Hello and welcome to my Spark page, here you can find my Explanimations process

On this page you'll see my progress of the assignment 'Explanimations'. This project goes as followed; Research, w.i.ps / process, starting to finish, end result.

The assignment was as followed; Stichting Transmurale Zorg Den Haag has asked our animation class for an explanation animation. They want this animation because a lot of elders don't understand and with an animation they can also see what the meaning is. We also got help from an animation company called Pitch Parrot. They explained how they do it in (mostly) 10 days. They can make an explanation animation in 10 days because their communication is strong.

requirements:

• You'll have 5 weeks for this assignment
• You work in pairs, these pairs have been made by the teacher.
• Each week the teachers will be looking at this spark page to see if we work on schedule. And it'll be judged at the same time as well.
• Communication is key.
• You'll be giving the voiceover assets on the spark page. Those sentences must be divided into each team member.
• With your teammate you'll think of a style. This is one of the important things for these weeks since the animation has to look like one person did all of it.

If you don't want to see my entire research, w.i.ps/proces etc. On this spark page I have all the end results from assignments from school and outside. With a quick explanation on the how, when, etc.

This spark page will go to another page with only my own projects and creations. With also a quick explanation on the how, when, etc.

Research

After we got our assignment from the hospital. We had to find our partner which our teachers made. I got teamed up with Mirja Maas. For this assignment we had to show at the end of the week during the lesson what we finished for that week. We started with the actual briefing. After that we had to make a Style guide, Mood board and the concept. For those I'll show them here right now.

Week 1

Debriefing

After we got our assignment, we had to sit by one another. Then we had to make a debriefing. A debriefing is where you make the briefing once again but in your own words, and see if you understand the briefing.

When Mirja and I first got together after the briefing we had about the same idea on a view sentences. We also got along rather quickly. I'm quite alright with her.

Styleguide

I started with a style guide while Mirja made a de-briefing. For the styleguide I putted in the logo of the Transmurale Zorg, colors (only of the logo) and fonts we'll be using. Here's my style guide.

This styleguide isn't final yet. While I made the styleguide and moodboard, Mirja worked on our character moodboard.

We choice for the logo colors because we had a good feeling with those colors. They all matched one another and looked cute on the character.

For the font we wanted a good understandable font. Arial was a bit too easy and we went to look on Dafont for the eventual font shown in the styleguide.

Moodboard

For the moodboard I choose to do it about our background / styles. The style was inspired by Pitch Parrots own styles. We choice 'Corporate' because we found it easier to make the characters one color with a bit lighter or darker tone. And the 'Clean' because if we'd make it too busy most elders wouldn't know where to look and could easily stop watching our animation.

While I did that moodboard, Mirja started making the moodboard about characters. Here is hers;

We choose for the character a young elder woman. Because not a lot of elders like to be shown as a very old man that can't do much. Even if it's true. With the character we went more to the clean style.

After we made these moodboards we had to think of what style we really liked. For the character it was the woman shown above in pink and purple, with a touch of the blue woman above her. We also liked the corporate style a lot. This is still shown in our eventual character.

We didn't talk much about the background. We simply letted it as it was and went on to make our character.

Week 2

Styleguide 2.0

For our second, and more finished styleguide we also added in our shapes, and techniques. Such as shadows. The rest is mostly the same. We've also added a view variations on our colors, these are mostly meant for the shadows and maybe even our backgrounds.

Script (Not final)

When we looked at the text of our voiceover we had to think about how we wanted our story to be told. For each scene I made a quick note. Here are those quick notes;

This script is of course not final yet. It's too sketchy and most isn't readable. For this I'll make a better, more text, script inside Word.

Quick (no detail) Storyboard

After the script I went on to make a storyboard. I wasn't really feeling like drawing that day so the entire storyboard is a very rough one. It's also more a sketch of each scenes main idea.

After the script we had to start thinking about a styleframe. For this styleframe I thought the styleframe would look good if it had a hospital in it. I designed this hospital for the styleframe. The hospital will also be in our final edit.

Styleframe

As I said before, we had to make a styleframe. For the styleframe I used a hospital, background and of course the character. The character was made by Mirja. The background and hospital were made by me. Mirja liked the idea of the hospital but wasn't really a fan with the background. So we edited it a little to fit inside our first scene.

Storyboard (detailed)

The next week I started to make the 'detailed' storyboard. For this I used the Illustrator files of our nurse and character. I sketched the backgrounds and I didn't use colors because else it would be too detailed.

Animatic

After that we still had to do one thing for the week. This was an animatic. For the animatic I used the storyboard from above and edited it inside After Effects. I remember making the animatic for WorldCharacterStory. With that thought I made this animatic.

