Reflection journal
This tab is essentially a diary, It contains entries from most days throughout the project and explains everything that went wrong, right and how I felt about it.
24/02/2025
Due to technical problems, I was unable to access any of my previous work. Due to this I was able to start work on thinking of idea for my final major project short film. I had done a small amount of thinking during the weekend and was desperate to make something animated as I have only done that once in my 3 years of studying film, and it's a format I want to explore deeper. Today, I decided to list out every format I'm interested in making and would aim to add 3 bullet points briefly describing the plots I could utilise for each format. I did this as not every format works for every idea (I.e. a Lego movie with very dark themes will be off putting unless there's a reason behind it). I also researched stop motion animation formats as they would be the easiest to pull off (I can't draw very well). I listed out 5 formats I could make my film in and gave ideas for each. I then decided I would list out each of my favourite base plot ideas and add more detailed ideas for each to help me through the writing process.
26/02/2025
Over the past 2 days I've been chipping away at my ideas and made a bunch to choose from. After looking I decided there was two I really liked. A 2001 a space odyssey inspired animated film that showcases the evolution of humans, the war and protests of humans and the peaceful aspects of life. I planned out how the plot would continue and how each scene would transition and play out. I also decided to have the film change animation styles throughout, I decided this as I wanted to try out multiple types of animation and I thought it would be an interesting thing to explore in my film. I felt this idea was a little too complicated and decided my second favourite idea of making an action scene may be easier and more fun, as it would be dealing with less complicated themes.
03/03/2025
Over the weekend I did some thinking on how exactly I want my fight scene to go. Today We were still unable to access our old documents, so I decided to continue my work on OneDrive. From now on I will always save one copy of work on one drive and another on the PC. I made a rough synopsis of how each segment of the fight will happen and like the last idea I had the animation style change throughout. I then began work on my proposal document I utilised guides that had been posted on teams and made sure I matched every demand from the criteria while matching the word limit. Surprisingly writing my proposal and rational went incredibly smoothly, I had to make no edits to fit the word count, and I was very happy with how the document came out. I looked at other students' distinction proposals to make sure my work was on par, I added a couple changes primarily adding basic information at the top of my document and felt my work was up to standard. Finally, I wrote an evaluation explaining how I will reflect and evaluate. I made sure I matched the criteria and moved on to my mood board and treatment. I added 4 movies/shows that inspired me to my mood board and explained how they inspired me. Finally, I wrote the basic information section of my treatment and the logline and synopsis for my story. Tomorrow I will research target audience and apply that to my treatment.
04/03/2025
Today I struggled to work out what to do as I had found no relevant websites to help with identifying and backing my chosen target audience. I decided to create my production schedule, once I had planned out everything I needed to do on my schedule and wrote target start and end dates, I pasted the schedule to my treatment, proposal and its own document. I then decided to fill in some of the blanks in my treatment where I could. I couldn't create a detailed plot and character description as I'm still not ready to draft a script, I also couldn't talk about requirements and resources for similar reasons. Due to not knowing what to write for legalities I decided to just write a brief description on audio I will likely record and use on my piece and paste my rationale from my proposal into the treatment.
10/03/2025
I was unable to research while I was off. Today I decided I would begin to plan my research to help make things easier. I created the proposed research section of my proposal and wrote how I planned to use library books and the internet to research choreography writing and styles, animation writing and styles and I will do deeper research on specific animation styles. As said on my proposal I plan to research this to better understand what animation styles to use and how to do them. I also tried to provide links of library books I was hoping to pick up however had issues finding the books on the library website. After A student helped me with that issue, I searched for many library books on the topics I hope to research and provided Harvard referencing in my proposal for each book. Today I will pick up the library books I was looking at and then I will do research at home.
11/03/2025
Yesterday I picked up 5 books from the library; the world history of animation, the animation bible, unarmed stage combat, animation techniques and producing animation. I was unable to read the books last night and decided to work on my research today. I started by finding multiple websites about the evolution of animation, I only read up to the 1870s on each website and made notes on the early animation. I didn't get much research done today as I was struggling with staying focused, I will do more this afternoon.
