I've decided the way I will move forward with my animation is to just start animating - but kind of in an animatic style. I realised that if I just sit down and plan it out for too long it might be harder for me in the long run to start animating. This is usually not the way you would go on about it, since you would usually have storyboards and animatics to help you plan out what you want and when you want. I believe that method, in this current situation, would get me stuck more than I would like to.

I will create some key frames to get myself going, sometimes it will be to get a certain scene down and see what it would look and feel like, and sometimes just to kind of have a "sketch" of a scene I would like to have included but not forget about when I move onward.

I will be using a very simple animation style - inspired by Peanuts. Obviously the drawing style will be my own, but Peanuts utilize a quite simple and charming layout in their animations. They focus mainly on the characters with the background being quite simple and sometimes just simple colours or an item.

Using Storyboarder I tried out a scene for my animation and I believe it will help me to see what elements I want to keep and build on, and what I may need to reconsider and eventually take out or replace in the future.

With Procreate on my iPad I am experimenting with some shots/scenes that I want to be included in my animation - this is a scene where I'm trying to show her falling/drowning and when there is a light I will be going for a "trying to reach the surface" scene where she is struggling to catch a breath.

Showing that everything that knocks you further down/deeper will make it harder to catch that breath of air (catch a break) bit the light is supposed to symbolise that there is always something good out there to either distract you or keep your head above water.

I thought maybe this scene here would be good for the opening sequence where she is walking to the bus stop, where the bully walks onto the bus before she does, and when she is walking towards the back end of the bus the bully trips her along the way and makes everybody laugh at her.

updated animation 14.02

progress week 01.03 - 05.03

Cleaned up a bit and added some frames to it and finally managed to export it to a mp4 to see how long it was. On my iPad it said 15 seconds,

Week 8 - Rush

This is essentially the first "part" done. Each part is going to be 20 seconds each so after some fine tuning, and more frames l managed to reach 20 seconds. There is some more fine tuning to be made as some frames are still a bit sketchy looking and needing to add some more frames to certain sections to make it look more fluid.

I've started sketching out a couple frames (near the end) for the "part 2" of the animation that I just made a frame called "Act 2" on, so that anything past that point goes toward the second part/story.

Current goals

Added some more in betweens to smooth out certain scenes, as well as key framed the next parts. This (above) is not the newest update, since I have been unable to export lately.

But from what is seen, I've added a swing scene where she just kind of rocks on the swing - giving a kind of a loneliness feeling of her not having friends, then panning to the bully talking with people to show the differences.

After some feedback from friends, they told me to add some transition scenes to not make it look like they're "teleporting" and would make the animation more fluid. I've also added a "school bell" to the animation for when I eventually add scenes involving being inside of the school building. I want to make it obvious to the viewer where the scene is taking place, and will also add a way for them to tell it's inside a "cafeteria".

At first I didn't think of adding a "getting on the bus" scene, but I realised I needed to let the viewers know that the bully got onto the bus before she did. Or else it would be confusing to have shown the bully at the bus stop, then suddenly inside the bus and being sat down and the one tripping her in the end.

I searched the website "freesound.org" for ambiance sounds, laughter and background music to fit to my animation as it was needed. There was a ton of different laugh tracks as well as a lot of music in general so it took some time to find out what I wanted.

• Wanted some cheery background music for the Bus scene before she falls

• Sound for when she hits the floor

• Happy music for when she is approached by a stranger to comfort her

Will be using Premier Pro to add the music and sounds into the animation

Final Animation

After my initial notes on what kind of sounds and music I wanted to use - I ended up using a main background track to set the mood and added just a couple sound effects on top of it. I decided I wanted it to be very minimal and not have too much of a takeaway from the actual animation itself. I also took a long time between last update till now to post anything - mainly because of other deadlines but also because I was so focused it kind of slipped my mind.

Bullying still continues on to this day, it might've evolved into something that we now call "Cyber-bullying" with how technology has severely advanced the past decade or two, but at the very end there still exists bullying "in person" to this day. I wanted to include some examples of cyber bullying through animation, but with time and a decision to keep things more fluid, I ended up leaving it out. I thought I would mention it instead that nowadays what is more common is bullying over the internet, with anonymity.

