Alisha Wood DPS

BA Animation DPS Year
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Museum Of Brands

The Museum Of Brands Brief – Week 3

Monday Meeting Notes:

  • On Title screen have the title of the workshop be the focus, make sure it’s prominent
  • Obviously no copyright but can abstract designs
  • Definitely include the footage from the workshop, can see how it could all come together in mixed media
  • Can get peoples consent in footage to gender bend them.
  • probably best to add both the elements of collage narrative and gender altered footage
  • Will meet with Nicola before the midpoint
  • Will get sent the names for the credits at some point (depends on film crew)
  • Need to narrow down all conceptual ideas and have them fit in the timeframe given
  • consider composition and consider how everything comes in and out
  • For meeting with Nicola at end of week, had one solid idea chosen.

I then after getting our feedback started to experiment with some animated and design tests. I tried to do both stop motion as well as digital so that my team would know that I can handle both, especially when it comes to compositing at the end. I wanted to test how the collage technique can work with stop motion so I started by doing some tests using paper cut outs on theme to the workshop. Because they were just tests, I didn’t worry about them being perfect and lighting it properly.

Then I wanted to create a digital style frame using some stills from the footage alongside my stop motion collage elements, trying to replicate what we discussed in the feedback. This way hopefully my team can start working towards some style frames we can present at the midpoint review. At the moment I think the focus is more on the opening sequence than the credits because I do think we can improve on those and hopefully we can find a good design as we start experimenting.

We then had a team call to share our ideas and discuss what we wanted to do going forwards. We addressed how elements should be created with which techniques and which style frames we want to have completed. We then started looking at ways that we could alter the footage and so I started doing some digital experiments with the still frames.

I was also tasked with recreating the cars to go across the screen but to have it leaving a trail of flowers instead of fire as a test to show at our next feedback session. I started by making a concept image so that I could show it to my team during our call. It was suggested that I reanimate the sequence but I know that animating that many flowers would be very time consuming especially as we are just in the stage of making style frames. Therefore, I created a refined concept image that we can use for the

We had a meeting to get feedback on our chosen idea before we start meeting the style frames and beat board.

  • Really enjoyed the concept and direction.
  • Can see that we’re being led by the topic of the workshop staying on theme
  • Good experimentation
  • Go with the font your prefer doesn’t need to be exact to the brand guidelines.
  • Title just needs to be on screen for 3 seconds other stuff can be animated.
  • Instead of people from adverts behind logo could use altered people from workshop.
  • Focus on getting the style frames done.
  • Leave the credits out of the presentation

I then went ahead and sketch out a couple variations of a storyboard so that I could turn them into timed animatics to share with the group. I took the ideas that we discussed during our call into consideration.

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SIPS

SIPS – Creative Conscience Part 5

I started by looking back on my style design map from my original presentation and created an updated mood board with more relevant examples of illustrative styles. A lot of the examples use limited colour palettes, solid colours and sometimes grainy textures. I think for this animation I want to take a more realistic approach to the style because I don’t want to take the viewer out of the situation. This shows that it’s really happening here to real people and not an imaginary concept.

I then started gathering some real reference images specific to the visuals feature in my animation so I looked at inspiration of kitchens as well as real footage captured during the water scarcity in Tunbridge wells. This helps keep it grounded and an accurate representation of the situation.

I then made a list of all the backgrounds I needed to complete so that I could see which ones were going to be easier or more complex. Then I started sketching the compositions of all the backgrounds. I didn’t draw any of the elements that move within the backgrounds as they would need to be done separately in Toon boom during the animation.

  • Kitchen Side
  • Laundry Room
  • Inside Shower
  • Kitchen Sink
  • Bathroom Sink
  • Pipes under Sink
  • Outside Parking lot queue for water

Then I coloured all of the backgrounds with realistic colours and textures. When I do the compositing I want to adjust the tones of the videos before, during and after the water scarcity to further highlight the crisis by having it be darker possibly with some vignette.

Here’s what it looks like so far with just the backgrounds. Next I need to start drawing out the rough animation for each section. I think once I have animated it I am going to import it into after effects or premiere pro to do the text based slides at the end and adjust the colours.