12/03/2025
This morning, I continued my research, I read up any of the historic chapters in the books from the library making sure to only read up to the 1870s. I learnt that flipbooks were invented in the late 1860s and then researched more specifics on the animation styles I've researched so far. I didn't find much relevant or interesting information. Today I was given feedback on my proposal by the entire class. My feedback primarily consisted of complementing the ambition of the project and that I should improve my schedule to help have tighter time management. I was also told to relate my rationale more to previous projects. On Monday I will ask for advice from more people on how to improve those areas as I agree they could do with work but am unsure what to do to help. I will also try to do lots of research while I am off.
17/03/2025
While I was off I read the entirety of my world history of animation book. It was about 400 pages, and it taught me a lot about most of the important animated movies to release and the various styles they utilised. When writing notes on them I decided to only focus on 2D and stop motion movies as CGI animated movies have an incredibly long history and were not as relevant to my project. I also read a couple pages from the animation bible and animation techniques, however there was not as much information on the history of animation in those books. Today I copy and pasted all my work from when I was off, and I slightly altered how it was all phrased. Once I had finished putting the work into my research document, I decided to finish reading through the 5 articles I had previously looked at. Due to how detailed the world history of animation book was, I found very little new information to add to my document. Once I had finished that, I researched 5 websites about various types of animation, once again the book I had read covered most of it so I was unable to find much new information. Finally, I researched types of stop motion animation to narrow down my search and despite the very specific search I was still completely unable to find more animation types in the 3 websites I looked at. I did all of this to make sure I had looked at as many animation types as possible to guarantee I had enough animation types within my skill set that I was comfortable doing.
18/03/2025
After finishing all my research on animation, I decided to reword my notes to make for a more presentable research document. Once I had finished that I decided to write a conclusion explaining the animation styles I have looked at and which ones I would like to use. After finishing my conclusion, I pasted it into my project idea document and decided to make a table to make my decision of animation styles easier. In the table I wrote every animation technique I learned. I then highlighted animation I wasn't interested in red, animation I may do if I have time in yellow and animation I want to do in green. Once I had done that, I felt much more confident on my idea and decided to add the final two slides to my mood board. I added a couple more movies/films that inspire my style or story for the short film. On my final slide I created a track list of music for my fight scene. I plan to have one of the characters playing the music on a music player, so I wanted to keep it random to match that idea, the characters personality and to provide many comedic moments with the music. Due to this, while most of the music I chose is fast paced, I made sure none feel dark or contradict the comedic tone. Tonight, and tomorrow I will focus on researching choreography and action writing to better help my sense on how to write the fighting. I will be on holiday from Thursday Sunday, but will try and research if given the opportunity.
19/03/2025
Today, I began researching hand to hand fight choreography in my unarmed stage combat book, I would make notes for any information I thought would be very important to remember. This was taking a very long time as I was not very interested in the book, after a while I decided I'd read the book at home and would focus on my script writing during lesson. I wrote up the majority of the first scene (from the opening to just before the first fight) I'm not sure on the dialogue and think it needs to be tinkered more, but it's a good base for the time being. I'm hoping to read more of my book during my time off however, I am on holiday from Thursday-Sunday so it's unlikely I'll get much work done.
24/03/2025
Was unable to read during holiday and am now incredibly behind, hoping to complete pre-production and script this week so I can at least stay just a week behind, sadly it's not looking likely. On the bright side if I complete all pre-production before the 2nd of April I can do the rest of the work at home. I also can come in Thursday and Friday as a backup if needed. Today I slowly continued reading through the unarmed stage combat book and took notes as I went. I want to finish reading this book before I write action scenes, as I believe it will help me write more realistic and easier to make fight scenes. I will continue to read this book this afternoon and tomorrow until I finally finish it.
25/03/2025
I had some bad news last night, so it made reading the book even harder. I really struggled to focus, but I've continued to read it, didn't get much done today but will try my hardest to get it done tomorrow.
26/03/2025
This morning, I finally managed to finish reading the book. I copy and pasted all notes I made from the morning and put them into my research document (I also returned the book to the library before college). Focus has admittedly still been a struggle today, but I tried to get some work done. I rewrote my research notes slightly and then wrote a small amount of my script, getting to just as the fight begins to start. I will read my books on animation while I'm off and will make notes.
