Journal post

What has been the most challenging part of getting work done on this project so far? How are addessing overcoming this challenge?'

I find tying to edit my animation down to 2 minuets while simultaneously animating a well acted characters to be very difficult and is resulting in a lot of rapid and quick pased action shots, in what is suppose to be slow piece. I know that many scenes need to have more keyframe, but the animation keeps brushing with the 2 minute time line, and while I need to sit down and see what can be managed to be cut out inorder to have good pacing and tell the story, its been hard to for I keep tying to push forward to make the deadlines in the calendar. While i have been making the deadlines the work isn't as good as it could be.

shots for FEB 26

Shots for feb 26 from Kaitlin TIll on Vimeo.

Journal Feb 19, 2013

Pick a piece and, making use of the vocabulary below, write a paragraph that articulates your sense of how successful or unsuccessful the piece was. We are not necessarily “judging” the piece, but making informed observations about it:

• evidence of strong structural elements (narrative or otherwise: sense of place and context in introduction, clarity of articulation of and viewer engagement with the introduction of the hero’s conflict, growing sense of tension as development events occur, clear and powerful articulation of climactic moment, satisfying conclusion)

• sophistication of movement design (sense of weight via speed changes, squash and stretch, secondary action; strong acting via silhouette, gesture, and key poses; grace and fluidity via arcs and secondary action)

• evidence of character thought process, motivation, and appeal

• strength of composition and staging (effective and informed use of closeups, medium, full, wide, and other shots; use of active negative/positive space, size relationships and overlapping of forms to orient the viewer towards important shot elements

• effective pacing that keeps the viewer engaged from beginning to end

• strength of design and color: line quality, character and object proportions, color palette that supports the story and establishes an appealing aesthetic

---

The Flautist and the Goliath

Matt Barns

     In the story the story builds from a young girl who walks through a forest and runs into a terrible giants. She offers to play to stop him from attacking her, slipping a dart into her flute, at the last note of her song she attacks the giants and kills him. Finally from the frostest comes villages who celebrate her victory. I enjoy the story but there are elements that would improve the story, like having the terrer of the giant be told to the audience before the girls adventure, or that maybe the a reason why a girl would walk alone into the forest. She could of gone into the forest to find the giant or she could of just ignored earlier warners of it because she was distracted by playing her flute. 

      The movement designs as good, compared to the other animations we watched in class where characters would be held in single frames with few actual keyframe animation. This animation looks to be done in pencil, rather than flash, so the artist must of actually drawn out pose to pose. There was a nice idea of scale to how big the girl was to the forest and to the giant. She has nice movements when she adresses the giant for the first time.  Evidence of her though process talking to the giant, we understand her nervousness talking to him, and her plan by a extreme close up to her slipping the dart into her flute. The moment she decides to strick the giant we see her brow crese showing her aggression and determination to defeat Goliath. Than we watch the fall of Goliath, he doesn't fall right away, we see his realization of the dart hitting him by the look of shock to his face and holding his neck as if something bit it. He walks wearily for a moment than falls rather than instantly dying right at the moment the dart hitting him. This acknowledges that this may be a poison dart, for poison must take some time before it could travel enough into the body before effecting its victim. 

    

    There were some nice staging in this. The film starts with relaxed long exposition shots, and mediam shots of the girl walking threw the forest, until we as than looking at fast cut medium shots of the giants last victims. The scenes between the girl and giant comparing the height differnece were good. the scene where the girl talks to the giant was angled showing it was the giant looking down at the girl, this shot make her look meek by looking up, and her nervous body language towards the giant made her apear as a week heroine, but with an extreme close up of her slipping a dart into her flute we see that she her fear is not hindering her mind, that she has a plan. We can tell that by asking the giant to play her song and her sneaking a dart into the flute she plans to attack the giant unsuspecting. During the song was experience a few shots of ease, where the giant has no suspicion of the girls attack and the build of the audience witing. A close up of her eyes going from ease to anger shows the moment has arrived. This choice of shots and pacing is good build of dramatics to get the audience involved into the girls dilemma, showing us the stakes if her plan fails, the death of the last victims, and her victory by defeating the giant.  The film ends with villages celibrating her victory, but there is no shot of them coming to her. Possibly  the animator ran out of time to show the villages leaving the forstest to thank her.

    I like the design and color of the film, the pastel color palette and the simplicity of the character design. Like the eyes being only dots rather then eyeballs with the whole iris and sclera thing. Its choice of color and character design reminds me of children's books, like Madeline. I suspect this was intentional for the story follows a sort of Fairy Tale sceme, where a young child is put in peril againts some monstrous foe, and there is some sort of moral. For this I would say Wit over measure is man's greatest treasure, for the girl deafest the giant with her wit.

Shots for Feb 19

Febuary19shots from Kaitlin TIll on Vimeo.

February 12 2013

1) How do you hope/want the audience to react/respond to your piece?

I hope they would find it cute, and have a few laughs.

2) How do you want the audience to feel about your characters? What kind of connection do you want them to feel to your characters.

I want them to understand that there is good intent in each character. That Porsha doesn't like Pumpkinhead due to a bad first impression, and continues to have one so long as he is so unkept. Pumpkinhead while putting his best effort now would of done better if he regularly took care of himself before this point.

3) What sort of audience reaction/response would leave you disappointed? What would be the best response? Imagine a critical review of your piece that would make you feel that your piece was understood, and that it was recognized as being a great piece, a festival winner what would the review say?

Indifference would be a disappointing response. Neither would I learn what I done right or wrong if nobody had a feeling over it. Any response is better than nothing. A critical review of my piece might be over poor timing. Since it already is a problem now, for I am trying to cut down to 2 minnets while trying to animate the thing, I know it will show in the final animation. I guess a comment about character design would be nice.

Keyed and PT shots

Keyed & PT SHOTS from Kaitlin TIll on Vimeo.

For February 12
a few from February 5, that were not numbered

Production FEB 5

Shots done

Feb 5 keyed shots from Kaitlin TIll on Vimeo.

February 5, 2013

• What is your relationship to the main character?
• What experience of yours inspired you to create him/her/it?

I guess my relationship to my character is about pumpkins. Acutely the scarecrow characters are headed with items that I like. Pumpkins are one of my my favorite fruits, and teapots are about my love of high tea, and highly associated with my tea parties with my Grandmothers and sisters.

Pumpkinhead character design is also based on an old character of main, but in comparison Pumpkinhead is physically flexible and procrastinate against him, the only common denominator is their head. In some ways its funny (to me) since the old character is based off a scarecrow, and the scarecrow Pumpkinhead is based off him.

Porsha character is in a way based off my sisters. She has yet to adapt her full persona, in this short, but her end game is a personality is a very adventurous, outgoing, social, and fun. (That works against Pumpkinhead procrastinate, quite, and while he has a good sense for things he will not always be the one to sort them out).