Flick books and animated Giffs
Loose playing within the genre action films, create some basic flick-book, QuickTime or animatedGif animations that involve chases, shootouts, or any other staple of the action film. Think 007 films that only run for 10 seconds or less.
I started by thinking of some ideas for the action film, something similar to James Bond, I started by doing a spider diagram.
Now I need to research animation, I have heard you can do this on Procreate, but I don’t know how, so I need to find out before I go any further, incase I can’t do it and need to think of another way.
I found some You Tube tutorials on animating in Procreate, so you go to canvas and turn on animation assist, then frames appear at the bottom, you can choose a background scene which stays static, then you use the layers to add the different frames. So this is another digital tool that I have learnt for this section, from the feedback from my tutor to do.
From the above spider diagram I chose the words :-
Fight scene
City
Chase
Shooting
Criminal
MI5
So I was looking to create a fight scene chase with shooting in the city, between an MI5 agent and the criminal.
I then looked into the opening reel from the James Bond movies, where Bond shoots towards the viewer. I wanted to create something like this in the animation.
The next phase is to start drawing some thumbnails of the ideas above, then narrow these down into some frames.
As I was drawing the thumbnails I realised I needed an image script to help pull the frames together, so I wrote this one out, as I was writing it, I realised it was quite complicated for the amount of frames I had, and really needed to simplify it more.
1, Background scene with criminal
2, Background scene criminal pulls out gun
3, Passerby by walks passed
4, passerby gets shot
5, full scene of what’s just happened
6, MI5 agent in James Bond style circle
7, MI5 agent pulls out gun and shoots towards the viewer
8, criminal dead.
I think I need to draw a simple squiggle animation in Procreate before I do anything else, just so I know how seamless this needs to be. I practised with a tutorial and did this flame giff, just to understand how the frames worked.
So now I understand more about how the animation works on Procreate I can go back to the planning stage and work on the image script and thumbnails. These are not drawn in order, I numbered them after, it’s just as a guide for the initial sketches on the iPad.
Now to draw the background image for the frames, this will be the one that is static, and I will do this straight onto the iPad.
Actually due to the change in the middle to a different background, I didn’t need to do this frame, but this did mean I had to draw the same background on 5 of the frames, but that was ok.
So this is the criminal waiting in an alleyway.
This is when the criminal pulls out a gun and lays in wait for the victim.
This is when the victim is just walking by, the criminal is laying in wait around the corner.
This is when the victim gets shot.
This is when the MI agent comes along in the James Bond style drama.
The MI5 agent pulls out his gun and shoots the criminal.
The criminal gets shot and bleeds to death.
I decided to cut out frame 5, just because there wasn’t any point in it, it repeated what was in frame 4.
Now I ran this as an animation, and it worked well, but it does need a few more frames in it to make the transitions seamless. I feel as though it would need an awful lot to make it very smooth, but I think as my first animation just a few more will be ok.
I added in another 4 frames, so there is 11 in total now, I added 4 fillers to make the transitions smoother between frames.
Here is the animation.
I have just realised I have a few mistakes so I will go back into Procreate and change these, I missed out the gun on the James Bond frame, and maybe need another Frame at the end with the criminal laying on the floor dead.
What went well
I was surprised how easy it was to create an animation on Procreate, it’s definitely something I will try again, and use more.
I found working on the frames easy and putting together a story and image thumbnails was fun to do.
What I would do differently/ better and why.
I would try something more simple next time, so I could get the frames to run even smoother in between.
I would choose images that were very similar to each other to help the process better.
I would like to colour this animation in, but I ran out of time, as there was a lot to learn about to get started with this exercise.
Up-dated 09/09/2022.
After feedback from my tutor she suggested that adding colour and texture to the animation would enhance it, and also to write about “has it inspired me to add more animation in my outcomes going forward”.
I started with adding colour and texture to the animation, I decided to use a limited colour palette of black, brown, blue and grey. I also wanted textures that would enhance the materials used ie. a rough acrylic brush for the walls of the building, but also to add some atmosphere to the animation.
I used roughly about 10 different brushes, to add the different textures to the animation, I wanted to create atmosphere and detail but in a simple way.
Here is the final animation coloured in, I think using a limited colour palette really worked with this design, and I think made it stronger because of it. I wanted to keep the design simple, so I didn’t add too much detail or colour, I wanted the textures to show through.
Has this inspired me to add more animation in my outcomes?
Yes learning how to create animation has inspired me to use it in a lot more work and in my degree too. Even just going back to this exercise now has inspired me to experiment with colour more and incorporate it with my animation. I have also create an animation for my You Tube channel with the last assignment for my degree which was inspired by this exercise.
Using Procreate makes the process so much easier, that it doesn’t take loads of time to experiment and learn more about animation, which fits in well with my work.
I will defiantly use animation in my work and business to market and advertise my work going forward.
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