The Olympic spirit and the Sea

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For this early brief within my first year of university, the task was to make an animation which represents a certain culture and activity based on the country you have chosen. For me, I have gone for Rio, representing a modern Rio culture which was enhanced as the 2016 Rio Olympics came along (which this animation is set during), and I have gone for kayaking as an activity. On top of that, I was also tasked to apply some deep subtext, and what I've gone for was the issues involving plastic in the sea, which does tie with Rio's history with plastic problems and can fit with the activity of Kayaking. This resulted in a narrative which involves a young Brazilian lad, who is experiencing the near opening of the 2016 Rio Olympics, who wants a Kayak, but sadly cannot afford one. Due to his mischievous behaviour, he throws a bottle in the sea, and even takes a kayak for himself while everyone else is getting hyped for the Olympics. This then leads to him encountering the mystical turtle, who tasks the lad to help clean the sea, which have been harming other turtles. and so, the lad helps gather everyone (along with their community spirit) to help clean the sea, even the lad collects the same bottle he threw earlier, resulting in the lad taking part in the Olympic spirit (after being established as a loner) while the turtles are all safe and sound.

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This was the first animation in this scale to include Photoshop digital frame by frame, used to animate the likes of the characters, environmental features like the sea, and the colourful motion graphics, all the other drawn elements were still drawings, forming all the environments and more. As I was educated to experiment with texturing and other visual looks of the animation, this is where I took many approaches in terms of texturing, going for bold colours for the smaller assets while applying textures around the environments like the roughness of the sand and the sea. There were more than forty photoshop compositions, each one rendered an mp4 to help form this extensive animation, which is together via casual cuts, or some applied animated transitions (which was another new skill of mine, as well as the many others I have stated within this paragraph so far). On top of that, there was also the extensive use of sound effects, a variable soundtrack and even some After Effects techniques merging with the Photoshop elements such as glowing effects. It was Photoshop creating the visuals, After Effects binding the visuals and Premier pro which helped with the audio. While those techniques were used, I made a much bigger effort to tell a story visually, creating a set of events which I hoped made enough sense while also being satisfying from how much is set up and paid off, as I implement what this brief required.

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This to this date is my favourite animation, this is because it represents my identity the best and this is how I prefer to make my work and present myself as an animator. While there are other animation approaches such as the mix of 2D with 3D and even mixing animation with live action which I have gained interested in, I am mainly drawn to colourful and simplistic 2D animation, while also being open to other methods of animation just in case my plans for the future change e.g. being open to 3D. This animation is what I considered to be the best narrative-based work I've made, a story which has more internal substance compared to my other narrative pieces of work. The blend of my chosen country, culture, activity, and subtext I believe all fits nicely, which makes this animation very consistent alongside the visuals, which is where I heavily improved on the use of my colour pallet. There are some practical instances such as some untidy 2D animation I have spotted as I watch this animation, the consistency of moving while serviceable, I believe it's the weakest part of this project. But despite 2D animation which could have been neater, I am happy with the animation in other ways such as presenting an animation which tells a satisfying tale while educating my audience about Rio's culture and spreading awareness of plastic problems.

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This was the only university brief which were split in two, one module (a pre-production module) consisted of the pre-production, and the following module (a production module) is where the animation itself was made. The first module lasted three months, while the following module was five months. I did do a lot of pre-production towards this animation, I would even argue that it had the most planning material around, not only was the portfolio massive, but the sketchbook had around fifty or more sketches to support this animation; this attitude was a result of learning many new aspects on how to make animated content, and getting a bit carried away with it. Not that I ever wasted my time doing too much, but in future briefs, I have learnt to be more selective on how much a portfolio requires and what kind of sketches are needed to support the animation's development. As mentioned, I did learn more about animation development such as a supporting sketchbook and planning what kind of textures the animation could have. For the first module, I used the time well and was finished a few days before that deadline.

 

After the pre-production module as done, I did use the Christmas break to make a start with the subtle areas of the animation's production before the production module started, this did help me provide myself extra time to complete the animation, and it was certainly worthwhile, just being able to complete this animation a week or two before the deadline. One factor of this animation taking a while is that not only were there other briefs present such as the black hole group animation being a large, scaled animation too, but this Rio animation I believe was too long to some degree. The brief required that animation to be a half a minute or longer, but I did end up creating a storyboard and animatic which was lengthy, which then made the animation lengthy, not knowing how to track the number of scenes compared to the number of seconds back then. This workload did improve in future projects, for instance, the Flip Flop animation and the RSA animation in the following year required thirty seconds or more, and the other needed to be more than a minute and a half, I did decided to stick to those particular lengths, to not repeated the mistake of giving myself too much to do again unless I am certain with the amount of time I have, and I have sensibly limited the length of those second year animations as other briefs did occur alongside it. A good rule of thumb is that only extend the length of animation if you are certain, you can provide that length, if not, stick to the limit the brief states.