BSA1 Animation Liam Haggerty

Late shift Late shift is what has been coined as a "interactive movie" which makes it  almost like a hybrid between a video game and a short film, the major differences are that whilst in theaters its a group vote on which path the main character, and subsequently the story goes on, this is both interesting and possibly disappointing, you wanna see some violence, but the audience is filled with frail old  grandmothers who are tech-wise enough to vote against you, or maybe your that frail old woman subjected to the loud group of tweens wims, you see it's not the film that shows the nature of choice and their consequences, its the audience themselves, the intriguing tagline of Your decisions are you doesn't quite work in this contents however. the film has in total 180 different possible choices to make and in its entirety is over 4 hours long, not including the part where you have to repeat through a path you have already seen, so if you want to see all the ending

Amelie Amelie is a french romance comedy film that i found very hard to follow, perhaps because it was in french but more because it seemed more rom than com, so strange things like why the main character, Amelie, is interfering in other people's lives and generally acting the way she does, doesn't have much grounding, in a comedy you can get away with the ridiculous but this seemed to be convoluted "quirkiness", the positives is that the film has good shooting and looks very colorful and it occasionally has some humor that passes through the language barrier.

Forgotten Silver Forgotten Silver is a film mockumentary that "claims" to be about a series of discovered films made by a new zealand filmmaker, Colin Mckenzie (who is in fact not real) this leads into a investigation into Colins life, all the discoveries he made, revealing the true first human flight was made by a new zealander etc, the Documentary had, mostly realistic protrails and forgeries and involved prominent film directors, so much so that many people who watched the first showing on television believed that it was factual. in hindsight is seems strange to think it was possible for people to think it was real when there are characters like Stan the man who threw pies in babys faces, id imagen the creators didn't imagine this film would have this effect on its audience, but it was shown at the time documentaries where normally on, also people simply wanted to believe all these great things happened in there own country.  

The Circle made in 2016, the short film The Circle is a story about a father reconnecting with his son, primarily through art and making sacrifices to better the lives of others in need. this film was entirely shot using a DJI Inspire 2 drone, employing multiple techniques/tools to have it be able to capture every angle needed and capable of shooting in areas such as the interior of a car. one of these methods was part way through recording a scene the drone would be "captured" and turned off remotely so it could be hand held. Review beyond the impressive techniques used to have a drone shoot the entire film, the film itself was good also, the story however was predictable, but often story's that show a "moral" are being that its been ingrained in our minds from a long line of films that have followed the same "plot points", there was only two irritating things that i think could improve the film if changed, that is the brother who

The Karman Line The Karman Line is a short film about a mother who contracts a strange condition that constantly lifts her of the ground and a gradually increasing speed and how she and her family deals with the issues and grief for her, eventually hiting the karman line, where our atmosphere meets space. the film could be interpenetrated as a different take on a family with a member who has a terminal disease, making the story more relatable in a strange way, because the audience will instead imagine themselfs or a loved one in the same position of the mother, something that literally distances themselves from you, or you from them. 

one small step  one small step, created by TAIKO Studios, is as the name might suggest a short film about a astronaut taking their first steps on the moon, however the story is everything leading up to that point, a daughter and her father living together, he making and repairing shoes to eventually pay for his daughter's dream of becoming a astronaut, the point of the story is ti show that u shouldn't forget family in pursuit of a goal, for they are the ones how helps you get there. the film is made in 3d animation, but however, in post production the creators used a "toon shader" effectively making the film appear almost 2d, other than the movement of the characters.

unreal engine for 3d animation -boy and his kite boy and his kite is a short film about a boy chasing his kite, ending on the, if you love something let it go, or in this case, set it free metaphor, the significance of this short films is that it was created using the unreal - game making engine, the creators have used its many features, such as dynamic lighting cinematic post effects and procedurally generated trees to pull of something that is comparable to programs like maya, in the end it still does have the feeling like its a cut scene from a game but this still an interesting premise to follow.

Conclusion  Project question/project intention  : How to create Special effects for 2d animation, with a focus on magic with a cost of using, and its development in power. What I mostly discovered in my research:  How to animate a variety of magical effects in a variety of ways, how to use it within a attack animations and how to recreate the animated versions in Photoshop for publishing material    Conclusion I have learnt to, or improved my animation skills on a variety of magical effects in a variety of ways, then how to introduce those animations styles into attacks or photoshop images for advertisement use.

