This week was a bit hectic as I had a few interviews for my part-time work. I also had to apply to a few more roles. I could not get time to read the books I got from the library, but I’m planning to read them over the weekend. I also need to brainstorm about my final term project and the storyline that I’ll be aiming at.
Unit 1.2 Design for Animation Narrative
The week started with Nigel introducing us to the auteur theory. He explained to us in depth about how it evolved and that initially it was only about the director, but as time progressed it became more about the people involved in the background. We learnt about auteurism and Nigel showed us a bunch of films for us to understand the theme behind the film and figure out the director’s style or any other prominent person’s style to figure out the auteur of that particular film. He also told us to figure out an auteur by ourselves and justify why we chose that person.
I chose Kevin Feige as an Auteur. He is a famous producer who is well known for the Marvel cinematic universe. He has been on the credits for most Marvel Films over the past 13 years. I find him to be an auteur because of his continuity theme and the fact that he interrelates most of the movies to sync with each other. Kevin is the main architect because of his deep knowledge of Marvel, mainly through comic books. I find his art direction and style is always related to superhero action for the most part, but he is always able to maintain the comic book story arc with all of the Marvel characters that are involved in them, especially the popular ones that the audience wants to see.
Unit 1.1 Animation Fundamentals
Serra taught us about setting up a level sequencer and setting up our cine camera shots in the scene. We learnt about how to properly name and add a sequencer to the level and then add multiple cameras and shots into the sequencer. It was a bit confusing but once I got the hang of it, I was able to animate basic camera movement. We loaded a sample scene in Unreal Engine and we worked inside that project.
The next day George gave us a brief about the next assignment. It was regarding animating a ball with a tail and we had to properly apply animation principles of anticipation and follow through majorly. We had to watch squirrel videos for reference and it was fun! Later on George reviewed our pendulum assignments and he told me the feedback that I had to incorporate. I had to get the flow of the pendulum swing right, especially at the end. I noted down the key things for me to improve on, especially spacing and timing. For next week we had to submit in blocking an animation of a ball with tail jumping about.