The Production of Winds

I havent really decided on going with water or air for my animation. And I decided that I'd use the element in a way that people wouldn't normally apply that element. I figured that a personified form of elements has been used a lot before so I think i'm going to use it in an applied form of the element.

I decided to go with air because my zodiac sign, Aquarius, is an air sign. Literally that's why, I really have no reason other than that.

I needed to come up with a main character for my animation so I decided to do the same thing i did with my 5 second flash animation Business Penguin. I found a picture of an old man that has a pretty simplified body form, so I'll use him. Also I decided that I'm going to make my main character cook with Air or Winds from different climates.

I'm going to have him have a cupboard filled with jars of different climates that hes going to do something with, I'm not sure what yet.

Since it's a cupboard of jarred winds, I figured he should cook with them, so today I drew a big cauldron in my sketchbook next to him to see how it worked. It looked nice so that's what I'm going with.

I want him to live in the middle of nowhere and since the western things been done I want him to live in the middle of a tundra in a weird house made of plank wood.

I finished my first 40 frames, It's the opening sequence. Basically it consists of him walking in a blizzard to his house. I didn't really have any idea that walking looks a certain way(my fault) so I drew it without reference. It was only until after that I realized he looks weird, so I drew a cloak over him, and it looks a lot better. I also Finished 3 of my 6 backgrounds that i'm going to use in the animation. This was a productive day.

I found out that i'm going to be finishing my animation over in America so I asked my parents to get me a scanner, a lightbox, and some animation paper to get there when I arrive in America, so I can finish it the first week and have the rest of my break to have fun.


I flew in today and asked my parents where my stuff is so i can get ready to make my animation tomorrow, and they said that they didnt order it yet. Bad turn of events. I got them to order it online so hopefully it should be getting here soon, and i guess ill finish half of my animation the week after Christmas and scan it in.

My stuff didnt get here until the week of christmas, and since i cant do my work during christmas i decided to dedicate the last week im here to sitting in my room and finishing all of my frames.

My parents decided that they didn't want to get me a scanner and that i'd use the one at my dads office. I told them that that wouldn't work since i need a scanner that can scan a4 pieces of paper, and they told me it would be fine. I guess i'm going to have to use it anyway.

Today is the monday of my last week here, i figure if i finish 50-75 frames a day i should be able to get done in time and still have fun with my friends. I had my girlfriend over to chill with me while i do my animation, it was nice. I ended up finishing the scene where my character goes into a living room and turns on a gramaphone. I want to have him play old jazz from the 1920s or something, i dunno. I've been writing down a bunch of jazz artists in my sketchbook that I think would sound nice with this animation.

Tuesday I finished a walk cycle for my character that I thought looked nice, and it should cover quite a lot of frames since he's going to be walking a lot. I have extra time that im going to hang out with my friends.

Thursday I finished a scene where he's looking for a shaker of snow and the rest of my backgrounds. I realized that my cauldron idea wasn't going to work so i decided that he'll use a pot on a stovetop oven.

Today is the last day i'm in America, and i don't have enough time to scan in all of my animations, so i'll be doing that when i get into Leeds, since its going to be in the morning. I managed to finish the rest of my scenes so now I can spend the rest of the day with my friends to have one last outing.

I flew into Leeds today and its the morning, i just got in and im gonna chill for a little while to rest my bones.

I accidentally overslept and now im going to have to finish all of my scanning, and put the animation together today. I'm probably going to have to do an all nighter because of the amount of work i have to do so i bought 2 liters of energy drink. Hopefully I wont get sick.


I barely managed to finish all of my animation and put it together. Final amount of time working on post production, 25 hours. The entire time i was doing this i didnt have an internet connection, until about 10 am. During that time i lost a set of scans to corruption, and i also went through 2 different songs, one of which was a windows 7 sample song. I also had to cut out an entire 6 second scene because it made my animation a lot longer than 20 seconds. I also recorded some SFX sounds at 3am, hopefully i didnt wake up my roommates.

Today was the crit, and they asked me to change around a few things in my animation. Since i was pretty much having an anxiety attack for 25 hours i didnt remember to save the photoshop versions of those animations, so im going to have to re-make them.

I redid those scenes and managed to make them a lot better than i did last time because im not on such a time constraint. I added an arc to the arm that looks through the cupboard and i also made the labels on the jars darker so people can read them. I also added a coat onto the coat rack inside his home, to add a sense of continuity.