Link to videos on my blog:
I set out with this project to be able to create an animation of a children’s story book. This story book would be created by collaboration between human and Artificial Intelligence, examining the creative process, as well as producing artwork. I researched the issue surrounding artists and their worries around AI to gain some background information.
So, I turned to classic children’s books, and I looked for inspiration in the Julia Donaldson books that were adapted into animations. Julia’s stories and animations are extremely popular with children and adults alike.
I also looked at “the tiger who came to tea” and “we’re going on a bear hunt” 2d animation adaptations of classic books. These are nostalgic books for me, so I was excited to see them animated. I enjoyed the simple aesthetic styles, but I now appreciate how much work goes into these animations, and making them look simplistic. I wanted to incorporate some of this style into my own project.
The progress that I have made for this project is to produce two very short, few second, clips of animation from the story produced by AI. I am pleased with my animation result; however, I had hoped to achieve a lot more animation and scenes from the story. I learnt that it takes quite a while to animate each element individually, and for the scene to come together. I would have liked to make between 30 seconds and 1 minute ideally.
The skills I have learnt have been successful in delivering an animation the way I intended to, in a watchable format on my blog, although given more time I would make these animations longer and more in depth. I like the aesthetic style I ended up using, although I would have liked to have time for shadows and highlight on each object.
I did not find a way of incorporating a message to make it obvious about the wider story of AI and human collaboration within the animation itself, I would have loved to have done this if I had more time to work on it. The story itself is being told in small pieces however.
I had initially planned to use motion video capture to create the movement, importing it to Blender, so that I did not have to animate each element individually. This would have simplified the animation process greatly for me. However, trying to arrange a time to record, arrange equipment to hire, and find somebody to do the actions from the drama department seem a huge task and as time went on, I just didn’t have the time to figure it all out. So, I decided to stick with frame-by-frame animation, as I could do this from home without any equipment over the Christmas holidays.
For research I looked at video motion capture techniques and camera angles for my initial idea and how I would have used them. I also looked into animation types that could be done by hand, which came in handy when I changed my animation method.
I successfully used AI as a tool to create artwork, as I was hoping to do with this project. My process was helped out greatly by using AI as a tool, to write a story to speed up the timeframe of my project, and to help me narrow down my ideas of how I wanted the characters to look, even though I simplified them in the end.
My progress was hindered by the fact that it took me a long time for me to get my head in the game, in regards to understanding how grease pencil works within Blender. If I had managed to do this much earlier, then I would have had a lot longer to work on the final piece and more would have been achieved, especially since I suffered illness when the work was nearly due.
I have learnt the importance of being better at time management; by spreading out my work much earlier, so that if I do become ill at almost deadline time, I do not have much left to do and it doesn’t affect the project as much.
The project could have been improved by including all of the scenes from the story, a voice over by a narrator, as well as voices and sound effects from the characters. The project could also have been improved with a more complicated story, and therefore more things could happen in the scenes.
The skills I already had were; working within Blender software, navigating around the software, creating 3D objects and adding materials to them, and rendering the final results.
I have been impressed with my own ability to pick up new skills, even though it seemed very daunting before I mastered the skills. I feel my general Blender software skills have improved as well as learning how to work within the 2D side of the software, learning to draw flat and animate with frames and layers. I do feel my skills in drawing in blender are still basic, but with practice they will become better.
I would have liked to learn skills for the video motion capture side, to import into Blender, but that is a skill I can learn in a future project.
I enjoyed using a Wacom tablet for the first time, I think using the tablet and pen on the screen was easier than using the mouse, even if the hardware itself is quite bulky to have in front of your computer. I would like to continue learning to draw on a tablet attached to the computer as a method for illustrating.
I would like to continue this project in the long term, to continue learning animation skills and to produce results that I am happy with whilst telling the story.
A problem I kept encountering was with the timeline, making sure it was on the correct frame, sometimes not realising it was not in the correct place and having to undo and redo drawing that frame. Another issue I found lots was when moving objects, sometimes it retained the previous information on other frames, and I had to adjust every single frame to correct it.
In regards to my project management, I found using a Gantt chart to break it down and block out which tasks I need to accomplish first, very helpful for not feeling so overwhelmed. Having a year chart as a visual aid, so that I can see when all of my deadlines are is also very useful for planning tasks out around holidays etc.
I am not particularly happy with the quality of my animations, as they are quite jerky movements, not smooth, and there are ways to smooth them out in the graph editor if I had more time.
Overall, I feel that my project was successful in achieving what I set out to accomplish, but on a much smaller scale than I had wanted.
I feel that the collaboration between artificial intelligence and humans in general has a long way to go in establishing a complimentary way of working, however AI can definitely be used as a tool to help creatives along their journey. I do not feel however, that AI could take over humans’ jobs completely, as some things computers simply cannot do, for example use their subjective knowledge and feelings to project into their artwork. AI produced artwork, I believe, may be beautiful but would lack meaning behind it.
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