Making Progress: uh maybe not

 This week was a bit crazy for me- I reframed my entire schedule and now have much more time to be learning and doing art (yay!). However, Week 5 was extremely busy for me academically and job-wise, and I feel behind the schedule. According to the timeline of the previous blog, this is what I have completed so far:

👍 Flour Bag Drop

👍 Ball Bounce (kind of)

👍 Simple Human Motion

 👎Dialogue

👍 Full Environment Animation (WIP)

👎 Create 5 thumbnail animations depicting my narrative through keyframes 

👍 Learn how to use Alight Motion

👎 👍 Learn 2D animation for Blender or DaVinci (no Blender)

A reference to Simulations: it is a bit funny and frustrating to be learning all these various elements of animation. Simply because mainstream animation had established things like "ball bounce" or "flour bag" to be the pinnacles of practicing the 12 Animation Fundamentals (which
also are a construct), I am now practicing them too. Are they even relevant to my final project? Likely not, but because they're deemed to be so "fundamental", I've taken my time to replicate those exercises myself. 

So, though I've done a lot of good work, the most important aspects of learning new things in animation I have missed. What I've chosen to work on is really not central to my project, but is rather helpful practice. This is a bit frustrating, as I could have structured my practice better and have gotten results more relevant to my final piece. Sure, these do look cool, but now I only have 3 full weeks to complete my final piece. Eek. 

Between today and Wednesday, I will ensure that I'm practicing the right techniques, and will start working on the project directly. It's imperative that a full "rough draft" of the final animation I want to complete is done by the end of Week 6. 

So far, I'm leaning towards idea f), but it might prove to be a bit too complex (it will involve tons of human motion!). Then, I will go with c): it's a narrative that will be visually interesting to explore, and feels much more relevant to me. 

A couple additional notes for each of the ideas, just for future reference:

f)

1. The sport of choice will be something that can be done single-handedly so that it makes sense that the athlete can text the whole time.
2. I want to showcase the athlete training, competing, winning, and then going into their car, all while texting. 
3. The camera angle will be consistent- with athlete at the center, either side or frontal view (I'll pick the easiest) 

c)

1. Option One: The whole animation will be filmed from bird's view, centered on phone. It will zoom in/zoom out (need to pick one) every time the phone gets a text, until the driver, with hesistation, turns the volume off (I want to show that hesistation with hand gestural motions- a very fun thing to explore!). 
2. Option Two: The camera will be looking about 45 degrees down at the phone from outside of the driver's window (with the driver's body and arms in the shot). Every time the phone will buzz, it will get a bit larger. The driver will begin to freak out about it and eventually turn the phone off before the phone gets toooo big.

with both of these options, I want to showcase how it is difficult not to respond to the text, and how it's best to put the phone on "do not disturb" to avoid getting stressed about it. 

This is all for now; thanks for reading!