[Animation Practice] 20/11/12 - More Lightboxes

Last week was the week that a few people in the class went to BAF, so last Animation Practice lesson was cancelled. So we picked up this week from where we left off last two weeks ago, with Elroy and using the lightboxes to do simple animation tests.

Before lesson started I did a really quick animation test using a actual human character I created which you may recognize from a previous post. Because I plan on doing a keyframed animation at some point in the future I wanted to practice small movement that you wouldn't think to practice, the movement I chose to animate was "turning your head". Here is how it turned out:

NOPE

When the actual lesson started we were informed that we'd be doing a "push and pull" test. However we weren't informed on how many frames to create, as long as they were 2 frames long then we could do as many frames as we needed to create. I chose to use a new character for this exercise, and by new I mean a panda but just fatter than the tiny one I did last time. Here is the animation:

 NO ANIMATION HERE

[Project Related] Feedback and Rethink

Today we had to go in to show Sarah and Rossie where we are on the Royal Armouries Project, this was to be done infront of our peers and explain our current situation in the project and to receive feedback of our idea from Sarah and Rossie. This was similar to when we pitched, however there was no pressure of getting green lit or now hanging over our heads, luckily this time I didn't jumble up my words. Below is our presentation:

I spoke about my backgrounds, their purpose in the animation and also what else I have contributed to the project. The presentation was missing the current animatic with the new script so we had to explain to our tutors about it, however once everyone had finished saying their roles and explaining the project to our tutors we awaited feedback and answered questions from our peers.

We were informed that our idea lacked "oomf", by which I mean excitement and showing the helmet off to its full glory, Something we had been told to avoid during the script writing class. We wanted to avoid making anyone wearing the helmet as it would raise questions on who the person is and what is role was, making him the protagonist and not the helmet. We raised the point of we didn't know who wore the helmet, as nobody does, however with Will's research we gathered some information about where it was used. We came to the conclusion that we were going to add something else to the end of the story to show the helmet in use in parades, combat practice and battle, still keeping focus on the helmet. The old saying applies here; You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

Once we sat back down we discussed how we could do this, however this lead to a conversation about the camera shots in the opening scene in the mines. Anthony felt that we should change perspective instead of keeping it flat and 2D, so to not clash with the art style for the Blacksmith. Now Anthony is creating a new animatic so we can see all the accurate camera shots and scenes, all we can do now is wait and discuss things until we come to a final conclusion. 

[Inspiration] Anime Influences #2

You may have noticed a certain character appear often in my blogs, that is a small panda. The small panda has a big head and a chubby body and is taken influence from 2 different anime; Hanamaru Youchien and Potemayo, both featuring small chibi characters. Below are trailers for both Hanamaru Youchien and Potemayo:

Though I am not a massive fan of the anime, the drawing styles are really refreshing and the characters wouldn't have nearly the same appeal if they looked any different. Both of these anime's are for kids, obviously, and I wanted my panda to appeal to children. The panda still lacks a name and a finalized look, however the style of drawing will still be the same. The panda is someone I want to work on a bit more, as I want him to be a trademark character for my work, similar to how my fellow class mates has their own characters for their work, eg; Anthony has Antique and Will has Blue.

However, one character I could say is a trademark for my own work is one that used to represent myself, which then transferred over to the short series I am planning to make The Uni-verse of Jack Miles. The drawing style of that character has changed over time until I finally decided on a style:

The final drawing, labelled present, isn't suppose to be the same as the other drawings. Though similar, this character doesn't wear glasses or have sideburns. One other thing that has changed is the hair, this was because I was influenced by a character in an anime called Panty and Stocking, which I have mentioned before in a previous post. The character's name is Brief, who shares similar hair to my character. As stated before, I love Panty and Stocking's drawing style, and is something I have grown fond of for a while, however instead of taking the style as my own, I want to take a few styles from the show and use them in my own, as you can see with my finalized character and the shows character.

Panty and Stocking's character designs intrigue me, the Nymphomaniac, the Sweet tooth, the geek, and everything else inbetween. I liked how each character has their own personality, which is why the character's I created in The Uni-verse of Jack Miles's character's each have their own personalities, likes and dislikes. The character styles in Panty and stocking are very western in comparison to various other Japanese anime, giving them a very crisp colour scheme. I liked this and wanted to bring that into my own style, you'll see influences from this show into my own drawings I am sure over time.

