ANIMATION - EVALUATION‘JEREMY THE MONKEY’

Mel Ruvolo

Sunday, 29 June 14

Technical Quality Walk Cycle

The walk cycle I created worked well in the sense that it was made in simple slide by slide animation instead of a 3D structured animation. This makes it very jumpy but was the sketched theme i was going for.

Parallax Scrolling

My three layer parallax scrolling background worked effectively with the walk cycle to create a well structured scenery which also moved at a consistent speed to match my character Jeremy. It ran smoothly as each layer had a different speed to separate the background from foreground.

Shot Types

I used a minimal amount of shots because it was a simple and short sequence. I repeated a long shot of Jeremy in the setting of an island and also various close ups so that I could focus on detail and enhance Jeremy’s facial features.

Snappy Motion

The snappy/ jerky motion does give it a slight amateur look, but I decided to purposely use this theme to give the animation a sketched style to match with the background’s drawn features.

Sunday, 29 June 14

Creative QualityCharacterisation

From the portrayal of Jeremy the monkey in my animation he carry’s mainly human characteristics, which was easy to create as he is shaped after a monkey. As he is the main and only character in my animation there is no distraction from his actions making him centre of attention and the humour of the sequencer.

Script

As it is such a short sequence which included no dialogue at all, a script was not needed. Instead I created a storyboard to refer to.

Sunday, 29 June 14

Professional Influences and Comparisons

James Davis is an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the highly successful comic strip Garfield, which has been published since 1978 and grew to become the world's most widely syndicated comic strip. Davis's other comics work includes Tumbleweeds, Gnorm Gnat, U.S Acres and a strip about Mr. Potato Head.

From Jim Davis’s artwork I have incorporated his over exaggerated facial features used in his creating of Garfield. Although his comic strip’s are much neater that Jeremy The Monkey, the idea of an animal having complete human characteristics has really influenced my design.

I could have used After effects to create a more structure character with more fluent features and movements like the Garfield cartoon. Using Photoshop I made a slide by slide style animation which gave my character less soft features and more of a scruffy and jolted style.

Sunday, 29 June 14

Appeal To Target AudienceWhen creating my animation I decided on aiming it toward people the same age as me, around 17 years old. I decided this because I could understand what they would want to see in a short cartoon. While designing the animation I realised that it could also be aimed at a younger audience because of the slapstick style action of my character ‘Jeremy The Monkey’.

Humour

The main feature of humour that I have used is ‘Slapstick’ which includes clumsy foolish action such as falling over. Also the fast and chopped scenes give the animation a surprising affect on the viewer.

Characters

Being a monkey my character carry’s human characteristics as well as that of a monkey, which relates him to the audience in a comical way. It also becomes more interesting when the characters in an animation are animals and has become very popular in children's cartoons.

Visuals

I have used very a simple and brief title and credit sequence keeping it a short compact animation, not letting it drag on and become boring to the audience. This helps to keep the audiences attention throughout the sequence. Appealing to a target audience aged 13-17 I have used colourful yet not over complicated visuals making easy to watch.

Sunday, 29 June 14

Software

Photoshop

In Photoshop I used a graphics tablet to firstly draw out the three slides for my parallax scrolling background plus each slide that was needed for my characters walk cycle and animation. The process began by sketching out the outline of the image followed by filling them with colour. I found that photoshop was the easiest way to create my animation as I was familiar with the program, so the process wasn't too strenuous.

Final cut Express

After creating each part of my animation in Photoshop and exporting it as a mov. file I then imported it into Final Cut Express to put each clip together as a complete sequence. With each layer of the background I could effectively create a parallax scrolling background for the walk cycle. I used Final Cut Express because as well as Photoshop I was familiar with the program and i knew how to utilise the features to create my animation.

Sunday, 29 June 14