My Experience about observing one of the Animation 2D classes in RIT

As I was permitted to observe one of animation and film class- Animation 2D (storyboard SOFA 627) in RIT last week, I am going to talk about my experience and reflection about this class.

The content of this class is about giving peer feedback to each other’s Animation storyboard which is an 1:00-2:30 long animatic with key frames,  background music, and dialogue.  According to Wikipedia,”A storyboard is a graphic organizer in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence.” and it is also called “Animatic”.

Before the class begin, each student of this class should submit  their assignments to the professor and then the professor was going to exhibit their video projects one by one during the class  via the slide. In the beginning of the class, the professor encouraged the students  to be the first one to show the video. Some students raised their hands almost at the same time so the professor had to choose the one who was the exactly first. A girl with purple hair demonstrated her video first and I felt that she is confident with her works because she has very excellent drawings and a clearly structure of storytelling. After the presentation of each person, other students were all actively to give their comments or suggestions.  The professor critiqued to the student later that based on his professional perspective as well as his mature experience. The student, who was given suggestions, had positive respond to the professor and other students by answering their questions in patience.  The whole class interacted with each other every effectively which established a kind of  easy  and interesting atmosphere of study. In the end, the professor concluded the performance of the students and let them develop their animation story in  further and deeper way.

Throughout the whole class, I can see every student  fully prepared his or her work and they cared about each other, support each other as well as inspired each other to better their works. The quality of their works were amazing which reflected their positive attitude and enthusiasm on the assignments from the professor. Besides the behavior of the students, the professor gave a very professional and humorous lecture to the students by encouraging the students to interact with each other and inspire them to be creative base on the professional animation principles.

I think the most difficult part for me is to  create a clearly storytelling in a professional and effective method because, as far as I know, animation is one of the most complicated major which needs the students not only have the good drawings but has the ability to organize a story through logic and aesthetic angle. I think I should to accumulate the basic animation fundamentals as much as I can to prepare my major study well. One thing I feel happy is that I was able to understand 90 percent of what did the professor said during the class which was much better than I expected. I believe that with great efforts and strong passion, I will be better everyday and finally be qualified to take major study. I am looking forward to that day.

Approaching an Academic Assignment

Pre Production For Animators
Film and Animation
Sofa 627 – 01

Week Seven: Final Story Boards

Assignment:

Taking what you’ve learned from the feedback on your thumbnails, create a finished set of storyboards for your concept.

Requirements:

Use the storyboard template posted in the week Seven My Courses Folder.

Frame Count: You will be using the minimum time frame of two-minutes and 30 seconds for this film, and nothing longer than 4:30. You need to create a minimum of 30-60 frames per minute of action. This will mean a minimum total of 75 frames, for a 2:30 length animation.

Storyboard Notation:

Following the structure of the Harvey Birdman board below (image also posted in week seven folder) include the following notations for each page:

• Title

• Page Number

And these notations for each panel:

• Scene Number (Usually determined by everything that happens in one place during the same time)

• Shot Number: (Dictated by new camera position)

• Panel Number

• Transition in (note how we are editing into this shot. Is it a fade-in, a cut or something else?)

• Action (Briefly describe the action)

• Dialogue (Note the dialogue if there is any)

• Transition out

• Notes / Camera (If needed, describe any camera moves or other shot details that someone else would need to know to complete it properly)

Grading Rubric

Your boards will be evaluated by the following criteria

Clarity and Neatness:

Storyboard is easy to read and all the elements are so clearly written or drawn that another could create the presentation if necessary.

Storytelling

The images used tell the story clearly and effectively, and help convey drama, emotion and character. For narratives, an understanding of the three-act story structure is shown.

Staging

The frames are designed to lead the eye to the important things in the frame. The frames designs are interesting and dynamic when that is helpful to the story.
Your use of camera positions, shapes, character poses and negative space helps convey
the emotion, meaning and atmosphere of your shots and scenes and are motivated by the story point.

Screen Direction / Screen Side

You scenes maintain a consistency for which direction characters and objects move and which side of the screen characters are on, particularly when there is more than one character in a scene.

Required Elements

You have produced the minimum number of frames, and all your pages include the proper notation for the page and the panels.