People can hide behind their computers or phones and comment/say everything they want without the targeted person/people knowing exactly who their are or even where they live. This make people think that there are no repercussions to their actions online, because they're "free" to do what they want.

Using 2D for my animation I felt was a good idea for what I had in mind. It makes it easier for me to show and tell the story in my own personal best way, and it is the medium I currently prefer working in.

End Thoughts/ "Report"

When I initially started this project I had a very clear idea of what I wanted the theme of the animation to be, but not how to execute it. I had tons of feedback and suggestions from not only my tutor but also others and I think in the end it was a 50/50 on whether that feedback was helpful or just made my head more jumbled. I was supposed to have a showcase of 3 different scenarios, but I ended up wanting to make it a little bit more of a connected story. So I had 2 scenarios picked out in the end and tied them together as a school day with a good ending. I felt having it be sad all the way through was a bit much, and felt like adding a positive ending made it feel like it had a turn point like most stories have. Although my "breaking point" isn't that obvious but also is very late - having her break into tears near the end was kind of my idea of a high point in the animation.

I chose to use Procreate in the end for animating as it was super simple for me to use and the interface is very "beginner friendly", when the "animation assist" (timeline) is applied all you need to do is keep adding another frame to create your animation. What I ended up discovering down the line is that those frames become layers, but at the same time their own separate frame. Thus colouring in the animation proved to be difficult. In the end I didn't mind this as I really liked having the animation in "black and white" and very sketchy-looking. It adds a certain charm to it and also having simpler or not fully drawn frames I find added a certain character to it as well. Although there are some places I wish I had paid more attention to that aren't just "not fully drawn" frames but thankfully to me I was happy with how it currently is. With more time and effort on my part I would've liked to have a fully fleshed out animation but I already feel like the animation is already a bit too fast paced in my honest opinion. I was trying to get as fluid as possible with the animation movements and adding transitions - I even got a lot of feedback from my friends watching the animation for me and giving their honest opinions about it, and comment on additions.

At some point after Easter Break I got really stuck and completely art blocked. Although I had my "timeline" set out for me, my notes and friends giving me feedback, I would just sit and stare at my work for hours on end. Eventually I ended up having to focus on other modules/work, and as the progress for that was going really well I got my motivation back to animate. I ended up having to crunch a little bit at the end but being motivated and excited to work on it again really helped and I didn't have to stress about having less time than planned. I also really was enjoying the positive feedback from my friends who watched my progress at this time, and it honestly kept my head up the last couple of weeks.

Now having gone through this process and being able to think back on how things went, I am really happy of how things turned out in the end. It makes me able to take this year and bring it with me into the future. I now have an idea of how much time I should be spending on certain phases of a project like this - and I would make a better effort to have a more detailed "layout" of my plan and an extensive storyboard to work with. Planning ahead and in general is something that I really struggle with, but hopefully is something I can get better with, by taking the time frames of each phase of this project with me to the next one. Thinking about it now I maybe would've written a little story about a girl who was bullied, or even taking a whole different theme and went with a more fantasy themed story to make it better for me creatively. With the current story and theme that I set for myself, limitations were kind of set, or at least I felt like it was. I suspect might've caused my initial art block once I reached a certain point into my animation.

Resources

https://freesound.org/browse/ : All the music and sounds are from this site!

List of used songs/sounds:

Background song - "True Love Piano Tune.wav", by ITheRealGooglekatClaire

"Bus arriving and Departing", by bone666138

Laughter -

"Footsteps, Concrete, A.wav" by InspectorJ

"Body fall_01.wav", by deleted_user_2104797

"Girl sighs", by BlueSiren

"School bell", by thecityrings

"Spilling water On The Floor", by altfuture

"Female Sobbing", by Idalize

Outro song - "Celtic Positive Intro", by DDmyzik

Tools:

Procreate

iPad Pro 11"

Adobe Premier Pro