31/03/2025
Over the weekend I read the majority of my producing animation book. So far, the information has been admittedly redundant and unimportant, but it has helped affirm the documents I need to make before production of my film can start. I also took a couple pictures of pages I thought would be important to remember in the future. Today I continued on with my script, writing the first two fighting segments giving detailed descriptions on how I roughly want it to go. I ran out of time just before starting the Claymation part of my script. This afternoon I will finish reading my producing animation book and tomorrow I will finish my script and begin pre-production.
01/04/2025
Yesterday I finished reading my producing animation book. It was somewhat redundant and didn't give me much new information, but it was still affirming and helped me better understand all the pre-production documents I could make. Throughout the past two weeks, friends have constantly told me how ambitious my idea is and that I should likely scale it down slightly. I'm personally not going to do this as the difficulty of the project is what intrigues me about it. However, I did realise on my proposal I hadn't made it clear that I had any contingency plans for if I was unable to meet the ambitious proposal. My contingency plans are that my script would be designed so that every animation scene could be moved around and still make sense. I did this so that if I'm unable to get certain animation done, I can still have a cohesive short film. I also am making sure my pre-production work is all at fantastic quality if things go bad enough that I'm unable to get much animation finished. Today I was also able to finish my script, I finished writing all the fight scenes and was relatively happy with it. After that was done, I made a second copy of the script focusing on just the voice acting lines and also showcasing what fighting sounds they'd also need to make for example, grunting. Tomorrow I will finish my animation techniques book, hopefully start my animation bible book and work on pre-production planning for my project.
02/04/2025
This morning, I finished my animation techniques book, I was unable to start reading the animation bible as it was a busy morning, but I will hopefully start that tomorrow. Today I did a small amount of research on creating brick motion, Claymation and cut out paper animation. I did this so I knew the resources I would need for each type, I then created a document listing all animation materials I'd need and all technical things I'd need (like tripod and lighting). On the same document I also listed locations I would use, all physical props I'd use for live action moments, clothing I'd want actors to wear, I also listed the two characters, but I still don't know who will play them. I'm hoping to hold a cast reading to pick the people to play my characters. I plan to come in this Friday to borrow a tripod from college to use during the holiday, I will also buy some of the materials I need to animate and hopefully finish my animation bible by then. While at the college on Friday, I also plan to do some extra work primarily, making a shot list, printing script and possibly an animation frame list. On April 9th and April 10th, the college will be open for people to do extra work, I will come in on one or both of these days to look at whatever animation I would have made so far, and to do any bonus pre-production documents.
08/04/2025
On the 4th of April I picked up the tripod from college, I then went shopping in hopes to find A copper wire, A3 paper and black card, I planned to buy clay at a later date. I was unable to find copper wire sold in any of the shops, and I decided against A3 paper as I wanted my animation to be more intimate and was also unsure if A3 would even work. I did however buy a couple sheets of black card, I then went into the library to do some college work, I needed to get home relatively soon so was unable to get much work done, but I was able to write some reflection journals. On April the 6th I finally finished reading the animation bible and was ready to start my Lego stop motion. The animation bible wasn't too helpful as it primarily told me information I already knew or didn't need, but it did give me a step-by-step guide on how to animate cut paper animation, which took a picture of.
On April 8th I began building my brick motion set, I have been unable to plan filming days and voice acting days with my friends, they keep cancelling and I have been unable to find right days for them. Luckily, my brick motion needs minimal voice acting and I should be able to do it without their input. I first built the base layer that would become the living room floor, when making my set I wanted to highlight the vibrancy and colour of Lego, but I also wanted to avoid being too chaotic and distracting from the characters. Due to this I decided each layer of the set would be made of a different colour, creating an organised but still colourful layout. Due to the nature of Lego my set would also feature many different tones of the same colour as some bricks are older than others, I am happy with this as it adds slightly more chaos without detracting from the organisation. When building the wall, I would use a Lego brick and then a flat piece, per layer. I did this as I planned to have the government punch a wall and leave a dent, to create that dent I would simply remove the flat piece and push it back slightly to create an indent in the wall. I then added all the decorations to make it look similar to my summer house and finished the set. Finally, I went into my Lego minifigure bag and created two minifigures that I knew would be easy to recreate the clothing and style of in real life, due to the simplicity of Lego this wasn't too hard, and I was ready to film. I then went around my house to go to the dark room, only to realise the rooms i had originally envisioned filming in weren't nearly dark enough. After some thinking I decided i would utilise a big black box I owned and would put the set in that, I would then put a blanket on top of the box and when ready to take a picture I would put the blanket over my head covering it in darkness. I set up my set in the room and the camera. I was about to start filming when I realised, the lack of roof made it easy to see my phone and the way the phone was balancing was also an awkward risk. I decided I would give my set a roof with a small hole in and would use that hole to point my torch in. I started to build my roof, but the Lego was noisy, and it was getting late so I decided I would finish it tomorrow.
