On this day, we were told about timing, and how we should always consider how many frames it would take for a certain action to happen. For instance, it could take 15 frames for a character to blink, or 40 frames for a car to speed down the road.
We were then given a task to choose between two videos (‘Drugs’ by Adult Swim and ‘cat city’ by vewn) and go through them frame-by-frame to either record each instance of an action taking place or a shot change, and how many frames it took for it to do so (this was for 30-45 minutes). I looked at shot changes in ‘cat city’, and I accidentally looked at the first 8 seconds without realising I didn’t have to, only finally deleting my notes when I looked at the board almost half an hour in and seeing “0:08-0:34”. Thankfully by that time I didn’t go over 34 seconds, as the task was so time consuming I felt relieved knowing I didn’t have to write anything more.
Notes of every key shot and the frames in ‘cat city’ (0:08-0:34).
I actually really enjoyed the animation (at least what I could watch of it), and the artstyle was really adorable. However, I do wish we could watch the animation in full (I didn’t get the time to).
Afterwards, we had to pick an animation of our choice and do the same task. I chose the 2025 intro to SKZcode (a variety show of the K-Pop group Stray Kids) because I find the animation so endearing. Unfortunately, I only had the time to analyse one interaction between the characters Wolfchan and FoxINy (which was 3 seconds despite having to look at 6 seconds of animation), as we had less time.
Notes of every key shot and the frames in ‘SKZ Code intro over the years (2021-2025)’. Was analysing 2025 (1-1:03).
We then had to do yet another task, which was for all of us to watch the same video on the board (‘MTV Artist Ident // Dan Woodger’) and discuss the key actions. I really loved the animation, I found it so charming and the colours to be extremely vibrant, and the meteor crash and subsequent pan to the MTV logo was unexpected but hilarious. However, I didn’t really like how we spent so much time on the tasks when we could have instead been working on our animations, especially since we only had less than a week left to complete them.
When we did get the time to work on animating, I decided to give Photoshop one more go (even though I couldn’t animate during the weekend as I didn’t have the software), but soon became impatient with it and immediately switched to Clip Studio Paint, where I quickly started working on my animation. I had an idea at the time, which was to use animate Mouse spotting cheese from far away and speeding to try and eat it, before being pulled by the wire that tethers him to the laptop. This slightly deviated from my previous idea where Mouse looks at something off screen and his eyes go wide (exaggeration) before forming love hearts, as I felt it would be difficult to time properly within 8 seconds, and I wanted a shot where Mouse would look at the piece of cheese instead, before narrowing his eyes with a zoom in effect (exaggeration pt.2). I went into this plan thinking it would be within the 8 second limit (spoiler alert: I was wrong!).
My idea
During the weekend, I continued animating Mouse, and completed a rough animation that detailed Mouse’s arc from trying to move towards the cheese to being pulled back and growing upset over his tail. The only problem was, my animation ended up being over 8 seconds! I realised the first few seconds (Mouse spotting the piece of cheese) could be cut down but I wasn’t sure, and I ultimately left it so that I could show Mariana on Monday. I also exported each frame in case I could import them onto Photoshop and clean-up there.
PLEASE NOTE: There is no sound.
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