You spin me right round - Turn around

This was another task set for us to make use of our characters, a turn around of our character showing them from front, back, side and various 2/3 showing the left, right, front and back.

The turn around was a very frustrating thing to make as my character had a very rigid and sharp design so the placement of certain lines, specifically his robe were very awkward to figure out as they don't flow the same way a natural curve would they're a lot more stiff. Personally i didn't enjoy the turn around it was a task i was unprepared for as i had made this character with out any prior knowledge of the task, so i regret making his design so sharp, another factor was i was unsure as to where the centre turning point was whether it would be the head or the torso taking in consideration how one part will spin round but another part would turn around.

Visual Langauge - Captain Character,Rendered Character sheets

Finally! rendered, coloured, cleaned up whatever the word is character sheets!

As i have already talked about the poses and expressions in previous posts i will focus on the process of  the production.

These are the final designs with colour drawings of my character, on a character sheet. i found the colouring process to be very tedious as it had come to the point where i wasn't designing or coming up with new actions but filling in the blank space. There are however two factors in the process i want to bring up; the varying purple colour and the digitisation of the colour palette. In the case of the purple i originally used the eye dropper tool on the original hand coloured image but i then went on to add darker purples which 'tainted' the original colour palette, that being said i prefer the darker purples and looking at them now i feel i could of come up with a way to portray the emotional state of my character with the smoke rather than just having it there. The other factor on colour, the digitisation was because i wanted consistency with the colour (ignoring the mist :/ ) also to be able to add a form of shading albeit simple, i like how his clothes are very simple in both style and colour while compared to his actual body which, while simple to an extent has a very varied tone and shaders of colours to show his rotting bone body.

with the application of colour on the head the main aim was to get the feel of bone, stained from living for a thousand years with any sense of skin, muscle or humanity left as just carcass like meat and strands, seen on the inner back part of his jaw. I enjoyed doing the colouring of the heads more than i did for the bodies as they were all on one page so easier to work with i was also looking at the expressions at that time which were the focal point so more enjoyable to see. unfortunately there seemed to be a point when the yellow stains became green which i would of liked to change as it looks like he's slowly turning into plague knight.

A tool that i seemed to use the most was the smudge tool. i used it to give the swirling misty effect on the smoke as well as merging the colours on the body together. i found it to be more useful than the blur tool which didn't show that much of a gradient between the colours i was looking for, the smudge also gave a really nice mystical and other worldly effect to the smoke and the character.

Visual Language - Captain Character, Dark crystal

Well this was weird. Due to my characters design i was told that it looked a lot like the Skesis from the movie Dark Crystal. These were very twisted and disturbing creatures with crooked personalities and backs with blemishes, warts, scars and a variety of imperfections that make them terrifying. This is all amplified by the tone in their voices which is like broken sand paper, their voice boxes obviously never seeing a glass of water before. Their most terrifying aspect is their behaviour, sour, bitter and cruel with selfish motivations and attitudes.

After that they don't sound to much like my character but they are both selfish characters with bird beaks and hunched backs wearing cloaks. The actual placement of these characters in the story of Dark Crystal was really unclear to me, actually i didn't follow any of the story there was never really anything big about it or unique (in the story) the puppetry and chaacters designs were very interesting however while being disgusting and terrifying.

I didn't know about this film before hand when designing Count Bratkowski it was very surprising and frustrating to realise that there was ANOTHER character design that looked like mine already out there (oh the unintentional, borderline plagiarism is strong in this character) its possible this comes from my character being very reminiscent of the plague doctors, with their long masks and beaks with black hoods and its just such an iconic image that its been worked to the bone, maybe, so everything thats has taken inspiration from it just looks like each other.

Visual Langauge - Captain Character, Colour scheme

Now that the design and poses had been worked on i drew out an accurate pose of my character and photocopied it to see what possible colour palettes i could use.

These colours were made using copic markers, the hood and cloak is a nice colour but my attempt at merging the green and brown on the body didn't really look very good. I didn't really mind the green colour colour but i think it would work with a different colour to compliment it as the black robe is a bit off along with the brown and the blue smoke is way out of place (i thought it would work with the green but both colours are too bright.

I tried a different media with the next one, pencil crayons. I kept the green bones which wasn't too bad, removing the brown from the body. the paler colours were really bad though as they weren't as striking as the darker colours along with not being very appealing as a combination, they don't portray his dark atmosphere.

