Animating Illustrations: Illustration 1 Animated

After completing my illustration, I separated the layers for animation - lights on the red jumper, the star/spring on the headband and the layer of smoke above the mugs, merging the rest together to make working in After Effects much easier. After creating an After Effects project, I imported the .psd file, keeping the layers separate. I used effects and the glow tool for the lights on the jumper, which was extremely easy and something I have experimented with before.

For the smoke I changed the scale, size and opacity between frames but it doesn't move that well, and next time it may be easier to animate in photoshop, maybe over 12 frames and the repeating them

I had fun animating the star the most. I rotated the image first, but it rotated from the wrong point so rather than using a lot of positioning keyframes as well, I created a null object and placed it at the base of the spring. I parented the layer to the null object, creating my rotation keyframes through that rather than the layer. This time the image rotated from the right point, but it looked too flat and not very believable. I wasn't sure how to go about this, but I guessed that using the same sort of technique could work. I duplicated the star/spring layer, before using the eraser tool to delete the bottom half of the spring. I then placed another null object where that spring half of the spring started, parenting it again. I tried rotating it on top of the rotated star below, and it let me give a much more exaggerated movement. I erased the bottom half of the spring on the original layer, so that between the two layers they made up one full image.

I had to use a lot more position keyframes though to match the top half of the star to the bottom half, since the point where they should connect obviously moved when the bottom of the spring was moved. This didn't take too long though, and eventually I got the animation working with both parts.

I had a lot of fun creating this image; I feel like I found a way to colour that I enjoy and could actually finally stick to, and just trying to backgrounds more makes me want to actually concentrate on creating a few more complicated and well thought out backgrounds. I learned more in After Effects about movement and null objects than I expected to, and even though I am not a huge fan of animating, I am actually excited to try some more small pieces of After Effects animation to go on images I create. This was definitely a great exercise, and I would recommend it to other animators/illustrators.

If I was to do that again, I would probably think about the overlapping action a lot more, maybe separating the spring into three parts instead, and making the top half have a more exaggerated movement so that it was still very much to the side while the base began to move the other way again. I could still have had a lot more parts of the image animated, as they are more subtle I think than Rebecca Mock's, so in the next piece I make, I will take into account the pieces that could move/change/interact and what would add something extra to the illustration if it wasn't still.

Animating Illustrations: Illustration 1

Recently, I have been inspired by the artist Rebeca Mock's work, who uses slight hints of animation in still illustrations to add life to an an image, and tell a story without having to make a full image or video, or have another page/panel/image. I feel like thinking about small details like this would help my practice a lot, thinking about what is happening in an image, how I could show this, and how to really enhance any small details in my pieces.

For my first illustration, I took a drawing from my sketchbook (a season inspired piece of fanart and relevant right now) and decided to turn it into a full illustration. I tend to just draw characters without any context, and since Mock creates full scenes in her images, this is a great chance to actually try adding a background too. I usually stick to basic colouring or get a bit too carried away trying to pain something and not being fully happy with it. This time, I thought it would be best to actually use reference images and tutorials and actually stick to the way I intended to create the image.

I found a few reference images of  christmassy living room on Google creating a palette from the most popular colours in the images, and blocked out some basic shapes. I didn't want to background to be too busy and full of detail since I had a lot of other things to concentrate on, and I wanted the viewers to pay more attention to the characters and the animation.

I hid the background and create a new layer with a solid light brown colour, to give me something to work with while colouring. After inking my characters, I set the lines to a dark red/brown colours so that they were less harsh, and worked much better with the background and feel of the image. Using my palette created earlier, I blocked out the characters' base colours, making some adjustments to get a nicer contrast.

For the shading, I found a tutorial that I have read a few times, but never actually put into practice before. I usually just try to figure out the right colours based on my knowledge of colour theory and do them on top of the base colour, but the tutorial I found uses a greyscale layout with multiply, with extra detail and colours added afterwards. I changed the hue and saturation of my shade layer to a warmer, pink colour to go with the feel of the image. I used warmer shades for the shadows, and lighter, colder colours for the main lighting, coming from a very light window with lots of blue outside. I did the same for the furniture and background objects, trying to keep the colouring style consistent.

The tutorial can be found here.

I wanted to leave the skin do do myself, using more of a normal cel shading technique, with a blurred layer of the flat shadow underneath it.

On top of this I created a subtle yellow to orange gradient, using it as an overlay to enhance the image. I tweaked any parts of the images that needed some colour correction or more or less contrast, until the image looked close to finished.

After this, I moved on to animating in this post.