We then had a feedback session where we could show our works in progress and receive feedback on what we have already done. It was also great to see everyone else’s progress. Overall, I am on a good track and that I should get my animatic reviewed before I animate so that I can receive more feedback on the timing. Also If I want to record dialogue then I can book out a recording studio at Uni to get good audio quality.

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Museum Of Brands

The Museum Of Brands Brief – Week 1/2

We started this week by spending two days at the museum getting introduced to the brief and engaging in a series of workshops. I went to the museum recently so I am already familiar with collection but we also received a tour. Below is an image of one of the tasks that we were told to do during one of the workshops. The workshops did feel a little repetitive as they all started with the same introduction. The film students weren’t that distracting although I do think that they could’ve improved the efficiency of their set up maybe with better communication. We were told that the resources we made during the workshops would be used for the titles and credits. This is a little concerning for me as I have no idea how these are meant to be incorporated.

The four workshops were:

  • Brand Evolution  
  • Gender in Advertising  
  • Sustainability in Packaging  
  • Customer Profiling

We then had a session where we chose which film we wanted to work on and formed teams based on that. I decided to do Gender in Advertising because I think it will give us lots of visuals to work with and also a clear idea of the workshop that we are trying to represent. As a group we scheduled a teams call for Friday to discuss any ideas and to start working on the style frames for Monday. In the mean time we started generating some ideas around the project and what we would like to incorporate into it. It’s somewhat hard to imagine it as we don’t have access to the filmed footage yet, so I kind of just tried to figure how we could visually represent gender in advertising.

We then had our teams call where we discussed our ideas and decided on what we wanted to present on Monday. Unanimously we agreed that at this current moment in time we did not have full clarity on this project as we were missing some of the vital assets needed to be considered within the design. We decided to collate together all of our mood boards to present on Monday And then once that meeting has happened we will then start experimenting visually with what we want it to look like. During this time we also scheduled two more calls for before and after Monday’s meeting. Independently My plan is to wait for Monday’s meeting And then start physically experimenting with some of the imagery Both physically through stop motion and digitally through After Effects to get a range of experiments.

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SIPS

SIPS – Creative Conscience Part 4

After receiving feedback from our presentation to Creative Conscience, I felt that my developed idea was definitely better and I had a clearer vision of it going forwards. My next step is to create a storyboard for each of the videos outlining the scenes visually based on the story outline I created for my presentation.

When I was creating these, I felt that they could work better with some narration, just to help make the visuals clear and understandable to the audience and also to guide the story and make it flow. I created a small draft script that I feel like fits with the videos that will work temporarily until I make a final decision or get outside opinions. I might also make adjustments when I make the animatics because it has to work with the timing of the videos.

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Blink Ink

Blink Industries Brief – Week 6/7

We started by comping together all of our current progress in order to show it for our feedback session. I am hoping we get some feedback on the colours so that we can adjust them before the Wednesday deadline.

The feedback we received was that generally everything is looking great and that we need to have an exported MP4 file for Wednesday. So until them we only need to decide on a final colour design for the wave elements and then it will be finished. Below is the current final design for the animation presented on top of the Nippets background.

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Blink Ink

Blink Industries Brief – Week 5

Prior to our weekly feedback session, I last minute took on some more animated props for people that were struggling with their workloads. I still wanted to leave them the ice cream prop because I feel like they will do a better job of animating it than me.

Feedback:

Props: Ball working nicely, nice bounce however, adjust timing to squash on impact, delay the bending of the kite, likes that the kite goes different direction, add additional frame in the middle. Octopus tentacles more fluid and waved. starfish good.

For Monday, have a work in progress Comp to present to Nicky. Try to have everything clean and coloured for Monday.

During our weekly feedback call I was given a lot of feedback on the animation of the props, this is actually very helpful to me and will help me make improvements. I am feeling confident about finishing the animation, clean up and colour for next Monday even with the additional props that I have taken on. I firstly want to incorporate the feedback into the roughs so that I can contact Nicky to ask for additional feedback before starting on the clean up and colouring.

