Part 4 of The Reedy Boy

So I've finally finished the massive Arts Council funded project, The Reedy Boy. I've loved every minute of working with such a lovely pair of talented guys. I think without such hardworking, supportive people around me I wouldn't have managed to get over 45 minutes of hand-drawn animation produced in just under three months. It's been a crazy level of commitment, and the learning curve has been steep as anything. In this last week I've learnt how to mask videos, composite photographic elements with hand-drawn images, create sunbeams and glowing fire embers in After Effects, composite real film and digital animation in with hand-drawn animation... to name just the things I'm most proud of/are most useful for the future.
Anyway, here's Part 4, The Final Chapter, The Finale, The End.

Wish I'd known this earlier...

Originally, at the start of this project, I had an idea in my head of what my fibonacci film would look like. I imagined it as quite a fluid, inky animation with very smooth, natural-looking transitions. I realised quite early on in the project that trying to draw 720 frames with inks would probably drive me crazy, as the ink would never match up properly and is entirely too unpredictable to use in this way in a constrained time period. 

When I was putting my frames into iStopmotion in the animation studio though, I began chatting to a second year girl, Jen Ferentiuk, as we were both practically living in the studio at this point. If only, I had met her at the start of the project, because she showed me an animation of hers using inks, which was not only beautifully crafted, but solved the issues that had put me off using inks in my film. >http://vimeo.com/87952216

By using inks on acetate over a light-box and pixelation techniques instead of creating a peg bar animation, Jen  managed to get the flowing quality of inks in her animation without wasting paper and time. In the future this will definitely be a technique I will try out, however I think I would have struggled to create this kind of animation for Unit X anyway, as access to the animation suite was non-existant over the Easter break. Something to think about for the future though...

Collaboration!

Having looked again on youtube for some fibonacci themed music to compliment my animation, I discovered Bence Peter. The speed and tone of his fibonacci composition was exactly what I was looking for and so I followed the link to his facebook page and sent him this message: 

"Hi, My name is Rachel and I'm a first year student animator in Manchester. I've been creating a hand-drawn animation for my final project this year based on the fibonacci sequence and I've been looking for some music to go with it. I found your fibonacci piece on youtube and I absolutely loved it. I was wondering if you'd object to me using it as the score for my minute long animation, as it fits beautifully with my images. It's obviously non-profit and I would credit you fully in my titles. And, if you were interested, I'll of course send you the film. Hoping you'll agree and wishing you luck with your future music. Rachel McMahon."

To my surprise, Bence got back to me straight away with a lovely message...

"Hi Rachel, thanks for writing to me and I'm glad you liked the music and of course feel free to use it for your animation! I always love to see creative people using it. If you provide me with your email address I might be able to send a better quality version too.

Thanks, and good luck! Bence"

I find that creative people are often very eager to help each other out, especially if you're a student looking for a bit of help or guidance, as they can normally remember the time when they were just starting out too and will empathise with you. Bence emailed me that evening with a higher quality mp4 track of the composition like he said he would. What a lovely guy and talented pianist!