Initially with the animation progress I was trying to work out the style I would go with. My main consideration was how I would introduce different elements of the comic into the animation. As a result I began by experimenting with the initial comic elements and trying to see how I would introduce them.
IDEA 1:
My first idea was to have a globular animation similarly to Synapse which is my main point of inspiration. So I took my drawing of the Iron Age farmer and cows and used a globular shape to swoop in and introduce them. Although I really like the way it introduces the drawing I did consider that the image is very stationary and too detailed to animate in a short space of time,
- Below I like the idea of having different coloured and smaller blobs giving the large blob a bit more motion within the animation.
My second idea was to simplify the style of the cows using my initial drawing as a reference image and then animate them with more motion. As a result below is the development of this idea from sketch into the final product idea. I way prefer the smoothness of this and also feel like it challenges but also builds my animation ability much more.
Looking at Synapse I liked the way in which the animation transitions aren't logical and the characters and sets appear out of blobs that are floating around on the screen from the last item. As a result, I decided to embrace this kind of effortless and lack of logic. I think this will appeal much more to the younger age groups swell because you never know what might appear.
After animating the cows I began thinking about other creatures and elements I needed to incorporate and how I could do this. When looking at my illustrations that were going into the comic I realised the striped on the pigs back looked very similar to the shape the cows jumped out of and decided to play around with this.
- I have added a swooping motion after the cows to introduce the next element of the animation.
The main part of a Roman Road that sets it apart from other roads is how straight it is. As a result, below are a few rough animation gifs playing around with how to exaggerate the straight road whilst also incorporating it into the fluid style of the animation.
Below seems to be the style I have landed on for now. The swooping motion fits into my animation style with a brief pose to exaggerate the road being straight and then it transitioning out of shot again.
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Small notes reminding myself to focus on the direction of the animation and to ensure that it travels in the correct direction and feels full of motion.
Below was the beginning of me trying to workout how to introduced the Iron Age home and then working out not only how to transition into the next scene but also how to maintain the aesthetic I have created for the animation. One of my ideas was to have the smoke from one of the fires emerge and billow out from behind the the hut and within the smoke the next scene.
Ultimately I decided to focus on the shape of the small hut and focus on that. As a result, I wanted the animation to swoop upwards into the shape of the hut with the excess globular shapes to travel through the shape of the hut and outwards.
This was quite a short and easy scene to make due to the fact that, that there isn't much motion in the hut itself. If I have time I would like to add an additional layer over the top to add some motion to the hut when it is established.
The next phase of this animation was having the house transition back out of the shot in preparation of the next scene. Although I liked the idea of the smoke I didn't think it suited the style of the rest of the animation and made the animation feel very flat.
Introducing the crops:
My first idea is to have the crops appear in a similar way to a one of the scenes in 'Synapse' my main influence in this project. This was by having a blob swoop in and then have it billow in the corner with the crops within it. However, in practice the idea actually worked out quite glitchy and wasn't really as effective as I thought it would be. Below are my attempts at this idea.
Below is a roughly sketched animation of another idea of mine. I didn't really liked the first idea of introducing the crops so I decided to do some sketching and ended up with the below gif where the crops swoop into shot and then out again. I really like this idea so I am going to develop it and see if it fits into the animation style.
Below is my attempt at making the sketch a reality which doesn't really work for me. I feel like the delicate nature of the crops doesn't really suit the globular nature of how they are being introduced to the scene. So I am going to continue playing around with it.
After deciding that the above version of the crops didn't work I decided to try a version with the animation of the crops growing into the frame. The outcome is really effective and not only plays on the life cycle of a plant but also looks more fluid and seemless.
The next step of this animation logically was to have the plant to then wilt and vanish. Almost reflecting the full lifestyle of a plant and continue to maintain the seamless style of animation.
Introducing Roman children play fighting with swords.
Maintaining the globular shapes is important at this point now that I have established it.
The below rough animation has a symmetrical blobs swoop into the scene with some motion from the children fighting and then they swoop out again following the direction that the blob was originally travelling in. I really like this idea and am going to attempt to finish it with it looking this way.
Final development of this scene, It actually was allot more difficult to create then originally planned but after a lot of development the scene finally came together cleanly. My main issue was making the scene where they are fighting last long enough for people to recognise what is happening.
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I wanted to animate some of the games etc... that Romans would have played. In my comic I have two men playing dice and I wanted to incorporate the intricate and strangely styled dice into my animation.
To create a realistic motion I really had to label the background to ensure that it had the right pace when it was bouncing and then was speeding up at the roll at the end. Annotating an animation like this has become very useful throughout this project so I can maintain the fluidity of motion.
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