I ended up sending Nicky the updated version and then we scheduled a call for feedback. Nicky suggested that I start with breaking the arms into basic shapes to get the volume and motion correct and then draw in the waves on top. When I draw the waves onto the arms I should start by following the curve of the previous frames until they split. Other than that she was happy with the other alterations that I made. I then started on the clean up and the colouring of the elements including the letters. I used our design image as reference for the colours I should be using.

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Blink Ink

Blink Industries Brief – Week 4

This week started with our meeting with Nicky where she gave us feedback. firstly Christina presented her sketches on the blink flag with the updated colour scheme and addition of a diver. We expressed our concerns about adding people into the design and she said to come up with some more ideas that we feel more confident about. She also suggested An appropriate timeline in which to decide on a finished concept and to have the line art completed.

Feedback:
Experiment with different hues for the blink to make it pop more whilst still using the outline colour for the sea.
Maybe do smaller people swimming through the seaweed, play with the scale of them.
By Wednesday or Thursday at the latest have a locked in design chosen.
By next Monday have the line art mostly finished

Personally, I am not too worried about getting the line art done on time because the beach balls’ line art is pretty much already done and therefore I am available to assist on other sections. Also having been the one to create the animatic, I feel experienced in the motion and it is not that complicated or time consuming. I did allocate myself the position of creating a spreadsheet detailing each element’s allocation and progress for this project.

I also spent some more time experimenting with adding people into the design, I tried to be more carefree and less protective of the design already created. The Nippets style when it comes to people is very simple and minimalistic and so it’s difficult to portray these people at different scales doing different actions whilst replicating the style. I am then able to present these designs to my group during our scheduled meeting in a couple days time so that we choose the most effective ones. I’m feeling a lot better about this design as the people feel equally spaced without taking away or overwhelming the current design.

We decided that we wanted to keep the idea of someone swimming through the logo and that we also wanted to add-in a mermaid which we decided should be positioned on the letter D. Overall, I felt like my group was quite hesitant to add in additional people as they worried it would be too much, but I ended up liking the design that I created. After deciding on our final design, we also allocated elements of the animation to each individual in order for us to complete the line art for next Monday. I was given beach ball and the kite so that they stay in sync. I created these on Toon Boom. Here is the final line art for my section.

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Blink Ink

Blink Industries Brief – Week 3

We started this week with our weekly meeting with Nicola for feedback. she strongly advised that as a group we designate one person to create an animatic to present on Thursday. She felt as if we were rushing through pre production and already starting to animate, which we was however it was primarily because this didn’t feel like something that needed an animatic as we had already identified the points of motion. She also addressed concern that the elements would not loop seamlessly if they were created by us individually, however we discussed this prior that the loop would be two seconds maximum but I understand what she means. After the call we then got together as a group to discuss the feedback and decided that because of the other team time restraints, I would be the one to create the animatic (which I’m glad that I get to contribute more). We also discussed which design for the logo we favoured the most so that we could present one idea going forward.

all of our team members submitted their current contributions to the shared group file for me to access to build the animatic. This allowed me to seamlessly combine all the elements into one file. I’ve created two versions one which presents our ideas at the current stage and one that fits the restraints of an animatic more. This way I can show our team what we have already created and have an asset ready for our presentation. I did all of this in Toon Boom which some of us were working on different software so I imported their work is image sequence instead which worked fine. I then made minor adjustments to some of the movements and designs to better fit the changes that we have made.

Whilst making the animatic I frequently updated my team members with the progress and to ask for feedback so that I could make sure it was as accurate to everyone’s vision. Once it was finished, I exported and shared it in the files for the presentation. we also decided that we would have a group call shortly before the presentation on Thursday to practise what we were going to present and then receive our feedback from nicola.

Feedback:

  • Make sure line width and colour stays consistent.
  • Change green outline to the dark blue that’s featured in the image, if it doesn’t work then he is happy to stick to the green.
  • Likes that the motion encapsulates the essence of the game as there’s a lot going on and you always see something new.
  • If possible add people.