Rebecca Mock

Rebecca Mock is an illustrator and comic artist based in Brooklyn who creates illustrations with slight animation. She has created variant covers for the Adventure Time comics an illustrations for The New York Times.

The animation she uses in her images ranges from subtle to noticeable but still covering less than half the image. She uses this to tell stories and really set the atmosphere in her pieces, even if there is no text or actions happening. Her colours are also chosen very well, adding to the atmosphere and really letting you know what the setting feels like. This technique gives more depth to the image, looping perfectly so that you do not have to just watch one animated scene to see it.

I would like to create more animations/illustrations like this, to explore more sides of image making and illustration that I am not quite as strong at while still animating, and learning more techniques to make things move and interact. I feel like this could help me with my story telling, using still images to get something across while enhancing it with animation to make it feel much more alive. even just for my character designs, I could use small extra bits of animation like this to reinforce any of the character's personality traits through small movements, or important details that may move/glow etc. This would really make me think about how they act/look off of the page, and maybe with some moving environments too they could help to flesh out my characters a lot more.

My favourite piece of Mock's is the laptop one, above; the image holds so much life without there being a person present. The colours are very vivid and bright, imitating the environment that someone with this set up would really be in, drawing your attention straight away. The deep colours again help to give the image life and it feels much more of a living piece than a plain scene. It gives you just enough of a scene to be able to visualise a character, to put someone or yourself into this image. It is relatable, making it easier for the audience to connect to this image and I feel like it is very effective.

Social Networking

A social network is a place that allows people to connect online, whether it be for personal or professional reasons. Social networks generally allow you to post text/images/audio when and however you want, and to keep a track of the content that other people that you follow may post.

The first that people may think of when they hear the word social network is Facebook and Twitter. These are only a few examples, but there are many more and social networking sites rise and all throughout the years. Sites like Myspace and Livejournal were once large sites for all kinds of networking, but are now used mostly for specific content, as other uses of the site are now less used than they used to be.

I have created social networking accounts throughout the years for various things, but in recent years I have been creating ones for much more specific reasons. These still aren't as rich in content as I would like, but I still have time to add to my networks. I would like to specialise further this year, especially in 3D animation, so I can then put more specific, consistant and related works on my channels and any channels in the future.

Twitter

I use Twitter for exploring and researching the worldwide animation community more than anything else. It is good to keep up with news, and to have a look at the sort of job offers that appear (especially on AnimationJobs ). I have also used it to talk to people at studios in Manchester, and talk to them about visits and what sort of thing they do. I can also keep up with conventions and get updates without having to check individual websites.

DrawCrowd

Drawcrowd is still a relatively new website for putting up at - especially digitally painted art. I love to look at that sort of thing so I made an account, but I don't do enough of my own art of this type to upload things. This type of art is less relevant to my professional interests, but is still interesting for ideas and inspiration.

Vimeo

Vimeo is good for sharing your work on a more professional level than video sites such as Youtube or Vine; the general standard of videos tend to be higher, and is less associated with silly, gimmicky videos and ice bucket challenges. I feel like it looks a lot neater and is good for keeping a portfolio of animated work.

Pinterest

I use Pinterest more for research than for my own actual work; it helps to create moodboards of relevant images and ideas that can be neatly organised and easy to find. It also lets me follow other peoples' boards and constantly be finding more relevant images. The only problem in the lack of sources, but this can sometimes be solved by sites like SourceNao and Google Image Search.

 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is good for finding other people with skills and communicating with them. You can also show off your own work, talk about your experience and show your skills which is good for future employers. This can be used like a more detailed CV with live examples of your work and projects. I need to get more work and information on my account because this will be a useful site, and as I continue to look into my skills and what I want to use them for throughout PPP2, I should be able to fill this out a lot more.

 I use my RSS Feed often to see updates from artists, websites and companies that would talk me ages to search through otherwise. I can read the title of the post or updates that appear and decide then whether or not I want to read the content, or skip it and go to the next entry. Everything can be nicely organised, and it makes researching and reading news much easier.

I find Tumblr to be one of the more useful sites for showing your work, and that is what I use mine for. The tag system makes it very easy to look for things you want to find, and you can follow artists that you like. You can then see anything they reblog which allows you to find new art, artists and ideas. This also allows other people to share your work and gives you more exposure. It is also easy enough to tag your work separately so that your different tags can be looked at on your page - for example, the tags at the top of my page on the left, letting you choose between animation work, digital work and other options.

