The general idea for the main story of the outcome was simple from the beginning: A parrot escaping from the destruction of the rainforest of mankind, demonstrated in the form of a gameplay. And so I started develope extensively based around it. The first step I had accomplished was the developement about various potential concept and pick one among all that could turn to be the most suitable one fit for being the actual outcomes. I made 3 different versions, each in different style and would have been processed with different techniques. The first would have been animated by rotoscoping, the second in a flat 2D style and the third by rigged animating. In the end, I chose the second idea and extend my development based on that, since this type of technique has more flexibility and I’m able to demonsrate my expectation more vivid and and precisely. After making up my mind with the primary style and story for the animation, I continued to develope and designed a base animation for Angela the quaker parrot. Throughout the entire sequence of the animation, she appeared in the form of a 9 frames flying cycle animation. As simple as how it may seem, the development for this flying cycle animation wasn’t easy, and it took me over 5 days to a week to accomplish its process. The most difficult factor lies on the fact that most references for a side-view parrot flying cycle animation doesn’t include that of a quaker parrot, so I have to take various sources and design, readjust everything by myself so that Angela would preicsely represent her real life counterpart in terms of her appearance.
8 images and 250 words reflecting on the development of your outcome. What was
successful and why? What could you improve and how?
The animation and the editing was primarily done using unique techniques in Adobe Photoshop and Cyberlink Power Director. Most of the characters, assets and backgrounds were drawn in Photoshop, including the simpler animation such as the moving claws on the excavator, the smoke from the factory, the bulldozer and also the crushed fallen trees. Then they were compiled in to .mov video file (which are backgroundless) and imported in to Cyberlink Power Director for further motion editing. The backgrounds drawn in Photoshop were exported as ultra wide images, saved as .png and exported in to Power Director too. They were first zoomed to fit the 16:9 ratio screen, and then applied with motion editing by making them moving from the right to the left. Since the backgrounds were precisely designed capable of connecting right next to each other’s, I was able to turn the slideshow in to an endless rolling video. In the end, assets and characters are then layered over the rolling background video in the final editing.
I think the outcome in general is pretty splendid and even turned better than I first expected. However, I’m a little unsatisfied with my faulty decision for outlining some of the assets and ignoring some other’s. The original purpose for the outlining was to define the difference between assets that would cause collision with the character and not. However, after careful evaluation, the outline didn’t looked really well especially with most of the assets on the third stage of the animation and so they weren’t applied during that sequence. I would make an earlier evaluation next time and determine whether I should apply an outline to all the assets or not before I even started working on the outcome, if I’m ever given the opppertunity to work on a similiar project again. Besides that, I also originally intended to apply powerups and health bar for the player character, but that idea was also abandoned due to the fact that I had to cut down the complexity of the production time and difficulty.
10 images and 300 words reflecting on the project as a whole and suggesting areas for
personal and professional development. Consider the following questions: Did you
achieve your aims in your project proposal? What more could you have done to achieve
them? How will you take this forward in your future practice? How would you exhibit your
work given the opportunity? Who is the target audience for your work?
The outcome animation is generally sucessful and I’m pretty happy in the way it turned out. Apart from the imperfection involving the outlining of certain assets, the rest of the outcome worked out really nicely. I think that in the future, I would presumably love to turn the idea of this game design in to an actual game, or either an animation film based around it’s concept.
The real game based on this outcome would be exhibit in an enviromental exhibition, within the deforestation area with its own stand and introduction board. An arcade machine specifically designed for this game would be installed in front of the introduction board and any vistors particapting the exhibition could queue up in line and taking turns to experience the gameplay. The primary audiences for this game is aiming for people aged around 4 to 30 years old, but anyone from all ages are free to experience it.
In the end, this project actually poses a significant meaning for me giving by the fact that it’s my last project for this academic year. It’s also a brief celebration for the real Angela parrot, as it was her 4th anniversary since she had arrived at my house. This paticular project has been a bit harder for me to accomplish in the beginning, due to various reasons involving the pandemic and the repetitive cancellation of the flight that would have supposedly brought me back to London. So I’m really happy and glad that not only was I able to accomplish this outcome, I was also able to make it grand and gorgeously. I think that it’s a brilliant example of the hard effort I had worked over the past 1 year, and all of the essence I had learned and processed were all demonstrated through it.