[Inspiration] Paul Robertson

I have been inspired by many people, as you may have read in the previous post about my inspirations, however there are people who inspire me when they do not do the same type of animation as me; be that 3D, sprite, stop motion, pixel ect.

Paul Robertson is an example of this, he is a sprite animation who animates his own sprites that he has created. Sprite animation was the first form of internet animation that I watched and enjoyed, the first ever sprite animation I remember watching was called Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom, animated by the late Randy Solem. It was animated using sprites from Super Mario games, not his own sprites, however this is the case with alot of internet sprite animators. Thus far, Paul Robertson is the only sprite animator who creates his own sprites and backgrounds. An example of Paul's work:

Devil Eyes:

King's Power of 4 Billion%:

.

As you can see, the style of the sprites in the animation are very recognizable and rememberable. Different from older game sprites such as Mario and Sonic, these sprites fit in well with the 2D, side scroller, beat em up game genre, however have a Japanese anime look to them. I am familiar with Robert's work and anyone who is a fan of indie games will recognize that Robert is the sprite animator for the Scott Pilgrim vs the World: the Video Game, a personal favourite game of mine.

The thing about Robert's animating style that makes me be inspired by him is that the characters he create are full of energy and personality. They are all well drawn and animated, and are unique though they will have all originated from the same model. All the scenes are bursting with colour and imagination which makes a great short film.

I am not going to run off and create a sprite animation, though that doesn't mean I haven't attempted at making my own sprites in the past; during college I was asked to draw my tutors, so instead I took the sprites from Scott Pilgrim and using them as models I created my own sprites:

Apart from this, I haven't really been too interested in doing sprite animation as such. Though it does appeal to me entertainment wise, however I thought I would share my interest in this animator and what he does and creates.

[Drawing Lesson] 20/09/12 - Fun with Ink

Summer is over, and its time to start lessons again, we we're introduced to to our new Drawing Lesson tutor, Tom. Due to this lessons are going to be very different now, sue to the difference in styles, ways of teaching and knowledge in drawing. During our first lesson we dove straight in to drawing by going back to basics and pouring ink on paper and trying to find drawings with it. Some turned out better than others, we were given sticks and straws to manipulate the ink and create something from nothing. Below is the outcome:

As you can see, I created a few characters with this technique. Soon after, me and fellow class mate Emma Pinder were put together in a team to try and collaborate something from nothing. It turned out to be a fun mess. Below is that outcome:

This lesson made me think of drawing in a whole new way, I don't have to sit down and stare at a piece of paper until an idea comes to mind. I can just as easily make a mess and find idea's from nothing, this can include characters, scenery and objects. The possibilities are endless!

[Personal] September with Tony Garth

As I may have written previously in the blog, I work closely with Tony Garth during University as until his departure in the beginning of October he taught our Animation classes. During the beginning of the second Semester we found out our original tutor Andrew had left the animation team to continue his classes with the Graphic's design course, because of this we were given Tony Garth to teach us, unfortunately he was offered an animation job so he can no longer teach us. As you may know he worked on a few big animations such as Danger Mouse, Alias the Jester and Microscopic Milton, so it is a great opportunity to get feedback and creative ideas from such a person.

He helped us when we were pitching our animation idea to the Royal Armories  he told me how to present what I was going to present and how to answer their questions. Along with this he gave me feedback on some of the backgrounds I was working on for the Royal Armories project, when I had a problem with them he told me how to solve it and gave me advice on what I should do, for instance: I created a background which was greatly inspired by the game Limbo, however when I posted the background on my Facebook to get an opinion everyone asked me if I was copying Limbo. I asked Tony how to solve this and he told me that there was nothing to solve, if I am inspired by something then I am not copying it. The client doesn't need to know where I got the idea from the background from, and as long as I am happy with them I shouldn't change them, so I didn't and the clients at the Royal Armories really liked my backgrounds.

