(Above) Here my main character sits in bed, in order to improve this scene I would have added more symbolic objects in her room since it would have told more of a story of who the main character is and their struggles. I had begun to do so with the version of Flaming June by Sir Frederick Leighton on the wall in the background, one of my favourite pieces of art due to how it depicts an ethereal woman, content. The sunflower growing out a bust also ties in with my ethereal theme, the bust is of Venus De Milo which is a famous depiction of a goddess. Sunflowers also represent beauty and love, ultimately I am aiming to create a visual language that highlights the love I want to communicate through my work. The character is pulling at her face whilst looking in the mirror, this is part of how I chose to represent how she is questioning of herself and her feminine identity. This is a struggle that many have gone through as shown by the responses to the questions on my story. Her mind bursts into flames with thick dark smoke that further develops the idea of her inner turmoil when questioning who she is. If I had more time this part would have been useful to develop further. As seen in my concept images and animatic I had incorporated chains that would wrap around and constrict her brain as a representation of society’s restricting ideals and perceived norms of femininity. However due to issues I faced with time management I was not able to include this in the final piece. A large goddess figure appears, this character allowed me to experiment with size and how to illustrate something and make it seem huge like the Bolo character that inspired me from Final Space. Enormity in animation is something that interests me since it links with my desire to create these goddess like figures and is something I am going to continue experimenting with. This part of the animation is paced too quickly and there are transitions and shots that need to be added in order to tell the narrative since it is not as clear from the audience’s perspective as I would want it to be. I attempted to keep the pace of this piece slow and this part is too quick and disrupts the relaxed atmosphere I was aiming for.In my opinion the bounce of these eyelashes in the piece is my most successful part. I have been attempting to stylise my work recently and the way I decided to animate the eyelashes in this bouncy manner adds more than having them straight like they are in real life. It would have been more effective for the piece to add more movement here in her face since this would have made the characters closer to life and therefore easier to connect with on the audience’s behalf.This part of the animation was also successful, using the bubbling technique and a loop, I was able to quickly and effectively create the illusion of the character floating in water. With more time I would have made the water glow and sparkle whilst it was healing her and incorporate close-ups of the water healing her whilst going over her skin. One of the main improvements I would have made is experimenting with making a character this big move. It would have highlighted her enormity and developed her character as a powerful goddess. Usually I take care when creating my storyboard and consider each transition between each shot in detail so that they merge together smoothly rather than just cut to another shot. However I have done the latter in this piece and I believe by doing so I missed an opportunity to develop the nature of the universe these characters are situated in. Such as here, I could have had the flower grow bigger and around her hands filling the shot and then disperse to reveal the next shot (below).The end of the piece comes back to the first shot like a loop, this is something I like to do in my work since it helps to ground the narrative of the storyline, reminding the audience of the narrative. However I chose to change it slightly in order to represent her growth and empowerment, such as through the sunflowers. I believe I should have done more with this, changing her stance and expression and adding a glow around her since she is filled with the goddess’ power. I could have even had her put the mirror down away from her, it is small visual developments like this that I need to start considering.
