IOL Week 11

SUMMARY (Using Nick's guidelines)

What was the main intention/focus of this weeks’ practice for you?

Make the ladder shuffle loop work, refine the Contemplation gesture based on feedback and get the animatic running in Harmony so that I can incorporate finished sequences.

Where there any specific technical/narrative/visual/movement or design problems guiding your practice?

• The Contemplation gesture (which is not necessarily a part of the finished film) has revealed how much more I need to understand about the human body in motion. I am unclear if it is because of the stylised nature of Oscar or because I have just never done this before.
• The Ladder sequence highlighted the need to understand how to make a loop so that it joins seamlessly.
• Bringing the animatic into Harmony has been a technical but achievable exercise. The export process gave me a better understanding of how sequences work in Storyboard Pro, which I can now apply in future storyboarding.

How did you go about your making endeavour relating to this intention?

This was straight forward; I used a combination of tutorials and ‘try and see’.

How successful were you with this practice? How do you know?

Week 11 has built on breakthroughs in Week 10 and moved fairly easliy into Week 12. The big-ticket item, making a seamless loop, was ticked off and the animatic export solved. The templates have been very useful enabling me to bring disparate parts together, but I have not been able to make the Symbols work.

Have you come across any new related works that inform your larger IOL project for the semester?

• I purchased the Kindle version of Wayne Gilbert’s Simplified Drawing for Planning Animation. I couldn’t find the answer to the hip gestures, except possibly the weighted bag sequence which uses a line bowed under weight. If time I will look at this option. I need to make more time to read it properly.
• I was interested in a Skwigly podcast episode (Swigly Film Club #11) which quoted Peter Lord’s description of English humour. This got me thinking about a new way to write the synopsis for Home.

What do you need to iterate further or reiterate in terms of your past practice in coming weeks?

I need the whole animatic integrated with existing animated sequences so that I can work on any obvious gaps and make it ready to send out for further feedback. I also need to compile a list of people for feedback.

Describe one insight you have had about your practice this week?

I mostly kept in mind the need to review new versions of the animated sequences as exported movie files. This allows me to watch them at an approximate finished scale and sometimes reveals that what doesn’t appear to be working in the enlarged view in Harmony does work when viewed at the finished size.