Hello The Christmas break is here!! But by no means do I get a
break.
I am planning to carry on with my work at a steady pace through the
holidays. Yesterday I did a little bit of my business studies, planning on
where my future is going to be to write up my business report.
Today I am mainly spending a little time on my practical animation
module as yesterday I put all my video reference together as a sort of live
action animatic, it has become apparent 3 of my scenarios are over 2 minute
long that is 6 minutes in total- this is way too long so I have to take a
couple of days after Christmas to sort this out and re-tie them, just a quick
re-jig of what I am doing.
I have got a musician working on the music already he is currently
having PC issues so I won’t get my music snippets until after my hand in.
My plan for today is just start from the top and work my way down
through everything that I have done, to see if I have missed anything.
Being as it is Christmas Eve it think my dissertation will be neglected
tonight, but I am not too worried, I have a pretty clear of which direction I
am taking it, and it is coming together well.
A couple of week’s back I was researching huts and cabins and I came
across an artist,
Richard Greaves the "Anarchitect" has been very influential on
how I design the exterior of my witches hut, I don't even know if I will be
using it for a scene but I still wanted to give her a place of being, to ground
my character and build her up. Read more about him here.
It is final film & show reel time and I am so excited !
For our final animation brief we have to make a film, pre-production- in great depth or a show reel.
I being the awkward soul I am, have opted for a series of mini scenario films that are art heavy as oppose to animation heavy. So I have a concoction of all the of the briefs!
While I do love animation and I do want to be an animator, I haven't lost sight that I want to be a comic book illustrator for a career, so I am making animated comic books for a part of my show reel/film to address both these sides of my passion.
I wanted to make a witch film earlier in the year, and now I have done extensive research into this topic and my project has now developed immensely from what I started with, it has taken upon many looks and I have taken on board many suggestions.
I hope to be collaborating a lot this year, people working on my film/show reel and myself working on others projects too. Research for my character!
Mavis, Hotel Transylvania
I have done a lot of research into my character, I did the early concepts of her around September time. The she was put on hold until a couple of weeks ago when I did some proper research into designing her.
I have taken some major inspiration from Mavis (Hotel Transylvania). I found Mavis while looking for inspiration for hair styles, although I didn't use her hair style I took inspiration from her body shape to create my character.
Artists and their styles that influenced me are Loish and Randy Bishop.
Loish, Drift.
I love Loish's style, colour palette and textures, I also love the line she uses creates energy in her work in contrast to how delicate the characters look. Her characters look anatomically correct and that is a look I hope to achieve in my project.
As Loish has done, I would also really like to do an animation test with an immense amount of detail, however it be very subtle like a blink or an eye glisten, maybe hair caught in a breeze.
Randy Bishop,
Randy Bishop's ability to get a feel for a character is flawless, and I love how you can instantly look at one of his characters and know who they are. His line is a lot cleaner and his colour is more bold and simple than Loish's art.
His main inspiration for me is again, anatomy. But the facial features on his characters are so expressive, I hope to achieve this in my work.
Other key inspirations for my project is my love of sorcery and witchcraft, I have loved it ever since I was little. Obviously films like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings were very infulencial on me, but a main inspiration for my film is The Dark Crystal and the concepts by Brian Frowd.
Blayne Fox
I have had other inspirations too, for the familiar I was inspired by Blayne Fox's entry to a character design competition. I love the idea of the cat being covered in eyes and I have seen it as a real challenge for my animation and redesign for my familiar.
Environment
Other inspirations: dark crystal - brian frowd
Inspiration for Hut Interior
I found a few interesting things for inside the witches hut on Pinterest, they were very inspirational, I hope to upload concept background sketches next week to show how I have implemented them.
In terms of backgrounds as a whole Kazuo Oga is personally my undisputed background genius, he is amazing. I do want a traditional look to my film even though it is being made mostly in a digital format. But if I can make background half as good as him I will be happy.
I hope to do some watercolour backgrounds soon I will upload in my next update.
In the mean time watch this sorcery.
Scenarios
I plan on having 3 scenarios in my show reel as well as a few line tests, and walk cycles and possibly arcs. The 3 scenarios are going to be in different styles and software but all based in the same world- this is because the scenarios are longer and wouldn't leave me with any time to design more characters so I would like to stick to 2-3 characters for the scenarios, instead of having lots of short clips and lots of characters and be preproduction heavy as there is not a lot of time.
