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Drawing tablets are computer peripherals that input controls to the mouse. However with a drawing tablet you can be more precise with your movements since what you use to control the mouse is a device shaped like a pen in conjunction with a tablet that acts as a piece of paper. This creates opportunities to do a lot more with limited software as the limit is now how far your ability to draw can go.
These devices are usually used in 3D modelling, animation,  game design and other types of digital art.

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Once I decided I wanted to create an animation, immediately started researching drawing tablets that were both affordable and of good quality. The first brand I thought of was Wacom since I had researched them before out of curiosity. I did not go much further than that since I quickly found 3 tablets to choose from. The Wacom Intuos Draw, Intuos Comic and Intuos Pro. Being a bit tight on budget I ended up buying the Intuos Draw as it was the cheapest and I already had the software I needed so free software that comes with the device was not necessary.

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Before i did anything else, my priority was becoming familiar with the new type of input device that i had never used before.
I was surprised with how quickly i adapted as i had previously assumed that separating the piece of paper i am drawing on from the drawing itself would be very uncomfortable. Soon enough i had the power of using my lifetime long drawing skills along with the potential of computer software. The results motivated me immensely.

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The main influence of the look of the animation I am creating are the rough black outlines of the characters seen on the music video of the song "Breaking the Habbit" by Linkin Park as well as its' dark nature.
However, it will not go further from there. The rough and almost sketched-looking outlines are all the detail I need for this project as it adds to the simple dark look I am going for.

Other Influences come from animations of the Japanese style "Anime".
Anime is a hand-drawn style of animation that originated in japan. Famous for its' big eyes and colourful hairstyles, it can also be quite abstract and obscure.
In fact, that is what inspired me not only for the visual style of the animation but also for the story.

The graphical style I was going for was a product of the fact that I do not run an animation studio and would not be able to animate a full colour and background animation with the time I was given. However I still wanted to put across quite a dark abstract look. So I did the obvious and just went for a hand-drawn lines style, only instead of black lines on a white background, I used white lines on a black background. This would surely contribute to the lost and lonely feeling of the protagonist and obscure nature of the universe he is in.

Here are a few series that came to mind while creating my FMP:

- Tokyo Ghoul.
- Death Note.
- Attack On Titan.
- Another.

Here are the links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WOxnuSlf3E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGRm4IzK1SQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJZtOrm-WPk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETHpMMV8rJU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2H4l9RpkwM

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I knew from the start that I wanted to go for quite a dark look and overall feel.
However I did not know how to approach this initially, so I started sketching.
I quickly created two characters that i just knew had to be the protagonists.

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I created some drawings so I could get used to the device, here are some of them:

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Here are some of the sketches I created:

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Here are some of the sketches I created:

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After I had an idea of how the animation was going to look I started thinking about the storyline.
I wanted the story to feel ambiguous in order to fit its' mysterious look. However it still had to have some degree of lineage.
At first I failed this as once more I got carried away with my imagination and created a story full of details that could never be depicted with the type of animation I was creating.

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I already had a few sequences animated from the first storyline that could also be used in the new version.
Most of these sequences included the two main characters as they are the only thing that was not changed in the new story.

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Choppy is stuck in some kind of purgatory. He realizes this when he tries to commit suicide and is immediately healed by Abyzou (ruler of this place), preventing him from escaping.

Every entity in this land (besides Abyzou) has been trapped in it for millions of years and, despite the hatred they have come to grow for each other, they all have the same purpose. To die.

Choppy will eventually meet Monsturr, another lost individual stuck in this place.

Monsturr is different than everyone else here. He is friendly. This behaviour is neglected by the loners that exist in this place. Except for Choppy, who seems to be new to the purgatory.

Monsturr quickly makes himself Choppy's friend.

After trying several times to die by either suicide or purposely killing each other, Choppy and Monsturr decide to analyze Abyzou. The thing that seems to be responsible for the unwanted ressurections.

Monsturr finds a secret passage into Abyzou. This passage leads to a dungeon inside Abyzou. They now have to look for the life source of Abyzou and destroy it.