09/04/2025
Today I finished the Lego roof, I utilised clear Lego plastic in the hole for the torch as I had seen leaving it empty still didn't look great, I even lowered it slightly into the set and added a red stud to create a more realistic looking lightbulb. Once I was done, I was finally ready to start animating. When taking pictures I had a blanket over the black box and my head, because of the relatively small space I was working in I realised I was constantly moving the box slightly by accident, because I had already taken a couple pictures like this before noticing, I decided I would lean into it and purposely move the camera to make it look like a moving camera. I also had learnt my lesson and decided from now on i would compare each shot with the previous to make sure things looked fluent. The camera I was using had an autofocus and I was unable to find any way of turning it off. Because of this, I was constantly having to retake pictures and get the focus right however, I still made oversights by assuming changing the focus of a character between a single frame would look good, I would later realise I was wrong. I began to create my first punch, it took around 2 hours for me to animate up to him hitting the desk, when I finally got there, I slightly raised the monkey and 2x2 flat piece, in the next framed they'd be slumped on the desk. This would cause a massive issue with consistency as the monkey was constantly rolling around and it was hard to get it exactly where it should be. For the punch shot I had also changed camera angles by simply removing the Lego wall I wanted to shoot from and replacing the one I had started at. I then began to animate Zack as he was about to kick the government in the air, however I was unsure how to get the fishing wire to attach and asked my dad for help. My dad had the idea of simply feeding wire into the body and trapping it by placing the legs in, he was unsure how I would do the same with the head, but I decided I would worry about that when I get to it. I will do the flying kick part of the animation tomorrow as it is getting late. I am unable to go college tomorrow due to having to look after the puppy and a driving lesson.
13/04/2025
On the 12th of April I continued animating. Making the front kick was relatively difficult as i had to make the figure stay still in position and keep it in a position that looked natural, after some time I was able to get the frames, I needed and continued with animating his landing. After changing camera angles again, I was fed up with the monkey constantly moving and the fiddly nature of keeping it consistent. To combat this, I decided I would animate the monkey to flicker as if it's disappearing like in a Lego game. I then animated Zack being thrown to the ground, which was fun to do as I got to have his arm come off and the posing was interesting to make. Today I did a couple more frames and animated his hand being pulled off, I wasn't entirely sure how to create this as the hand piece would not fit in the cloaked man's hand. I decided to just hope the audience wouldn't think too deeply about it and that in the fast-paced action it would feel likely to have come off, I still don't know if this was the right decision. Tomorrow I will try to create the floating head punch, my current idea is to feed the wire on top of the Lego head and trap it with the hat.
