OUAN405 - Process & Production: Men in Black Ending (Research)

OUAN405:

After creating the elaborate, time-consuming and wacky idea of a black God creating our Solar System out of Revels, a family member brought up that it sounded exactly like the ending of the first MIB film where the aliens have a bag of marbles and Earth happens to be one of them. I looked into this to see how it was filmed and watched the ending for possible ideas as they approached a very similar topic...

It was very interesting how you do not expect that Earth is in fact a tiny marble in comparison to the giant aliens. I like how the narrative has almost "run backwards" as I would imagine it to zoom into a marble, then show the galaxy, then Earth and continuously zoom in. Instead it zooms out to show the grand finale and conclusion. I, however do not have as much time as that to create something as unexpected as this in 20 seconds, but it was nice to think about in terms of shots, angles and so forth.

OUAN405 - Process & Production: The Classical Elements Ideas

Soon after the brief had been released, I had already jotted and sketched out plenty of pages worth of ideas. We had the choice of using one of the four classical elements for our animations; Earth, Fire, Water and Air. I managed to get a good range of ideas, and eventually settled on Earth. Below are my pre-production sketches. Some of them baffle me completely as I cannot remember even thinking about them and find them bizarre when I look back on them, but nevertheless, it helped me settle on a final idea in the end...

OUAN405 - Process & Production: Narration Audio (Research)

Along with my background audio which I mentioned in my previous blog post, I contemplated having some form of narration to help the animation feel more relaxed and give a feeling of "story time". I was hoping for some form of Morgan Freeman's voice (which is impossible as I can hardly get in touch with him and ask him for some voice acting!) as I think he has the most beautiful and soothing voice that would work perfectly with my animation if not anything!

I looked into using the "text to speech" feature that most Windows laptops have as this would give a robotic sounding voice and would also make the animation feel a little uncomfortable to watch which would pair well with the style of character. However, after much thought I felt that this was not the best option and I decided to turn to the web for more answers.

I found a brilliant website that is free to use and download created speech off (so long as you don't gain from using the clips commercially) called "Yakitome!" - I imagine this means "Yak it to me" as in "talk to me" which is quite clever! http://www.yakitome.com/tts/text_to_speech# It was there I found a fantastic little text to speech converter that allows you download voices and change the speed of the voice and so forth. This is good research for me as I am able to find a way of acquiring a high-quality voice with an almost synthetic feel (well, it is a fake voice after all!) to it without having to hire a voice actor (which are hard to come by considering I wanted a Morgan Freeman-esque voice!)

OUAN405 - Process & Production: Animation Audio (Research)

After much debate over what audio I would plan to use in my animation, I decided that I would like to add some background music of some description. I knew that because of the setting, space, I would want something calming, almost surreal and ambient at the same time. I thought about creating my own on some music editing software such as Sibellius or GarageBand (the latter isn't as professional and I don't really favour it) but my schedule didn't have any room for a "Creating Backing Music" sort of task!

In the end, I stumbled upon a handy little website called FreePlay Music. http://www.freeplaymusic.com/browsemusic.aspx It was here that all of my music needs were satisfied and I spent happy hours listening to all kinds of music as I tried to picture and get a feel for which track worked the best. Eventually I found the perfect piece called Interstellar Aurora by FreePlay Music themselves from an album called Electronica Transmissions Volume 3.

In order to use this piece of music, which was free of course so long as the terms and conditions weren't breached, I had to agree to the rules that I would not use this music for any commercial use and that regarding I do not make any money off the track, I am free to use it as part of a composition online under the condition that the creator is credited. So, knowing that I wouldn't get into any trouble for using it, I decided on happily using a twenty second clip of that track.

OUAN405 - Process & Production: Chris, The Simpsons Artist (Research)

Taking into account my research on the way Disney made his characters appealing in terms of mannerisms and attitudes/personalities, I then went on to create my very own character - or protagonist rather - to bring my animation to life. I started by jotting down the most bizarre of ideas for my "God"-like character. I can't even remember jotting down half of them!

I started with a naked figure of an emaciated male suggesting that God doesn't need lavish clothing to represent his benevolence, nor should he be the picture of health, he is one of us, he has flaws and so forth. Eventually, I thought about the comedic side of what God's potential appearance really could be...