[Drawing Lesson] 15/11/12 - Using Easels

While half the class was at BAF, the rest of us were in lesson. Today we finally got to draw on easels, we set them up in the room only to find out we didn't have a life model. We came to the decision to use ourselves as life models, clothed ofcourse. A new found respect emerged when life modelling, as the aches and pains of standing completely still for 3 and a half minutes will forever be scarred upon me.

Tom, our tutor took it upon himself the get the ball rolling, he stood in the center and told us to draw his silhouette and his outline, but before doing any of this, we had to set up the easels, a hard task indeed. It took roughly 15 minutes of confusion to actually get the contraptions to stay up right, and don't even get me started on getting the actual paper to stay on the easel. But finally, the easel was up right and we began drawing Tom, below is how that turned out:

After this, we began drawing each other starting with Arron, I really liked how these turned out... Honestly I actually loved every drawing I produced today. Each of these drawings took 3:20 to draw, after Arron's drawings to 20 minutes was used to prepare ourselves to draw the model though. Arron's drawings were just 3 simple drawings, pretty much just look at him and draw him in any medium you desire. However, we had to be very accurate with the size, so today I finally learnt how to measure with my thumb, something I have been curious about for a while. After Arron modeled, it was my turn. See other people's drawings to see how that turned out, it got very tiring towards the end so my final stance was laying down, which turned out to be difficult to draw.

After me, it was Anthony's turn to model, Tom however had a change of plan now, he wanted each pose to be in a form of "dead on the battlefield" pose. so instead of standing, dead on the floor. He also wanted to spend 20 seconds drawing the silhouette and the skeleton of the person, before drawing the actual model. I really liked how Anthony turned out, especially the one where he has his legs over a table. Below are the drawings of Aaron and Anthony:

After Anthony, Emma was up next. Something Anthony had been saying to me for the past few months is that "girls are easier to draw than guys", and one pose that I drew kinda made me see that. Same to how Anthony's drawings are, 20 seconds drawing the silhouette and skeleton, then after drawing the full person. The one pose I really liked was the pose of her laying down, the curves are really nice on the drawing, during the last drawing I went for a bigger approach, however I only ended up going into detail for half of the drawing. After Emma it was Harry's turn to model, he only had to pose twice for this and the second pose we had to draw for 5 minutes, without any preparation drawing. I drew the last drawing fairly big, and I think it turned out good, the pose was fairly hard to draw and alot I didn't really measure the model as much as the previous drawings however you could still tell what it was suppose to be at the end. Below are the drawing's of Emma and Harry: 

[Showcase] Various Animations #2

Yellow Cakes:

Yellow Cake is an animation which caught me off guard, I really didn't know what to expect, what with it's happy opening, however as the animation went on and on I kinda got what the animation was about. The style of animation is similar to two TV animations, one I grew up watching as a kid; Ren and Stimpy. And another that I have only watched a few times; The Amazing world of Gumball. The whole animation style reminds me of Ren and Stimpy, characters and backgrounds alike, even the music. The character designs for the little creatures remind me of The Amazing world of Gumball however.

The animation represents one thing, America. During the beginning of the animation, the little creatures who I think represent any country that America has invaded, for example: Iraq, Vietnam etc  The cakes, represent anything that America has wanted at any given time, for example: oil. The cats invaded the creatures home town and killed everyone, eventually taking what is rightfully the creatures, similar to how America went into war with Iraq for oil. During the middle of the story, we see that the creatures are standing up for their own rights and won't stand for how they are being treat any longer, turning them into a form of terrorists, finally planting bombs in the cakes for revenge, similar to what Iraq did to America with 9/11. Then for the final part of the story, the creatures think they can finally live in peace, however the cats go on a full war with the creatures, invading, torturing and destroying everything. The cats turned the creatures into terrorists by their own greedy actions. One part during this scene is 8:04 where two of the creatures are running for their lives, this scene is similar to the photograph taken during the Vietnam war of kids running away from the war after being bombed with Napalm bombs. One big thing is the scene at the end, just before the video ends the animation acts like it is on a TV  the channel is changing to various TV shows featuring cats playing football, kids shows and variety shows. This shows that the cats are turning a blind eye to what is happening and carrying on with their normal lives.

My knowledge on History is terrible so most of these facts are probably wrong, however the representation of the animation is quite clear. The animation has been well received by critiques an I strongly recommend looking into the animator's stuff; Nick Cross. He is a Flash based animator whose animations all have meaning behind them, another amazing animation he created is one called The Pig Farmer and I recommend watching that when you next have the chance.