Comic Scenario
I have a script, storyboard and rough thumbnails and animatic, i was going to do it in CelAction but my lecturers advised against it as it would take more time than I have to complete the scenario, mainly due to all the replacement shapes cutting into my time and the characters are very "human" as it was described and wouldn't have a good flow, it may seem floaty or clunky which isn't what I am going for for the comic book animation. Originally I took inspiration from the Watchmen Motion comic on YouTube, which I later found to be a bit too floaty for what I want to do:
For the comic section I love the looks of Sandman by Neil Gaiman and Wytches Scott Snyder so my comic book is mainly going to art heavy, I am thinking of doing it in Adobe Animate and After Effects so I can get the multi-plane aspect nailed and mixed with some smooth and graceful animation. My preprodcution will include the usual character design, turnaround, and expression sheets but I need to make loads of textures to achieve that Wytches look. By and artist simply know as Jock
I was also thinking of attempting to capture the style and finesse of J.H Williams' art work from Sandman.
I have my thumbnails my storyboard is still rough but it is nearly there, I think it needs some tweaks and the other 2 storyboards should be finalised by next week. For now I have my very rough animatic for the comic book sequence, I will be introducing pops of colour in the final i am so excited to make this!!
I think that is enough Information for this post I will upload most of my work in the next update, I want to get parts finalised before I show my progress.
Hey!
I have just handed in my after effects projects.
The brief was to make an Advert for a chosen charity, I chose the Wale Air Ambulance.
Over all I think the project went ok, i did have some issue with time management- but in honesty i thought i would of gone as smoothly as my Flash project went. However After Effects was certainly more complicated to use.
I feel like 4 weeks would of been a good amount of time to get my head around the software and have a good final piece. Also a structure would of been nice to work to, being a newby to the software, for example: Week 1 ideas, week 2-3 preproduction and week 3 production.
I found it especailly hard to find a good source for industry research, i found a lot for live action film. I was perhaps looking in the wrong places. I would like to conduct more research into this once i have had a rest.
If i were to do it again i think i would refrain from using a character and focus more on facts and imagery. I would like to further this by doing my other charities; Save the Bees and Little Princess Trust.
If you want to help out that charities:
Wales Air Ambulance: Here
Save the Bees: Here
Little Princess Trust: Here
I would just like to drop a bit of my process below:
This past couple of weeks have been the most stressful in my life. I did touch on this in my last post.
However I have just had a weekend away from my screens and all university work, to do my seasonal job. It was actually a welcome relief- i thought i would absolutely hate going back to my job, but it was a different kind of stress, a more manageable kind of stress. The kind that you can actually do something about, rather than have it loom over you like a deadline.
From the past couple of weeks and my obligatory weekend halt. I have realized I do actually need to stop and get away from all my work and screens when I feel them consuming me, or else i go into a cycle of just mentally torturing myself; tricking myself into believing I have been productive but really all i did was put the laundry on and draw a doodle.
I have now put into my packed schedule Netflix, gaming and craft nights so I can just actually relax. Just designating a couple of hours of 'not work' i think will really help. Where as before I will be forever chipping away 24/7 at my work.
In other news:
I have just handed in my draft Methodology and Literature review, which has given me more air to breathe. Although i think the draft is really bad and sketchy, i know I have at least made progress. The deadline was today.
I have missed most of my Halloween celebrations due to work/deadlines. But there will be next year.
I just wanted to take a moment to step back from everything I have been doing since the start of the academic year for a small breather, to collect my thoughts.
This post is more of a 'dear diary' rant. Feel free to ignore.
I have been thinking long and hard about what I want to do for a career and it honestly terrifies me, I have always known I need to be in the art/media industry but I have these bouts (like I assume many other artists do) of feeling worthless and pathetic or just not good enough at what I do.
Today I have been to the first animation grill I have ever been too (an animation grill is place to get your work critiqued by people in industry and make connections).
I know this is where I belong, but perhaps in illustration or concept design. I don't feel I am ready yet to take the plunge into animation as a career, maybe I will when the year it up but that is quite a while away. I have also been contemplating doing a masters if I don't feel ready yet.
My first step is to get known; I need to make all my social media coherent and upload more of my work; nobody will know of me if I don't post it- kind of obvious, but I never really post much of my work. And I need to update my blogs consistently.
