Advance Animation Techniques: Update #2

UPDATE #2

 06/12/15
 As I have already mentioned, I restarted the the project the other day because the lines weren't  correct and I started to colour in the line layer, so i made the judgement and it was easier to just start again. I think it has gone well actually although I had a minor panic attack last night about the build up of work I have to get done besides university work.
For my own background I wanted to replicate the same techniques I learnt for the template backgrounds: using channels and textures mainly as I have found it a very useful skill to know.

Research for Own Background

I have had a few ideas for my own background. My first proposal for a background however was; on different layers of asatate paint scenery and stick photographs of buildings that i have tweaked with a wash of colour or ink. Although i didn't get any further with this idea.

I started off by taking a few photographs of Newport at night time. I was planning on doing a cityscape with photographs and handdrawn and painted drwaing, I was thinking in an scratch acrylic style, due to the photos that I took looked quite blurry (camera quality on my phone) but I liked the way they looked, they almost seemed like impressionist paintings.

 

On the subject of cityscapes, I drew the view from Newport city campus cafetria, I mainly looked to see how far into the distance I would see, rather than the details. It was quite an overcast day too.

I also had another idea that I would make a layered background in a traditional medium. I did two experiements with this, they both turned out quite nice:

<This one is acrylic paint on asatate. There are four layers: Bushes, park & trees, city skyline, and the sky.

>This one is on tracing paper, I really do prefer this one more. It is based on the overcast day I had in Newport, hence the monocrome colours. The layering up on the tracing paper worked really nice interms of creating distance too.






My third idea was to make a line background in a digital format and then colour the sections with different textures that would match, for example: the trees woulf have a bark texture, the leave would have a leaf texture etc. I desided i would try it but using substitue texture instead to leave an impression rather than a photograph of hte actual thing.

Here are some photographs that were going to be my textures:

I perposely chose things with a neural colour for two reasons; if i wasn't going to have a colour layer over hte tope, it would be interesting to see how I can use opacity to creat the background. If a did use a colour layer over the top it wouldn't be to drasitc to make the photograph greyscale and turn them into an overlay giving hte background a more "collage-y" feel.
I still want ot try this on out, I will attempt it over the holidays.

My Own Final Background 

My final background is based on a dream I had; it was a volcanic island and the earth breathed and out of holes in the ground came these fumes,  the earth slowly raised up and down. I think it would be quite interesting to animate actually. I will proably attempt to do it in the furture, although I am not sure of the best software that would work for it currently.

Here is my original mock up of my final piece:

My Final Drawing :

I did this digiatlly, much like the background templates we had to colour. I felt replicating the skills I had learnt in a similar format would be a good option for time management and practise.  

I had been recommended by some class mates that I look up The Good Dinosaur that was recently released as it has a similar thing. But I would porbably have to go watch the movie to get a good grasp of it, google didn't turn up any images either. With such short notice it was pretty unfeesable.


" TO-DO LIST

Just needed to check the lines of my day background, I have to scan in my research and Noah Bradleys work was inspirational- I wanna be that good. "

07/12/15 - 12:39 pm

 

Template Backgrounds:
I changed the line colour for the background layer to mimic the ones on the brief. I don't think my line looks as clear so I duplicated it to make thicker black lines and asked peoples opinion; the lines I had already done  (the mimic ones) looked the best apparently so I will stick with this.

Thick black lines. Not the one I went with.

My Final Designs 

Day Background with mimicked lines.

Night Background

I first completed the Day Backgorund then I worked on the Night Background - but I didn't use the hue and saturation technique as shown in the tutorial, I did it in the same way as the day background; Picking the colours and section myself to colour and altering the shadows slightly. This is why I have so many layers in photoshop and it looks a little hectic.
I did try and change the colours of the completed day background to look like night but it was very purpley and there wasn't much else within my knowledge to change it from that.


The textures I used for the overlay were also a little bit of an experiemnt:

B&W Acrylic, Brush. Not used- too harsh.

Watercolour paper, I used this.

Black & White acrylic, scraped. Used.

Conclusion

 

I thought this project was a success, I had a lot of setbacks but ultimatly I am happy with the outcome. I wish I did a bit more background research but I will be doing more of that over the holidays in my spare time.
Things I would of like to improve on; agian time management seems to be a biggy with me, it may be due to my inexperience with the software that sets me back, but that can be improved on. Also I would like to work on my quality of line, I am still not 100% happy with the lines I cleaned up. But I did my best for now.