This module offered an opportunity to try something I hadn't done yet on the course, a really big and ambitious animation project within a team, and whilst I was initially not happy with the mandatory nature of it, we quickly decided on a topic that all three of us were interested in and excited about working on and this made me feel more happy about being put in groups. I differed from the Responsive collaboration in that all three of us this time round were animators, and would be working on a purely animation project rather than the mixed-platform approach we took in Responsive which allowed everyone's individual skills to be utilised separately.
The three of us quickly made good working relationships, which I think was helped by the fact that we all three were personally interested in the subject of sustainability and climate change. Originally we had discussed focusing on the issue of fracking, and were planning on conducting interviews with anti-fracking activists and campaigners to create a sort of vox-pop style documentary. At the time I was looking forward to making this sort of film, but I think we all had worries about making it original and having it stand out from the many hundreds of vox-pop and talking-head kind of animations out there. For this reason we were very excited when Devi Lockwood offered us the use of her collection of climate change stories, and the opportunity for us to create a really poetic documentary from a first-hand account of climate issues.
Initially we couldn't decide on which story we liked best from our shortlist, and so I came up with the idea of each of us picking one and then producing storyboards to pitch it to the group. At the time we all thought that was a smart idea, but actually when it came down to it I think the process of going through and creating storyboards kind of bonded us each to the story we had chosen, even if it wasn't particularly our favourite beforehand. This just made it seem a little bit harder to decide out of the three as it felt like we were competing with each other, and nobody wanted to concede. Eventually we settled on Noelline's story and Rosie's storyboards. I think there could have been some more hurt feelings after we had to have this discussion but luckily by this time we were all on board with the project and just wanted to make the best film we could.
Once that was settled we divided up roles and made a Gantt chart, but actually I don't think any of us looked at it again after we had made it. What we hadn't anticipated was that because of the aesthetic we had decided on, with a mix of real and digital watercolours, the animation process was going to be quite piecemeal until near the very end when compositing could begin. I began putting the pitch-bible together whilst Rosie and Brenda began on key frames and backgrounds, respectively, but again the pitch-bible was going to be something that was worked on and tweaked throughout the course of the project as more and more artwork became available.
For lots of this module I felt like I wasn't able to give my full attention to it, in part due to having a very big and ambitious collaborative project going on in Responsive, and when that had finished I turned my attention to finishing my COP submission. Also for a while at the beginning of production I felt like I wasn't having much influence or impact on the project. The visual style was very much Brenda's, and the storyboards had remained virtually unchanged from Rosie's very first thumbnails.
Similarly to Responsive, I found myself spending 11 or 12 hours in the studio practically every day, and working efficiently but still feeling like I wasn't putting a dent in the work I had left to do. I also completely neglected to blog what I was doing each week, but realistically with 60+ hours per week dedicated to actually doing the work I really couldn't be bothered to spend any more time talking about said work (not having access to a computer when college is shut also helps.)
I was surprised to find out I quite enjoy the task of
inbetweening - just put on some music and it becomes a kind of automatic
action - and getting into the kind of work-trance that is required for that sort of repetitive stuff is quite easy for me. I think to some degree I did resign myself to just doing the menial labour of the project and letting Brenda and Rosie really run the show, but then later on I took control of compositing and adding After Effects animation and visual effects, and I felt like I had finally really contributed to the production.
Altogether I am really proud of the outcome of this project. The animation itself is finished to a pretty high standard, and visually it has a strong style due to a combination of the watercolour aesthetic we chose and Brenda's really beautiful character designs. But more than just this, I think as a group we really researched and planned the project in a way which I haven't really done so far and it has resulted in what is probably a much more rounded and complete piece of work than I have often achieved before.