[Commission] Party Quest

This was a project outside of Uni that both me and Anthony worked on together, unfortunately to say it didn't turn out the way we had hoped. If you have read his blog you should know which animation I am talking about, it is none other than Party Quest. We both worked on this project along side with out University work and both took the role as animators, though I only did the backgrounds and the inbetween animation. I thought the last client was bad, I didn't know bad until this guy. Below is the video of the animation before its finalization:

This animation could have been good, it had potential, however the script was awful, the characters the client told Anthony to animate were worse and the client thought it was the best idea ever.... even though the plot has been done before. Basically the plot was about 4 characters who are in a role playing game who have adventures, this seems familiar: Example, example and example. They are all different animations however the plot is still the same, an animation like this won't make it as a series, let alone a well paid series. The client 's original plan was to make 3 episodes of this, send it to a sponsor to get a sponsorship and then get the money back he uses to pay us with each episode. In the end he couldn't get a sponsor and tried putting the animation on a kickstarter page so he could get money for the animation series to be produced, the money he was asking for was £70,000... that's right he wanted £70,000 for a animated show with a poorly written plot that has been done hundreds of times before, featuring annoying characters and animated using models. This plan backfired and when everyone saw the animation and the money he wanted for said animation they spammed hateful comments on the video leaving the client no choice but to take the original video down leaving the project over.

The client was alot more understanding and much nicer than the last, giving us time to do our university work, actually paying us to do it and keeping in contact with us. I communicated with him through Anthony and those two messaged each other about the work. Once the project was released I didn't speak to him and Anthony had to deal with the client asking him for advice and such. Though the client was nice there was something very funny about what he was asking us to do, he was telling us to insert characters taking off other characters, for instance he was very insistent of inserting a character representing a character from the TV show My Little Pony who goes by the name of Derpy Hooves. After this Anthony was asked to create a logo for the animation, the example he gave us was clearly ripping off the logo from the TV show Adventure Time.

I don't have much to say as Anthony was the one who communicated with the client the most, however I did take one thing away from this experience: If a client wants to hire you for something, be sure to check what it is before you accept, who knows what cat people with annoying voices he'll have you animating. 

[Commission] The Kangaroo Animation

This project was given to us as work experience, it wasn't mandatory but was said to "look good on a CV", the client wanted people experienced in animation to work with him, so myself, Will Padgett and Anthony Price took the work. This work was not paid and we was offering our services to him for free, however we did not finish the project as we all quit halfway through the animating process for our reasons. Though we gave him what we had done and told him he can finish the rest himself. Below is the outcome:

As you can see, the animation looks very incomplete and more like an animatic, we were told to tween the animation with models, he provided us with a kangaroo hop cycle (Though I recently found a tutorial which I think he may have used to create the kangaroo with located here) and then we were to animate the other models ourselves, I created the wallaby and the rest of the team created the other animals. The main reason why it turned out so bad was the fact that he had me, Anthony and Will animating different scenes, and not giving us separate roles. Each of us animate very differently, giving off a very look to the animation, to fix this he should have given us roles such as Lead animator, secondary animator, clean up animator ect.

The reason behind us quitting was because of the lack of information given at each meeting, the poor way we were treated in the meeting and because he was telling us to do things that we didn't how how to or felt uncomfortable doing. In the first meeting he gave us a shot list and a shot to name list, using these he'd choose 3 out of our lists for us to animate, however it seems like he tried to evenly give us a bit to animate in each scene each, which would and did cause continuity errors. Because of this we were abit uneasy on how it'd end up and we weren't feeling it, so we each discussed leaving the team, however we decided to stick to it a while longer until we finished the animation. During the last few weeks of us being there though, our client started to treat us incredibly rudely, telling us to do most of the scenes again, insulting us, ordering us around and then having the cheek to tell us we have to give him £25 each so we can pay for an after party to show off the animation. Because of these reasons we sent him an email and told him he can do it himself, we gave him all the scenes, the models and the resources he'd need to finish it off, we just wanted nothing to do with it.

The animation is roughly 3:16 minutes long, and took us from the end of January until we quit in April to do half the scenes. We could have done the animation alot faster and with little hassle if it was alot more organised. Considering the animation was almost all tweened, me, Anthony and Will could have done the animation together in roughly a month. We weren't given a script of any kind, we only received instructions on what to animate at each given time, the shot list could be considered a script however even from that I didn't know what was going on in the animation until I actually watched the finished thing.

Overall I did take away something from this experience, the knowledge on when to quit a team when we are treated as badly as we were. I didn't gain any animation experience, however I did gain the experience of what it is like to work under a bad client. No client should as for money from people he came to for help, insult us and give us little to no information about what he wants doing, then blame it on us when we haven't done what he wants, especially when we were doing it out of the goodness of out hearts.