I don't tend to follow many people art wise on Facebook; I use that more as a purely social platform, but it is something that people check everyday, and having a page on there that everyone follows would be extremely useful. Once I have enough of the same style work to upload, I will create a Facebook page for myself and begin exhibiting my work on there. I will probably make a professional Youtube account at some point as opposed to my student account that holds even my less proud work, as Youtube is widely used for entertainment and could link people to my other pages through that. Instagram is also useful for still images and is something I have considered using, although I think it isn't quite as widely used as it was a few years ago, and is less of a match for Facebook, so I do not think I will make an Instagram account. 

Deviantart is another site that I have used for years - longer than any other of these sites in fact, and that is why I am reluctant to create a professional account. I still associate the site with fanart and beginners even though I know that a lot of professionals use it, and there is also a lot of beautiful work in there. It is used a lot by comic book artists, and a lot of people have been hired that way. I think that eventually I will create another account on there, especially as it is a good way to keep up with art, the groups are very useful on there, and I have seen a lot of people use it to show and provide 3D models for download very efficiently. This could be good for my practice, and for connecting with a lot of different artists.

I will continue to use my own name on all of these sites, since I would rather work for a company than be my own brand and it is best to keep consistent, especially when I link all of my accounts together.

Thought Bubble - Sketch Spotlight 2

One of the first subjects broached at the Sketching Spotlight, as usual, was of routine. Carroll and Boulet were agreed that their routines were largely chaos, but that was okay as long as they hit their deadlines. They would do a lot of work through the last minute panic.

The bits of animation on Boulet's websites weren't necessarily planned, but he saw where he could put some so he did it. Since at lot of the artists at the panel show their work digitally, they have to think about how their work would look in print if they wanted to sell/distribute it. Carroll finds it very hard to use her work in print, since she utilises everything that a digital medium can give her, like scroll bars, clicks, hovering and gifs etc.

Carroll also uses a lot of thumbnails and layout planning in her script book. She looks at webcomics as being less of a financial investment, and didn't know how to get into print comics anyway. She uses traditional pencils/inks and then colors and edits digitally and she prefers penciling and inking manually and then switching to digital for colouring and editing.

Boulet said it was 'hard not to get eaten by the machine' when talking about digital art; a new tool makes him want to test all of the limits, especially Photoshop, although this could make his art a bit inconsistent rather than sticking to the same thing he has done for his projects. He also like water colours because they make it easier to be lazy - he can use water colours while he watches the TV.

Tarr commented that life drawing informed her work and actually made her cartoonier style much better. Corsetto agreed and said that one of her only regularly scheduled things as life drawing and that she enjoyed the shorter poses a lot more, since they are great for cartoonists. She doesn't like the 40 minute poses as much though - "what would you do for 40 minutes?" Corsetto's mentor always old her to think more and draw less. Tarr gets bored of rendering and also prefers much shorter poses.

Boulet commented that it was hard to give up control to an assistant or a collaborative partner; it was more interesting leaving them to do what they wanted, otherwise it ended up too close to his ideas so he re-did a lot of work in stick figures to give them more of an opportunity to do their own stuff. Carrol doesn't like giving negative feedback, so it is easier working on her own.

Carrol likes to use her dream journal as inspiration for comics which somehow meant she had less nightmares, and she also continues to work on her stories as she goes along rather having it all 100% to how it was planned.

Boulet finds it boring to ink over pencils - he would rather ink straight away, and improvise. He also commented that it was weird to achieve a dream that you wanted and hate it; he found it more fun to to sketchbooks and silly little comics, so he went into webcomics instead. His job was suddenly interesting again and he would get instant feedback which was much more fun and he left doing printed comics - "Now I'm happy and rich!"

Something that came up in this part of the panel was ages; Boulet is 39, Carrol is 33, Corsetto is 31 and Tarr is 27. All have been doing comics from around their 20s, mid 20s. Corsetto doesn't plan well - her characters aren't planned much before hand and he 'fans know more abut my characters than me'.

Boulet said that webcomics were expensive to do on his own website, but he ended up getting all of the site stuff done free from a fan after complaining about it on Twitter - this fan now does all of his programming/coding for him.

It was interesting to look at the different ways that these artists work and their reasons for choosing digital or traditional media. Webcomics would be an interesting thing to look into although they would require a lot of motivation.

Thought Bubble - Sketch Spotlight Artist Introduction

I didn't know any of the artists involved in the Sketch Spotlight this year, but that didn't make the panel any less fun. A lot of the artists this year work primarily on webcomics or comics presented digitally, so it was interesting to hear about their different processes and way of working than the artists the year before. this years artists were as follows;

Danielle Corsetto, writer/artist of the webcomic Girls With Slingshots which celebrates it's 10th year this year. It is a slice of life webcomic well known for its well done depictions of characters with disabilities, and LGBTQ characters.

