This short experimental animation is a final piece for one of my animation classes in my first semester of freshman year. What inspired this animation was a rough idea I had back in October: NOISE. A narrative that is inspired by my daily commute between the city and the suburbs.
Understanding that there are multiple ways of narrating a story that tells the experience between both lifestyles, I wanted to focus on one feature that stood out to me, resulting in creating this narrative inspired by the ambiance of both worlds.
Frames and scenes
Animating with both Photoshop and Toonboom Harmony, I experimented between both programs in order to get a grasp of which one would best suit my style and what I would prefer using in the future.
In the end I find that both programs were great to work with, creating various tones and visual outlooks! As I am still learning to animate and find my style through my work, I am excited to keep using both programs and explore different themes and styles to further learn and grow my understanding and to find my style through them
Adobe Photoshop
Toonboom Harmony
Original idea
The original idea to this narrative formed after a month or two of starting the new semester. Even though I have previously commuted to the city and back by train, having it become my daily routine gave me a new outlook in the parallel experience.
I based most of the setting in this idea off of the train station in my hometown, where I stand by the railroad tracks as I wait for the train to arrive. Leaving in the city's station, brings a whole different parallel of noise compared to where I started with.
At first, I didn't have a certain direction in where to take this idea, so I left the sketches and notes in my sketchbook. If I ever wanted to revisit it, I would know where to find it.
The original storyboard
Thumbnails and rough frames
When the assignment was given, We had a total of 3 weeks to form an idea and execute it with any method of animation we desired, a way for us to experiment and take what have learned through out the course of the semester into whatever work we wanted to create.
Though still a vague idea, I wanted to look back on the notes written in October for NOISE and use that as my narrative for this Final.
I wrote a rough script while thumbnailing the extension of the original idea, originally planning to make it a short animation with high emphasis on movement and character animation. Still roughly forming the story and trying to get a grasp of what I wanted to visually narrate, I focused more on the animation of the characters and extra fun story rather than the emphasis of "noise" itself.
The change in idea
Since this was my first semester of finals, I under estimated the amount of time I had between all my classes, so not only was that a driving factor to the end result but it was also a learning curve in how I go about executing my idea.
I had ended up revising the short animation to a few drafted versions before the final animation, one of the biggest changes is the narrating story after the introduction of the first character. It was during a train ride to the city, when I realized that my story so far had strayed away from the original idea and intentions. The sketchbook spreads are the ideas I had when making a visual representation of the
Putting it all together
Recording the audio was a very fun experience, I knew that I wanted to somehow create the ambiance and noise factor I experience when visiting the city in comparison to the quiet atmosphere I live in. I figured there was no other way to represent this, than record the city ambiance itself!
I brought my camera along with me for a few days to record the audio of the city noises around me. From the train, to the station, to the Chicago streets themselves I recorded what I see and hear on my daily commute to school.
I overall had fun with this animation, for it was my first animation project and final in my college experience.
As I always find myself doing, I would love to go back to this project and have a revision in reflection to my experience between the suburbs and the city within the years to come. I learned a lot with this and I'm excited to learn more and find out what more can be made in the future