17/04/2025
On the 14th of April I had a dentist appointment and used that opportunity to finally return the last library book I had borrowed. On the 16th of April I once again continued to animate. When creating the floating head, I ended up having to attach the string by trapping it under the hat and then blue tacking it to the side of the hat both for strength and to keep it relatively straight. Getting the head in the correct position took a large amount of fiddling and messing about with placements, but after a while I got it in a position I was satisfied with and began taking frames. I still had to consistently fight with the blu tac and fiddle with the position as it was constantly moving and I had to make lots of changes throughout, like changing the expression of Zack and the height of the head. I also encountered the same issue as the monkey from earlier, where Zack's arm and hand was consistently moving causing risk of inconsistencies. Unlike before, i needed the arm and hand in the scene and so after lots of thinking i decided to stick them both with blu tac as they weren't in focus for most frames and it would hopefully go unnoticed. I had also learnt to use more blu tac in my frames in general as it was very easy to hide and could lead to more dynamic poses, I utilised this for the frames where Zack pushes cloaked man to the floor. After that, it was getting late, and I decided to finish up for the day. Before i went to bed i decided to flick through all the frames I had got so far and get a sense of how my animation might look. by doing this I had realised many issues with my project, primarily it was too fast, and I hadn't created nearly enough frames for the animation. I had also noticed errors with the focus constantly changing between frames and how badly it effected my animation. Another problem I found was a massive inconsistency error where Zacks red time watch disappeared during the flip and never returned. I looked all around the room for it and was unable to find it, I also decided that even if I had it would look weird to randomly appear after being gone so long. With the deadline rapidly approaching, how much i still have to do and how much longer each shot would take to line up for me to add the missing frames and keep it smooth, I decided I would leave the animation how it is and just make my next frames much smoother and hopefully fix my previous frames in editing at college. Today I finally finished my Lego animation, I made sure to triple the amount of frames I was using and to make things look as smooth and cohesive as possible. I also utilised blue tac in areas where possible and tried to make this last part of animation as good as i could, utilising everything I learnt from the previous frames. In the end i do believe i created much smoother footage and I look forward to seeing my work on Monday.
18/04/2025
Today I drew the 3 Zack puppet models for my cut-out paper animation. Each one showed a different angle of Zack, I also drew circles showcasing the joints that the puppet would have, and I drew the arms separate from the body. After doing that, I then put glass over a box and shined a light through it so I could trace each body part separately ready for cutting. The body parts must be separate as the puppet won't be movable without them being sperate.
23/04/2025
Yesterday I uploaded all the footage I had made for my project and uploaded it all into my files and adobe premiere pro. I then added the frames into adobe premiere pro messing with the speed. Originally the animation was going to be 3 frames per second because I hadn't recorded many frames but, I then realised the final section was significantly smoother than the rest and changed my speed for the smoother part to 6 frames per second. After rewatching the animation multiple times I came to the conclusion that the first half was still slightly too slow, and I decided to change the speed to 6 frames per second and made the smoother part even faster at 12 frames per second. Once I had finished my rough edit, I decided to write up my reflection journals for the past two weeks and update other various documents. Today I created a very rough template for my final major project website, all I did was create the name of the website and chose the base template. Tomorrow I will organise dates for borrowing a tripod and over the weekend I will once again try to organise voice acting with my friends.
28/04/2025
Over the weekend I was unable to organise the tripod properly, but I ended up finding out my dad had bought one anyway. On Saturday I was also able to organise one of my friends to come around and voice act for me, I struggled a lot to stay focused and was constantly getting distracted or procrastinating but in the end we was able to get the vocal sound effects and dialogue that I had wanted, I will record my own sound effects and dialogue at a later date. I also decided my Lego animation would no longer have vocal sound effects as the animation moves to fast for it to work well, instead I will utilise a song from the list I had made earlier in the project development. On Sunday, I finally cut out the pieces for my cut-out paper animation and turned them into dolls, I will have to make the second doll this week and begin filming.
29/04/2025
Today I remembered that I never finished my treatment so i quickly created a plot description, descriptions of my characters and a short explanation of my target audience. Once finishing my treatment, I decided to create a foley sound effect list for my Lego animation, I repeatedly watched the animation creating notes of the various sounds I would need. Once that was done, I remembered that I still needed a good score to make up for the lack of dialogue. I went to my mood board and looked through the song list, I then went through a slow process in which I would listen to each song and would play the animation at points in the songs i believed fit the atmosphere. I would then work out the timing and see if the animation worked with it, finally if the song did work, I would place the song name and the time stamps into my foley list. When I begin editing the full animations I will choose between each song and pick the one, I think fits best. As lesson was coming to an end, I decided to focus on adding more to my final major project website. I created 7 tabs, a blank home page that will eventually summarise the website and welcome visitors, A context tab for my early production documents, a research tab for my research, Practical skills and presentation tab for all my production work, an evaluation tab for people to easily find my evaluation, a reflection journal tab and finally a contact page for if people have any questions. I also decided on a colour scheme, I chose a nice bright blue to keep the home page eye catching, although I may change this as I think it is a bit too vibrant. I chose Light icy blues for my context page and decided each page would get darker blues to make each one contrast while sticking to an appeasing theme, my Reseach and practical skills pages followed this theme. For my evaluation I chose a nice neon green as I had run out of colours and felt it was a good colour, that still somewhat matched the turquoise, I also made my reflection journal tab a darker shade of green to match the evaluation. Finally, I made my contact page an appeasing cool blue as to not distract too much from the contact information while still keeping the blue and green theme.