However, if they die along the way. They will be ressurected outside the passage. This is a problem since there are miniatures of Abyzou trying to kill Choppy and Monsturr to defend Abyzou.

In the middle of the action, one of the creatures kills Monsturr, leaving Choppy alone for the rest of the journey.

After killing what he thought were all of the creatures, Choppy heads for the life source. A floating crystal.

Just before Choppy gets a chance to break it, one last creature appears in his way. This one is bigger and stronger than the previously encountered ones.

The creature grabs Choppy and rips off half of his body.

There seems to be no hope. There is only so much time before Choppy's blood runs out and he is ressurected outside of the dungeon.
Just before Choppy lost contiousness, Monsturr jumped out of the dark onto the creature's head, ripped its' eye out, killing it.

He came back for his friend.

After the creature was dead, Monsturr finally destroyed the crystal, which killed Abyzou and freed everyone from life.

Choppy was already bleeding out so he died just after the curse was broken and was set free.

Monsturr rushes out of the dungeon and tries to draw attention to himself.

He then commits suicide.

The entities stare at the body.

To their surprise he is not ressurected. They look shocked. One of the entities also commits suicide. They all realize what has happened as no one is being ressurected.

Everyone finnaly ends their suffering after millions of years imprisoned.

The end.

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After discussing the first storyline draft with my tutors I got several recommendations on how to tell the story clearly.
I realised completely forgotten the style I decided to go with and ended up with an interesting but over complicated story.
However to tell this story I would need to create a more common modern style of animation. Thin lines, colours and full audible dialogue.
After contemplating the feedback I had received from my tutors I decided to write a new story with the style I was drawing in mind.
I had to keep in mind that the style had very little visual detail, no dialogue, and would have quite a minimal sound track.

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The main character is lost aimlessly walking in an unknown dimention. He does not know where he is or why he is there. All he knows is that he feels lonely.
Distracted by his own thoughts, he unknowingly approaches another being. He stops walking and stares at the being for a while in confusion.
The being seems haggard. As if it has been around for a long time. It sits alone with its' head looking down facing the main character's oposite direction.
It notices someone is watching it and turns its' head around, looking back at the main character.
The being mutters the words "They explode when they see" to the main character's confusion. It then says in a firm voice: "Leave", turning its' back against the main character and continuing to do what it was doing before. Looking down.
The main character hesitantly turns the other way.  His expectations for any future encounters have lowered.
He finds a sign shaped like an arrow. There is a prohibition symbol on it.
When he looks at where the sign is pointing he sees a giant pyramid with some sort of creature on the top of it.
Before he has any time to think about what he just saw, he feels something approaching him. He looks around to find an appearently strong monster looking at him. He feels scared at first glance but after the monster jumps at him to lick his face, he realizes he is friendly. He accepts the monster as his friend.
The monster also appears to have been in this place for a while as it points at the pyramid with the intention of taking the main character there.
They head towards the enormous structure together. The monster knows it is the only way out of this empty dimention. However the main character has no idea why the monster is leading him there.
As  they reach the bottom of the pyramid the creature that lies on top sees them and reacts in what seems to be a defensive way.
It shoots out its' two eyes into the sky. While the eyes are in the sky they transform in to two individual creatures. While different in body shape, these creatures seem to have similar pupils. They are small and shaped like a coin, almost as if they were some kind of button.
These two monsters fall down facing the main character and his monster friend.
They are now ready to fight with the two creatures.
The monster jumps toward the creature on his left while the main character jumps and lands a full body weight punch into the other creature's face, breaking it and making it drop what seemed to be its' pupil. It has a coin shape and is quite small.
The creature the monster was facing attacks him. When the main character turns around and sees this, he rushes and jump-kicks the creature, throwing it far away.
They have now defeated the two creatures and are looking at the main creature with no plan on what to do next. The main character turns around and picks up one of the coin shaped objects that the creatures dropped in the fight. As he is holding it he remembers what the first creature he encountered said: "They blow up when they see". He quickly connected the dots in his mind and realized that this meant the pupils in the eyes of the creatures were bombs. He called the monster's attention and they both threw the bombs at the creature at the top of the pyramid.
The creature exploded and disappeared.
Soon after a portal opened where the creature was standing. The main character and the monster look at it happily as it seems to be the only escape in this place. They walk into the portal and it closes after them. Where they went is unknown and up for the viewer to imagine based on what happened.

