Identity - Mid-Point Evaluation

For Project 4 I decided that I wanted to create an animation that told the story of how my identity and the way I presented and saw myself changed over the past five years. I’ve felt for a while that creating a type of art piece to represent this part of my life would help me come to terms with it and move on; since the prompt for our project was ‘Identity’, it was now or never.

I did a lot of research into works by independent artists as well as larger companies to study techniques that they used to portray things like the mood of a scene or a character’s emotions, so that I could hopefully use similar methods in my own work.

I managed to find some nice reference material on Endless Reference- I could use their content for rotoscoping and/or study for a long time to come; a worthwhile investment in my opinion, since I still have much to learn when it comes to anatomy.

I eventually came to the realisation that if I wanted to create something that truly looked good with my current knowledge and skill within the given time period, I needed to aim a little lower than smooth animation. I knew that I would be making a rough keyframe animatic while creating my final piece anyway, so I decided that the best way forward for me here would be to stop at that point. Clean up the animatic to be a series of higher quality illustrations rather than lower quality animation. I would still use the research I did and reference material I gathered while planning for my animation.

However, while working on this project I hit a bit of a setback. My original plan to use this project to score a metaphorical line under this chapter of my life to allow me to physically and mentally move on from it backfired. I have found myself stuck on the darker topics of my plan; it is very badly affecting my mental health. I am not sure I can carry on with this particular project without making myself ill. I do however have a backup plan that I have found I like much more than I ever did this one- a plan to do something I am very passionate about while including many of the things that I have learned at UCA over the past year. My plan is- make a custom doll that represents all of the important aspects of my identity, full of positivity and colour, then produce a video outlining the whole process. From my inspiration to my concept art, from an old doll to a (hopefully) beautiful art piece. I can use what I learned in Photoshop to create my concept art and edit my photographs, Fusion 360 to create fully custom 3D printed props for my doll, and Premiere Pro and After Effects to produce the video. This plan will fully encapsulate all of the knowledge I came to UCA with and everything I’ve learned while here. It is, in my opinion, the perfect project to end the year on.

Here is some of the storyboard that I was able to finish before changing projects I was working on for my initial project idea.