Animated Life Lessons

P3T6 James Gains Confidence from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

In our GT class we have been working on an animation project in groups of three. My teammates are James and Tyler. James is pretty shy and quiet so in our animation we exaggerate those traits of his. Tyler is a good teammate but he does admit that he can be a little discouraging and a little mean sometimes. So, in our animation we exaggerate those traits. He is a bit of a bully in our animation but remember, we are exaggerating his traits, so he's really not that mean. Lastly, there's me. So I can be supportive sometimes, and kind, sometimes crazy to friends.Therefore, in our animation, I am the friendly one that is very supportive. It sounds a little like I'm building up my ego and bragging but I promise I'm not. That's just how I am in the animation. I'm not saying I'm the kindest person on earth, because I promise you I'm not.

Our animation is about James entering a track race at school. Me, being his supportive friend, encourages James to enter. Soon enough, he agrees but then Tyler comes along and says "Haha James, you'll never win that race!" This makes James have second thoughts about entering. Now, our story isn't that humorous. However, we did try to add a little humor by having me scream at James in the background. It originally wasn't intended as humor but now it is because its the closest thing we have to "funny" in our animation. The message we are trying to share with the audience is, you shouldn't listen to negativity. Negativity can easily bring you down and we don't want that to happen. In our animation, James listens to the negativity which does't lead to good things but eventually he realizes that words are words and he shouldn't let them bring him down.

For this project, we had to work with people we have never worked with before. I loved working with my team. I made new friends and I thought working with them was a lot a fun. James and I sit next to each other in class but we have never talked until this project came along. Now, a lot of my seventh grade friends complained to me about their team because they were just not getting along. From hearing that I felt so lucky and felt like I got an amazing team, which I did. James and Tyler never really fought about anything and I never fought with them either. I think we got along pretty well. Our team didn't really do well with productivity. When the animation was originally due we only had 4 scenes done and we were freaking out. Luckily we got an extension though. I think from a scale from 1 to 10 our productively level was about seven. Even if we weren't friends in the beginning, eventually we became friends and laughed a lot.

I think our biggest challenge was finishing the scenes. This was actually a bigger challenge for me than them, I think. The reason I say that, was because we were so close to finishing the last scene on my computer but I was sick that day. I was in class but I felt like I was gonna throw up unfortunately. I didn't want to talk, I didn't want to move, I didn't want to work. So, I got out of the way and made James do the work. I was worried because I couldn't help or do anything. In the end, he did well but he did not finish. Anyway, as I said before, I loved working on this project. One of my favorite team moments was when we were going to practice the script. I had the stopwatch up on my computer and the script up on another computer. I had the first line so I pressed start and started reading, I actually tried to read it with expression. I read about two lines until Tyler and James stopped me. Turns out I was reading for no reason because I didn't actually press the start button. It was a little embarrassing but funny at the same time.

Character Development

If I were to describe myself in one word, it would either be weird or awkward. I'm not exactly a normal everyday person. I tend to loose my balance a lot. Im not that clumsy, but at the same time I am. Whenever I see a friend, or my brother, I like to stare at them in a weird way. Sometimes I do weird things like lip sync. Another really weird thing about me is that I cross my legs while standing. I'm not sure why but it's just a weird habit. Before I go to sleep I always listen to music. I always smile, or at least I try to. When I'm excited or happy because I accomplish something I always say "Yes!" Another weird thing I do is say "Merrrrrr." Although, that's only around my  close friends.

I think I'm going to make me clumsier than I am in real life. I also might make myself a little weirder. I could do that by making my character do weird things such as standing in a weird spot or maybe standing in a weird way. I could make myself pat someones head. I guess and that would be considered weird in a lot of circumstances. If I try to make myself clumsy I could of course, trip at some points.

When we started this project, the first thing we did was take pictures in front of a green screen. The pictures were of ourselves of course. We got three pictures. One taken from behind us, one taken from in front of us, and one taken on the right side of us. Next, we opened up our images in Photoshop. We only used the front picture for the first project so that's the only one we opened up. Then, we had to cut out our person, our self. That way we couldn't see any of the green screen in the background. After that step, we had to crop our image to width 640, height 720, and resolution 300. Now we are finally at the animated part, or the warping part. We opened up the animation window and started to animate yourself to make it appear as though we are moving. Then we click Edit, Puppet Warp, and warp your body to make it look like its moving. I chose the odd motion I'm doing for my GIF because it reminds me of a really silly dance Shaday and I made up. I enjoyed this project, seeing everyone else's odd movement was very interesting.