Whiteboard Experiment

Here is an animation I worked on with my partner Ashley Popay. This was our first ever animation technique we learnt and although it seemed simple enough we did have difficulties. One of the main things you must not do is move the whiteboard! So when it came to drawing you had to be in an awkward position so the white board wouldn't move. Our character ideas went out the window as soon as we realised the reality of doing something complex on something you weren't allowed to move. Then I came up with the idea of doing a Pokemon and we came to the decision to do 'Diglett, this was mostly because it is one of the least complex looking.


Then we had to decide what to do with it, we came up with the idea of having two Diglett's and moving them up and down at different times. During the process of creating this whiteboard animation we did have to restart it because the whiteboard moved which caused frustration. Many things can go wrong with a whiteboard animation as we found out such as the board moving, the pen running out, the character slowly changing into something different because there is limited movement you have to draw. However we continued on and completed it. For the editing stages we used Adobe Premier Elements to sort out the frame rate and include a title and credits. At the beginning of the animation we had the title and who it was by and then it was followed by 'Do you dig the Diglett? At the end of the animation we put 'So do you ?' After everything was done we exported it and then we had finished. Whiteboard animation is simple enough to do and allows you to do various things and any mistake can be easily rubbed out. However it does have its down side of being unable to move the board so it can become awkward if not set up properly. Considering it was our first animation we weren't expecting it to be that good but actually it turned out alright :)
The skills I gained were drawing in a restricted space and learning to be a bit more patient as repeating the same thing over and over again can become tedious and frustrating. Personally if I had to redo it I would use the new techniques and abilities I have gained from doing more animations to make the movement of the Diglett's smoother.