Initial Animation Practice
I began by practising how to animate, as this is not a method that I had been familiar with before. Initially, I drew frame-by-frame on the drawing app on my tablet to exact the illustrative style, then took screenshots and stitched them together as a video. I first did this tracing frames of a video that I had taken at the zoo and screenshotted, before practising with just an image as a visual reference because the animals were not necessarily doing what I wanted. I later downloaded an app called "Flipaclip". This is the first practice I did, with the screenshotting method.
Version 2 Initial Practice
My second version of this was with a video I had taken in the zoo of a bear. This was with the same method of screenshotting frames of the video, then tracing them in my drawing app and stitching them together. This time I found an animator app so I put the frames into that so they would run more smoothly. I discovered that I liked the drawing function in this app enough that I could use just it going forwards.
Practice with the Animation App
I started experimenting with the app I had downloaded. This animation was only from a reference image, as I could see the previous scene behind the one I was drawing.
Background Experiment
This was the result from the experimentation I did on the background, as evidenced in my sketchbook. I decided that it was too distracting, in the end.
Colour Experimentation
On this, I began experimenting with colour (as evidenced in my sketchbook). This was the first of two, with different brushes in the app.
Colour Experimentation 2
This was the second version, with the other brush. I think this was not as successful because the first brush was a bit more illustrative and imperfect.
Colour Experimentation 3
To the animation with the first brush for colour, I added some shading to the water. This is successful as it adds movement and depth, however is hard to see against the background.
Brush Experimentation 1
These were some smaller outcomes that I did to decide what brush to use. I did these on some plastic backgrounds, as further experimentation for this.
Brush Experimentation 2
This was my second experiment for the brush style. I feel this is would be more effective (if it were thinner) than the other brush, because it is more sketchy and illustrative.
Final Piece
This link is to my final piece, an accumulation of all of my experimentation (particularly the digital and animation experiments on here). I also added music, to enhance the tone of the story and make it seem more like a campaign video that could be put out by a charity, for example.