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Sweet chilli 3- further changes

18th April 2023 by Jahiem Walker | 0 comments

I started to animate Sweet Chilli as my next course of action, as to not run out of time and have to crunch toward the deadline, as I wanted to avoid the unhealthy method of working I’ve previously leaned towards. within the animation industry. I started with my harder, 3 day long scenes, but while doing them I realised I could finish them more quickly than intended; for most scenes I completed them in a day, allowing me to be ahead of schedule.

I also took note of some of the feedback I received upon my last presentation; I was told to include an hourglass or clock to give a sense of time, and to include a points screen of sorts for more video game influence. I also needed to make my film shorter; I didn’t yet know how I’d achieve this, as the timings of my scenes and some shots in the animatic weren’t matching up causing the film to be longer, and so I decided to present it as it was and listen to feedback on how to make it shorter.

I compiled my animated shots into my animatic and presented them again in the 3rd interim. My criticisms this time were;
  • Too long- some shots could be cut
  • the animation felt stiff and there was too much line boiling
  • the addition of the hourglass and points screens made it feel too long
  • Anti aliasing of the pngs looked unpleasant

After this feedback, my main concern was the animation looking stiff, so I decided to go back into it and re animate some shots; some would be completely reanimated while others would be edited to include more movement and overshooting. This was the animatic with the edited shots;

I was also worried about the animation feeling too long and becoming boring, so I removed features such as the hourglass along with a few shots ahead of my next presentation, while continuing to animate new shots and being mindful of not making them too stiff. This lead to my interim 5 presentation;
Although I had managed to cut roughly a minute from this version, the addition of my title card brought it back up to 6 minutes and it still felt too long; some shots were held for longer than they should’ve been, and some shots weren’t necessary. I evaluated my film to decide which shots were unnecessary and made some cuts, bringing it down to 4 and a half minutes. I was told that my film should end sooner than I had initially intended, so I cut the ending short. I presented the shorter version at the final interim evaluation;
I added some black outlines to the pngs in this version, which solved the anti aliasing issue and made everything look more coherent. Even with the cuts, my tutors felt that the film was still too long. I was told that the section where the girls make the curry is too long, and that the overall tone of the film is softer and politer than it should be; maybe I should experiment with having the girls be a bit more aggressive with each other, and try to cut the film down to 3 minutes. I was also told that the narrative was unclear and that some of the character’s place in the story wasn’t clear. I was advised to try out more camera movements to keep the energy up, and to try and make the film feel even shorter and snappier. There were also some minor animation errors pointed out to me, like the reviewer clipping over the characters in the scene where she waves goodbye. I was also told that the title of my film was unclear, but I’m not sure how to make it any clearer than putting it in the title card.

At this current point, I’ve run out of ideas on how to shorten the film; I don’t know how to make it any shorter without cutting more things and I feel that the narrative will become even more unclear if I cut anymore shots, and I don’t see where else I can shorten any shots. With our deadline approaching, I feel that I don’t have the time to re draft any parts of the story, as realistically I wouldn’t finish animating anything new on time. I feel it would’ve been useful to make one more animatic before starting where I figure out the pacing issues, but I’m already running out of time as it is after prioritising finishing the animation and I doubt I would’ve been able to meet the deadline if I had done that. I’m going to book a personal tutorial and seek some advice before I create the final version.

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