I might of gone over board with the dark colours here, the green against the black is nice but a different colour for the body however these are basically the colours of plague knight which isn't good as it isn't helping carve out any individuality to the character.

With this palette i thought about your, almost stereotypical villain colours, gloomy off colour, blacks for villianary and purples for poison. I was worried that the purple would look off in the image but it works nicely as an accent colour, working alongside the black robe and the off white bone and the hints of yellow in the bone compliment the purple but don't over power the other colours.

The final one i didn't finish because i immediately didn't like the red with the blue, the brownish bones look nice but his clothes colours are too bright and don't work with his personality or his design.

I chose the purple and black design as it made the character seem evil and unique as well as keeping him interesting. He has the right level of ominousness as well as being colourful enough to portray the silliness and cowardice of his character traits.

Visual Langauge - Captain Character, Shovel Knight Plague Knight

Id gotten this far drawing my character and a class mate told me my character looks like a character from Shovel knight, a retro-style, indie game. The character it looks like was plague knight.

The hood and beak are really frustratingly similar and when as well as the simplicity in its design, it also has a staff like my character... I CAN'T WIN!

There are extra details and legs on this character and he's more curved than mine which is more angular and rigid. When it comes to the colour I'm going to have to avoid that colour scheme or I'm not going to be able to make my character stand out as his own character, he'll just look like a taller jagged version so i need to figure out a colour scheme that looks unique and interesting.

Visual Langauge - Captain Character, Poses

Now that the expressions have been made I started making a variety of action poses that get across his personality. These poses all have some reference towards his personality and character traits i feel and while they won't necessarily be used for animation its a good chance to see my character in variety of poses other than standing.

The first two are him running away in fear showing his weak will and cowardice i thought about in cartoons a character would throw their arms back and scream in terror for comedic effect, his robe flying behind him and his hood blowing off his head, he's probably being chased by a rebellion or a foe which he can't actually fight against. The other pose is showing his sinister and conniving side, hunching himself lower to catch them off guard and persuade an unsuspecting, idiot. I like these poses but i prefer the left one as it is so comedic and it feels more natural than the other which is a bit rigid in its lines and angles, his expression and emotion is less obvious than the left one which gets his situation across more clearly.

These two were quite awkward especially the left pose because it doesn't quite make sense, visually. but first the right pose is a simple one of him rubbing his hands together getting gleeful over a possible sadistic and manipulative plan he has, he's a little more hunched here but it adds nicely to his sneaky demeanour in the pose. Now back to the left and his cannabilistic tendencies are taking over here and he's crouching in front of a corpse tucking into the guts and organs of an unfortunate soul. The crouching was awkward to do as his robe would buckle over and crumple becoming bigger so i think its too big but i wanted to keep the simple lines as they fitted the angle, (the back being seen was a good chance to work with his behind it also gives a nice idea of him trying to keep his tendencies on the down low.)

Now these poses are my favourites! it shows such different sides of him as well as expressions and character, they were much more fun to draw than the previous ones. The left is his jeering/cackling face, sitting from his throne mocking some poor unfortunate creature. like the above it was interesting to  imagine how the robe creased from a sitting position along with his smoke, but working with the core orb for his smoke it still made sense and looked natural, flowing into his body smoothly. The last pose was mostly to entertain myself but it gave a nice look of vulnerability to this rude and cruel character, bringing out his real personality and characteristics, he could be getting out the shower or be collecting his clothes after being shamed.

Visual Language - Captain Character, Heads

Now that I've established what my character looks like, i needed to be able to draw my character from every angle, especially its head, because of the awkwardness of its head shape, being a beak. i had to figure out how the beak would be perceived from all angles which was an interesting thing to take into consider, the hardest was the 3/4 heads where i had to consider the length and angle of the beak.

Once i figured out my head angles i started to draw expressions for the character. I had multiple interesting and awkward aspects to consider, these were; the fact that his head is bone so i had to think about wether or not i want to make it realistic so stiff and unlovable or take artistic liberty with making bone flexible, as can be seen below i went with making the bone bendy to show more expression and reaction in subtle emotions. The other factor was that he's a character that would never show simple expressions like happy, sad, angry etc. he would show much more extreme and subtle emotions which would make use of his simple shaped head. So i came up with expressions that fitted his characters background and traits, so not laughing but jeering, not happy but gleeful, not sad but dejected.