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Because I did not create a shot list or a script I ended up animating sequences out of order and sometimes even leaving certain bits to be done later using key frames instead of just drawing those frames.

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I had already started animating the sequence in which the two protagonists meet for the first time so that was the one I started with.

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Even though the storyline was written, as I began adding new frames to the sequences I realised how much clearer the characters' personalities were.

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I finally had a half term break. After quite some time experimenting with frame-by-frame animation and sketching the characters out to get an idea of how they moved, I planned out the week to animate all of the sequences I would need to edit together into a short animation. My aim was for it to be from 1 to 3 minutes long.
So I did. That week, every day from around 20:00 to 02:00 I animated all of the sequences I needed.

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After the half term I was ready to bring this to life. When I got to the college the first thing I did was export the sequences into video files (.mp4) that I could use to create the rough cut

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Once I had the first rough cut of my animation, I showed it to anyone that would spare the time. From tutors I knew to friends from my group as well as from other levels.

Feedback I got:

- The first being the main character encounters needs a more relevant role in the story.

- The establishing shot should be a wide shot of the main character walking through the unknown dimension instead of the original mid shot that i had.

- A bit of dialogue. Not full dialogue, but just a few lines that would help clear up some of the storyline yet still leave the ambiguity I wanted from the beginning.

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I took into consideration all of the feedback I got and went back to work to fulfill the wish list.
I added the wide shot of the character in the beginning, making it clearer that he is walking in a large empty space.
I also related the first being the main character encounters relevant to the story by making it say something about the eyes of the monster the main character would eventually kill. This connected a previously irrelevant character to the end of the story, bring it all together. I did this by adding a few subtle lines said by that being that while connecting the story, still make the viewer think.

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It all looked as I imagined. However it did not feel like such. This was because there was no sound. Even though it was intended to feel empty and lonely, this was not the case. The lack of sound only disconnected the viewer from the animation, instead of contributing to it. Silence can only be heard if there is sound before it.

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I happen to be a bedroom musician and as such I have a few friends that do the same. One of them happens to by particularly sharp when it comes to sound design. We also happen to be quite close friends, and when I asked him if he wanted to do my homework, he could not say no.
All jokes apart, I showed him the animation first and asked what he got from it. To my surprise it was what i had written. He did not see an existing character or ask if the being he encountered was his ex-wife. He got from the very beginning that this was all happening in another dimension, one that does not look or feel like the one we live in. That not only is why we are such close friends but also made working with him quite smooth.
I did my best to explain the feelings that I wanted portrayed.
Feelings taken into account when creating the sound track were:

- Loneliness.

- Confusion.

- Neglect.

- Lack of aim.

- Empathy.

- Anger.

- Relief.

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After working together on a sound track that would emphasize the feelings portrayed in the video track, we exported it into the final cut that I will submit as my final project.

