Unit 5: Investigating audio production and technology
Unit 6: Investigating visual production and technology
Unit 7: Investigating interactive media production and technology
Intent: To produce a "creature comforts" style animation for a piece of audio, challenging your creativity, theoretical knowledge and animation skills
Implementation: Through practical development
Impact: Short animation appropriate for your portfolios. An awareness of age-related stereotypes. Ability to translate dialogue into engaging animations, understanding of how animation can be used to challenge stereotypes and promote inclusivity.
Soft skills: Professionalism, collaboration, time-keeping, creativity, problem solving
Industry: This challenge models working for a client in the creative field
SMSC: Understanding of the 2010 Equality Act
Context:
The College are creating a year long campaign that promotes equality, diversity and inclusion throughout the College environment. The College have named this #StartNewConversations to promote inclusion in the College whilst also encouraging more conversations between students and staff at the College. Each month has it's own theme of a protected characteristic within the Equality Act, 2010. We are looking for student work to showcase each monthly theme, with the first theme being age.
Your animations will form part of this! You will be animating short audio clips of staff and students being interviewed. These will then be used throughout the college and social media. Every person was asked the question "What stereotype do you think exists about your generation?".
What do I do?
Listen to the clips, fill out the form and vote for the piece of audio you want to animate the most!
As well as the original Creature Comforts, animating more natural dialogue has become really popular. Taking dialogue and using animation to bolster or alter the context can be really powerful! With the clips being relatively small and the audio's origin already being popular it can be a great way of promoting your own work too.
What do I do?
Look at some clips below for inspiration but also find and share your own examples.
Your animation must:
Use one of the pieces of audio provided
Be exported at 1920 x 1080p
Not enforce negative stereotypes themselves (Creature Comforts is playful with its animations, it is not hurtful or cruel to the original audio)
Your animation can:
Be any medium you like
Be any framerate you like (12 fps recommended)
Your animation should:
Be as creative as possible
Play with the audio (someone younger could be a tadpole, older an ancient tree, etc. The best creature comforts are playful with the audio, using the animation to enhance the interview or add additional story)
Not worry about animating the question (unless you really want to), focus on the answer!
How to challenge stereotypes:
1- Call out any prejudice or stereotypesÂ
2- Question where these perspectives come from.
3- Inform them as to why the perspective may be harmful and engage in conversation with them
Getting Started
What do I do?
Listen to the audio you've been given and start to think about what you might do with it. Play around with character, actions, etc. Once you've settled on a couple you're enjoying, have a chat with your lecturers and get some feedback.
Developing
What do I do?
You should now have the audio and an idea you're excited about. Fantastic! Start developing your idea. Build up your animation: storyboard, animatic, roughs, keyframes, inbetweens, colour, lip sync etc.
Make sure you are:
Building up in stages
Saving regularly and backing up your project file to your google drive
Sharing your progress with the class, animation is collaborative and we should all be encouraging each other to produce the best animations possible
What do I do?
If you feel your animation is finished, gather feedback on what else you can do to take it even further. This piece should be looked at as a portfolio piece, embrace the challenge and keep going!