OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Production: Discussing Roles

OUAN505 - Discussing Roles:

In order to make our project more organised, we worked out certain roles between us and who would like more practice and experience with certain aspects of the post-production. We decided amongst us that Alex would work on the title sequence which was simply the opening of curtains combined with an overlay of text quite possibly splitting and sliding off screen along with the curtains. David would work on the end credits of which would consist of small animations or images of each character surrounded by a bounding circle which would move onto screen and display the end credit text in a sequence of roles followed by the specific people who engaged in them.

Seeing as our soundtrack sounded a little unenthusiastic and blues-like, a fellow offered to give it a trial run and sing for us on Monday. Katy happily agreed to volunteer and sing our lyrics over a backing track of which we were very pleased about. This will then require minimal editing of which can be done in the space of a day.

I will be working on the poster aspect of the post-production of our project. This will require me to have a good knowledge of graphic design of which I am keen to work on. I am also very fond of working in Illustrator which will be a fun and beneficial task for me. We all work in a fairly consistent style and communicate appropriately to get all three aspects done on time and in the right style.

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Production: A Song of Type and Titles

OUAN505:  A Song of Type and Titles:


To help us understand type and titles a little bit more as we have merely scratched the surface of what vast knowledge lies within graphic design, we were given a session on playing with type and how this could benefit out project for Applied Animation. I now have a rough understanding of kerning, leading, typing on a path, what fonts make for good projects and why, connotations behind certain fonts, and so forth.

I'm currently reading a book called Typography by Harris/Ambrose which is actually quite useful in giving me a recap on the things Annabeth taught us. My ideas for our title sequence were things like 'The Good Life' title sequence where quite blocky text is revealed around an object (could be a piece of fruit or veg to relate to the band). 'Eating Healthy with HiVit' has a nice ring to it.

There are also some useful websites such as

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Production: Set So Far

OUAN505 - Set So Far:

Our next step is to hook up the curtains on the front, neaten the whole thing up and make sure everything is stable, create the microphone, fix up the recording song of which might be recorded again due to apparent 'lack of enthusiasm', and recreate the strawberry as David wasn't happy with the stability of her.

OUAN503 - Responsive - Individual Practice - Study Task 3: Evaluation

OUAN503 - Evaluation:

OUAN503 – Responsive Evaluation

This module has been a particularly tedious and soul-wrenching experience for myself and everybody I have had the fortune to meet regarding Responsive over the past few months. It can be agreed by many that the workload was constant with little or no regards to what other modules we were undertaking at the time and I find that in fact affected the quality and quantity of my work overall.

However, it was particularly enjoyable to be given the freedom to choose what live briefs we were able to respond to. Independence and choice was a privilege in this module and allowed me to find areas of practice of which I was capable of and will help me in the future. In terms of time management it was obvious that I struggled with some of the larger briefs such as YCN and DANDAD. This was genuinely because of a high workload in other modules and partially lack of enthusiasm as longer briefs tended to lose my attention span very quickly whereas shorter competition briefs were more manageable and easier to juggle between other aspects of the course.

Standard of work was also an issue as I felt that feedback often wasn’t substantial enough for me to find areas of improvement in my work thus leading me to leave my work at – in my opinion – at a very low standard. In order for Responsive to improve as a whole, the requirement of constructive feedback must be made clearer as I received a lot of pointless feedback such as ‘you need to improve this’ and ‘this isn’t very good’. Some peers did give me very critical and helpful feedback of which I was grateful for, however some comments like the ones mentioned did nothing for me or my work.

In order for me to improve when responding to live briefs in the future, I feel that keeping a better, more obvious schedule or plan would be helpful as I would benefit greatly from better time management on my behalf as there was often to the temptation to ‘leave work unfinished’ which was due to boredom of that particular brief. To overcome that boredom, setting a better time plan would force me to work on those dedicated days and the quicker I try and get a brief done the better as it would not drag over weeks and induce my lack of interest.

Responsive was definitely the most difficult module I have experienced so far mainly due to amount of briefs that we were asked to undertake. I found it very daunting at the start when told that a minimum of five live briefs was the requirement. After completing five briefs it actually became quite addictive and a positive experience as I found that learning new skills and communicating with new professionals was exciting and encouraging.

An area of improvement for future collaborations would be to work outside my comfort zone and not necessarily opt for members of the group I am familiar with. In our collaborative practice brief, I found it difficult to approach members of the Illustration group as I was not aware of their personality compatibility, skillset, or interest. An introductory session would have been highly beneficial to all of us as it would have given us the opportunity to get to know everybody briefly before choosing who we were going to work with. In the real world you will often talk at least once to a possible work partner before being thrown into an agreement or project with them. I feel that this was not available to us and seeing as some of struggle with social encounters (myself included), it would have given us all a confidence boost knowing that being in a room full of strangers is not so daunting anymore.