  

Emily Carroll is an illustrator who studied animation at university, and creates a lot of horror comics on her website. She has had her work featured in a few anthologies (especially ones collecting horror stories) and he work has also been featured in games  The Yawhg and Gone Home.

Babs Tarr is a freelance illustrator now drawing the Batgirl comic for DC comics. She has also done some game art/character design for the Facebook game 'Wormwood' before working in comics. Her work can be found on Tumblr, Instagram, DeviantArt and Etsy among other places.

   Boulet is a French cartoonist posting comic strips to his cartoon blog since 2004. This has made him very big in France and his work has been published in several volumes. His work is largely in French, although some have been translated to English and in 2009 he began an English version of his blog, achieving wider success among other countries.

What I Want From PPP This Year

This year's PPP module gives us a chance to explore further into one are of animation that we are interested in. I am very excited to get a module where I can specialise in something - I didn't enjoy all of last year as much as I could have done; trying everything was fun, but 2D animation is not something that I enjoy doing. I would much rather focus on the design and keeping the drawings looking nice than making the figure move, and that hindered my results significantly.

I thought that I would come into PPP ready to concentrate fully on design and visual development, and though I love those areas and would still like to continue them, our work so far this year has given me a chance to try 3D animation/art, and I am enjoying it so much more than I expected to. It feels much more natural than 2D animation and I would like to do more. However, the most fun thing I have done on this course so far is 3D modelling, and that is something I would like to focus on throughout our PPP module. Maybe 'design and creation of 3D assets' would be a good description of the work I hope to do this year and is something I will try and bring focus to throughout everyone of my modules.

I will start with more basic modelling, then texturing it and rigging for animation. I may then do some animating, and practice interaction between my characters, backgrounds an props and how I can make this work more smoothly.

By the end of this year I would like to have enough work to have a decent porfolio of 3D models and designs of characters, props and environments. At the moment I feel like I would like to show a larger focus on characters, but I know that through modelling I could change my mind on this, so I will have a look at how far I am after Christmas and hopefully be deciding on one particular aspect of modelling to do more of and feature more heavily in my portfolio. Studios will be looking for a more specific focus than just 3D modelling, and though it will be very good to have proof that I can do everything, I need to be specific in what sort of modelling I would specialise in for a company, and what sort of modelling I am better at.

SWOT

THINGS TO DO/THINK ABOUT TO MAKE OUTCOME STRONGER;

Substitute - different material/process/location/character
Combine - two characters as one? Skills, time management
Adapt - different context or medium? Change role, reuse old stuff.
Modify - settings? Emphasis? Addition?
Put to another use - Audience? Research later? Re-use rig etc
Eliminate - tone down, streamline, plot needed, function
Reverse - story back to front, different sequence, different perspective

Don't always be happy with what you have made. Get feedback, make changes, experiment with shifting around other parts of the idea and use principles as above. Brain remembers curves more than straight lines - put mindmaps into workfile etc - word association

SWOT;

STRENGTHS
- Organisation - prioritising, visual research easy to get to and in categories
- Experimenting - can easily slip into other styles and build off of them, see what works and what doesn't
- Teamwork - task delegation and compromising
- Meeting deadlines
- Design
- Photoshop skills
- Not afraid to network online

WEAKNESSES
- Animation
- Focusing on multiple parts of the project - don't feel like I can put 100% into everything I'm doing if I have to switch/split my effort between different parts of it
- Need a lot of deadlines to keep me motivated and on track; a longer deadline means a longer time to procrastinate in
- Documentation - easy to leave until last minute when done digitally, much more fun and do it more regularly with a sketchbook etc.

OPPORTUNITIES
- Studios in Manchester
- Thought Bubble Festival - networking + selling one year
- Competitions
- Whatever comes out of Responsive

THREATS
- Competitions - more experienced people *in both skill, time management and advertising/networking)
- Projects that focus on animating that slow down my progress when it comes to design - could get at least 3 good design projects done in place of an animation module
- Balancing time between projects

AREA I WOULD LIKE TO DEVELOP FURTHER THIS YEAR:

DESIGN

- characters, props and environment

AREAS TO LOOK AT IF I HAVE TIME:

3D MODELLING 

- characters, props and environment

Social Media

I have found social media to be very useful throughout this year.

