Risk Practitioner Research Report

The two practitioners that I have chosen to write a report on, are Walt Disney and Harry Smith who are both shown on my timeline.

Both practitioners Walt Disney and Harry Smith have alot to do with animation but their chosen mediums are different to each other and used in different ways. The medium that Harry used was hand drawn animation, better known as Cell Animation. Although Walt used to use Cell animation, his later work medium was known to be Computer Generated animation. Harry Smith has always used Cell animation and his work is very unique with his own style.
Here is some of his work:



Walt Disneys 'the Little Mermaid was also cell animation, but here is one of his more famous Computer Generated animations, Toy Story:


I could not find any information showing any artist that might have influenced the development on Harry Smiths work, but there is one person who founded cell animation who might have influenced Harry Smith on his work, and he is Earl Hurd. Through my research I found that Walt Disney had been drawing since he was at the age of around 7 years old. From this information I believe that he inspired and influenced himself.

The change in technology didn't effect Harry Smiths work in any way, as all of his work was hand drawn animation or cell animation, so Harry stayed in the same medium through his whole artist animator career. He produced his animation by drawing directly onto film and he also painted directly onto film aswell. In my opinion Harry Smith is a big inspiration because he kept with the same medium when it came to animation. However Walt Disney used a variety of mediums, such as in 1923 he and his brother made the film 'Alice's Wonderland' and he used cell animation to add in all of the cartoon characters that you see throughout the film. Walts final cell animation which he did was 'The little mermaid' in 1990.




His most recent work was 'Tory Story' which was computer generated animation which shows that artistic techniques and creative practices have changed over time all thanks to technical developments. So through my research I have found that Walt Disney has experimented on a few different types of animation mediums.
Harry Smith and Walt Disney are two very different animators and their styles are very different from each other. Harry Smith was very good at what he did in his cell animation work, but Walt Disney's work although he is now dead is still carrying on with great success. I am very pleased with the two practitioners which I have chosen to write a report on, and I am also very pleased with the research and information that I have picked up about both practitioners.

Video Feedback

In todays lesson I received my feedback from Darwin College. I found out that they are not going to use my animation video in there lecture. I don't mind about this but I do feel that all the time and effort that me and Liam put into this animation deserved some sort of compliment.

Positives: Darwin college said that our film animation attacks risk in a head on way showing a risky situation go wrong, and they also said that it was like something that Charlie Chaplin done which we had no intentions of doing. They also liked the hand drawn graphics.

Negatives: They didn't like the way that all of the drawing came down at the end, and wondered if we noticed the faint writing on the back of the paper which we did.

My response: I am very pleased with what they have said and I agree with most of what they have said.

Rocky's Risk (Final) animation video

This is mine and liams animation which we finished off today at Coleridge. We decided that we did not need any sound because it is being played among lots of things at Darwin University on tuesday, so we decided that we didn't need to apply sound to it.

Here is our final video:

L3 RISK - jahmal and liam FINAL from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

Evaluating my work in progress

What would you do if you could change anything about the project?:
If I could change anything about the 'capturing risk project' then I would most probably go for a task that is much easier, like making a short film about something rather than drawing out each frame to my animation, so that I could make it to the best quality. With the animation which I did with Liam, it was very difficult and challenging, and we didn't have enough time to add any music, so if I could change anything about the project then I would make my animation less complicated. I would also change my planning up to the animation and make it more clear what I was going to do each day leading up to actually doing the final piece, because in my planning I feel that I didn't really have much idea about what I was going to do on any particular day. Another thing which I would do would be to concentrate more on my work and work faster.

Looking back, how would you improve what you did?:
To improve my work, looking back I would most definitely do more research and more planning, becuase doing both this would make my work much easier when starting it. I would also improve what I did by adding humorus music which I didn't have time to do, and I would make sure that both me and Liam had our own set things to do, rather than just taking it in turns to do things, I think it would have been much simpler if we both did seperate tasks, so that when it came to editing we would put our pieces together. Obviously we would have a plan, so that we wouldn't be drawing random things and puting them together to see what we would come up with, as that wouldn't work.

How do you feel you have done in this project?:
I feel that me and Liam have achieved more than what we expected to achieve in the last few days, and I am very happy with what we have done. Although we have no music in our animation, I think that the viewers watching it will still find it humorus without any sound. Eventhough we both found our animation difficult to do because we had to edit separate frames into other frames and edit the lighting around the characters, I think that overall we have done a very good job out of it.

Evaluation of todays lesson

This is my final daily evaluation for this project. In todays lesson I continued with my timeline in photoshop and I completed it. I have added colours on the text but i have no pictures apart from the pencil in the middle which is my timeline. On the pencil I added a title 'Cell Animation' on it, and took out the existing title which said the name of the pencil and I replaced it with 'cell animation'.

I then continued to add things into my sketchbook and I have now completed it. I have now completed my blog and sketchbook and the risk project.

I am very happy with what I have achieved, and I hope that I have done enough to get a good mark.

evaluation of todays lesson

In todays lesson the first task which we did was to continue getting research for our timelines, but because I have already got all of the research which I need, I started doing my timeline on photoshop, but I do still need two book references. My timeline is in the shpae of a pencil as the medium is for my animation is cell animation, which is hand drawn animation. I have got all of the information that I need, so in tomorrows lesson I will continue and finish my timeline easily.

The next task which we had to do, was to 'pimp' up our sketchbooks. I have now done my title page, which is simple, but I think that it is good enough. To my title page I have added two paper springs, just to create more to look at on my front page.
Here is my sketchbook title page:

I am going to do some more on my sketchbook tonight, so that fo tomorrows lesson I will have a complete sketchbook to hand in.

Evaluation of todays lesson

In todays lesson at Coleridge, our first task was to fill in a self assessment sheet, reflecting on what we have done in this risk project, and the sorts of things which we have done to help others, and how others have helped us.

The next thing which I did was to find research on our film medium, which in mine and Liams case is 'cel animation'. The reason why we are getting research on this is because, by thursday we are to have a timeline on the medium which are animation is in. Me and Liam have already sketched out a rough guide of our timeline, and are ready to start on our actual timeline on photoshop tomorrow. The earliest stage of our timeline starts at 1824 where Peter Rogers presented his paper 'the persistence of vision with regard to moving objects' to the british Royal Society. The latest stage on my timeline is in 1995 where Toy story was the first full length 3d CG feature film animation.

Here is the rough guide of my timeline:

As I have now got my full timeline which I now need to transfer to photoshop, it should be very easy to complete.