30/04/2025
Today I decided to continue work on my FMP website. Over the course of the day I added all my context documents, I first added screenshots showcasing the thought process I had when creating the basis of my project. I then added brief descriptions to explain why I did it this way and how I came to the conclusion. I then did the exact same for my mood board. After posting the screenshots of the mood board, I realised the links were inaccessible so I added links to each document in case the site visitor would like to see the links in my various documents. I then pasted in my project proposal and finished treatment the only thing missing is my production schedule which i will add at the end of the project. After doing that I decided I would start working on my storyboard I didn't get very far with it, but I was able to create 12 panels and describe each one before lesson ended. Over the next 4 days I plan to finally begin work on filming my second piece of animation (cut paper animation).
01/05/2025
I began by drawing up the diagrams for the character models in a very similar way to how I created them for Zane. I also utilised the original diagrams I made for Zane to understand a good rough height for the government. I wanted the government smaller as I wanted to base his appearance on the person who did the voice acting for him, I also added curly hair to the character for this same reason. I also added a hood to match the Lego figure, this time however the hood would always be down. I then traced the character models as separate pieces for me to cut out (like how I did before). Once that was done, I once again cut out the pieces over card and taped copper wire to create my posable dolls.
I then began setting up my recording studio. I decided to use a table in my summer house as I needed somewhere i can easily make dark (for consistent lighting) and a place that would fit my tripod. I then placed a blanket over the desk and some chairs to make the filming area dark, finally I used various heavy objects to keep the blanket stable. After some brief test shots I realised a couple issues with my recording set up. Firstly, I was unable to keep the tripod stationary and after reading the manual figured out the lever had been put in the wrong place. I put the lever in properly and the tripod was working great. I also realised how big of an issue consistent camera angles would be from my previous animation. Because of this I decided to tape the box down on the floor to stop movement, I also taped lines below the tripod so I could have a good idea on if the tripod had been knocked and moved. Finally, I added a cross on the inside of the box to know where my phone should go to keep consistent lighting, I couldn't tape the glass as I would need to remove it to retrieve my phone after each session.
After multiple test shots to make sure i was happy with lighting and position I was ready to animate. I created 9 final shots before realising I would eventually need to create an extra set of legs and arms for each puppet. I decided I would stop animating for today and instead focus on finishing the puppets. I traced each limb as best as I could in an attempt to keep the limbs shape and sizes consistent. I then, taped the extra limbs together and added some tape at the end so they could be removed and replaced when needed.
