Animation Rationale & Final Edit of my TV Ident.

SJF Ident - Sound from Samantha Freeman on Vimeo.


Over the past three weeks I have been focusing on the practice of animation in my Design Practice 1 module. My task was to produce a 30 second animation on 3DS Max to be used as an ident on my own TV station.

I decided to just use my initials as the station name in my ident. This very simply but effectively represents me and gives me a chance to use some typography in my work; therefore adding written clues to what the station could contain. I also decided to include a quite basic character based on the skills I learned in my second seminar. This character was loosely based upon me and my interests – the glasses being the main feature of my influence! The rest of the alterations on the character were mainly just to give it a cartoony, cute style, as this is quite simply the style of character I would most want on my own TV station!

I experimented with animation on 3DS Max for a while before deciding on the motion to be used in my final ident. I played with tools such as bend, extrude, stretch, melt, etc. to try to mimic jelly-like movements when jumping and sliding across the screen. These are movements I decided on using due to my experimentation working out quite well.

I also experimented with materials, cameras and lighting for a short while to help me figure out how to make my character and its surroundings look as good as I could with the little knowledge of modelling I had. I think this worked out quite well, although I would have liked to have learned more about textures and lighting to enhance the quality of my renderings.

I have found this project very interesting, mainly due to specialising in animation in my previous course. I have always found animation fascinating; particularly stop motion pieces (Coraline, etc.) However, now I have discovered how 3D animation can be produced, I have grown a great interest in improving my skills and discovering more about the subject.