 All in all, I feel that this was a rewarding yet challenging module – of which it was expected to be in the first place – that I found to be helpful in preparing me for future briefs and different means of tackling them. I thought brief analysis was particularly beneficial to my responsive work as it enabled me to select and work out target audiences, what needed to be achieved, how, and in what context. I wish never to stumble upon a module like responsive again alongside any other work I may be doing, however I definitely saw the positives to such a negative part of the year.

OUAN503 - Responsive - Individual Practice - Study Task 3: Project Report

OUAN503 - Project Report:

In order to correctly document all of the briefs I have taken part in over the course of Responsive, we were asked to create a project report. I found this very therepeutic as it helped me to organise everything I had done instead of being some form of spaghetti junction floating around in my head of which I struggled to remember. I created my report in PowerPoint as a means of not only completing one of the module outcomes, but as a means of organising my work and myself into a neat and tidy journal of my time with Responsive.

Below is a link to my project report if the below embedded version doesn't work. OUAN503 - Responsive Project Report - Grace Elmer

OUAN503 - Responsive - Individual Practice: LoopDeLoop Storyboarding

OUAN503 - LoopDeLoop:

Seeing as there was not enough time to actually create my LoopDeLoop animation, I decided that the best option would be to create a storyboard and finish the animation as part of PPP instead to at least show that I am able to create it from my storyboard. Having to juggle lots of modules and work around along with personal life and events is quite difficult so I will at least get a storyboard churned out for this brief.

After waiting a week for the bimonthly theme to be released, 'Gravity' was decided on. I feel this is a very strong theme that can spawn lots of ideas and possible animations. I wrote down everything that came to mind as soon as I read the word gravity and came up with a long list of ideas from things that could happen in space to animations that could possibly break the laws of gravity here on Earth. I wanted to go for cute and quirky as I usually find this is appealing to a younger audience. I thought about creating a couple (at most as I didn't want to overcrowd such a short animation) of characters that would instantly be funny and loveable that would some way interact with the environment to show how gravity affects them.

It took a long while to think of what objects would look successful if animated in space until I finally thought about how toasters and toast would react on the moon. Toast could make for an interesting couple of characters and the toaster could act as a propeller of animation - it would trigger the event which would then turn into a loop.

My final idea is that a toaster will be featured on the moon of which will then 'ping' and release two slices of toast of which will float into space and proceed to put on helmets whilst flailing their arms around helplessly. As they put on the helmets they will float up and off the screen as a new 'moon' is shown with another toaster on it. They take off the helmets and float back into the toaster on the new moon. This will then loop. I have the ability to show gravity whilst adding humour.

OUAN505 - Applied Animation - Production: The Making of...

OUAN505 - The Making of...:

Whilst trying to work out the best process for creating both our keyboard and microphone, I did a few quick sketches after talking to both my godparents who are both DIY and prop and set-making enthusiasts. They gave me a few really good ideas and tips for creating the instruments, making sure they were both lightweight and sturdy enough for movement.

I then gathered up all the materials I will need to make these and now all I have to do is create them.

Upon creation, the microphone didn't actually stay together made just out of clay because of the weight of the top bit, and when made with a q tip, the head of the microphone was too small. I will have to work out the best method of creating a microphone before the start of next week as we need to animate.

OUAN503 - Responsive - Individual Practice: LoopDeLoop Ideas

OUAN503 - LoopDeLoop Ideas:

In preparation for the upcoming new LoopDeLoop theme, I decided to create a character that I could possibly use for my future loop. I named her Clover and she's a young, hippy female character with lots of charisma and happiness. I plan to give her a lot of bounce of flounciness when she walks to make my loop more interesting if the Loop requires me to animate a walk sequence.

I thought of styles and came up with a few rough sketches of her nearly final form:

OUAN503 - Responsive - Individual Practice: Teespring

OUAN503 - Teespring:

As another contribution to Responsive, I decided to have a go at creating yet more T Shirt designs for a website called Teespring. Teespring allow you to create 'campaigns' where people who like your designs can buy them and if enough are bought and you reach minimum target, you start raking in the profits. So far I have uploaded two designs. I will respond to these based on what feedback I receive from other users, and how well both designs do in terms of sales.

Here are my two shirt designs so far:

I discovered that a younger audience is more prone to using these websites as quirky fashion revolving around popular culture tends to be more successful with a teenage audience due to an almost 'cult'-like inclusion or by using shared interests amongst teens to create an exclusive group. Cuter, more fan-based designs did better in terms of voting so I created the sushi design in response to how well other designs did previously.