 I already had a Tumblr, although this course has helped me fill it out a lot more. It gave me something to show Kilogramme when I asked about work experience, rather than having to bring a tonne of sketchbooks or sift through a million different pages between 3 different college blogs. Our front page could serve as a portfolio, but it is so awkward to see the images - and to have people find your art on it anyway, that it is not worth the effort. On tumblr you can tag work making it easier for people to find you, and all it takes is one reblog from the right person for thousands of other people to be able to see you art. I have even had Giancarlo Volpe, the producer of Green Lantern The Animated Series 'Like' my Green Lantern fanart on the site.

Through Asks on Tumblr, I have also spoken to quite a few animation students from America, particular third years who have given me tips and advice for my work and the rest of my uni experience.

Twitter makes it very easy to talk to people who would not necessarily even look at your messages on any other site. I have been able to ask about work experience, and find out about the sort of projects that other people and companies have been working on. The notification system lets you know whenever you have a reply, and it a very easy way of talking to people.

I have more people seeing my art now and it is a lot less intimidation to talk to big names in animation on the internet. I will definitely continue to use my social networking accounts throughout and after university, and hopefully I will have enough contacts on both to have learned a lot and to be able to find out about things that could be very useful to me.

Presentation Anxiety

We have a presentation coming up at the end of the year to help us reflect on everything that has happened and what we have learned. I am not a fan of presentations - in fact, I used to start hyperventilating at just the thought of it. I have slowly been getting better at it throughout the year, and despite still feeling quite nauseated as I wait for my turn, I do seem a lot more confident while I am presenting. The main thing I do to help this is not overthink it. That gets me even more nervous. I do not write a script, otherwise I sound robotic and trip over my words because I am talking and reading at the same time, or making sure it goes 'right'. The way I tackle it now is to write down a few points per slide that I need, and then don't look at my notes while I am presenting. I just remember the subject I need to be talking about that then treat it as a conversation (albeit a one-sided one). This makes my speech much more natural, and come on - how much passion and excitement can really come out of a rehearsed word for word presentation? Of course there is always a chance for me to forget one or to things, but I definitely sound a lot more like I know what I am talking about and that I am interested in it.

Although I do have a strategy now, I still find it nerve wracking while I am waiting for my turn, so I am going to look something we discussed earlier on in the year about fighting that anxiety;

1. Get Blood Flowing! 
Excercise has a positive effect on your nerves for up to 12 hours (and don't you always feel better after exercising?) I will definitely try to keep moving before my presentation and get myself pumped up.

2. Rehearse, Don't Memorise
Practice - but don't memories. Be able to improvise, but know what you are talking about. Memorising 'implies that you are dependant, lack confidence and are controlled by your talk'. I have this one down, I think.

3. Show Appreciation
If you show that you care for your audience, they will care for you. Speak about things relevant to them, and look them in the eye! But not for too long. That would be a little bit awkward.

The Tale of Despereaux Development - 2D to 3D

Though 3D animation is not something I have tried before, it is definitely something that I would be interested in experimenting with, and something that I would like to try ahead of next year's module involving it.

I came across some of the visual development artwork for The Tale of Despereaux by Olivier Adam, and it is interesting to see how to 2D design fits into the end 3D model.

To get details exactly as they are in the development art must take so long, so I am not surprised to learn that occasionally things will change to make it easier for the people building in 3D programmes. When they do get it exactly the same as the design though, it looks great. I would be amazing to have a whole world that you have designed going from a drawing on paper to something that you can pan around and zoom into.

I am planning on gathering a stock of videos and tutorials over the summer so that I can try to learn how to use programs like Autodesk Maya. I also want to see if there is anything out there about visual development specifically for 3D animations, and whether or not ideas and designs would have to change depending on the intended outcome.

I am definitely excited to learn new ways to see and make new worlds!

Final Turnarounds

I decided to explore my designs a little bit further for my second two turnarounds,combining some of my favorite parts of each to make some new idea.

I kept them all as female ideas because creating the basic turnaround took me longer than expected, so changing any shapes/sizes and gender would not give me enough time to make enough turnarounds.

Since each turnaround lasts for 2 seconds, I think that having all three run back to back for six seconds would work, giving you enough time to take in the design, but without keeping them on the screen for too long.

My first design is possibly my favorite, just because of the colours I have used that really make it stand out. I think that the shape is much more dramatic and memorable than the others as well, so this will definitely come before the other two when I combine the videos.

I like the simple design of the second character, and the detail around the cuffs and edges. For the third design, I wanted something less fancy - more of a washed up pirate kind of look. I think maybe some rips/tears would have worked well if I had time, and though the colouring works well to make the outfit much plainer than the other two, I am not 100% sure whether or not it works next to the other two, so I need to get some feedback on that before the exhibition.