My second move will be building up my portfolio and show reel this year and taking things to the monthly grill. I am aiming to go under some major character development and just kind of pull my finger out and get stuff done!
To tie all this together I am sticking to a rigid timetable and hoping that it will pay off in the long run. To get on top of all my work that I have neglected doing so far, either through panicking about it or having no time in the day.
Recently my life has been very hectic and busy. The roller coaster that I am on feels like it is currently low and upside-down. It is just the usual things getting me down; finance and work getting on top of me and other none uni related issues. But I do tend to wallow in it and keep everything bottled up until I pop. I'm going to change it though, onward and upwards!
Animation
14-10-16
My projects is about 70% complete I started it today, i justa have a few more things to fix tomorrow and iam going to do all the coding tomorrow so i have time to fix it. However an issue i repeatedly keep bumping into, Flash (animate) keeps crashing and i have no idea why. I have nie folders, i don'tt have as musch stuff as other people, i know there is a lot going one but Flash should be more duarble than that surely.
todolist for tomorrow:
15-10-16
For context: I have a cat sat on a shelf, it has an on going animation of its tail swinging off the edge of the shelf on loop, i am trying to demonstrate that i can use the bone too (this project is about what you know not specifically the quality of the animation). Context-context: the Bone tool is pretty much what it says, you have an image, in this instance a tail and you can use the tool to put 'bones' inside the tail, this them makes it so yor static unanimated iamge felxible and you can then move it to and bend it to where you please as if it has bones and joints.
My issue: I have tried and tried and treid, to get eh bone tool to work today, what should of been a 5 miute job has turned into a 3 hour job and i just can't think what is wrong, i have checked every single thing for a mistake and there are none. It just doesn't want to work.
update on the chrashing software, it is getting beond rediculous now, it crashes every half an hour or so i'm glad it has the recovery function but it is so stupid, espcially when it takes longer than a minute to save. I just dont know what i am doing differntly to other people, as they dont seem to have that issue.
the only thin that iahve done differetnly on this one is have a bitmap fill (basically, a fill that is an image).
I am literally having a timeout to write this becuase I am so frustrate that teh bone tool simply won't work. I am going to give it ONE last try then i am animating it.
and another thing that is super getting on my nerve, even though it has just save my life, id auto save every five minutes!! please how do you turn it off!!!
Half an hour later, no ia m animating hte damn thing. bone tool you suck.
I have a strong opinion on Flash/Aniamte
most of it is bad, just to my experinece surrently, but i do see its potential and hope that iwill use it again in the not to distant furture, but it really has some issues that need attending.
I lovethe coding and especiall making custome cursors that is great! but there are the little things that need changing, maybe take a couple og leaves of other softwares books.
Looking at flash in industry: a list of cartoons that have
used flash.
How else has flashed
been used ?
Google Doodles
I have looked at lots of the creations on the google doodle
page mainly for inspiration and what kind of interactions are generally in a
google doodle. Although some are not Flash I found them super helpful for ideas
I love this one, it shows how much interaction Google allow.
It is very fun and entertaining.
There are more inspiring doodles in the PowerPoint document,
they are gifs so I couldn’t put them in a document and describe what I liked
about them at the same time.
Brief: Create an interactive Google Doodle.
The Due date is 17th October!
Just a few photos of my Planner.
Being as I am nearly at the end of the project I'll just go ahead and post where I am up to.
I have an idea, have done numerous test when I was researching Flash/Animate and also looked into how it is used the industry. Now i think i have a substantial amount of tests, I reread the brief to see if i was missing anything, besides the final product.
I may attempt an animatic, however being as my idea is mostly interactive, I am not sure how to do this in animatic form. Besides i have a simple storyboard of how i want things to go and how things will work and I have done the appropriate tests to prepare for my final piece.
Every day I have a day plan that I stick to as well as an online hourly schedule - this year i just wanted to prepared for everything. My plan this far is to start my production tomorrow (Thursday 13th) and working through the rest of my to-do-list; I am still contemplating the style I want to go for, being as I'm not well practiced at Flash yet, I'm thinking simple and clean even though my usual style is a bit 'scruffy' or grungy.