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For my final project I was given a variety of choices on what to create.
I immediately chose to create an animation as it is something I always had an interest on ever since I was a child. Not only that but this would be the perfect excuse to learn how to do it. So I did.
Even though I already had an idea of how animations were made and what types of animations existed I still had to do some research on the technical side of it. I wanted to create a frame-by-frame animation as I was and still am quite a big fan of the Japanese style of animation, Anime. Another reason that contributed to the choice was the fact that not a lot of technical knowledge would be needed as my only limitations would be my imagination and my ability to draw. This brought me from originally wanting to use Adobe Flash to Photoshop. Because I already had Photoshop installed on my laptop, I dug around the toolbars to find a feature called "Timeline". This day I found out that I could animate using only Adobe Photoshop. I had no idea this was possible until then and honestly would not have not found out had I not snooped around the program.
This made me extremely happy and motivated as that meant I would be able to animate sequences at the times and places that worked best for me.
The original idea was called "Choppy and Monsturr". Named after an old sound design file I named after how it sounded, it was based on the concept of purgatory. Only it had two characters with catchy names and quite a traditional cartoon story line.
However, after completing the story line for the inicial idea and discussing it with tutors I decided that it was far too detailed for the visual and audible style that I was aiming for.
Before any idea was formed in my brain, I already knew how it was going to look. A black background with white lines that looked as if they were sketched on a school notebook. This idea came from the fact that I wanted this animation to have quite a dark and mysterious look.
As cool as it may sound, it was quite a limited look. One one hand this taught me to write and animate a story with the most important elements in mind. On the other this only happened after I failed doing it for the first time. So I guess I succeeded in creating an ambiguous yet quite linear story that is dark in nature.
The first story was almost entirely scrapped with only the two main characters remaining on the latest version. However on this version it serves the style better. The characters did not have any names as there was no dialogue or titles that were planned in order to introduce such a thing. The name "purgatory" was removed in order to make the viewer think the animation takes place in an unknown dimension, rather than associating it with the real world that we live in.
With a new story line I was ready to start drawing some frames. As I got closer to finishing a sequence from the first story line that I used on the new one as it still made sense, my laptop started failing. At first I thought it was the drawing tablet. Like anyone I instantly blamed the cheapest piece of technology I had.
However after testing it on other software, I realised that it worked just fine. So it had to be my laptop. Around a week later I decided to update my laptop's graphics card drivers, fixing this issue. I was now really ready to animate. I had my laptop working fine, my drawing tablet skills on edge and a week of half term ahead of me. So I animated all of the sequences I needed during that week. That proccess was relatively smooth - At least to a cheap laptop's standards - and I was able to complete them on time to edit right on the first day back to college. Editing was fairly simple as I had done that quite frequently duriing my course and it was not different this time since I was using the same software. Only this time instead of editing together shots filmed on the real world, I was working with sequences I had animated the week before. Even though I did not have any other guide to my edit besides the story line, which made this proccess a bit more improvised than it should have been.
After the first rough cut was finished I went around showing it to people to get some feedback and find out what I could improve. I got some feedback that was fairly easy to apply to the edit as it did not require animating any new sequences, only re-structuring some of the ones I already had and adding some text.
I then contacted my friend who happens to be an audio engineer to ask if he could help me with my final project. He was immediately up for the task and curious to see what the video looked like.
After watching it, he immediately got an idea of the feelings it is supposed to portray only through the silent video. We then discussed it a bit more just to clarify the idea to him and we proceeded to create it. It went exactly as I expected and wanted. The sound track, while not being completely attached to the video, is still shaped by it. My idea was a minimalistic sound track that would not take the viewer's attention away from the video but rather narrow it down to it. He did exactly that. The sound track includes a theme mellody for each new character and event that is introduced while still sounding like a musical piece on its' own and not like a full sound track.
After watching the final edit more than 10 times I am confident in saying that I am happy with it and proud of what I have achieved with this project both technically and as a film maker.
This project taught me how to write a story with the viewer's point of view in mind. This allowed me to develop implicit ways to demonstrate certain feelings or connect certain parts of the story through visual and audible qeues.
I will however take a more orthodox approach to planning on the next time I do this.

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Creating a static drawing was one thing. I had done that for all of my life. However drawing 15 frames only to last less than 4 seconds on the screen can be frustrating.
Luckily  I am quite able to draw.
I use Adobe Photoshop's timeline feature to animate with the "onion skins" setting enabled.
This setting lets the user see the previous frame drawn with some transparency in order to know where to start drawing the new frame.
I found this was worth mentioning as a question I often got from people was how did I know where to draw when I made a new frame.

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From then I had my software configured and hardware ready to go. All I had to do was create a few simple animations to get used to the idea of drawing to create the illusion of movement. Soon enough I was animating the actual sequences you will see on the final edit.