My assignment plan:

In this Animation 2D assignment, the most important aspect is How to use storyboard to exhibit the story which we should draw the main scenes on the paper or use PS (software) to complete the story we want to tell. This is the first step of creating an Animation. It is just like  before we are going to write an essay, we should reflect on what the story going to process, so we need to create a outline in order to make the story well organized. After this storyboard, we will use it to make a motional storyboard which we called it “animatic”which also is an important part we should pay attention to.Furthermore, there are many strategies for storyboard such as the format, labels, usage in Harvey Birdman board which the professor given me in the assignment document as a example. 

Specifically I am going to make a detailed plan to show that how to approach this assignment.

 

1, Questions for the professor :

A. How to grasp the time of one action accurately?

B. How to design the scenes to help the story exhibit clearly?

C, what is the due day of this assignment? (I think this assignment should be finished before the day when I observed to the class which he allowed me to attend, but I still should ask the professor to make sure what the due day is.)

2, The most difficult part:

Designing a scenes and make it fluency to tell the story; furthermore, drawing the picture clearly which can create a clear story to the audience.

3, Before I actually start the project, I should done:

A. Write a story first.

B. Draw the whole character designs in 3 angles which is front view, side view and the other  view. ( could be rough drafts)

c, Design the background scene we need to use in the Animation.(also drafts)

d, Searching for some appropriate music , dialogue , sounds and background music for the film; furthermore, if it’s possible I can make a music or sounds and dialogue through the software by myself or I can ask a musician student to help me about this part.

E, Referring to a typical storyboard which the professor given me to learn how to draw a storyboard and make the signs on it.(title, page number, shot number, panel number, transitions, action, dialogue, transition out)

4, The steps will be taken to complete this assignment:

a, choose a style which can decide what the method we should use in drawing the pictures for the film.

b, Think about the interest transitions between two scenes.

c, Make sure the timing is appropriate to the actions.

5, How much time will I need to complete this assignment:

If I would not in busy, I would take at least 1-2 weeks to finish this assignment. If I would be busy in other things together, maybe I would take more longer time to do it.

6, How much specificity and depth is necessary to be appropriate for this assignment:

a, Understanding how to draw the actions, postures and expressions for the characters in a right way.

b, Some  ingenious transitions will be created in order to make the scenes more professional and brilliant.

c, The story also should be interesting , have a lot of critical thinking and influential idea.

7, When I will finished the animatic, I am going to show it to my classmates, friends and professors to ask them give me a piece of advice and feedback to help me improve the assignment.

 

 

 

 

Summarization – 3 Academic Articles of Visual design and Animation 2D

1.How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation

My Summarization:

Heuristic evaluation involves having a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles (the “heuristics”). Different people can look for disparate usability problems because it’s not easy for single individual to find all the usability problem in an interface. Heuristic evaluation needs individual evaluator look over the interface carefully. After that when the whole evaluations are completed by the evaluators who allowed to communicate and have their findings aggregated. This procedure is significant because it will ensure independent and unbiased evaluations from each evaluators. The author described difference between heuristic evaluation and traditional user testing, and how does heuristic evaluation do in user interface design. The benefits from heuristic evaluation are the findings of usability problems to increase their understanding by comparing their own evaluation reports.

The author conducted this research to show the heuristic evaluation was very important and widely used in user interface design. As the software to be used in-house and sold on the open market, the values which were found in each problem  can be fixed before the software ships.

In my opinion, I think the heuristic evaluation is necessary being used in user interface design. It is not only can fixed the problem which was found by evaluators but can effect the level of sales. In addition, the users and other evaluators will have a better experience by using the applications and give them a great review rating.

( The problems, for instance, during the process that users were using the software, some potential problem would come out, such as some buttons are wrong or even the operation is no reaction etc. Before a product came into the market,  experts should test the product many times and then it could be sold to the customers.)

References:

Nielsen, J. (1995, January 1). How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation. In nngroup. Retrieved November 29, 2016, from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-to-conduct-a-heuristic-evaluation/

The following part is for some people who didn’t undertand the professional defination and want to know more details about Heuristic Evaluation.

My explaination:

A. Defination:

Heuristic evaluation is a method that used to assess the usability of the software, this way uses a set of relatively simple,general, instructive and heuristic rule to proceed an availability of evaluation.

