Planning
I wasn’t sure what I wanted my emotion to be mainly that it would be something around distraction, burnout or getting overwhelmed and to plan that I drew out possible shapes how they would change or move so that I could take into consideration the 12 principles of animation and I ended up with distraction as my chosen word/emotion. We were encouraged in class to make a list of the principles and write how our animations will use them I got a bit confused if I’m being honest so I turned it into a list to summarise each of the principles so I could remember them better, looking back I think I got a bit overwhelmed with the idea of writing while my brain was in a visual thinking mode and didn’t really know how to puts my thoughts to paper.
First Try
My initial plan was to have shapes drag the main shape back so it would not get to its destination and would have to start again, I wanted this to be linked to how when I get distracted it’s like something pulling me back to the start of whatever task I’m doing I did try to plan out the movement and the pacing of how fast or slow the shapes move. I wanted the triangle shape (the distraction) to be airy and random because distractions to me are more things that kind of float into my head but grab my attention fast so I tried to measure out more frames as the shape ascends and less frames as it descends to make it faster. However I kept getting stuck on where to go further after the two shapes met, in class when I showed my first very incomplete draft someone suggested another approach instead of the distraction setting the shape back the two could bounce off each other and throw each other off track, this definitely made things a bit easier for my brain to compute and tried drawing out lines to help imagine how the shapes would move.
Issues I faced were mainly to do with colouring in the shapes every time I tried to fill using the bucket tool it would read the shape I made sure that I was on the right layer and the right colour layer but I still wasn’t working so I tried searching up what issue could be and one of the ideas was that it could be that the shape isn’t connected when I checked it was connected but I noticed that because of the brush, I used the end strokes had a lighter opacity, I assumed this was the problem but I knew I wouldn’t have time to go through and fix each frame and then colour them all so I decided I’d keep the shapes unfilled and assign colours to the outline instead which I still think works fine. I ended up going with a light green colour nothing too intense so it could inflict a feeling of calm and stability and an orange colour for the blob as the orange encourages a sense of enthusiasm and optimism, I felt this helped show that the blob was determined and enthusiastic as it moves forward giving it some character whereas for the triangle shape the colour I chose was grey and it was neutral and represents that a distraction can be anything and doesn’t have any intent it simply falls and invades your focus. For the sound I wanted something that would also be calming but would be easy to manipulate, when I found this audio I thought it fit very well it reminded me of a fly or a bee buzzing from afar to then when it comes close to you it becomes annoying and distracts you. I then also made the buzz louder for the blob when it shows a little frustration at the end.
Final edit
after getting my first set of feedback I definitely felt less stressed and that this project was more manageable so I’m very grateful for the feedback. I was definitely happy with how it turned out in the end I really like how the sound works with the actions of the shape and how well I managed to use the principles in my work especially ease in and ease out it really helped give weight to the shapes. I think if I were to work on it more I’d go back and use a better brush so that I can finish the colouring properly and I’d maybe experiment with maybe changing the colour of the shapes or the background ones they hit each other to show the imbalance the distraction caused. A popular piece of feedback I got from my class was that I could try making the shapes bigger so that it would be more clear and that too much empty space would maybe make you feel like you’re expecting something else to happen which I agree with, making the shapes bigger would add more clarity. I think I mainly started off small because of my nerves when starting this project.