This is my first animation. My great accomplishment of sealitude <3.

We were given the task of creating a 60second+ animation for a Multimedia module and allowed complete free reign on the plot, characters and style. Since this is my first real animation (apart from small clips to learn how flash works) I started more or less from scratch. It was a great and terrible experience. I am in love with the concept of being able to fabricate an entire world from scratch and being able to transfer my thoughts and ideas into such a tangible product. But on the other hand, this is one of the most time consuming mediums I have experienced. That being said, I would do it again in a snap.

The idea came to me while doodling in a lecture (as you do). I drew a seal - a square one. And as a logical next step I drew a club, but I didn't really fancy killing off a seal with a club. A few lectures later I flicked past an octopus I had drawn previously and the idea sprouted in my noggin. I didn't want to brutally murder the seal, but I liked the concept of coupling something so cute with a dark and twisty element. Over about a week I developed my idea and incorporated intrigue, irony and humour into the plot, but was worried it would reach the minute mark. I pushed that worry to the back of my mind and created the storyboard in Photoshop in the style I planned on using.

I did a lot of *cough* market research (spent hours trawling Newgrounds) and took an interest in My Little Pony (go watch it). A lot of my inspiration in terms of style came from My Little Pony - the whimsical clouds and outlining an object with a colour a few shades darker than the fill. I used a Wacom Intuos 4 for the drawing bits, and CS5.5 adobe software. I originally planned on creating the characters in Photoshop - where I am more comfortable than sparkling new Flash, but relented and switched to flash because vector images were simply a better solution. As I animated I surprisingly didn't change my storyline or characters by much - only small tweaks and improvements.

I used motion tweens for the majority of my animation with chunks of frame by frame. I avoided using notoriously buggy bones for as long as possible - but again relented when it was a more elegant solution to octopus tentacles than other things I had tried.

I added the sound towards the end of the process and tweaked my animation to suit. I used Audition for sound editing - which was also a new experience. I learnt a lot but also learnt that I really don't know much at all about the vastly powerful complexity that is every single Adobe product. I'll get there.

To me, this animation was successful - not in terms of the realism of the movement or the perfection of timing but in the sense that I accomplished something cool. I created a world and filled it with things; I learnt more about Photoshop, Flash and Audition; I fabricated a seal that is irresistibly adorable and then deleted him with the use of an evil purple octopus.
I can't wait to do it again.