Week 3

Animatic clean

When we got back in the third week our teacher showed us how they'd like to see the animatic. Even tho we had to finish that last week but whatever. So Mirja made a quick animatic seen above. While she did that I went on to make the scenes we'd use in our animation

Scenes

I started with scene 5. In this scene she'd be in her cozy house.

In this scene I made 2 scenes in one. Scene 6 without the question marks and scene 7 with the marks.

For scene 9 we made an mouse, and for two side characters called a general practitioner and a healthcare. We didn't have those characters at the time so I just added the nurse. 

This scene was still a pretty cool one.

For scene 2 we had an fun idea. We wanted to make the nurse talk like he's the voice over. In that way we could use Character Animation once again.

For scene 3 we just made a hopsital room.

Scenes I made, and are finished

In scene 0 I made the logo, each color of the logo is another layer, to be able to animate.

Week 4

All our official scenes

In scene 0 we don't animate. It was a suggestion from me to animate the logo a bit but Mirja didn't think it was a good idea.

In scene 1 we're animating the character. We'll animate it going from left to right in a smooth motion.

Scene 2 is on the last moment changed. I don't have that picture because it's still being animated. I did see how it looked so I'll try do describe it.

In the new scene 2 you'll see our character left, in the middle her house, and on the right the nurse. In the animation the character walks into the house, in which the door opens and closes _Sound Effect_. The nurse moves his arm around.

In scene 3 our nurse comes to visit our character in the hospital. For the animation we have the nurse coming in from the right corner. Then they start chattering. _Sound Effects_.

From scene 3 to 4 is a long period of time. Scene 3 didn't work for that long time. Because it became quickly boring. So we made a new scene where we see the nurse and the back of our character. This worked great and kept it in the end _Sound Effects_.

For the next scene the voice over talks about our caregiver. In our animation we just make the caregiver fade in with the opacity tool. _Sound Effects_.

In scene 5 we have our character in her cute, cozy, tiny house. We thought it'd be nice if she'd do something in the scene. So we made her grab a coffee and drink from it _Sound Effects_.

According to the voice over in a few days the nurse will come to visit and see how everything goes. In this scene we wanted to do a zoom in, so we'd have a good transition to scene 7.

In scene 7 the voice over talks about that you can ask the nurse all your questions when he comes to visit. So for the animation we made some question marks that can come from behind her and fade in slowly.

In scene 8 the voice over talked about that your nurse could talk with a fellow nurse about the situation. In the animation we made the fellow nurse hold the same notes and talk a bit with your nurse about it. _Sound Effects_.

Scene 9 might be my favorite. In this scene we thought it'd be easy to understand and a cool idea to make two characters. A general practitioner and a healthcare that we just make on a simple background and with a mouse we'd drag onto both characters _Sound Effects_.

In scene 10 I had the idea to make 6 days into one scene, so it looked like the nurse comes in every so few days. In the animation we'd make each day and night circle.

And in our final scene, 11, we have our character wiggling to hold balance while she does yoga _Sound effects_. With the nurse standing by to keep an eye out. In this scene the voice over talks about the nurse helping out to make the character get her "old life back".

While I made some scenes a bit better, was Mirja beginning with the animation. Those fial scenes can be seen above here.

After I finished making each scene I started looking for sound effects to add into the animation. I found sound effects for;

• The door opening and closing (scene 2)
• hospital background noises (scene 3, 3.5, 4 & 8)
• yoga relaxing music (scene 11)
• footsteps (scenes were they walk)
• mouse clicking (scene 9)
• coffee slurping (scene 5)

Sometimes while Mirja is animating I gotta change a few scenes. When I don't I try making this Spark Page look better.

We got our animation finished for the deadline, a week before the deadline. This is exactly what we wanted so we could get feedback from our teachers and get an even better explain animation.

Animation part 1

For the first animation we got a lot of positive feedback. Mainly the first two scenes could be improved, the rest was good. For these feedbacks we got;

• Scene 1 For scene 1 we got feedback on the duration of the scene. The scane was rather long and boring. the feedback was to make the three individual parts on screen big, so the hospital with character, the bridge and character walking on it and of course the final scene with the house. The latter one is already scene two.
• Scene 2 The nurse is already in the scene. This could be improved by making the nurse come into the shot. Because then the elders will be like; Oh now she's home. Look the nurse.'
• We also got some feedback on the nurse itself. This was during the middle and ending rather sad. We never see his face again. So we thought to make his face appear once more at the ending of the animation, scene 11.
• We also got feedback on how stiff our characters look, they don't look relaxed. However we couldn't change this anymore with the deadline being next week and we were already done animating / re-doing it a bit.

Animation part 2

We took the feedback positively. We tried to make the feedback come back in our animation. This worked for the most part.

OTHER STUFF THAT CAN BE IMPORTANT:

• I had 5 weeks to make this
• We had to work in pairs of two
• In the last week we would present the work for the client.
• You weren't allowed to sit anywhere else except for the seats our teacher signed us on.