We recently had the opportunity to watch Joanna Quinn and Les Mills give two lectures about their process of animation and film-making, and later give feedback on our individual films. It was hugely informative to watch Joanna’s film-making process, and helped to de-mystify some of the elements of her fantastic films. I now slightly wish that I’d invested in a proper light desk a while ago and had chosen to make my whole film on paper after seeing Joanna’s fabulous drawings! One thing that Joanna suggested was to sketch out individual scenes from a film to get an idea of how you want a section to look. This was a really helpful tip, as I have been struggling to play around with camera angles and get more interesting shots of Gertie the fish in my film. I also noticed that spending some time mindlessly sketching Gertie whilst watching TV really helped me to get to know the character better, and has ultimately informed how I have approached the character acting for Gertie in the film. Below, I have posted some of the sketches in my book. Some are just doodles of Gertie doing nothing in particular (perhaps dancing, swimming, or chilling in a fish bowl!), whilst others are sketches that I used to get a feel for key frames in the film. After having taken on board feedback from Joanna and Les, I have changed the drawn style of animation, removed a character, and changed around some scenes to get more interesting shots.