I had fun creating these turnarounds. It was a struggle to find decent reference for 12 different frames - there seems to be mostly collections of 8 angles on the internet instead, so one or two frames don't look quite as accurate but when all put together in an animation, it works fine. I would like to try doing more of these over the summer, practicing drawing different people in different shapes/styles from different angles, and experimenting more with character design. It would also be good to use as a reference for any character that I might have to draw again and again.

Too Many Girls?

It has been over a year since the show Young Justice, shown of Cartoon Network's DC Nation block has been cancelled, but it took a while for the actual reason why to come out. Below is an excerpt of an interview with Paul Dini, a writer and producer working in television and comics, talking about why the show was cancelled. I have bolded some of the quotes that particularly stand out.

"Below are excerpts from the conversation, via Vi at Tumblr agelfeygelach.
DINI: "They're all for boys 'we do not want the girls', I mean, I've heard executives say this, you know, not [where I am] but at other places, saying like, 'We do not want girls watching this show."
SMITH: "WHY? That's 51% of the population."
DINI: "They. Do. Not. Buy. Toys. The girls buy different toys. The girls may watch the show—"
SMITH: "So you can sell them T-shirts if they don't—A: I disagree, I think girls buy toys as well, I mean not as many as f***ing boys do, but, B: sell them something else, man! Don't be lazy and be like, 'well I can't sell a girl a toy.' Sell 'em a T-shirt, man, sell them f***ing umbrella with the f***ing character on it, something like that. But if it's not a toy, there's something else you could sell 'em! Like, just because you can't figure out your job, don't kill chances of, like, something that's gonna reach an audi—that's just so self-defeating, when people go, like… these are the same f***ers who go, like, 'Oh, girls don't read comics, girls aren't into comics.' It's all self-fulfilling prophecies. They just make it that way, by going like, 'I can't sell 'em a toy, what's the point?'
DINI: "That's the thing, you know I hate being Mr. Sour Grapes here, but I'll just lay it on the line: that's the thing that got us cancelled on Tower Prep, honest-to-God was, like, 'we need boys, but we need girls right there, right one step behind the boys'—this is the network talking—'one step behind the boys, not as smart as the boys, not as interesting as the boys, but right there.' And then we began writing stories that got into the two girls' back stories, and they were really interesting. And suddenly we had families and girls watching, and girls really became a big part of our audience, in sort of like they picked up that Harry Potter type of serialized way, which is what The Batman and [indistinct]'s really gonna kill. But, the Cartoon Network was saying, 'F***, no, we want the boys' action, it's boys' action, this goofy boy humor we've gotta get that in there. And we can't—'and I'd say, but look at the numbers, we've got parents watching, with the families, and then when you break it down—'Yeah, but the—so many—we've got too many girls. We need more boys.'"
SMITH: "That's heart-breaking."

When it gets to the point where animated shows are made only to sell toys, you have to wonder what is going on in the industry. Obviously merchandise makes up a large portion of profits, bt animation was never made to do that - the purpose of animation was to entertain, to create something that people enjoy. Pulling a show because too many of the wrong people enjoy it is a ridiculous idea; surely it would make sense to look at the audience you have, to see what attracted them to your show, and to use that to your advantage - it isn't like there haven't been shows for girls before that have been successful. Or better yet, stop gendering shows. It might be easier to target a specific demographic when it comes to marketing, but that does limit your audience - especially if your marketing aims at a specific demographic, then yes, that specific group of people will buy your toys. If you have gained an audience you didn't intend to, then why not extend marketing of your toys to them as well, rather than just writing them off straight away? Misogyny is present throughout every entertainment industry, with boy female creators and audience holding less value than their male counterparts so it shouldn't be as much of a surprise that this kind of thing is happening, but if people are producing animation soley for profit than entertainment purposes, then it definitely makes sense to take advantage of having a wider audience than try to cut it back down.

As Anjin Anhut, writer at http://howtonotsuckatgamedesign.com/ says:

"There never was a moment in the history of geek media, when geek media was advertised equally to men and women and there never was a moment in the history of geek media, when it was equally culturally acceptable to be interested in geek stuff for men and women.Women never ever got as much marketing attention as men have and women always have been treated as an oddity in geek culture, with all the barriers that come with that. There never was a time, when toy cars and robots and construction toys have been made equally accessible to little boys and girls. The same goes for safe spaces and tech education." ( Howtonotsuckatgamedesign.com/12/marketers-fear-female-geek-2/)

The fact is that women and girls are not inherently going to like or dislike certain things put in front of them in the media; if they grew up with, say, Action Man having been marketed to them all their lives, then maybe they would buy Action Man as much as Barbies. If people grow up constantly being told that certain things are made for them and certain things are not made for them, then yes, they will naturally gravitate towards the things they are told are for them, because people feel like they should act as their culture and society tells them to. If people grown up without the idea of gendered products and actions, then they would not be biased towards one interest or another.

