Reflection: Revised Ideas

Looking at the artbooks that I like and my thoughts/feelings on the year to include in my presentation, I have been finding it hard to find a way to combine them together for my presentation. If I had sections of character design, and then environment design, and storyboards, I would probably want them to be chronological/ in some sort of order because that's what works in an art book. This is a little tricky to match to what I want to say, because that doesn't match up with the subjects covered in an art book.

Having done some research on motion comics recently, I thought that maybe this could be a good way to show my thoughts and feelings, with some moving comics showing what I may have been doing at the time, and important key moments in this year of education. I also keep seeing Rebecca Mock's illlustrations everywhere which are gorgeous and a good way of combining animation and illustration. To me, they seem to work better than motion comics, which sometimes use a bit too much animation and also take longer.







If I can combine these two techniques, I think that maybe I could come up with some good animated images to represent each part of my journey throughout the year, and that wouldn't take me too long to do (especially while trying to fit our PPP animation in as well!)

This also gives me an opportunity to try out some different designs and styles (which was the reason why I wanted to do art books at first) so this will be a good idea for me, I think.

Reflection - Ideas Extended

Parts of story to consider;

- start - meeting + summer presentation.
- BAF
- flipbooks
- working together on horror pixilation
- movie nights as 'research'
- stress over water animations
- RUSHING for projects
- Excitement over YA project
- Half the class bowling
- Essay D;
- burning disks ;(


Do I need to make an actual story for this? Am I doing storyboards? How will this be presented?

Will each slide be a different page? will the pages correlate with what I am talking about?

Much more specific summary of things to say;

This year has definitely been an interesting one, and not necessarily what I was expecting. Though this was a course I thought about a few years ago, I came to my interview expecting to do illustration, and I came out wondering what life could be like as an animator - and worrying about the lack of knowledge I had on the subject.

Learning to animate was... alright. I enjoyed using photoshop because that was what I have been using for years, except I've never used it for animating. Pendulums and bouncing balls were easy enough; I could copy frames and reuse the same images, and I thought, y'know, I'm not that bad at it.

Than came some of the more specific briefs. 'Great!' I thought. I can design stuff, I can make a story and I can storyboard it and it will be fun! Well. I got a little too tied up with ideas I wanted that would not work, so it took me way too long to sort my idea, meaning that I had to rush my designing and storyboards. Well, there's the most fun bit ruined. Then came the animating. Ehhhh. I like Photoshop for drawing/painting, not animating, and now I'm overcomplicating things.

Lots of stress (and procrastinating with video games - that actually helped switch between working and not working much more) until I finally made it through, not having enjoyed it and forgetting completely about it afterwards. AVOID AVOID AVOID

Excitement for the next project! Drawing, drawing, drawing, drawing. For a month straight (burning through sketchbook pages) and then putting everything onto my tumblr ready for going to Kilogramme. Very nerve wracking; called Cara up like "there's loads of buttons to press I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO AHHHHHHH" and then getting a very nice studio visit with lots of excitement, and plans to do stuff over the summer.

Felt more organised after that and less in a vacuum of just work - feel more like there's actually some sort of professional world out there that I'm slowly becoming a part of instead of just school. Started updating art blog more often and feeling more and more inspired.

Then so much organising files for
 CoP and VisLang; regretting not being more organised and doing blog posts earlier. Eyes start burning from that much blogging but inspired as I keep writing more for the essay. Finally hand in, and need a nice long break. More Xbox. More and more Xbox. Drawing! Very silly drawing! Start enjoying myself and using things from the designs that I've learned from char design from Animation Skills to do lots of drawings (Single Ladies!)

Start enjoying myself much more when start working on the next project more, and then start getting bored with it when the idea of more design/pre-production comes along. Begin being very impatient and putting off animating to be able to do the part of animating that I love.
Constantly looking at Cintiqs again, and then being sad.

-
Didn't like storyboards as much as I thought at first, slowly started liking them.
Effort animating, don't love it too much.
LOVE the vis dev part, think that's pretty much what I want to do. Gain confidence in drawing from it, along with Kilogramme visit.
now can not stop drawing.
Don't mind animating a little bit but then get bored with it when the idea of a new visdev part of a project comes up.
Time management isn't great for any less vis-devvy projects.
Get distracted from priorities when the opportunity of visdev comes up.
Excited for future, confidence gained and lots more experiments with gestures (more extreme! Has made work better) and get much more work done in smaller deadlines.

Reflection - Research

Art books I like the look/style of;

Shape experiments with colour to see the end outcome, no colour experiments. Works well for getting the body language down.

Pencil sketches of finished characters - shows shapes and how they work with other characters without getting distracted by colour. A chance to experiment with body language as well.

Looking at shapes faces and to decide on personality etc.

Expressions and poses, again to capture character.

Looking at the character at different ages, refining the shape.

Expressions and movements for personality, how exaggeratedly he walks/ how lively the character is and how he may interact with other characters.

Shapes, looking at current childrens' toys and seeing what makes it cuter/creepier.

Storyboard thumbs to plan out a scene with less defined sketches.

Accessories and final ideas, seeing what works without colour and concentrating on values.

Finding an outfits that works well for this character, looking at colours, patterns and shapes.

Exploring expressions to gain insight into how the character expresses themselves.

Plenty of annotation  to show layers/accessories/details to remember (especially useful for 3D modellers).

Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs

Seeing what designs work and how it looks from different angles - do it look good? Is it too simple? Is it too complicated?

A two wall view of the room to see more of the detail and layout.

Can check if all shapes and details works well with each other, and have a catalogue of the buildings, vehicles and props that need to be made.

Mapping the depths and details of an environment and planning colours to get a feel for the scene.

See if all buildings are consistent and fit in with each other. Have them planned to drop into a setting after layout has already been thought of.

Reflection - Initial Ideas

For our Reflect project, I want to do something that not only helps to show my experiences of the year, but the sort of things I am interested in pursuing in the course, and that I have enjoyed doing the most for it.

I love the idea of doing an art book kind of presentation (although will it have lots of small extra text?) giving me a chance to do some more character/environment design as well as experimenting with media, allowing me to show my year in a much more visual way.

Thoughts about this year to be presented;

- Intention to illustrate, not animate; accidentally happen into this course
- Actually more impatient with storyboards, less enjoy than I thought

Character design - loved it as expected and did most work in that, intend to do more in the future.

Backgrounds - was fun for the purpose of experimenting and looking at layout; sometimes uninspired but that could have been to do with the places I had available to draw; would like to try it with maybe famous/historical places.

Animation - need lots of work! Slowly trying new programs, less scared of After Effects now. Still enjoy it less than design though! Think I over complicate things too much with Photoshop, so other experimenting is needed.

Have some scenes/storyboards of the year nearer the end of the presentation? Or stick to design things?

Story ----> Char Design ---> Env Design ---> SBoard ---> short animated gifs


Presentation then character design heavy with some environment design, possibly some storyboards. Write a script to talk about? Can then help inform the presentation, order of things etc.