I really enjoyed making these expressions because i could be really subtle or really dramatic with them trying the variety of angles. With all the expressions i tried to make him sinister, conniving or weak in his emotions. My favourite is the jeering emotion as it shows his disgusting behaviour and personality.

Visual Language - Captain Character beginning poses

Now that i had finally established what my character looks like i decided to try and make a simple standing pose for the front and 3/4 pose, this was a lot easier to do now that i was working with heads as guidelines to keep the beak the right proportions and in the right placement. Its really strange to try and draw the character from different angles as he's still quite sharp visually, (i find curves move around as a shape in animation more smoothly than sharp edges because they can be slightly warped as they are less technical and more natural).




His T-Pose was also rather awkward as his body actually feels wider than it should as i realised that  his sleeves only come up to part of his torso and aren't connected to the shoulder but if it isn't pointed out i feel its not to obvious and the space fitted the medallion perfectly, this medallion gave him the slight royalty in his look that was needed making him look like a being to be respected and wealthy while still being weak and meek because of his stature.

Visual Language - Captain Character, Refinement

After leaving it for a bit and then going back to it, i used the original simple shapes to get a rough out line of my character then i started to add the details gradually, i also drew in the core of the smoke, at the bottom of the shapes. He was finally starting to take shape! but he still didn't look very aesthetically pleasing, his body seemed too blocky because of his robes which are very sharp, so i brought the waist in slightly to show his skinny body shape and relaxed the creases in the robe to make him look less mechanical and rigid.

I really prefer his new more slender look as it gives across that crooked and evil overlord feel, but i don't think he quite fits the lordly type just yet, he doesn't feel grand enough yet so i think ill try adding some form of jewellery or accessory in order to make him look more bountiful.

Visual Language - Captain Character Smokin' characters (terrible pun)

Surprisingly difficult to find a picture of hades full body from disneys 'Hercules' this was the best i could do, i really wanted a gif showing the movement of his lower half but oh well.

Im looking at hades as he is a character with a constantly flowing and moving body he also has an interesting transition of a solid body to a fluid body as its not a part of his physical body but his robes which appear to be producing the smoke, compared to my character where the smoke is directly connected to the body. 

His design is also different to mine in the sense of his is a full body with smoke coming from the base while mine has smoke coming from the waist, roughly, but that is his core and the centre of where the smoke comes from but it doesn't look out of place and they merge seamlessly well together unlike my attempts. i think this is because the smoke works around the solids and not independent of it.

I think a better example of an ethereal yet solid being would be eris from 'Sinbad and the seven seas' she was also a villain and a god, well goddess, whose lower half was more mist and smoke than legs, however her body also seems to make smoke from the waist down but like hades it appears to be from her dress. She does have scenes which show her legs and she also has scenes where even her top half is smoke making her i feel closer to a serpentine creature. 

I guess this blog post was just a chance for me to see what other characters that made use of smoke looked like,how they worked and to understand how to establish a connection between the solid body and the ethereal smoke, and that would be for the smoke to work around the solid and to not be too independent of it as if it was a separate entity, in the case of my characters design.

Visual Langauge - Captain Character EVEN FURTHER DESIGN

I went back to working with three simple shapes, two triangles and a circle and shifted just those three shapes around making a variety of bird heads changing placement and size. I chose the last head i made as it felt more sinister than the others and it added a strange sense of peculiarity as the eye was below the mouth (beak).

After deciding on which head to use i refined it to look more appealing and stylistic, and found my self, liking the third last head, it looks so much more skeletal and skull like than the rest which feel too natural and alive (in the sense of a living being, as he's undead). I then realised how hard it is to draw a beak from the front.

I started to try and imagine what the character looked like and i applied the head to the body, but i was sill unsure to how the body actually looked as i drew it more i struggled to visualise it, i knew based on my basic shapes he floated on smoke had long elongated arms and a hood with a hunched back but even with all this as i drew him it felt like completely different parts not making an actual character as they didn't mesh nicely, something was off.

The cloak hugs the body too much showing too much of a waist making less sense of its mist body, also i was told by my tutor that even though its mist it needs a constant, a core, for the mist to weave itself around which i will try to use. ALSO! The beak arrgh trying to draw a beak at angles is really hard! need to improve that part.