Photoshop magic effects Within photoshop there are alternatives for creating magic effects, this is a example of using the outer glow effect in colour with a white drawing that’s been “shaved down” until the lines are near invisible in some areas  The final version of this image adapted the concepts from the animation testing faze whilst using the effect options within photoshop 

Attack Animation  Adapting my knowledge of previous years work I created a very simplified version of the fire animation to experiment on how it can be used to attack, this animation also show the effect the magic has of the target. 

Water My initial design and idea of the water animation ended up looking as I intended, I attempted a more detailed version but it simply didn’t look as good  Illussion These where additional experiments that did not use reference material but involved practice/ trial and error, however  they  were inspired  by the eldritch / lovecraft  mythos

Ice  The effect I was trying to pull of with the ice magic was “traveling pillars” or spikes, this however was very time consuming for not that great of a effect  The final version of the ice animation used a mixture of the first attempt, and references form both avatar and Pinterest, collectively making a visually appealing effect  This effect was made through doing the “main blocks” and then erasing the full version segmentally in reverse, then using the fill tool paired with the already made internal lines of the ice duplicated on a layer above the transparent version to make line travel across all the “faces” of this shape.

Electricity  Another example of poor animation done before adapting/learning a technique Mixing a technique from an animation reference I found on Pinterest with the electricity that appears when alchemy is perfumed within the series Full metal alchemist, I created this effect    I learnt that electricity travels in a “jagged wave” and has areas of differing thickness. Also it works with or without the glowing edges.

Air/gas manipulation  Even though I didn’t intend to have characters control air within my series, I made a test version as it was applicable to any gaseous substance, however the end result reveals that the air bending ball animation from avatar is to iconic to be only somewhat adapted. To do this effect however, all I had to do was have a still, transparent ball and then animate “clouds” traveling around it

fire animation development   i decided to start with fire, because it is the most commonly used "magical element" in all of fiction so it has the most reference material.  1st version:    this was the initial concept I had in my mind, without spending to much time and not looking into other techniques it didn’t turn out very well. 2nd version:   is far more realistic, the key idea was maintain a core to the fire and have concave sections move up from it. Pushing convex sections like waves I attempted to create a soft edges effect like what is used in avatar , however I found it would have to be completely redone using a soft edge brush, which doesn’t work well with the “fill bucket” tool, rather than just surrounded by it, like my example of the right, due toon boom not having greater options for gradient opacities and the fill would be outlined by the soft edge (it looks terrible)                    A attempt at a idea I had

first concepts   these were some initial tests of what may be the damaging effects of over-or miss using magic, from the top left there is explosive, frostburn, illusion (which is actually just visions from the caster) dehydration, electricity burns and heat burns/fire Base for animations i created this animation to be the base for most of the magical effects i will be testing, to create this i use online and real world reference material, aka my own hand to get the main keyframes and movement, a close up in my series concept will show a bit more detail, things like the skin contours on the hand like i have done in this, not in to much detail , becouse then it becomes both to difficult and weird looking amongst the rest of the animations, 

initial steps The research I plan on doing involves investigating examples of previous works and practitioners that reflect and answer my own line of Research, deconstructing scenes from a variety of animations styles to see what suits my needs most, looking into tutorials on animation and special effects and experimenting with what I find in one or more scenes I plan on using in my final product for the third year project, a series preview. With most of the animations Im making throughout this year I am attempting to create a unique version of already used concepts of magic, to do this I referenced both successful series that I personally enjoy and a variety of Pinterest/online images and gifs, ill try adapting the two, or made a similar version of one for my own development in animating magic effects.  example of "firebending" animation used in avatar example of "alchemy" animation used in fullmetal alchemist  example of a effect that can be

Project question / project intention How to create Special effects for 2d animation, with a focus on magic with a cost of using, and its development in power. Magic with a cost is also known as technical or hard Magic, there is not consistently used term for it but the premise of this concept is that magic is closer to a science, the energy and resources to use it have to come from somewhere, causing a variety of costs depending on the fictional world it derives from. An example of this are full metal alchemist were everything done with magic, which in this world called it’s called alchemy, has to have an equal and opposite price, such as transmuting one object into another, often brought up throughout the series is a quote that explains this to the audience. “Human kind cannot obtain anything without first giving something in return To obtain, something of equal value must be lost That is alchemy's first law of equivalent exchange.” The purpose of this