After running through silly ideas of Morgan Freeman as God (a bit cliché!), Skrillex (definite no!), Snoop Dogg (Dog is God backwards, right?) and many other wacky ideas, I settled on a rather handsome looking African-American God dressed in hip-hop genre clothing, gold chain, basketball vest, the lot! However, I hadn't really settled on a style.

I knew what I wanted my God to look like, but how would I style his features? How big should his eyes be? Nose shape? Then, I was thankful one night as I was browsing through Facebook and came across one of my most loved artists(?), Chris, "The Simpsons Artist" - as he calls himself. On his website, Pictures That I Gone And Done, Chris shows off his extensive knowledge on creating abstract and (to be honest) terrifying characters which you can't help but laugh at! I thought styling my God with a few similar features to that of Chris' characters, I could recreate that same level of horror yet humour in my work...

http://picturesthatigoneanddone.bigcartel.com I recommend checking Chris out, his work is truly an inspiration!

OUAN405 - Process & Production: Creating Star Fields (Research)

As part of my animation idea for the Classical Elements brief, (see other blog posts regarding narrative, ideas, character design etc.) I decided to set the story in outer space. As a consequence of this, I had to learn how to create a star field; something I've never had the opportunity of doing before! So, I began to look online to find an effective and simple method of creating a realistic-looking universe using Photoshop.

One of the few I looked at was incredibly easy to understand and very useful. This was created by Greg Martin (http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tuts_arts/making_a_star_field.html) and gave a detailed walkthrough of creating a star field using the tools in Photoshop.

I learned a lot from this and eventually managed to create two fairly convincing images of which I could then go on to use as my backgrounds for my animation. I think two or three is a good amount to create as I'll have some variation in where the stars are and I can swap them around in my animation as I please. (Stars don't stay in the same place all the time!)

Although I cannot upload Photoshop files onto Blogger and there is no way of me exporting to JPEG as Photoshop doesn't exist on this laptop, I can assure you that my example ended up looking identical to Greg Martin's...

OUAN405 - Process & Production: Adobe After Effects

OUAN405 - Process & Production: Hayao Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke" (Animation Technique)

OUAN405 - Process & Production:

After spending my day off watching Japanese documentaries about Japanese animation, animation techniques, styles and methods, I came across a short clip of Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke. Not only did this catch my eye instantly as I found it relevant to my upcoming animation about the Classical Elements, I loved the way he animated this particular scene (I love the way he animates all of his films!) and simply had to blog about it immediately!

Below is where I found this short clip. A video from YouTube from Jonathan Ross's 2002 "Japanorama" (Season 1, Episode 2, Part 3) showed a scene where the character is blowing what seems to be leaves or petals out of her hand. This is a side view shot and demonstrates the rule of thirds nicely as your eye is drawn to the left hand side of the screen.

This is shown at time 7:38 of the video below and I am particularly fond of the shot, pace of the animation and secondary animation of the hair and clothes as the character blows the petals against the wind. It is very lifelike and I hope to use a similar shot, staging and pace in my own animation. I will not be using secondary action like Miyazaki has done however as my animation will be set in space, a vacuum, where no wind could possibly exist!

OUAN405 - Process & Production: Adobe Flash (Creating Simple Animation)

OUAN405 - Process & Production:

Today, albeit having some experience on Flash and much preferring it for animating to any of the previous methods and programmes I have used (simply because of its ease of use and simple interface, logically placed options and very simple use of ActionScript), we did some very simple pendulums and and squash and stretch bouncing balls.

I very much enjoyed this and learned something new despite using tweens, the timeline and Flash in general before. Below is my finished animation and feel that I achieved something new as I have not the easing in and out tool on Flash before, so it gave a new feel to my animation which I thought looked appealing and more realistic.

Personally, I consider this small task as a part of research as although I have used Flash for many years for all different purposes, it's nice to touch up on the basics and get back into using the correct methods and learn new ways of creating animation. I class this as research as when creating this file, it encouraged me to look at reference images of creating in-betweens (I have a tendency to opt for straight ahead animation as planning keyframes is tedious to me) thus learning to work out of the comfort zone of straight ahead animation.

