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.

Life Drawing

One of the things I have been doing this year alongside this course is Life Drawing. I really enjoyed it on my Foundation course last year and found it to be very useful for learning about anatomy, weight distribution, poses and lighting.

I definitely started off not being very good with the shorter gesture drawings, trying to focus too much on the shapes on the body rather than the actual movement and pose.

With a bit extra time my drawing was better, although still awkward in some places and not showing too much life.

I felt like having different lighting conditions helped to draw the weight and mass of the body, although I think in some cases I had way too much contrast and not enough mid tones. There are a lot of resources online to help practice with life drawing, and though it isn't quite the same as doing it properly with a life model, I am aiming to get better with gesture drawings and showing the flow of a body. I would also like to experiment further with lighting, although I do want to get the basics down properly before moving on to that.

Visual Effects

It's interesting to see all of the different ways that visual effects have been used throughout the years, first as they try to do things that no one has ever done before, and then as the industry learns from the mistakes, gets better technology, and creates amazing effects that you can't even tell are there. That was emphasised a lot by Nathan Ortiz of Double Negative when he spoke to us at Bradford Animation Festival. We watched how the film Rush - not the sort of film I would have thought about when talking about special effects - was made, using a mix of 3D and film footage to create a film that looked so realistic that you couldn't even tell the effects were there. Even the rain was fake, but I would never have even thought about that if it wasn't pointed out.

Visual Effects have become so important to our films these days that the industry can only grow larger. Despite that, there have been two protests before Oscar awards in regards to pay and the way that vfx artists are treated. Many vfx workers have even moved just so that they can keep their jobs. Vfx companies from inside the U.S have higher taxes than those from outside, meaning that many films turn to foreign companies to save money, costing American visual effects artists a lot of jobs and money.

While the companies dealing in special effects in other countries seem to be doing fine, America is definitely an important place for the film industry, and this can only be harmful for them in the long run. Protesters want imported visual effects to be taxes as well, meaning that their American companies will no longer be passed up on for something cheaper.

Pixel Art

Pixel art is a digital practice, used first in early computer/mobile phone technology. It was deemed primitive in comparison to newer art styles used for gaming, especially 3D graphics but it is something that has been popular again in recent years, as it is now considered 'retro' despite still being popular in some hand held games.

Minecraft is a game that takes full advantage of this, with users using blocks and square shapes to create pixel art on a large digital scale.

The game Fear Less, among many indie games uses a pixel art style, and by using a limited palette as well it definitely stands out.

There are many different style of pixel art, some so detailed that you can barely tell what is going on, some using square shapes as large as in Minecraft to show a bold, bright image among others. I am aiming this summer or in some projects next year to try out pixel art, and see what sort of things I can make. It is quite a change from drawing, especially when it comes to animating, so it should be a fun challenge. It is used more traditionally in the gaming industry in the animation industry but I want to try as much as I can in both before limiting myself to just one option.

The Animated Self

Who are you? What do you want to be? How can you show this in your work? Where do you want youwork exist? Produce a short 15-30 second animation that is 1920x1080, Full HD in H264 .mov format. The work you produce should reflect your emerging interest in animation, an awareness of the professionalaspect of your creative ambitions and your PPP research from this year. This is an opportunity for you toconsider what have you enjoyed? Where do your strengths lie? What do you want to push further throughmore play and testing? In exploring these questions you should demonstrate an investigation of the relationshipbetween:Context / Function.  Narrative, Sequence, Satirical, Persuasive, Promote, Agitate, SubvertMethodology. 2d Traditional, 2d Digital, Stop Motion.Visual Language.  Line quality, Shape, Texture, Composition, Colour, Abstract, Realism

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Your own personal development as an individual and as an animator is affected by all aspects of your life. This is an opportunity to reflect on the experiences from the past nine months that have informed the decisions that you have made/are making about your future development. Consider the following questions as a starting point for your work:What do you want to animate? (This is the difficult bit!)What excites you? What are you passionate about? What interests you? What do you want to know more about? What do you want to say? Who do you want to speak to? Consideration of context (see above) may inform your decisionIs there a subject tackled earlier in the year that you’d like to return to?Do you have personal interests that you’d like to make some work about?Perhaps you’d like to explore a subject in more detail that you know little about?This will require RESEARCH, INTERROGATION and SPECULATIVE QUESTIONING through reading, drawing and reflecting. Challenge yourself! Look to innovate. Don’t rely on what you can already do.

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Parts of animating I like: Mostly character design/visual development
What do I like: Books, games, comics, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Historical fiction
What I want to know more about: Working in an artistic industry, self publishing comics, history, science
What do I want to say (if anything): equality!

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Possible things to look at;
Character design
  - Evolution of historical costume
  - Non-sexist sci/fi/fantasy armour! fightscene showcasing PROPER armour? ---> do I have the skills to show this?
  - Some kind of own designs based on that of an animated world already (or a live action world that I can turn animated)
 - Motion comic involving one of the above

Background design (panning through various backgrounds - linking them all together is if they were all connected, around the world? Maybe rounded, like on top/around the world?)

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.

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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.