Obviously it would be impossible to change things just like that, but people are slowly taking notice of changing audiences and the desire for inclusion. There is still an audience out there who try to oppose it, because with all of the best things in entertainment tailored towards them, why would they want change? But these are no longer the only people who will influence the industry in the future, and we can only hope that enough people care to try and change it for the sake of the huge audience they aremissing out on.

Animated Self: Turnaround Tests

At first I scanned in the separate images I had drawn to create a very crude, basic turnaround, just to see how well the style would work. It could look good with more frames and if I corrected her stance - the character appears to be leaning at a very odd angle, and this would strange if I carried on with the turn around like that.

I made her stand up a little bit more straight and coloured over the base just to see how the outfit could look and test out some colours. I like the overall effect although the character still moves way too fast. This meant that I was on the right track though, so I then moved on to animation paper with some proper references of a human body from all angles.

I think that the turnaround looks much more 3D after drawing the character out properly. After using reference, the figure is a lot less stylised but I don't mind that as long as it works. I still have a lot to do before it is finished, so there would always be time to change things anyway.

I then went over the lines to get a much more cleaner turnaround and to double check the anatomy, before adding in the detail again ready to paint over.

I feel very optimistic at this point, and am definitely considering doing a couple of turnarounds rather than trying to add in animation of this character - I enjoyed the design process as always, and turnarounds will be very useful if I choose to continue doing it in the future, so I think that I will do as many turnarounds as time will allow, with maybe two or three turns each (as each turn is 2 seconds long).

Animated Self: Character Designs Part 2

I used Robert Valley's designs again as reference, to keep the character style consistent.

I got feedback that the body shape looked a little bit strange at times which I think is because the top proportions are very short, or at least wider than what usually works. I tested out a couple of other shapes changing the proportions around, and while I liked the one with thinner proportions, I thought that deciding on the actual character/clothing design would be more important, and the proportions could be changed to fit whatever style my character is.

Before I started developing any designs, I got invited to join a tabletop game of Rogue Trader - similar to Dungeons and Dragons, but with pirates in space. I thought that this could be a good idea to base my design off - I could create character, or give my choice of a few characters that would work well in this setting, meaning that instead of just being a flat design I could also think of the job ad purpose of the character. I set out looking for naval/pirate themed idea, helped by the research I had already done for my earlier sketches in Part 1, and started developing some designs for my space pirate pilot.

I tried to keep certain elements consistent throughout my designs, using the same sort of shapes/accessories (circles, lining of the clothes, buttons and/or buckles) to make them all fit into the same sort of setting in case I decided to use more than one design. This also keeps in with the theme of Rogue Trader and Warhammer 40K, a similar game, so that the design would be relevant to my character.

I definitely liked the pirate theme and wanted to keep it firmly in my designs. I also took inspiration from Disney's Treasure Planet which has quite a similar setting, and the show Firefly which is more of a Western but set in space, still combining sci-fi elements with other style of dress. At first I felt that the third image in the above page looked good but a little bit too dramatic; on doing some research into other player created characters, I realised that it actually wasn't that dramatic in comparison, so that was definitely one to think about using.

I thought that maybe looking more at layers could be a good idea as well, so I started experimenting above but they weren't quite as interesting as my previous designs, and didn't really capture the theme of the game too well. I decided that for now I would go with the design on the second page that really stood out to me, and on completing the turnaround, I could look back and decide if I wanted to take that further or have another look at my other designs.

Animated Self: Character Designs

For the Animated Self project, I decided that I definitely want to concentrate on character design, being one of my favorite parts of the animation process, so I started drawing with some vague ideas in mind.

First of all I looked at some armor throughout the ages - a lot of the games, TV shows and books I have been playing/watching/reading recently involve knights of some kind, so I thought it could be a good idea to do something that would keep my interest throughout the project. It was a lot of fun to draw armor, something that I haven't really done before, but since I was already considering turnarounds, I thought that 15 seconds worth of armor from various angles would be a little bit too adventurous for me at this point. Having got this idea out of my system, I then moved on.

Another thing that has popped up in a lot of games/shows recently is pirates, something that would be a lot of fun to design. The above characters are all referenced from the games and shows that I have been playing, but after drawing them I found that I still didn't really have many ideas for turnarounds or other animations, even if researching pirates had been a lot of fun.