Visual Langauge - Captain Character EVEN further development

Once i had established what kind of body my character had (the long pointed kind) I needed to make the head, this resulted in me drawing several heads using simple shapes and i found i really liked the look of the beak design so i continued to work and develop that image. I took it further and made it more detailed but i was then told that it wasn't showing enough consideration for the possibilities i could have for the design and it didn't work with simple shapes again, so i went back and used a circle and a triangle top design its bird head, however this was also incorrect as it lost its simplicity too abruptly.

The Other Side - Final Animation

The final animation is still missing colour but the movement is all there, i plan to add the colour later for the sake of a future show reel.

In the final scene there is a transition through zooming, fading and direction, this was achieved using After Effects and Premier Pro. I don't actually know how to do these so I had them explained to me by a second year(s). I think i would of liked to make the final transition slower but time was upon me so here is the final animation.

The Other Side - Animation (sort of, Im not happy)

Due to not having time to finish my rendering of colour this is possibly the closest i am going to get to with this animation to hand in on time.

I added the music which will be perfect fro transitioning to an end credits scene as there is an extra second of music which could fade on the end credits. Im still disappointed in the fact that i didn't get more of my colouring done as it can be really difficult to see the character in certain scenes, specifically the bramble bushes which were dark and would do really well with some colour on the character to bring him out of the dark.

In the future with my next animation i really want to be able to present a final complete animation that has been fully rendered to a high quality. This means i need to improve my time management and keep on top of my blogging and animating, most likely start earlier and work at a faster more inspired pace.

The Other Side - Sound Attempts

Early on in my project i wanted to try and make the sound in my animation respond to the actions to the character, similar to Fantasia, so that when he took a step a note is played and as he runs a tune is created as i find it hard to imagine my animation with realistic sound effects. So i tried to ask my classmate, Bash Ridha, who has knowledge of playing the piano to try and play some notes on the uni piano that i could try and work with in garageband/Audacity, but unfortunately due to outside noise quality and not actually having any plan on how i want to apply the sound to the animation. I wanted an upbeat and cheery sound but the tone of the piano wasn't right as it wasn't tuned correctly and it was slightly broken this led to out side noise sources causing distributions so i had to figure something else out.

After the unfortunate situation with the piano i went to the internet looking at free royalty music and found something on Free sound.org. It was a homemade, 26 second long piece made on a garage band iPod software titled Happy Music. It for the most part fitted the up beat and peppy atmosphere of my character and the world he inhabits, however it can sound repetitive and quite ingrained into your brain which is something i find very frustrating, i think in future projects i should take more consideration on for sound and how it affects my animation.

The Other Side - Animation Tester 3

Finally the animation is now 25 seconds this was because of more extensions on the animation scenes. The seventh scene had the most complicated extension as it required more character animation but I'm glad i did as it gave him more character. I added his wriggle of joy at the end of the seventh scene moving his ears(?) to characterise his emotion of joy and excitement for the prospects of what he might see. There was also an extension done on the lily pad scene to show a more gradual settling action along with a better ripple animation. I also extended the opening shot of the pan of the sky as i will  have my heading of the other side intertwined with the animation, fading away as it starts.

Finally i animated what the Weed Spirit was looking at which was two people playing in the garden, this was animated in straight ahead as i had come to the point where the important animating had been done and this scene through the bush is going to be blurred to make it harder to see. I found the actions to be quite humorous as the ball vanishes into the air and doesn't fall back down resulting in the child running away, sad. Originally i wanted to make the scene a more simple and happy-go-lucky scene but due to time i had to animate it quickly and just allow it to evolve as i went along so the characters got very warped being animated in straight ahead.

The Other Side - Animation tester 2

My second test extended the animation a bit more with follow through but it was still not quite at 25 seconds unfortunately so i still have to add to the animation. BUT, an important factor was the flower scene where you only see the top of his head. I had been really struggling to animate the flowers wobble as it comes into impact with the character. Every time i tried to draw the flower it became too distorted and the wobble felt jarring and unnatural so with the help of a second year i got my hands on the head of a flower, well a flower head and a bit of stalk. But it was just what i needed as reference as i couldn't visualise the action of the flower, i was giving it too much wobble initially and what i realised was that a flower will have a large extreme impact, but then it quickly returns to its original position so it didn't linger as long as i thought.

The Other Side - Animation Tester 1

As i animated my animation i chose to constantly check to see if i was at 25 seconds because of my mistake with the frame rate and for the fact i had to extend the animation in some way as it was only 19 seconds. so i extended the animation by adding in follow through on the objects he interacts with such as branches and lily pads, making the plants spring back and come to a close naturally. I found the warp tool to be most helpful in this situation as it made shifting the plants back and forth a lot easier and quicker than hand drawing them, it did give them a blurred outline gradually but this isn't visible when the animation plays so it didn't bother me. Because i left the onion skins on certain scenes they turn up black but here it was more focused to making the animation 25 seconds long. This was achieved with adding smoother transitions at the end of scenes by making the majority of a motion either finish completely or having reached the point where its subtly shifting at a steady pace.

Process and Production - A brief history of ... Westernization of Anime

Another post on anime as i thinks its an interesting topic, how animation has started to take influence and inspiration from western animation techniques.

Back in the 50's there was a very blurred line between western and anime as both had very similar art styles as japan had animation imported from the west which heavily influenced the art style to be very similar to the west.

50's anime was at least a decade behind of disneys art style, have a look at Pinnocheo and Astro Boy, both bear very rounded and pudgey shapes featuring large eyes, adventurous and bubbly personalities along with an incredibly similar visual aesthetic, (thinking about it both characters wanted to be seen as real boys... huh). The main difference was in animation techniques as even today  while disney would animate various scenes and frames to showcase movement and life anime would focus on big plots and flashy acting leaving context to the back burner with still shots.

It was after the 50's that the two types of animation took varying paths of style. While Disney developed their principles and worked with creating a style that could call their own, anime became very known as having the 'big eyes', leading to what has become known as moe a certain art style that is very popular in Japan and with various fans but becomes a big turn away for many new comers as its all about making the characters as cute as possible which can lead to very boring and unappealing characters.

It was the only image i could find that didn't make me cringe... but what I'm trying to say is the style of anime took a very restricted turn in certain areas because it brought in MOE money (see what i did there?). It was either this or dragon ball art style, so big strong sharp features or rounder and softer than a baby's bum leaving an unfortunate rut in style in the noughts especially. But it was during the teens that a certain style of anime became more mainstream and popular because of animations such as Kill La Kill and Gurren Lagenn, an art style that took regular anime and went crazy with it applying extremes to the principles of animations as well as action and story which was put across through the actions and movements of the characters and not just insane flashes of light and static images.  This made use of the 12 principles and western techniques and i loved this as it showed more life to the characters, some might say it takes away a sense of realism but if thats the case watch live action as animation (for entertainment) is about creating entertainment for their target audience. These anime stretched and squashed there characters with out restricting them to the confines of the human form which was still visible and clear. After this more anime came along putting more effort into their animations rather than a pretty animatic, action anime had full action scenes which were fast paced and dynamic while romance anime (while keeping the moe style) worked on subtle actions to portray emotions. Stories started to really carry weight and actions would effect the future, there became real connection with the characters and their ploy and world.

Id also like to mention the anime 'Fooly Cooly' (FLCL) for its animation style which while keeping the typical anime style fluctuated to various situations of fourth wall breaking and twisting the shape of their characters to the extreme, its very weird to, breaking boundaries i can't quite wrap my head round, think ill have to watch it more.

Process and Production - A Brief History of Animation… The 12 principles of animation

The 12 principles are the solid code and rule that all animators should follow, they give a character life and bring you into nthe world of the animation and the animators mind. But they weren't created on the spot or on a whim due to a need, they came into being as a way of explaining and describing the way an animator had created so, Walter Disney would go up to an animator and say that theres a really nice squash to that movement. It was a new jargon that would get an animators intentions across more clearly. Animators would try a variety of ways and techniques with the full intentions of not getting it right the first time, but the inclusion of these principles offered security and ease for animators and as each one was made it was then analysed and scrutinised to a state of perfection so that when new artists and animators joined the team they would be taught these techniques. Before the principles were put into place animations would move in a very rigid and lifeless sense, failing to give off any of the principles, even timing which was something missing from animations before, such as fantasmagoria.

