How it was made
Making the storyboard
Prompt words we chose: ‘Ocean, Dolphin, Swim, Love and Space’
We created a storyboard initially that was based on the story of a 52 Hertz whale that could only create sound waves at 52 Hertz, due to this nature it could no communicate with other whales. Becoming a lonely whale. This story was told with the first storyboard. The whale being avoided before hearing a sound that intrigues it. Going on a journey it discovers others but not being able to understand them they swim to further seas. Ending up alone it cries out for a last time to have someone who finally understands them to find them.
After talking to several tutors we made revisions to the storyboard to eb a lot clearer with the metaphors behind it of having found family that understand you no matter what when your original family does not. An example is the ending, as we changed it to feature more whales to give it a more found family feeling and to populate the space more to make it not seem lonely at all.
We decided to add music to each of the whales to make them sound more unique and to show the audience how the main whale differs from the rest. We also decided to make different shaped sound waves for each creature and make them different colours to differentiate them all easier. This is where our new member joined but we welcomed her and her ideas into the storyboard too.
Creating the Animation
I personally used Adobe photoshop to animate as I had gotten more used to the program. I was more so the leader of the group since I organised the roles and the different scenes each person was going to do. I also helped avoid confusion by making sure everyone understood which characters they were animating and noting them down on the excel sheet we created together. We made a Gant chart to plot down when we were finishing each part of this process so we would stick to a strict schedule to get this animation finished on time.
I decided to animate two of the characters with two variations of each the ‘Whaleshark’ and ‘Orca’. I assigned myself all the editing however this would change later on. Making the animation was simple which was animating the characters and drawing the backgrounds then putting them together in after effects.
Later on when we reached editing I had an unfortunate event happen that left my mental health in disarray so I had to take a very short break. Due to this I decided to ask for help on editing. I am very glad I did as it helped a lot with my mental health and having my members help had us finish swiftly on time to hand in our animation.
Editing was tricky as these assets weren’t all the same length but I managed. I edited the beginning and middle shots of the animation. The middle longshot was a continuous shot that was difficult to balance in pacing. It looks okay but could have been more pauses to be more natural looking and easier to read both of the characters expressions to each other.
Issues that arose was the new addition to our team wasn’t present in the first week due to unfortunate events as well. However we managed and when they came back we made sure she was okay before continuing onwards as a team. In the end one our members fell sick so we distributed their editing to everyone else. This was only a small set back and we were able to bounce back in no time.
Reflection on the project
When I look back on how well the team worked it was a very smooth experience. I had no issues with my teammates and we all worked together very well. We communicated all the time and when we had any sort of confusion we cleared it up immediately this was a very strong team to have indeed. We also set up an excel sheet when starting to animate as well as a one drive shared folder to keep track of all of the assets we would all use and be able to access. The excel sheet had a Gant chant that helped map out how much time we had left and what we wanted to complete on the days without complicating anything, this helped avoid confusion. The roles we assigned in the end was perfect and aligned with each persons expertise in animation and helped create a final piece that is strong in all aspects since we all worked towards our own strengths. There was parts of the project that we did not expect to happen however we worked on together as a team to make it work. Examples being a new member joining while our idea was already flourishing. We welcomed her ideas and were open minded to her character designs and included them in our final storyboard as well as being friendly and getting to know a new person in our course, she became a new ally and a team member that really helped develop our idea. Towards the end of the project one of our members fell sick so we divided up that team members part of editing to the rest to be able to finish before the deadline. Overall I was satisfied on how our team managed this project there is one thing we could improve on which is guiding our teammates to go outside their comfort zone. Since I was assigned all of the editing as I believed I could do it since I was the most skilled in After Effects however I had something happen causing my workflow to come to a stop for a few days to recover. I decided that it was not going to be possible to do it all by myself so I asked for help splitting up the editing with my team which they agreed was a good idea. This helped so much in the end and was one of the best decisions I made for the team as we were able to finish on time because of it as well as our mental as a team together was far better than if I had done it all by myself.
Throughout the whole project we used that Gant chart to chart our process and follow along to stay on track. When we created the storyboard I was very content with the variety of the tutors we asked to review as it showed how to some our storyboard seemed convoluted and easy to understand for others. When we changed the storyboard it became clearer with the metaphors in our characters and the composition in each shot became clearer too. Our process was simple and effective since we all individually created assets that we put together in After effects. There was some issues with this sort of process that could be noticeable in the Final animation. Such as the timings of the individual assets were different as some were shorter than the main character leading to rushed scenes where the audience may not have enough time to digest the scene just yet. This was a difficult balancing act when editing and could have been avoided if one person animated the characters to be able to control that pace and give the interactions between characters a more timed and natural feeling. We could have also animated certain parts/scenes such as animating 5 seconds each to be consistent that way. There are pros and cons to each of these processes as well as to the one we chose, however even with those cons in the end with rigorous editing our final piece still worked out, however next time a more split approach to the animation such as 5 seconds each would be much less of a struggle when editing them all together.
Based on the prompt words we chose which was ‘Ocean, Dolphin, Swim, Love and Space’ I can confidently say that we incorporated these ideas very well in our story. This is a very deep concept as it talks about found family and not being accepted by your own family. The idea hits very close to home for many of my generation as LGBTQ+ people can be ostracised by family and eventually each person learns to accept themselves for being different before finding others that will truly accept them for who they believe they are. Another interpretation that I believe in is the fact that my family does not like me personally for the fact I am a Chinese British who can not speak Chinese, I struggle with communicating with my family and because of this I am the odd one out. When making this story I felt more at ease knowing that I have friends that understand me and that don’t blame me for not speaking the language my ethnicity is since I was born and raised in the UK they made me feel not alone because of this. The theme of love is what our character feels at the end. I believe this feeling is laced in our animation by the journey and rejection to the found family at the end bringing that loving feeling that the audience can feel as well. There is one prompt that is used more loosely in our animation which is space, used in a composition way at the end to show how lonely the whale is by being in an empty space. This could have been done a lot more effectively as the crying scene is not as effective simply because the space is not as vast as we described in the animatic or storyboard. To bring this prompt out more we could have the main whale be a lot smaller in a vast empty ocean to really bring home that point of loneliness using empty space.
Overall this was one of the most exciting group projects I have been apart of and have had incredible teammates that I could confide in and work really well to create a strong animation for this project. If I were to do this again I would take care of my mental and physical health more as there were times I pushed myself to the brink of exhaustion without drinking water so in the next projects to come improving how I treat myself when animating will be first priority.
Link to the Animatic: https://youtu.be/mENDkY4eKkk
Link to the finished video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3OUSqqeNrQ
