Day Dream

 I just finished my 2D stop motion semester project called Day Dream. I combined my artistic skills and my animation skills into one animation that I plan to use for my portfolio. I wanted to challenge myself by having my animation be more detailed and realistic.
This animation is more focusses on technique than story plot. To put it in simple terms, this animation is about a girl looking for inspiration for her drawing. She begins to day dream. Her rapid change in thought is shown through each subject transforming into something different. In the end, the girl is struck with an idea and begins to draw on her paper.  

I drew each frame of my animation on paper and scanned it into the computer. Then, I dragged those images into Adobe Photoshop CC and lined them up next to each other. I decided to color over the frames with low opacity to give a sketchy effect to my animation. To add to the idea of dreaming, I am only colored the frames that the girl is dreaming of. I kept the scenes outside of the dream black and white.

This is a picture of a portion of the frames
I drew for this animation. 

It took me all semester to put this project together and it still is not fully completed. I definitely feel that this project has challenged me and has allowed me to grow as an animator. I have learned the importance of the number of frames I used per second. During the process of making this film, I struggled with timing out each section. My animation moves at a fast pace making the experience of watching my film a little confusing. There is not enough time between transitions for the viewers to process what is happening on screen. I will be going back into this animation to add music and more frames to make the 2D transitions more pleasing to the eye. 

This animation is twenty seconds long and is made up of more than a hundred frames. This project was time consuming and took a lot of patience, however, I am satisfied with my ability to draw frame by frame. I love the informal outlines of each frame. It makes the animation look as if it is being told on a piece of paper. Over all, I am proud of the work I have done for this project. I can not wait to see the improvements I make as I apply what I've learned in this project to my next idea.

I hope you enjoy my quick animated film, Day Dream.