Water Colour styles
I am currently looking at styles today, however my original plan was to go into Uni and power thorough making some extra last minute tests (pretty ones to show that I can actually make pretty tests). But I am here writing my blog and tying up loose bits of my project because there are currently not many computers left.
As it stands I think I am on time, I am only lacking exploration of styles, but I know I need to keep it simple enough to put in Flash. I have considered having "cut out" style but I don't think that would be appropriate at this stage.
I will think about it.
Just a small update on my 3rd Year at University, studying Animation!
We have been plunged straight in to working this year, we have practical, critical and business.
For Practical we are using Flash to create an interactive Google Doodle this is due next week so i will be updating again on that soon!
In Critical we are starting our dissertations! It is super scary and i have kind of put it on a back burner for the minute, but still doing little bits as and when I can. I will be doing updates every so often on this.
Finally we have a new module this year, Business. It is perhaps the scariest lecture I have, as it is preparing us for our future and we have to really think where we are going to be and what we are going to be doing when we leave university. I will probably updating my breakdown regularly.
I have other things going on at the side of uni this year, so there should be some updates on my general life as well.
Just a quick update on how my my narrative essay went. I wrote a piece on transmedia texts and how I could to apply transmedia storytelling to my comic book I wrote for the previous module.
I think it went well I will wait until it is marked and i have my grade before I go into more detail about it.
Visual Forms
I never went to the seaside to study my topic of pirate, I was meant to go with my dad to Portsmouth but family issues arose. However my friend went to Cardiff Bay and took some pictures for me. I have also being researching the pirate topic a lot but veered away from the topic as a typical study (not eye patches and peg legs) I looks more at cargo and the environment of the era, thing such as rock pools, the sea, sea life and cargo such as exotic animals and cocoa.
Today [April 21st] I have had a meeting with my lecturer suggestions to make my sketchbook stronger would be to focus on what my studies will be put towards? a film ? a painting?
Also I have done lots of painting and i should probably do more drawing ans sketches but my lecturer loves my painting process
I needed to work on more textures and perhaps focus more on quick smaller sketches rather than paintings and time consuming studies.
The hand-in went smoothly - almost to smoothly.
Production
[April 21st] "I've not updated this in a while but it has been hectic. Well Hell. I love the good stress of creating something but so far I have been working really hard and thing just keep going wrong mainly faulty technology, people not being professional/enthusiastic and other outside disturbances. It has effected me and my work greatly. "
"On the plus side!! I have how some rough sound off my musician for my film which is great!! I am also still on time with my schedule and hopefully all my hard work will pay off . I just push past this rubbish week."
[May 3rd] " I have had more issues with my collaboration; my artist seems unprofessional. They are most likely stressed, the main issue though is communication, I have tried to communicate. Perhaps not well enough, but I have supplied the means to create backgrounds and I am not sure how much more I can help. I am very grateful for the help, however it is poorly conducted."
Again my hand-in went very smoothly, I did finish all of my work there are still some things I would like to clear up with my animation to make it better; making it smoother and a few colouring issues that that I had, I would also like to improve on the consistency of my characters design, but that is is more of a learning curve for next time.
An (over due) update on my Production "Out of Time"
I would upload a video, but the file is too big. I will upload closer to the deadline on the 13th May.
So far things have not been going great and it is quite draining. Up-until a couple of weeks ago my project was going great, but ever since my computer crashed it has been a bit of a chore.
One thing after the other just started going down hill; I thought I lost my background artist due to her work stresses, I thought I may of lost my musician this week too- but that has all been cleared up. An due to needed a job desperately I have been having interviews and meeting this week to add to this it is my boyfriends birthday this week. Everything is just piling on now, but I know I need to keep on trucking.
I am still currently in the process of clean up, I hoped to be colouring in in this week but alas there is a long bank holiday weekend and uni is closed.
On the Left is my monthly schedule it is planned to the hour the orange is colouring, which obviously hasn't happened yet, it should be coloured by Thursday, but that leaves me with the conundrum of editing. On the Right is my daily planner to keep me sane, this is my page to show which shots have be cleaned, coloured and have backgrounds.
Backgrounds
I am currently working on backgrounds with my background artist, whilst university is closed.
I am making some more neat lines for her.
It has been one stressful time in terms of backgrounds, due to ill communication I thought I had lost my background artist so I took it upon myself to get them done.
It was my understanding that my BG artist would have textures and their own examples for me, but my lack of knowledge to how the art stand of this course works, this is apparently no so.