I thought that at least getting a basic turnaround sheet would be useful, giving me some foundation to work upon. I used Robert Valley's style as this is one of my favorites, and one that I have enjoyed experimenting with since finding it in one of my earlier projects this year. There are not quite enough poses here for a complete turnaround (although at least two of them could be flipped for extra frames) but since this was already something solid for me to work from, I thought that it was time to look at more designs.

My ideas still weren't flowing as much as I wanted them to, so I typed 'Men's Fashion' in to Google to see what could come up. I did a few designs based on this as above, but they didn't feel as fun to do, and I wasn't particularly excited with them. I tried changing the proportions slightly to see if that could help but the one I started off with looked much better in the end. Still unsure of what to do, I decided to leave this part of the idea and move on to looking at designs for a female character, in Animated Self: Character Designs Part 2.

Shaun The Sheep Teaches Coding?

Aardman Animations are running a competition for young people to make games online based on Shaun the Sheep, with the winner invited to spend a day at Aardman Animations to have their game further developed. Scratch coding platform will allow children to make games using assets from Shaun the Sheep, and with a curriculum change requiring basic coding being taught, teachers will have the resources to help children learn how to code.

The competition in split into two categories - children aged 12 and under, and children aged 13 and over, and runs until September 2014. Aardman said that they were inspired by the Tate Movie Project, a film making project for children from 5 - 13 to collaborate in 2010/2011.

This is a great way to get kids learning and involved in the gaming industry from a young age, meaning that if they chose to pursue a career in it later on, they could already have the skills (and more) to be successful. If this competition - and the curriculum change does generate more interest in working in gaming and programming, then this could only mean good things for the industry - more people from diverse backgrounds will have the opportunity to work in the industry already having the skills necessary and the stigma over certain genders being more accepted in the gaming industry could decrease in newer generations, if you see everyone learning and taking part in coding and other computer related work.

This sort of opportunity is great even just for showing children what sort of career opportunities are out there; some might not even realise the possibility of making games for a living, and all of the different jobs involved in that.

Character Design - Mass Effect

Mass Effect is one of my favorite games, with a heavy science fiction setting, huge plot and great focus on characters.

The game looks great, and is something that has influenced my ideas on some of my past projects. I got the art book because of how great the game looked, and it is by far one of the best art books I have found, especially from a student/artist point of view.

The book goes very in depth to the characters looks, showing art involving their personality and the more costume design side of things. I love seeing how artists get from one idea to another, and this really helps - you can see which parts of the design worked best, and how they were mixed in with others to create the finished product.

You also do not get many books showing characters from quite so many angles, and it looks great. Turnarounds are very important especially where 3D animation is involved, so the level of detail throughout the design has to be consistent, and also possible to model. The above shows how more detailed the front of the character is, while still keeping in with her theme and being interesting enough on the back.

Designing aliens would probably have been one of the hardest things to do for the game, in my opinion. There are so many places to start, and so many places to end - I am not surprised that they would have to go through so many ideas to find the right one. It is also good to see the 3D model - which parts were specifically built into the figure, and while parts would only be present as a texture on top. The evolution of the design really helps to show the sort of though process you would go through to get to a final design, and I would like to keep my ideas as open and explorative as this.

Robert Valley

Robert Valley is an animator, designer, director and storyboard artist from Canada. One of the things that he is most well known for is animation in many of Gorillaz animated music videos. Jamie Hewlett's character designs from the show had an impact on Valley's own style of character design, as seen in some of his most recent projects.

He has worked as a character designer on Motorcity, an animated series on Disney XD set in a futuristic version of the state of Detroit, focusing heavily on cars and action.

The show was animated in Flash, Maya and After Effect (with backgrounds made in photoshop), the former working extremely well with Valley's character style.

This style makes it easier to animate characters in flash, with things largely keep the shame kind of shapes and angles from different positions. Heads would be animated separately from the rest of the body, reusing already made assets rather than hand drawing each different position.

One of the things that attracted me to this style was how angular it was - a lot of childrens' animations use a lot more curves with softer characters having a safer, more friendly feel to them. Valley's approach is suitable for an action cartoon, using ore edgy and lively shapes. 

Another show he designed characters for was Tron: Uprising.

Tron had a much more science fiction vibe to it, and although similar in basic shapes, Valley has changed his style to something sleeker, taking out some of the sharper lines and angles.  This works very well, and the designs look just as appealing as those from Motorcity.

Robert Valley's style helped to influence some of m designs in an earlier project this year, and even though they were not designs that I chose to go through with, it is definitely a style I would love to explore further in future projects.