05/05/2025
On Friday I was only able to get 14 frames of animation due to being busy. Before animating I decided to watch another video on cut paper animation as the day before I had noticed the wire seemed a bit too stiff. After watching the video, I learnt that the wire was in fact too stiff and while copper wires have been utilised for cut paper animation in the past, it is recommended to use a weaker wire for easier possibility. Due to how long making the puppets took and me already creating frames I decided to continue on with copper wire. While animating on Friday I was constantly struggling to keep the puppet from falling apart and I often had to retape the wires as they would sometimes pop out. After animating, I noticed multiple joints of the puppet were weak, so I decided to retape them and then leave them to continue animating the next day. I was also able to use my newly made leg joint for one of the puppets. On Saturday I was able to make 37 frames for my project, animating Zane grabbing and dropping government, which took me roughly 2 hours to make. It was incredibly tedious, and I was constantly getting distracted, but I was happy with my work. During that time, I was able to utilise more of the extra limbs I had created all of which being surprisingly more easily posable than the base bodies, even if only slightly. When flicking through the pictures on my camera I had found that the falling felt way too slow paced compared to the rest of the animation, I wasn't too worried about this however as if anything it would likely make the animation more smooth and if not I could easily remove extra frames. On Sunday I was able to create 71 frames, which took me roughly 4 hours to make. To prepare for my animating I rewatched a Thailand boxing match I had recorded November last year as I wanted a more realistic and semi-Asian inspired fight scene. I then began to animate, it was the same as it had been the previous days, a tedious experience with moments of getting distracted and/or procrastinating and the dolls being very fiddly to move. After a while it started to get late and I decided to continue tomorrow. After the amount of work I did yesterday, I felt very tired and wasn't looking forward to doing it again, I spent most of my morning procrastinating to continue the animation. After a while I did finally push myself to go into the animating and try to grind some frames. I still felt exhausted for most of today and due to that was constantly getting distracted (even more than usual) and was getting barely any work done. It reached a point where I spent more time lying next to my camera and tripod then I did actually making frames. After a while i decided to just go indoors and would try again later in the afternoon. By the time afternoon came i still felt tired and still didn't get much work done. Because of all my procrastination I only managed to make 10 good frames in about 3 hours of work. I've decided I will give myself a break for one or two days to regain my energy for animating. Tomorrow I will upload all footage at college, continue editing my fight scene and catch up on reflection journals.
06/05/2025
Today I added all my cut paper animation frames to a new premiere pro project. I decided to put it in a separate project so I can easily keep track of frames and to not get either animation confused with each other. I then changed the speed to 6 frames per second and watched the footage back to make sure everything is okay. I quickly noticed that multiple frames had been placed in the wrong order, because of this had to zoom into each frame and slowly scroll through them with the keyboard arrow to see where lower numbers had been placed in the wrong area of the timeline. Once I find a lower number, I would have to move frames forward and place the lower number in the correct position. This took around ten minutes before I finally had the timeline in its correct order. Once I was finished and had played the footage back, I then zoomed into the frames to change the falling part of the animation to 12 frames per second. I had to do this as said before because I had created too many frames for the falling animation, making it feel out of pace with the rest of the animation. I also experimented with making the entire animation 12 frames per second to be 100% sure I chose the right speed, having the whole animation 12 frames per second created way too fast of an experience and I quickly reverted most of it back to 6. tomorrow I will do more editing for my animation and will possibly recontinue to animate that afternoon.
12/05/2025
On Wednesday I was very tired and didn't get much work done. On Thursday I finally began to animate again, I animated the characters going to kick getting stuck and punching out, I did this as it is reminiscent to Thai boxing, and I wanted a similar fighting style for my piece. I chose Thai boxing as it was a fighting style I had seen recently and basing it off it would create more natural action. While animating the wires were constantly popping out and the dolls were breaking apart, I tried to keep pushing through and try to hide the wires as much as possible. I then decided to attempt to make the government spin Zane around and launch him. I decided to do this as I thought it would be one last final challenge and I wanted to utilise the other dolls I had made. I did a couple test shots and thought my original idea would work and I then began to properly animate. As the government spun Zane around I would movie him closer and remove body parts to give the illusion of Zane moving further from the camera. Because of removing limbs and the already flimsy tape my puppets were in pieces when I was halfway through the spin. I then decided to take a break from animating for today and decided to retape the puppets and fix them up. I left two of the heads unattached as I wanted to have Zanes body turn before his head meaning I would have to switch heads temporarily. After doing that I went to sleep for the night.
On Friday I continued to animate; after animating the rest of the spin and the government pinning Zane down, I was ready to add the final dialogue scene. To add this, I listened to the clip I liked the most on the camera and played close attention to the time stamps. I found the audio was around 9 seconds long and since I've been animating at 6 frames per second, I targeted myself to get those 60 frames done today. I chose 60 instead of 54 because I wanted an extra footage of content in case the timing doesn't quite work out. After animating the 3 punches and the headbutt I added a bit of a wobble to show the government hurt his head before animating him collapsing on to Zane. Because I was unable to shoot any of the live action scenes I figured I may switch the chronology around and have the cut paper animation be the final scene, ending with Zane dying. Because of this I may not utilise Zanes dialogue in this scene. Despite that, I still wanted to shoot the animation just in case I changed my mind, I was getting really tired so it was a slightly rushed job, but I animated 12 frames of the characters breathing and figured I could play that on repeat for the dialogue. I then added 8 bonus frames to showcase the dimension watch being activated. On Saturday, I recorded all dialogue for Zanes character, it was only two lines and didn't take very long at all.
