I did a class on animation performance, which was essentially an acting class to get me thinking about the way I make my characters behave on screen. Instead of using dialogue we were only allowed to say numbers which made us think more about the way we said things and the gestures we used along side these.

Myself and Dan did a scene where he was my boss asking me to get certain tasks done; as his employee I wanted to appear keen and like I understood, however when he turns his back I start to unwravel with the stress of the situation.

Because of the nature of the task, I had to think more about over exagerrating my facial expression and tone of voice and was a helpful excercise to do by eliminating the dialogue which a lot of the time can become the sole focus of a characters performance.

I absolutely loved this excercise! It was a really fun way to generate ideas and even found that having the third impetus thrown in at a later stage actually helped to move the story along in an exciting way. I might even try and put this story idea into production if I get time at a later stage.

Pick two words from a dictionary at random. These two words will then combine to become a character to write about. (15 minutes)

The air was hot and humid which made it difficult to breathe. A drop of moisture slid lazily along the surface of a leaf before plopping dramatically onto Sphere Mightiest little pointy nose. Startled, he waddles from the cover of the luscious plant he had been hiding in and snagged a claw on a twisted tree root.

He had to admit, this was the furthest he had ever travelled from home and was starting to doubt that a forest in deepest darkest Wales was the best place for an Armadillo.

If only those pesky ants hadn’t dared him to prove his worth, if only his mother hadn’t given him a ridiculous name like Sphere Mightiest, a name which gave his fellow creatures a right to question how mighty he is. Not that he usually wants to prove himself mighty, for that is exactly what he is not.

I've only gone and created Frankensteins' monster!
These creatures were created by merging different peoples body parts together to create something new.

Today me and other people from my course made a group animation (and got quite sunburnt in the process!)

We each had to pick a word out of a hat and draw what we were given on to the long strips of paper seen in the photo above. We then had to morph our drawing into the drawing of the person that was next to us, which when filmed would create a cyclical animation. I drew "Great Aunty Dot" out of the hat which I had to morph into Yusrys' "Teacher". I'm looking forward to seeing the animation!