"Apply": The Final Product.

Well, that was a very stressful couple of days, but I've finally got it finished. And here it is.

I am so happy it's over.

I'm also really happy with the end result. I was really unsure of how it was going to look, as I found it really hard to flip my frames to get a taster, and some of the sequences were really awkward to draw, the part where the giraffe licks the girl's hair in particular. I really didn't know how the hair would fall and how the tongue would move, and it's quite hard to get a reference for these things. So I just went along with it and drew it how I thought it would look. I wasn't too bothered about getting it to look lifelike (I didn't want my characters to be 100% realistic, I wanted them to possess 'cartoon-like' features), I was more concerned about the fluidity (is this a word?) of the animation, and whether the actions were believeable. Looking back at it now, i'd say they were. The sequences seem to flow quite nicely, but the animation runs a lot quicker than what I was expecting. I think it's quite a nice touch though as it emphasies how bizarre the situation actually is.

There weren't really too many principles of animation for me to consider in this animation, in comparison to my bouncing ball sequences anyway. The only things I have really looked at with this piece is Arcs (arm movements and the giraffe leaving the shot), Follow-through action (when the girl's hair is licked), and I'd like to think I have used staging as well, as I have used a small variety of different shots. I would also like to think that I have been able to create character appeal. I know when I showed my sister my animation she said she loved my giraffe, so I guess that's a plus.

I think I could have looked at easing in and out more closely. It could have been nice to have the girl's hand trembling a bit more when she went to stroke the giraffe's face, and there could have been a greater impact on the audience if the giraffe would have eased into licking the girl's hair. Oh well. At least I know for next time. I still think I've done a good job with this task, and I'm pleased to see that the volume of the characters didn't increase too dramatically like I thought it was going to when I was drawing. It's also reasurring that it's not THAT obvious that the girl grows and shrinks in the animation, but enough on that, and don't go trying to look for it now that I've pointed it out.

I would have loved to have more than a week on this project. Whereas it has been enough time for me to get this far, I would have liked to have been able to try and incorparate some colour or maybe even sound effects. I like it as it is, don't get me wrong, but I am yet to experiment with these things, and I think it would have increased the character's appeal by including these things. I guess I could always come back to it and try it out, and I've still got many more projects to try work with these elements.

To conclude, I've really enjoyed working with this brief (about 80% of the time) and I'm really pleased with what I've been able to produce. I can't wait to get started with something new.