I ended up returning to the original concept image to identify the underwater outline colours and colour picked them to share with my team.

I then started generating some ideas for how we can incorporate people into our design which is hard because I quite like our design and also because the scale of a human is hard to achieve with the scale we have set out with the size of the animals. It’s also difficult because our reference image for summer actually doesn’t feature any people. But I just wanted to present this as an idea especially if this is something that comes up in our next meeting with Nicky.

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Blink Ink

Blink Industries Brief – Week 1+2

Today we got our brief from Blink Industries, and in all honestly from the presentation I was anticipating us having to pitch a game idea rather than animate a logo. The brief is on one hand quite restrictive and precise in what we can and can’t do but knowing because of the mid project review I think it’s best to take a risk and go bigger and then refine it down after receiving feedback. I started by researching into the company and the game that we are designing for, this also involved me playing the demo for the game to get first hand experience.

Blink Industries ResearchDownload

Then I started generating ideas based on the different seasons, I tried to do many variations as the first ideas are usually the least unique. Personally, I tried to not have a bias towards one season as I like a challenge and then it shows which season I have the most ideas for. Some seasons were harder than others to create ideas for. Doing this mind map did make me realise the limitations of the brief as to whether the logo must always be in frame or be visible at all times as the hardest thing to do was think of ideas that could seamlessly loop.

Because we are working in teams for this project and I wasn’t there to join a group in person, I decided to email and reach out to my potential teammate to confirm that they are still happy to form a group because the other person who was meant to be in our group joined another team. I know that I am not available later this week and so it would be best to make a start on this project now before our progress tutorial next Tuesday.

I started by filling out our Production Template with the relevant information, I can see how this can be useful when working as a team to know everyone’s availability and tasks. When looking at what everyone else in my team had already done, I noticed that were focusing on the design and colours of the logo and less about the motion and so I decided to continue focusing on that aspect individually. I then started to draft animate some mock ups of the motion of the logo to present to my team.

As a team we decided to have a call to discuss our ideas, how we wanted to divide the workload and who should focus on what aspect. We agreed that we liked the current logo design and our aspects of movement. We then decided what we wanted to achieve by the midpoint review next week. We wanted to have the roughs of each element completed so that we can show what the design will look like without committing too much in case we have to change things. I started by mapping out the timing for the bouncing ball. Given that it needs to loop in two seconds there’s not much room to play with the timings of up and down, plus the letters underneath will need to add the squash to which is for someone else to do but I will remind them.

Then I added a rough beachball design to the bounce template and added some rotation to the ball. and this is what I will be contributing to the group as this is the rough done.

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SIPS

SIPS – Creative Conscience Part 3

After our internal presentation, I wanted to work on implementing the feedback I received in order to solidify my idea for my next presentation. After taking a break from this project I had some time to reflect and have since felt that I have lost clarity in my ideas especially in the visual feel of the pieces. Therefore, I wanted to return to experimenting with different ideas that reflect the theme and new feedback. I went back and reread the original creative conscience brief and decided that I wanted to balance my original idea of showing the severity with also providing positive ways to help combat these realities; which is more aligned with the brief of identifying an issue and providing a way to improve it or raise awareness of it.

I then wanted to create a detailed outline of each video idea and back it up with research on each real event that inspires it, as well as the resources available that provide ways to prevent them. So, I spent some time reading news articles, timelines and official statements from each of the case studies and found out the impact it had on people and the environment as well as how they could have been prevented or reduced the severity.

SIPS research 2026

I then revised my presentation PowerPoint to reflect the changes I have made and the feedback I have been given. We have been given 10 minutes maximum to present our ideas, but I am not worried about that restraint as I like to give short, precise presentations because you have to use your time wisely and not waste it for yourself and others.

SIPS Presentation Alisha Wood 2026

Then I can get feedback on this more solidified positive concept. I feel like I can better picture what it is I would like to create now and I think it will be more impactful on the audience as it has a call to action to make a change. I am more confident in this idea and my ability to execute it. My next steps afterwards would be to start storyboarding the two videos.

Feedback: