403 Module Update #11 - Showreel

Greetings!

Since the twelve principles are learned, it's time to show off my own work using each principle. Some of the later ones use previous principles as well.

In retrospect, I'd pay more attention to linework and model consistency on any of the fully lined/coloured work, however for most I used just simple sketches to merely show the idea of the principle. For the most cartoony of the characters, I'd use much more exaggerated movement and extend the use of each principle to fully push the limits of what can be done in animation.

401 Module Update #8

Character Design Exploration #7 - Hriva

Early on in the process of character design, I essentially broke down aspects of my own character as base aspects of my list of characters to build on. The first characteristics I came to were my need to please other people, and my underlying senses of frustration at everything. The first became Tasha, and the second became Hriva. From that, I built the characteristics of Hriva, but at the design stage, I wondered how she would look. What would her species be? Who would she have been before and after the apocalypse? I have quite some knowledge on Norse mythology, so I decided to make her a Valkyrie, and from that, previous to the apocalypse, a goth (since Valkyries are orientated around death). After the apocalypse, she fits into being a strategist, since Valkyries are also linked to battle.

401 Module Update #7

Character Design Exploration #6 - Brear

I decided early on to use a Selkie as Brear's species, since Selkies are predominantly depicted as female. I liked the idea of merging some aspects of other marine mythology, such as sirens and merpeople, so Brear has the upbeat, carefree attitudes often shown in merpeople and the love of music/song sirens are known for. Stemming from this, Brear is the entertainer of the group who performs music and keeps the group's attitude up.

I also liked the idea of instead of having a seal coat that the Selkie uses to transform, the seal form has a ghost-like daemon form that Brear can transform into

401 Module Update #6

Character Design Exploration #5 - Dracsahr

I wanted to explore what an urban fantasy asexual character would be like. What kind of creature could they be? What would they do in a post-apocalyptic world in which ideas around sex would be a complete mixed bag of old and new views? Would they be more restrained or liberated by such a world? I decided to go for a small design pun in making the character a succubus, a demonic creature that takes people's energy/souls through sex, so made their general figure smaller and thinner in stature since they have no interest in where their species would get their power from.

I took much of the exploration in the horns, as I already had a general idea of the facial structure being triangular. Eventually I decided on a ram-like structure. 

I then created the character itself. What would this person do to gain power in place of sex? The first thing I thought was food, thus, Dracsahr was an aspiring chef before the apocalypse and continues to be the group's cook.

401 Module Update #5

Character Design Exploration #4 - Eraax

I looked at a general collection of identities students (especially high school students, as this is the age range of the characters when the apocalypse hit) like to fall into. One that I thought would be interesting to emulate in the genre is the nerd character. Eraax is a fantasy fan and loves playing Dungeons & Dragons, which gives them a very good understanding of planning ahead and organising a team, making them suitable for an advisory position in the group.

I looked at how being a gargoyle would impact that, such as a stockier build, smaller wings (making flight more difficult), and tougher skin, making shoes rather unnecessary. There also wasn't as much exploration in design, as I already had an idea what I wanted them to look like.

401 Module Update #4

• Completed a list of breakdown notes for each source to later write out each source into legible written work
• Written out all the source references

Character Design Exploration #3 - Dawn
I initially looked at how being fae in an urban fantasy world would work and how that would influence how she would fit into a post-apocalyptic world. Fae are closely linked with nature and are usually depicted in surrealism, so Dawn being somewhat of a botanist/herbalist and growing plants for medicinal and recreational use made much sense for the character.

In addition, Fae are also linked to seduction and temptation, so it was interesting to rework that into Dawn being pansexual and smoking marijuana fairly frequent.

401 Module Update #3

• Changed the number of characters
• Deleted Gurukk to save time
• Collected a number of sources to use in the main written work

Character design exploration #2 - Brivar

Started with some basic design exploration. Who would he have been before the end of the world to suffice his skillset so he could be a soldier-type protector of the group? How would urban fantasy work with him and his identity? 

I narrowed it down to a high school football jock, which would give him strength, speed, and a general stocky build, as well as a rudimentary ability to organise and plan attacks and work in a team.

403 Module Update #10 - Secondary, Overlap, and Follow Through

Greetings!

In this week's continuing adventures in animation, we looked at using secondary, overlapping, and follow through animation to create a sense of weight and form in animation. Secondary animation is essentially additional action that articulates emotion, such as using hand movement to express while a character speaks. Overlapping animation is when certain parts of a character's body or their apparel moves at different rates to the main body to create an emphasis on movement, such as hair or long clothes bobbing as a character walks. Follow through animation is when parts of an object continues to move after the main body stops, such as hair continuing to move forward when the character stops

To test out these forms of animation we filmed a short, live video and augmented a piece of animation on it. I filmed my friend holding out his hand and directed him to look up, then down and move his hand as if something of moderate weight landed on it. I then animated a bird named 'Birb Blob' standing on his hand, jumping up and attempting to stay in the air before falling back down and hitting his hand before falling off again.

I also implemented a few other principles to make the animation look better, such as squash and stretch, anticipation, and using arcs in the movement.

If I was going to do this again, I would re-time the anticipation movement a little so it was built up more, I would also add a 'ball bounce' action after Birb Blob lands instead of falling off (that would require re-filming).

401 Module Update #2

• Defined each character more
• Added names, basic character traits and group roles
• Added some overall 'story' to tie them together (mostly for context to influence design rather than to be used in the response itself)
• Explored some design with the first character

Overall story: 

An urban fantasy world with a civilisation destroyed by a fungus based pandemic. A group of fantasy creatures join together to survive.

Character Updates:

• Tasha - female, she/her - lesbian - Werewolf - shy, resourceful, good in any situation. Leader
• Brivar - male, he/him - gay - Dark Elf - confident, strong, eager. Soldier
• Hriva - female, she/her - bisexual - Valkyrie - goth, badass, ready to set fire to everything. Strategist
• Dawn - female, she/her - pansexual - Fae - hippy, relaxed, smokes a lot of weed. Herbalist/Healer
• Dracsahr - male, he/him - asexual - Incubus - reserved, awkward, very good cook. Chef
• Gurukk - transgender (ftm), he/him - Orc - loyal, big buff cheeto puff, works out a lot. Commander
• Brear - transgender (mtf), she/her - Selkie - optimist, thinks everyone is redeemable, really hard to make angry. Entertainer
• Eraax - non-binary, they/them - Gargoyle - intelligent, D&D nerd, a little high and mighty sometimes. Advisor

Character design exploration #1 - Tasha

Started with some form explorations. More human or more wolf? Would she have a human and wolf form? I went with a single anthropomorphic wolf form to stick to the urban fantasy theme more closely

Looked at the design of the head and face. Initially started with a small, thin muzzle, then made it longer, but found it to be too fox-like. Kept the second shape and just shortened it and ended up with the final face design. 

Finalised form shape and added a ripped shirt to break up colour patterns. Added various notes about the design such as 'Keep her chunky' 'Keep her poofy' and 'Use simplicity' Also added a small look at the underside of the paws so it was noted she has paw pads and her claws are part of the fingertip rather than separate.

Scanned the design into the computer and re-worked some of the lineart so it was cleaner and added colour. Based the colour palette of the lesbian flag (included with the design) as the colours work well together and are used as a reference to the flag (if the characters were to appear in a piece of media, it would be something for LGBT+ audience members to notice, like a mini easter egg).

401 Module Update #1

• Broke down points to use in research journal
• Listed examples and some ideas for analysis, including characters to focus on and how they link to the question
• Started exploring ideas of practical response to the question, looking at genre, sexualities and gender identities to explore with characters, and design choices
• Picked an over-arching genre to keep each design to a theme
• Picked a list of LGBT+ identities to incorporate into characters - lesbian/gay, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, transgender (ftm and mtf) and non-binary
• Wrote some basics of each character (sex/gender, sexuality, race/species)

Universe genre - urban fantasy/post apocalyptic (fungus based plague)

Characters: 

• Lesbian - Werewolf
• Gay - Dark Elf
• Bisexual - Valkyrie
• Pansexual - Fae
• Asexual - Incubus
• Transgender (ftm) - Orc
• Transgender (mtf) - Selkie
• Non-binary - Gargoyle

403 Module Update #9 - Exaggeration

Greetings!

In today's continuing adventures in animation we looked at exaggeration!

To experiment with exaggeration (and introduce us to some software) we created a very short animation (with SOUND) in TVPaint. Using a goat scream sound effect that was around three seconds long, we had to create a short animation that was at most five seconds that used exaggeration.

I quite liked the very simple movement, allowing me to go crazy with the squash and stretch, and the simple character design made sure it never went near uncanny valley in any of the smear frames. Despite this, I feel it could have been more exaggerated and used more elaborate squash and stretch and anticipation with the jumping motion.

403 Module Update #8 - Anticipation

Greetings!

In the continuing adventures in animation we looked at using anticipation of action for more realistic and (if exaggerated) cartoony movement in characters.

To experiment with this, we created very short (around one second) animations using anticipation of action. I decided to use good old Birb Blob doing a Road Runner style escape. I absolutely loved how it turned out, with the arced head movement and blink when it sees something off screen and the way form was kept even though it was a very simple character. However it was pointed out that there could be a few select improvements, such as the anticipation action (the head and leg pulling back) be exaggerated more and arced, which, once implemented in the second sequence, vastly improved it.

I wanted to explore it a little more as well, so did another short animation of Birb Blob following something in the sky (off screen, but meant to be other flying birds) and jumping up to fly too. I loved how the slight follow through action of the body squashing a little after pulling the leg around to jump up gave Birb Blob a little weight and looked more realistic and less cartoony, and I loved how form was kept with the wing positions to make a basic 2D shape seem more 3D.
However if I were to do this again I would have Birb Blob look up normally and then have the exaggerated following as a reaction to looking up, as currently Birb Blob just looks like it's stretching.

403 Module Update #7 - Squash and Stretch

Greetings!

In this week's adventures in animation we looked at using squash and stretch in animation to create more exaggerated, nicer looking movement.

We started with a simple single drop ball bounce, although we did not do it correctly, either in what happened in the actions themselves or in how the squashing and stretching was animated. We re-animated the single drop so the squashing and stretching worked better. Despite the reanimation being better than the first, it's bounce was too short.

After doing the single drop ball bounce we did an arced ball bounce. The squash and stretch worked far better, although the arc wasn't as high as it should have been.

An individual task we did as well was create a flipbook. I quite like how the flying motion worked, however the physics of the movements wasn't as good as I wanted, the figure seems to just teleport some distance behind and the speed as it travels up was too slow.

I'm very excited to improve my animation with the coming weeks!

403 Module Update #6 - Arcs

Greetings!

In the continuing adventures in animation we looked at using arcs to create more realistic and nicer looking movement. The first animation we did was meant to be a simple animation demonstrating the basic idea of arcs. I created a simple cut out animation of a plane falling like in the phone game 'Flappy Bird'. Although it fell quite well, I feel the timing was slightly off, as there are too many frames in the fall.

The second animation I created was a simple pendulum swing, which uses arcs in it's entire motion. I also included some use of timing and spacing to create a nicer looking motion. Although the 'string' was very inconsistent.

 I'm quite excited to continue to learn how to improve my animation

403 Module Update #5 - Timing and Spacing

Greetings!

In this day's adventures in animation we looked at the most important part of animation, timing and spacing! We looked at easing in, easing out, and easy ease, which focuses on the spacing of each frame to create more realistic motion.
Below is our showcase of each type using a sharpener, first going from easing out, easing in, and finishing with easy ease. I feel it went pretty well, considering it was just a basic look at the types of timings and spacing in animation, although something that irritated me was a single frame that caught a group member's hand. I attempted to fix it, but the knowledge I have of Dragonframe is limited.

We then proceeded to have a go at timing the frames right with a simply blink animation of the characters we created earlier in another class. The only issue I found with the blink was the lighting, which made it harder to see the pencil, although I found only having two frames made the animation feel incredibly basic.

We were then tasked with creating a very simple animated action using between 6-12 frames. The first version was stretching each frame to 12 frames and running it at 24fps. This broke down the animation into a slide-show-esque scene that allowed us to have a 'control' scene for us to experiment on to find the correct timings to create a nicer look. I created a lovely scene here of Etra yawning.

After editing the timings, I had this better timed yawn. I then finished off by completely rendering Etra with lineart and colour!

I very much enjoyed animating Etra doing something I frequently do, and I can't wait to do more with Etra here :)

403 Module Update #4 - Straight Ahead vs Pose to Pose

Greetings!

In this week's adventures in animation we looked at straight ahead animation vs pose to pose.

Generally I tend to do straight ahead animation, although I will occasionally work from simple storyboards, however the drawings from the boards won't be used as keyframes, rather simple outlines, so I found working with keyframes to be a bit more difficult as I am used to winging the timings and working back through it to fix anything.

To do straight ahead, I made a simple plasticine character (who I named Meatball) and initially made a very basic animation, then added tiny legs and tried some different motion, then added some arms and a tiny cowboy hat and tried some other motions.
I feel the animation was extremely basic and the frames weren't spaced properly.

Onto the pose to pose! I found it more difficult to work with, purely on unfamiliarity, but I feel it turned out quite well. I used a couple smear frames to exaggerate the animation and give it a more expressive feel.

I am very much looking forward to doing more of this!

403 Module Update #3 - Staging

Greetings!

In the continuing adventures of a student animator we looked at staging, how to focus the audience's attention and have a nice composition for various shots.
We were tasked with creating a storyboard with a fully rendered splash page/establishing shot focused around a nursery rhyme. I created one from the rhyme 'Hey Diddle Diddle'.

I really loved doing the character expressions and cinematography. I also loved how the splash page turned out, as I have not had as much practice with backgrounds.

I feel the cinematography of a few shots could be improved, such as the penultimate frame could have a better angle with the dog, and the final frame having a better background similar to the establishing shot.

I am very much looking forward to animating such camera movements properly.

403 Module Update #2 - Appeal

Greetings!

This time around in animation class we looked at the appeal of characters, both in look and personality.
I created a character called Etra, a large lizard lady who wants nothing more than to help the helpless and save the world. She's loyal, protective, but a little insecure and naive.

I really loved the simplistic design as it made doing expressions much easier as well as making her a more expressive character. I used more rounded corners and blocky shapes rather than separating the skull and jaw like in most of my designs.

I feel the hands could be improved slightly if they could be made a little chunkier and rounded rather than human like with sharp claws.

Can't wait to see where this journey into madness takes me next...

403 Module Update #1 - Solid Drawing

Greetings!

So far in the classes, we've done a little of the basics to start us off. We created Phenakistiscopes, mine of which features a character I helped name. Say hello to Curtis Fishfinger:

At a later date we looked at taking inspiration from life, such as creating a character from a walnut. Here's good ol' Nutboy, first as his lined variation, then with colour, then in a particular pose.

I like the lining in the colourless piece, the variation of thickness gives it a nicer style.

I feel the colours aren't the best, and the actual colouring isn't great either, but I had limited colours at hand and I am very out of practice with traditional colouring.

Aside from all that, we also looked at drawing form and constructing the human shape from lines of action to express emotion through movement rather than realism (very animation type stuff). Here's some of the better stuff I did, forgive the poor camera quality:

I have never been that great at drawing people (aside from hands) but I think the sketch vibe each drawing has made me more confident to try more so they came out better.

Can't wait to start the first proper project where I get to make some characters M O V E