Colors And Story

After the Grand Budapest Hotel exercise I learned more on the effect of color on a scene. When watching it in black and white, then told to create a color scheme we only really had the storyline to base our colors off of. I had thought that due to the, what I thought to be, playful storyline the color scheme would be very bright and saturated, although that was not exactly the case. Many scenes were very colorful, but the lighting threw everything off. The colors were darker but still saturated and some scenes so dark you could not make out the people. This made the clip from the movie seem very serious although when I watched it in black and white it was playful to me.

From this exercise I learned more about the importance of color on the storyline. When watching it once in black and white and the other in color I realized a significant difference in the story. Although the storyline was playful the director chose to make the color and lighting more serious which threw me off. Honestly, I didn't like the artistic choice in the color scheme and preferred my own. Colors have a grater effect more to a story than I realized. Therefore, to get the story across in my animation I will be sure to take colors into account.

I have decided that in my animation I will start out with a lack of color. Mostly white and have accents of reds and oranges to emphasize my character's actions and certain important items in a scene. This I feel is useful to get my point across to the viewer easier using simplicity. The second half of the animation I want to use a lot of color. I want the viewer to be taken by the color, just as the character in my animation will at this part. At this point the character will still be emphasized but I will allow the viewer's eyes to wander as this part of the story is more explanatory. This was brought to my attention due to the distraction I felt by the darkness and use of so much different colors in the Grand Budapest Hotel scene.

Critique Reflection

In my robot animation most people enjoyed my audio. I also remember people commenting on my scene and how the lighting was nice to give the emotion I was trying to convey and how they enjoyed the designs and texturing throughout the scene. When I was putting the animation together I was trying to get this lonely and solemn feel and I'm glad it was communicated through my warm to cool lighting. Also, I enjoyed that they were able to see the little things I added into the scene, such as the papers and blueprints of the robots on the desk and wall. Although I did have my problems, the comments were all positive.

Personally, what I felt I did best was creativity. I feel I really was able to create a little world for the robot to live in. Mostly I feel this way because I stuck to a certain style where everything had a sort of cartoon-ish look. Through my editing I also felt I was able to convey they loneliness of the robot and his calmness. I especially liked how at the beginning of the animation I decided to have the room be lit with warm colors, but when you hear the human leave and the lights go off the lighting in the room becomes cool. Overall, I feel my animation was well thought out and executed with only few flaws.

My strengths are definitely story creation and editing, but my issues lie in technical. There are many scenes where looking back now I notice the robot moves very badly. I think I had given up and that disappoints me. Some of the animation of the robot is very rushed and choppy. If I were to do the project again I would definitely focus much more on smoothing out my animation. Some things to make even my strengths better would be to focus on audio. When I had made the audio I didn't realize how low it was, so when watching it in class we were unable to hear many of the beginning noises such as the footsteps, door close and light sounds. In addition, I found some discrepancies in the story that don't add up, so next time I need to watch out for that. Though, for my first real animation I feel I did quite well and I am proud of myself.