Minor Project #2

Character Redesign

For this project we get a design that a child has created and we have to make it animatable, without losing the qualities of what the child put in. We do all the usual stuff that goes into our animations (turn-arounds, storyboards, action/expression sheets) the difference for me this time is that it will be animated using Celaction. I am not familiar with this software yet, but just think "Peppa Pig" type animation.

For an example in the industry of how this process works, here is a concept design of Sully & Mike form Monsters Inc. (Please if you know how to credit for the art, let me know. I can't find it anywhere) .
As you can see from the sketch they have all the basic similarities to Sully & Mike as we know them, they are the bare bones they they were created from, loads of other designs were made but this sketch hold the fundemental likelyness of the pair. That is what I am trying to accomplish with my project, take one design and make it in to animation with out straying too much from the original.

Here is my breakdown for the week!

1. Decide on the sound clip and  drawing , start re interpreting  the drawing into your own unique style bearing in mind any opportunities for character development  and replacement shapes
2. Start putting together your sound-clip on the bar chart  and planning out  rough ideas of performance on your dope sheet Video referencing.
3. Start working on  expressions and acting poses (rough) to interpret your characters performance to produce completed  turn around postures refine and complete characters

Next week (starting 12th October) 

1. Artwork ideas for  possible replacement shapes .. expressions facial changes appendages etc….
2. Produce a storyboard and an animatic with the sound.

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So this post is a little late, I have been working furiously on this project for the past week. I have done nearly everything for the first week and have started the second week as planned !! There are just a few areas that need neatening up for the finished project but so far I'm on target!

Here are a few things that I have been working on! 

TL: My original design, TR: My design broken down and explored.

BL: The original drawing annotated. BR: Compilation of a few rough sketches, expressions, storyboards and action sheets.

I also decided I needed a 3D model, which i made from Plasticine, to help me with drawing proportions.

Currently I am working on my storyboards, backgrounds and soon, animatic. 

I will be making the final versions of everything this week too I have until Sunday 18th!

Narrative Forms: Animation, Comic Books & Video Games

Narrative Forms

For this project I have to write an essay and production log. with option of creating a practical piece.
To start I had to write 2 premises, my first premise is a 7 minute animation, about a small coffee shop in suburban New York, the young possibly inexperience owner has to deal with rude and obnoxious customers.

The Characters I have been looking into mostly;
There is a young woman that owns the coffee shop, she is of slim build quite dainty, and delicate but she is a strong person that looks for the positive in everything, she is very kind.
She wears a white blouse with a salmon coloured pinafore and a black knee length circle skirt. Her hair is short, bobbed and is dark red. She wears dainty red mary janes on her feet. 

The second character is an old man, he is very small, and shuffles about with his walking stick, he is also a very kind old man that admires how strong the owner of hte cafe is, and how gracefully she can deal with ignorant customers. He wears grey dull clothes; a shirt, cardigan and corduroy trousers with sensible brown shoes, he has a flat cap and big round glasses.

Thirdly, an obnoxious woman with an up-tuned nose, she only goes to the cafe to gloat how successful she is and cause drama. Her hair is dyed black in a 50's up-do, she wears a matching burgundy blazer and pencil skirt, she is medium build and had black high-heels.

Finally and obnoxious mother and her very loud son. The mothers description is not needed because she is in none of the shots, you can only hear her, her son is about 7 years old and is very used to getting his own way, he has a blond bowl cut and is wearing shorts and a t-shirt, he has very grubby knees and hands and is missing a couple of milk teeth.

Here some artwork that I think will go well with the animation:

Thorsten Hasenkamm

Jisoo Kim

Ami Thompson

Jordi Laferbre

(I sourced these pictures from a character design page on Facebook).

My second premise is still pretty in early development but it will be a light-hearted "comedy" zombie survival comic.

My mood-board for this would include; Sunset Overdrive, Borderlands & Zombicide. I adore the art of Fiona Staples in the Saga comic books and Oscar Martin's "post-apocalyptic/survival" character design. There should be more on this once I have developed the idea further. I have until Tuesday 13th October to get something down and refined. 

Visual Forms #1

This was more of a warm up project, to go out an look at the world around you becuse first hand reference is the best kind of reference, because you'll gain your own understanding and htere for have your own stamp on your work.

It was a pretty easy project and it was very peaceful, it let me try out a few things I wanted to try, for instance; tissue paper and coffee painting:

Here is a compilation of the six trees I did for the project:

Watercolours

Pencil Crayon

Brush Ink

Felt Pens

Fine liners, Charcoal and Silver Pens

Water Soluable fine liner, tissue and brown paper collage and coffee. 

I would recommend any artist to try this, just go out and draw six trees with different mediums, try and go out of your comfort zone and try new things!! 

Advertisements & Story-boarding. #1

The Brief 

For this project we were asked to take apart a 30 second advertisement and storyboard, pretty simple. We are also asked to make an animatic of the avert too, an animatic is a simply animated sequence with sound, that shows key shots and facial expressions.

The second part of this project is taking 1 page of the TMNT script and producing a storyboard to using your own initiative and creativity. This is pretty easy for me too, being as I haven't seen the TMNT film yet I have 0% knowledge on what actually happens so it won't be influenced.

Research

To the right is an example of Iain McCraig's Storyboarding, he did quite a bit on Star Wars: phantom menace. His examples are very good. There is also a very helpful book on the star wars storyboarding process available on amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Star-Wars-Storyboards-J-W-

I do know a little about storyboarding already, due studying it on my media course in sixth form and my first year at uni on the film course (which I left).
Storyboards are basically a direction for the camera movement to tell a story, low angels imply something strong and high angles- something weak, there is an awful lot of storytelling in storyboarding, because it is the first visual on what the story will actually look like.

Here are some helpful sites about the importance of storyboarding and what it can accomplish:
http://lacyboggs.com/how-to-storyboard-your-content-marketing-success

Storyboarding basics:
http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/starttofinish-storyboarding/

The Process

For the TMNT Storyboard I first started by choosing a section of the script and analysing it, then i did a rough draft of what I though everything should look like, then I went on to do the final storyboard, but eventually ran out of time. For future reference I think i did it too big (I did it on A3 paper) considering the amount of time i had left to finish the project, this was a bad move.

For the advert I chose the "John West, Man vs. Bear" commercial. I watched it through a couple of times and drew key changes as they happened, then went back to find things that i missed. This was all roughly thumbnailed then turned into a draft storyboard and then the final storyboard.
I then did an animatic of this in rough, put it together in a program called "flipbook" then watched it back to see if i missed anything, the bits I missed I added in to the final animatic which I will put together in Adobe Premier instead.

My thoughts

This project stressed me quite a bit, it is project you need to take your time with. Alas I haven't had time, due to my job and my job hunt (I needed a better job).
If I have learnt anything from this project it is that time management is crucial. So far I am not happy with my work because I know I can do better, it is rushed and not thought through very well. The TMNT is far from industry standard. It matters that I know what I have done wrong so I can change it for next time. I also know what I can do which is why I know how terrible it is, I just need to prove I can. In terms of the advert one, I enjoyed this a lot more. I feel the out come was better because I didn't over complicate things.