B. This method has several characteristics:

1, Interactive experts use the heuristic rules as the guide to evaluate the element of the user interface whether or not approprite to the principle.

2, Interactive experts use a method of role playing to simulate the circumstance that the users are using the product, and during this process, they can find out the potential problems.

3, The number of the interactive expert are not fixed.

4, The cost of this method is relatively low, and it’s very effective.So,it also has another name called”Economic Evaluation”.

5,  But the accuracy is not high.

 

C. Process:

1, The observer explain the object of evaluation .

2, The evaluator understand or use the object of evaluation.

3, Proceeding the evaluation

4, The group discussion.

 

D. Common Heuristic Rules:

1, The system State is visible.

2,The system matches to the real world with users.

3, the users can control with freedom.

4,Consistency and standardization.

5,Error prevention.

6, cognization rather than memorization.

7, The flexibility and efficiency of uses

8, The design with refinement and Beautifulness.

9, Helping the users identify,diagnose and correct the mistakes.

10, helpless and documentation.

 

2. Walt Disney improves on J.R. Bray in Animation Production 

My Summarization:  

During the period of the Animation industry industrial, Bray’s studio brought new processes in animation production to light, by adopting a scientific management model. Bray’s studio was not unlike a factory, as Crofton mentioned on, “assembly-line,” animation. Bray achieved improvements in production efficiency and cost reduction by clarifying divisions between management and labor. Bray was the boss and the others were his lower-status workers. Bray also advocated the divisions of labor, specified boss and “inspectors” who supervised the rest of the staff. At the top of the management hierarchy were the skilled animators, and below them were the “cheap men.” Effective management, was considered knowing what you wanted your workers to do and seeing they follow through in the “best” and cheapest way. Adopting the management style into the animation industry also exposed many shortcomings, in the quality and in the lack of artistic innovation. However, Walt Disney, a man with a revolutionary vision and his animation studio would challenge many of Bray’s methods by  more focused on the quality of  animation and improve his company’s structure through dividing the employees into different departments according to their own specialties and skills. Besides the development of a new management method, Disney also found new innovations to improve the quality of his animation by brought “pencil tests” and storyboards into the workflow.

Although Walt’s studio system was based on Taylor’s scientific management, his goal shifted from increasing profit to improve quality. Walt accomplished this hiring more skillful labor and specializing them into specific departments according to their talent. His positive-participation leadership also helped unitize and motivate his employees. He did those improvements on Bray’s management because he had different objectives comparing with Bray. The quality of the animation for him was as important as the efficiency so that he could never sacrifice it. In fact, without these innovations and Walt’s insistence on the quality of the animation, Disney would not have become the influential force it is today.

The author wrote this paper was to show the development of Disney’s process from the Bray process he learned from Lutz’s Animated Cartoons as well as how Disney solved the problems introducrd by the Bray process.

 

 

References:

Deng, K. (2016, April 5). Walt Disney improves on J.R. Bray in Animation Production. , 1-3.

 

3, Animation Cartoons of Warner Brother

My Summarization:

Warner Brothers’ short cartoons began to dominate the animation industry in the 1940s while Disney’s focused on feature-length films. The way of Warner’s cartoon became successful was brilliant as it created more lasting star characters like Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, The Road Runner, etc., than any rival studio.  Warner’s success was due to the unique comic personality of their shorts, which mainly depended on topical humor and contemporary themes, making their cartoons more humorous instead of just cute. A second part of their success were creative directors such as Chuck Jones, who pursued the extraordinary, and created their own style in the late 1940s. The last but not least point was the budget strategy at Warner Brothers, were directors played with their budgets, which departed from Disney’s own management style.

Although Walt Disney had dominated the American cartoon industry during the 1930s, Warner Brothers, who initially imitated the more popular studio experienced a process of evolution to create their own style. Undoubtedly, Walt Disney is an excellent artist and leader who constantly made innovations and took risks to bring about a higher quality in his films. But Schlesinger was not an artist so he gave his directors more space to make their own funny and creative cartoons. The most talented and innovative director, Chuck Jones, used his smart budget strategy and creative direction of film that allowed Warner Brothers to surpass Disney in the creation of funny and innovative shorts. Warner Brothers’ style of entertainment, film direction and budget strategy helped them change from another common imitator to the unique history making studio that it is known for today.