Process and Production - A Brief History of... Anime, quality animation

Anime has always been very subjective over here in the west as, for various reasons. But something that is quite prominent in comparison to western works is how animations worked up until the teens (recently). Before recently anime animations were very minimalistic in their movements when possible, an animation was more like an animatic than an actual animation, with little movement on characters except their mouths which would just fluctuate open and closed with out any movement of the chin. A character was always personified by their back story and the words they disgorged never by their actions which removes you from the characters ploy and fight somewhat as they could pretty much be statues. This would normally come down to budgets, and this was more specific to anime series over anime movies. Anime movies had larger budgets which in turn resulted in better quality animation an example wold be 'Summer wars' which had a lot of movement and life to the characters actions showing each ones individuality compared to something such as, say Dragon Ball where everyone was the same static character yelling for five episodes.

This isn't to say that anime series aren't getting better, in recent years, (id say 2013 to present) series animation is gradually getting better along with the stories. I like to use Death Parade as my example here as (SPOILERS) one of the final scenes is of a character ice skating on what appears to be 24 frames a second which took a much longer period of time than older animations, it isn't just that but also the characters expressions and actions nothing is wasted and its in there for a reason not just because its easier. It does have some still shots these are minimal and get surpassed by the expressions and behaviour of the characters who initially start out very meek and stale showing little to none of their character but this is gradually changed and revealed as their faces contort and stretch to show their conflicting emotions.

(Watch Death Parade its amazing!)

Process and Production - A brief History of ... Digital Fluidity, specifically HAIR!

One thing of 3D Digital animation was that its fluidity, initially was very stiff and lifeless, borderline robotic, not only in the animation but also in its character design. A prominent example i feel was the 'Jimmy Neutron' cartoon series. It was an 3D animated series airing in the noughts on Nickelodeon, about a boy genius and the misadventures he got up to with his friends and inventions. i found the characters movements and designs at this early stage of animation very jarring, as the characters looked neither appealing or human with very dodgy body motions. The most frustrating thing i look back on is probably the fact that the hair looks and acted like it had been dipped into hair gel then blow dried so that it would move in a rigid fashion or not move at all. It looked so unnatural with out secondary and overlapping actions happening they remind me very much of dolls, very creepy dolls because the shading process was very off as well with dramatic and dark shadows which added to the creepy feel.This is something that has been thoroughly worked on in more recent animations. An early attempt to remedy the problem was Pixars short 'Geri's Game'. This animation was actually before Jimmy Neutron but worked towards the practice of fluid life like movements in the cloth and clothes of Geri the old man.

 Obviously these practices were not taken on by Nickelodeon resulting in the very rigid story. But what i want to draw more attention to about the evolution of hair and cloth is the character animation in films such as Tangled and Brave by Disney. Both films were 3D animation and featured to girls with very interesting hair physics. Rapunzel from Tangled had lucious long locks that had a glisten making her feel alive with her hair shifting and moving into different shapes and the weight of the hair being portrayed quite prominently. The lighting as well, was warm and soft to fit the scene with more subtle shadows in comparison to the harsh ones presented above, all of this makes the character and the world feel more real and less violently cartoony with primary colours taken out for a wider variety of soft shades and hues. I also want to mention Brave because of Meridas hair, which was animated using thousands of individual models of hair strands over the course of three years resulting in the most flowing and wild hair that moved with the actions of Merida very reminiscent of the old traditional animations.

Process and Production - Brief History of... Start of Digital

Digital 3D animation wasn't always the massive and amazing industry it is today, initially it was shunned by mainstream studios, specifically Disney as they didn't believe it would be faster and make more money than traditionally hand drawn animation. The initial presentation wasn't exactly awe inspiring to be honest as the 3D animations being shown had been made not by animators, but by computer software designers the people who made the software so it didn't really pull you in. So instead of pitching the software to another studio pixar was born through Lucas film industries and Steve Jobs.

Before making their first feature film, toy story, Pixar went about creating various shorts in order to showcase the new animation software as well as practice different techniques that could be showcased in their animations, things such as the 12 principles, considering how they could be applied to this knew form of animation which utilised models as well as the motion of more fluid things such as cloth or hair.

Before 3D was applied to full length feature films , it was applied to live action movies that utilised it in order to make the possible, impossible. Jurassic Park, for example was one of the first examples of realistic CGI giving a wider range and opportunity for 3D animation. But going back to full length animated features, it became quite prominent that 3D digital animation was the way forward because when Pixar released their first feature, Toy Story, alongside Disneys Pocahontas, Toy Story grossed 350 mil worldwide, a massive success and beating out Disneys independent 2D film by 4 mil as well as gaining overwhelming reviews in comparison to the mixed response Pocahontas got. This was the stepping stone for the world of 3D animation which then went from strength to strength as digital evolved further and further being used by Blue Sky, Dreamworks and eventually Disney, leading to the complete dismissal of the original traditional animation, 3D had become the mainstream rather than the kitsch or quirky animation style (although that might be held by stop motion).

