A conclusion to my 'Veronica and George' project
I believe this project was a success and a major improvement to my '5 Second a week project. By comparing the progress from my initial ideas for the project: Veronica and George Series - Initial Ideas (wixsite.com) (read here), I accomplished a lot of the point included whilst also focusing on areas where I knew I needed to improve:
Environment art - city, apartment rooms - For the last 3 animations I really focused on the world where Veronica and George live. I now have a good idea of what the world looks and feels like which will help in future when I develop this world further.
Concept art for other characters - e.g. parents, neighbours, interesting characters in the world - Initially for the project I wanted to focus a lot on the characters closely surrounding George and Veronica, but in the end I found it more interesting to focus on lots of different characters and the little insights into their lives.
Character biographies - Veronica and George - I haven't written in blogs about this develop but as I create characters I have been thinking about the character and their individual backstory. By thinking about this it has helped me anticipate how the character would perform in the animations.
After finishing animations, I have also thought what I could do further with characters, for example: with the little girl and dinosaur in 'The Fair's in Town!', I can see the two characters having adventures similar to stories I watched as a child such as: 'Clifford the Big Red Dog'.
Finished script for : "Veronica's Day Off" - For the script I started the first few pages to practice script writing and remembering the format of the script: WIP "Veronica's Day Off" Script (wixsite.com) (read here). In the future I can develop this script further to create the episode.
Storyboards - I created storyboard for my initial animations: 'The Frog Pond' and 'George's First Pancake day' . Since then, I have found it easier to create a background with some characters in mind and work it out as I go along.
Test animations to try out different methods - textural and mark making, ensuring the characters sit in the environment better - This was the most important thing I wanted to do with this project. In my previous project I got the characters sitting better but they still need work. In this project, I started overlaying texture through the texturiser tool, used more textural brushes, and then started to give characters a white outline to match the collage effect in their surroundings.
Themes: Feminism and Anthropomorphism - In this project I definitely focused more on anthropomorphism. In all of my animations for this project, none of the characters are human but are animals and plants with human traits. In the project I did find myself moving away from feminist themes, to enable myself to focus on more on other characters and narrative. However I still have references of these in 'Body Positivity' and 'The Street'.
Throughout the project, I developed my knowledge further with software such as: Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro and TV Paint. This was through using the techniques I previously knew and using them to a more complex level, and learning new techniques through online tutorials.
In this project I was able to further my confidence in animation, which allowed me to further my skills in animation. I combined my knowledge from the previous project and my stronger confidence, to create more interesting characters with little narratives in animation. I was also more ambitious with the scenes I was creating and challenged myself to animate more and harder things: e.g. a quadruped run cycle, and a dive.
Feedback I got from the previous project was I was approaching the sound too literal, and the fun animation was contrasting too much. When animating the sound, I combined literal sounds, overlaid with fun rhythms of music, and used less literal sounds for certain actions; e.g. a comedic trumpet for a scream.
Another key positive outcome of this project was one of the animations 'Body Positivity' (see below) was featured in 'Tits, Pits and Naughty Bits' 'Celebrating Women 2021 Exhibition'. the exhibition was online and included other artwork of Veronica, of a feminist nature.
It was a great opportunity to be recognised for my art, but also recognised for advocating for feminism through my art.
For this project I had some difficulties I had to overcome.
The main issue I had still when starting this project was the characters weren't sitting well with the background still. I overcame this by the 'The Street' animation by including a white outline, using textual brushes, using the texturiser tool, and being more loose.
With the length of this project and circumstances of lockdown, I did find it hard halfway through the project to find inspiration. I tried to overcome this through using TV Paint as a sketchbook, whilst also trying to loosen up when using the software to implement my sketchbook style better. I concluded using TV Paint as a sketchbook was too hard, and preferred using a sketchbook. I overcame the issue with idea generation, by working with a background before thinking about the animation. Backgrounds helped me think about composition and is like a stage for my characters to perform.
Once I started the process of background, asset creation, character design then animating I then began to find the entire process much easier.
If I had more time on the project, I would continue the style of the last 3 animations. I would then begin to implement more narrative similar to what I did in the last animation 'The fairground' .
I would also stitch the animations better together through a transition similar to a screen swipe of texture and mark making, similar to what they do in 'Tuca and Bertie'.
I would also want to refocus back onto the character Veronica and George, so I could think about individual stories and narratives.
Looking beyond from this project and at the end of University, I hope to use the skills I have learnt to continue to build this world I have created.
I want to develop a web-series surrounding Veronica and George in this bizarre world, and other characters. I want to continue to create this world through animation but also: comic strips, illustration and thinking more ambitiously a book.
I can also develop more child friendly animation similar to the 'Fairground', and implement activity sheets to make the animation more interactive to children.
Relating it to my small business, I want to continue to create merchandise and products based on these stories.
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