The author was trying to explain how did Warner Bros do to devlop their funny cartoon style based on Desiney’s through the perspective of companies’ s structure, personnel as well as budgets.

References:

Deng, K. (2016, April 5). Animation Cartoons of Warner Brother. , 1-3.

 

About Me

Make something great 

Not because it will sell.

Not because it’s on the test.

Not because it’s your job.

Merely because you can.

This shot article from Seth Godin is my favorite words which deeply reflects my sense of life.

Since I was a child, I engendered so enormous interest in animation, such as The Lion King, first released in 1994. I have been deeply attracted by the engrossing story, characters with attitude and talent, vivid pictures and sweet music. From that time, animation became an indispensable part of my everyday life. It ignited my desire to pursue a study related fine arts. After my graduation from my primary school, I have embarked on a professional study in arts for ten years. At Dalian No. 15 High School, a nationally known art school, I systematically acquired fundamental skills in sketch, color, and both Chinese and International art development. I focused my efforts in art and design, and after graduation, I was accepted by the Luxun Academy of Fine Arts, one of the top eight arts academies in China. During the four years study of art history, theory, painting, photographing, graphic design, 2-D design ,and visual design  etc., I gradually developed a keen interest in original painting and character design, and so longed for a more profound vision to stimulate my passion and potential.

Five years ago, I have already decided to study in the US but for some reason I had to give up. The first reason is the tuition which is too high for me, I cannot afford it at that time. my family were experiencing a hard time while I was going to graduate from my college.My major in college is write and direct for film. I was also interest in 2D Animation at the same time but the department of animation was just established soon which had limited  resources of faculty and equipments. In addition, the courses were also not fit on me so I decided to mainly focus on  the filmmaking which brought a lot of fun to me and I was gradually facinated by movie cutting. Pursuing graduate study of Film and Animation (2D) has been a never-withering goal in my mind. The animation industry in my hometown was in its leanest pitch at that time. Thus I decide to move to Shanghai, the most international metropolis of China, as a video editor. Initially, I felt excited because everything is fresh to me espesially the night life which was totally arractive for young people. I thought I would stay here for a long time but my mind was definitely changed after 6 months. I did most of the video edition work for every project but got the lowest salary each month. The manger seemed to treat me as a cheap labor and he just care about the profit that the company will gain. I lost my passion from the job which was repeated day by day. I was lost my way in this city. I thought it was the time to start over for my life. There was a day, My best friend who lives in US now called me and we talked for a very long time about her life in America which reminded me of my dream to study in the US five yeas ago. I thought if the fire was still burning in my heart, I would not let it go again. I should go to America and learn what I want to do in this country which gathered a lot of different people with different culture. Until this summer when I arrived at NYC which made me feel like a dream just come true. I want to be great in this new world with my whole family and friends’ supports.

I have already stayed in Rochester for four months. It is a small village but lively and quiet.  I enjoy the warm sunshine,  fresh air as well  as the cute squirrels dancing on the grassland. I live in comfortable apartment with  kind neigoubors . I was so excited to start my new life in this place. However, everything would not always go well especially as a foreigner lived in an unfamiliar place. The biggest problem is language. Although I was always talk to people around me positively but I still cannot express what I exactly want to people. And it really took my time to understand what people said to me. I cannot even catch up with the professor of my english class . I was afraid of receiving the phone call from the bank or the insurance company because it was difficult fo me to understand what they talked about. The most funny thing was that it was difficult for me to choose the salad from the menus so I had to order the honey muster every time.

As my English class went well, I met some classmates here and also made some new friends and teachers in ELC, the problems were getting easier to deal with. In the beginning of  the Autumn, I joined a picnic with my lovely friends and teachers of ELC. We talked about culture, life and played games together which gave me an unforgettable experience  in my life. I believe RIT is the place where I can pursue my passion, realize my goals, and expand my creativity. I am confident that with great effort, motivation and commitment, my academic aspirations will be well within my reach. I hope I will apply for the VCD MFA degree of RIT next year successfully.