Instead, I have supplied them with neat lines of my background- some still need cleaning up but i simply have not had the time, they have to now colour them in, and try to mimic my style.
I am very thankful that I still have a background artist as I only really have 6 days to complete my film this is due to other none uni related happenings that were unplanned.
So again I am working a full pace but am still hindered by something that is out of my control. I am still working as hard as ever it is just draining me a bit now.
In hindsight, no matter how much i thought that i had planned it can always be planned better. Communication is key.
Plans for the Week
My plans for the coming week are to get into uni on Tuesday 3rd to get animating and clear up the last part of my animation, I still have 8 shots out of 19 to clean up. I also need to check up on my artist and see how the backgrounds are coming along.
Wednesday again with an early start, I will be colouring all the short shots, this should count about 8 shots.
This will be continued through Thursday 5th (Also my boyfriends birthday) so this will be a shorter day in uni, but i will be working very late. It is also the day that I check on both my BG artist and my musician to see how things are going.
Friday is a little more sketchy but I hope to have booked a room to get some sound affects - this shouldn't take the whole day.
Although that my story is based on Scottish mythology the style of the animation is influence by a few things too.
My main inspirations include:
Song of the Sea (byTomm Moor, 2014) (Song of the Sea Trailer) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jxc7WkC674
Secret of Kells (by Tomm Moore & Nora Twome, 2009) (Secret of Kells Trailer) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw2_HZTuQBE
The Reward (by Suncreature Studio: Mikkel Mainz Elkjær, Bo Juhl Nielsen and Kenneth Ladekjær)
(Watch full film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cw7aAFS5oc)
Some art choices I liked for my film vary, check out my pin board on pintrest for a glimpse of the mood i wanted orginally for my film: Here
Some notable artists whose style inspired my include :
I love the loose lines on this drawing and you can almost see the transformation it Macka can make into the owl
.
The Reward:
Tehre are some comedic scenes in the animation where the characters become superdetailed, I wanted to have a similar thing with my animation too- to keep it light-hearted.
Here is my character and his more detailed state - note i am not 100% definatly using the detail version as it will be very time consuming.
Secret of Kells Inspirations :
I really loved the texture of the trees and flower, I did have a forest
secene in my film but it has now been cut. this is the kind of style I
would of been going for.
Song of the Sea inspirations:
Agian I really liked the tratditional fee of the film and the textures of the backgrounds. here are are some concepts of backgrounds i made regarding Song of the Sea and Secret of Kells.
Forest with Glowing orbs (Photograph, digitally editted)
I am going to make a post of inspirations, more of a mood-board of my project, lots of my inspirations can also been found on my Pinterest here.
Candle research & reference:
I wanted to have cream coloured candles in my animation, nothing too out of the ordinary, i need to see how they cast light in a dark space and how fast they melt so i will be doing some of my own video reference once i am back at home in a week or so.
In my animatic I have accomplished a good flicker with the flame, i only need to see how it illuminates the room and the wax.
Potion research and reference:
Potions is a fun one for me because of the shapes of the bottle and the colours i can play around with, there are a lot of interesting shapes, it is just replicating it for the animation, it needs to be simple enough to animate but still look quirky. I feel like the last image is similar to my preference in design.
Hourglass research and reference:
Hourglass from Braid, Number None inc, 2008
Hourglass from Days of our Lives, 1965- present
Wall and floor research & reference:
I like the cobblestone look but my animation is very dimly lit. I need the references more for the shape and how the bricks fit together as my backgrounds shouldn't be too detailed.
Similarly with the wood look, i have already accomplished what I want in terms of the wood, I used the bottom picture for a colour reference and I liked the cracks but I haven't used it in my backgrounds as again, they are very simple.
Smoke and cobwebs research & reference:
I haven't got on to drawing cobwebs or smoke yet, but they are more for the design of my character when he turns into a wraith. - I still haven't settled on a design yet.
Forest research and reference:
Here are a couple of images I liked for reference to the forest, being as I am currently revising my premise I doubt I will have a forest scene now -maybe in a future project perhaps.
Picture references :
I do not own any of these photos or pictures.
I googled "cream candle" "candle" "cobwebs" and took a lot of images off there, a lot of them were stock photos for shops such as amazon, with no other reference details.
