I discussed the project cooperation with the senior student in Year 2 via email. The senior student measured which tasks I was suitable for by asking me to draw rough drafts (for character style and animation). I completed the following parts: the draft of the editing timeline (adding character voices and adjusting the timeline), drawing a fragment of the keyframes (dog mother and dog children’s key frame), and creating the In-between of the animation.
During my interaction with the senior student, I successfully completed the task and promptly resolved the problems encountered during the collaboration. I tried my best to communicate with the senior student about the issues and followed the reference animation provided by the senior to draw the keyframes. When helping the senior student edit the timeline draft, I encountered a minor problem: I am accustomed to using Jianying for animation editing, including adjusting the timeline and adding sound effects. However, senior students prefer to use PR for editing. But during the communication, we did not verify the editing software aspect with each other. This resulted in my inability to find the draft materials I needed in the file she provided. The senior student’s feedback was: PR is a more professional animation software. If I need to collaborate with an animation company in the future, I need to learn how to use it.
In this collaboration, the issue I need to address is: It is essential to have more detailed communication with the project party in advance to avoid any problems during the cooperation process.
In this collaboration, I attempted to add character dialogue sounds, timeline editing, and draw keyframes and In-between frames. These steps are very similar to the division of labor in commercial animation (such as storyboard designers, post-production sound effect producers, and In-between frame drafters). I am very glad to have this opportunity for collaboration, which has helped me become more familiar with the necessary steps in producing an animation.
What I have learned: I have understood the important steps in animation production.
Question: I am not familiar with using the PR software for animating, so during the communication with the senior, we failed to confirm the software we both prefer. As a result, the final file submitted to the other party was in a format that was not very convenient for subsequent project collaboration.
This animation project incorporates 2D animation style frames that simulate stop-motion animation. I was responsible for drawing the key frames and In-between frames of two animation segments. To better fit the project’s style, I referred to the stop-motion animation storyboard. I minimized the number of In-between frames and reduced the continuity of the character’s movements in each frame. This made the animation closer to the style of stop-motion animation.
This project collaboration was a challenge for me. This project features cute cartoon characters, but I am skilled at drawing exaggerated monster characters. Therefore, in this project, I needed to change my drawing style to adapt to the style of this project. From this experience, I realized that professional animators need to learn to draw different styles to match different types of animation projects.
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