Process and Production - Photoshop Tutorial

We were given a photo shop task to practice the bouncing ball again, but this time we had to make it ricochet off of walls, coming to a halt. I planned out the path of the ball as it travelled over the screen, however i found that, especially with the largest arc that the ball slows down and zooms up too abruptly, the ball also gradually shrinks vanishing into nothing which isn't good. i do however feel it showed not timing but squash and stretch as the ball came crashing into the sides of the wall as well as arcs which were very present. The balls movements reminded me of a more alive, living being like an insect so...

I took the current animation and gave it legs to turn it into an insect! I found it gave it appeal on top of the bouncing, but 24 frames a second is incredibly fast and difficult to work with,but i think with time i can get the pacing better.

The Other Side - Animation sequence review

After completing the characters animation i put the eight scenes into premier pro in order to see how long my animation had become with just the character animations in place, (this is character animation with only line work, with no colour either as i didn't know if i needed to add or take away scenes at this point).

As i watched the animation i found that the characters movement and drawings weren't as rough or bad as i had initially thought, i was concerned that because i had done my animation quite quickly that the characters lines would be fluctuating all over the place. However i was told by multiple people that my characters animation was smooth and fluid, as well as shouldn't be changed which i was both very happy and relieved to hear. It was pointed out however that i should work on the length of my scenes as well as the transitions from scene to scene, this didn't necessarily mean adding completely new scenes but extending the scenes to linger after the characters animation has happened, so follow through and secondary action of plants that my weed spirit interacts with such as a rustle of grass or a twang of a branch.

There also some scenes i noticed personally i felt needed work, these being the lily pad bounce as it has a very dodgy path of bouncing and landing, and the final scene which needs a bit more extension with the characters movement and after effects to add a zoom on the hole in hedge.

Visual Langauge - Captain Character further development

After working with the triangle shapes i went with a thin and slender design as it shows a more sinister and snide character to my Lord of the undead as he needs a skinny build to show his physical weakness and his character is one thats powerful and foreboding but could quite easily be taken out.

I started to draw out the head at the wrong time doing it too soon, before my fully developed body shape of my character. So i continued the development of the characters design adding appendages and slight details, such as wings, arms, mist and tentacles. I found i liked the misty lower body as it fitted with the uncertainty of his true nature and in animation sense it could lead to a lot more freedom of movement. I also really like the slackened and lowered arms, he has hunched shoulders and long elongated arms showing more of his weakened character.

Visual Langauge - Captain Character

After creating the back story for my character we were told to use simple shapes to try and create a basis for our character however i began too complicated. I didn't focus on smaller simpler shapes which left resulted in to defined ideas for a starting point.

I used too many shapes and too many varieties of shapes, what was originally asked was the use of three, four simple shapes which were then moved around and warped to form varying body types. With this in mind i focused on using a circle and two triangles as i liked the idea of a hood and robeso i focused on that idea and shape.

The other Side - Zoom Rezoom

Zoom Rezoom is an illustrated graphic novel/childrens book made by Istvan Banyai. The book starts with a close up of a cockerel and then gradually moves back revealing more and more, so the cockerel is being watched by children through a window in a farm house and that farm house is actually a toy set  being played with by a girl whose actually a photo graph in a magazine so it just continues on.

Zoom rezoom is all about different perspective like my animation, I'm showing that its not all that it seems and that the world is completely different and to what we may not notice originally.

The Other Side - Animation tester

While animating i realised that four out eight of my scenes had been animated on 29.7 frames a second and not twenty four frames a second. This meant that the animation would be played faster and wouldn't fit in the 25 second scope id planned. To repair this error, instead of redrawing and animating the scenes all over again, i was shown that by exporting the animation from photo shop and saving it as a jpeg, this will separate each frame into an image so when all the frames are exported into after effects they can be set at 24 frames per second, so 24 images will be shown a second like a regular animation.

Visual Language - Captain Character Task

We were given a brief on character creation as well as development, producing a front, side, 3/4 view and a T-pose.

To start the project we had to begin by coming up with our characters back story and characteristics. There was no limitations on what our character could be as it was just the starting point for the further development of our character.