Today I caught up on my reflection journals and uploaded all the footage I had filmed over the weekend. After listening to all my recorded audio that I had got my friend to do a couple weeks ago, I named each file to make editing more organised and fast. I then uploaded my audio and new footage to my cut paper animation. Once uploaded I changed the speed to 00:00:04 to match the rest of the animation, I removed all gaps and then had to go through the meticulous task of scrolling through each frame to make sure it's in the right place. After reorganising the frames, I began to go through the animation and crop and place the audio into the natural places. Finally, I went through the animation and created a new foley list to figure out what audio I still needed. Tonight I will record all foley audio and shall continue my edit tomorrow morning.
13/05/2025
Last night I recorded all the foley sound effects and was even able to get my friend to send me the audio I needed off them. The recording process went very smoothly however, I was unable to get any of the meat sound effects due to not having raw meat to use, I will download stock audio for this. Creating the audio mostly involved me safely falling on the floor, banging my hand on tables, walls and the floor, smacking shoes and hitting my denim jacket. Today I continued on with my edit, I went through a process off adding all my sound effects and assigning them to different audio tracks to know which effects are which. I then muted all track but one and listened to the whole audio to find the best sounds. I would cut the rest leaving a much smaller and more manageable amount of options. I then added sound effects when needed to my cut paper animation, due to some minor technical issues and going through my audio I only managed to get about a quarter of the footage done. Tomorrow I will try to finish my edit and most of my website.
14/05/2025
Today I finished adding the sound effects and fully made up my mind on keeping the slap sounds to replace stock meat sounds. When looking at the extra footage for my alternate ending, I realised that the animation conveyed something very different to breathing and decided to cut it out. Despite that I ended up liking the dialogue and the animation of the watch and wanted to utilise it in my animation. I was also considering on having no alternate cut version and instead keeping only one animation. While i made up my mind I decided to add sound effects to my Lego animation, originally, I planned to only do sound effects for the collisions, but I realised some of my effects would work perfectly for the figures walking and added sounds for every step the characters made. This didn't take too long at all, I then added white noise to both the Lego animation and cut paper animation to make the sound effects less jarring. I then exported the cut paper animation and decided I would add the final Zane line into the scene, this also meant my placement of the two animations would reverse back to the original plan with the Lego animation coming after the cut paper animation. I did however decide I would still have two versions of the fight with the alternate version having all music removed, I did this as I was really proud of the foley work I made and wanted a version that I could focus on listening to just that. I then made a 3rd premiere pro file in which I combined the exports of the brickmation and the cut paper animation, to avoid the awkward breathing animation in the last frames I simply kept the characters in a still frame until the dialogue ended and then had the watch animation. I then exported the new file. After that it was time to add the music, I relistened to all the music I had chosen for my Lego animation and decided get ready and rock lobster sounded best. I listened to both separately and very closely with the animation playing alongside, eventually I decided get ready's beat matched the action much more closely and decided on that. I created a new premiere pro file and added my music less copy of the fight animation and messed with the timing while adding get ready to the Lego portion. After that it was time to add music for my cut paper animation, I decided to utilise none from my mood board and instead find some new music as I wanted a much more calmer tone for this fight. I decided on either using Glass by Daughter, hope by daughter, Dance of the druids by outlander or Wainamoinen by Faun. I downloaded each song and then slowly compared them to the pacing of the fight scene, many of them weren't quite aggressive enough or were too fast but after lots of comparing I eventually decided on Wainamoinen by Faun as I felt it fit the best. After messing a bit more with timing I was finally finished with the edit, I exported it and uploaded the video to YouTube.
15/05/2025
Today I added the finishing touches to my website. I began by adding every entry to my reflection journal, this took longer than expected as I wanted to colour code every different day and I had to manually upload each photo from the reflection journal. After I finished that I cleaned up the rest of my website, added more detail to my contact page and finally colour coded and linked each tab to my home page. After that it was time to begin my evaluation.