Animation

A Duck, A Window, & A Sandwich

Bryan Newman, 8th grade.

Drakes Creek Middle School

Animation

The first step to my planning process was thinking about what I wanted the video to be about. I already had a couple of ideas in my head of what I wanted to make, but I kept saying to myself that I wanted my animation to be unique, like something no one has really done yet. So I eventually settled on a duck that travels through different universes, and in every universe, his art style changes. Once I had that idea, I went and planned out the story more and wrote a storyboard. 

I wanted my art to be unique, so I chose a variety of art styles to use. I included multiple art styles such as silent film, picasso, my little brother’s art style, and fancy. The amount of detail I put into the video is extremely overwhelming and it took me over 100 hours to get even halfway through. I tried everything I could to make every universe different and I did things like use different brushes and experiment with different colors.

I used Procreate and iMovie to create my animation. I chose procreate to make my animation because it has a great deal of tools to help with digital animation, and I chose iMovie to take all my animation clips to put them all in one video because they are really good with editing and sound effects.

First I planned everything out. I brainstormed animation ideas and considered things that may be funny and interesting to include. I asked some of my friends for ideas of universes that I could include until I finally had a decent idea of what I wanted to make. I then created a storyboard to look back at so I could know exactly what I was making. I had things in the storyboard that helped me know which way the camera was facing and the sound effects that would be included.

Then I began the animation process. The animation alone took me well over 100 hours to create every camera shot. My process in summary was taking every panel in my storyboard and animating it all in chronological order. The tricky part started when I got to the part where he jumped in the window and into the universes because each universe was unique and had their own textures and specific colors. In his last dimension, you can pause it whenever you want and you’ll see all the detail I put into every millisecond, including the 3D duck that I created in a 3D modeling app. 

Next I uploaded it all to iMovie. This is where I did all of my editing to combine each animation piece to make it into one video. I did things like shorten videos, add filters, and most importantly; add sound effects. This may have been the trickiest part of it all because finding all the perfect sound effects that would fit and sound right took an eternity. I also had to do a final voice over for the duck. Finally, I added the finishing touches. I reviewed the video multiple times to check for errors and other mistakes. I made sure I had credits to list all of the songs I used. I showed it to my family to see what they thought of it, and get any feedback that would improve my video. I then reviewed it a couple of more times until I settled that it was ready. 

What inspired my animation was the idea of traveling through different universes and changing art style so that each universe was unique in its own way. I also really liked the style of old cartoons and how their eyes would just pop out of their sockets, and I tried to apply some of that to my video.

List of music & sound effects 

String quintet in E major

Funny background music

Evolution

Claves

Monkey machine

Road to glory

Images I used at 1:18-1:26

https://creazilla.com/media/png-image/841964/ducks

https://www.deviantart.com/themarioman56/art/Goose-846063444

https://www.flickr.com/photos/md9/3287379544

https://www.deviantart.com/absurdwordpreferred/art/Window-transparent-PNG-163124311