OUAN405 - Process & Production: Walt Disney's "Silly Symphonies"

OUAN405 - Process & Production:

The "Silly Symphonies" short musical animations by Walt Disney began in 1929 with the introduction of the very popular "Skeleton Dance". Usually the characters used in the Silly Symphonies shorts were not recurring or used multiple times in other animations. Because of this, it made the animations more interesting as you expected to see a range of different characters with different purposes in each of his symphonies.

A grand total of 75 silly symphonies were created and began to emerge in Technicolour during the mid 1930s. Disney's sole purpose for creating these daft little musical jingles was not only to entertain but to experiment with different techniques, styles, characters, effects and so forth. By watching a few in chronological order, you can easily distinguish the difference between the animations. they definitely progress over time.

In my opinion, I am not a huge fan of anything Disney. I was more of a Warner Bros' "Looney Tunes" fan and never swayed towards Disney even when from a young age as I found his work a little too "cheesy". The same could be said for Looney Tunes' slapstick comedy and Americanised humour, but I found and still find Disney a little too cliche.

I learn to appreciate Disney's work however as he is certainly one of the best known animators in the Western world and his legacy still lives on despite the change in Disney as a company stylistically (more modern approach, less slapstick, change in character design, 3D approach etc.)

Walt Disney's "Skeleton Dance" - 1929

In terms of what I have learned from Walt Disney to use in my own animations, I definitely think I will take into account the way he creates appeal in his characters. Even in his Silly Symphonies where he hardly ever reuses his characters, you still feel they've been around for ages and you get a real feel for them! They are just full of charisma and I want to be able to achieve this with my own characters.

I think I will do this by making sure I give the characters I create animations and movements that match their personalities like Disney does. For instance, if I create a villain, sharp, creeping movements would be most appropriate. In terms of my own animation ideas for the Classical Elements, I have created a very laid back character to represent "God". I will give him soft, swaying movements to represent his "cool" attitude.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Apply: Fear of Death Final Animation

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Fear of Death

Recently in a humble attempt to finish my final animation for Animation Skills I created a short seven second animation to describe my feelings and ideas towards the theme of death. I wanted to convey a message of living life to the fullest and not worrying about what might happen during death as the pressure of stress and worrying about the afterlife (if there happens to be one!) may cause death itself, ironically!

I am rather happy with this animation as it conveys the message well, contains a hint of comedy and has an element of shock-factor at the end where my protagonist, Eve, eventually gets her head cut off by the ever-cliche Grim Reaper.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - 12 Principles of Animation

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

12 Principles of Animation

Earlier last week we had a rather long lecture regarding the 12 principles of animation. Although this isn't the standard amount of principles, some animators may recall there being 20 or 25, some maybe even more, it was good to note the basics and learn exactly what makes up a great animation.

I made many notes and went on afterwards to research some of the other principles that weren't mentioned in the lecture. However, here are the 12 main points that I noted:

1. Squash and Stretch - exaggeration is key to making an entertaining animation. A bouncy ball does not hit the contact point (floor) rigidly. It bounces and squashes as it hits the floor and stretches as it comes back up.

2. Anticipation - When we are about to commit to an action, say a large jump for instance, we do not just jump. We have many actions called anticipation that leads up to that big jump. This is our body getting ready for the jump. In animation, every little movement matters.

3. Staging (Mis En Scene) - This is all about telling the story. There's no need to overcompensate and we need to assume that the audience is completely unaware of what is going to happen so we need to communicate to the best of our ability. The protagonist shouldn't be upstaged by any other character - it takes our attention away from them.

4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose - Straight ahead shows frame after frame of animation for more lively and fast-paced scenes. Pose to Pose is meticulously planned. Key poses are drawn and the inbetweens are filled in afterwards.

Here's the next part of our 12 principles in a nutshell...

5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action: Follow through and overlapping depicts the way objects still move even after a character has stopped moving. Say for instance, a young lady in a flowing dress is running away from something and she suddenly comes to halt. Her flowing dress will not stop at the as time as her - this is called drag,

6. Slow In and Slow Out: More frames at the beginning of a sequence shows a slow in, more frames means a slower start/finish. More frames at the end means a slow out. This is all very simple really.

7. Arcs: All actions except maybe some mechanical or purposefully stiff actions create an arc. A human's arms move in a arc-like motion when walking. A pendulum also follows and arc path.

8. Secondary Action: We may understand that a character may be shocked at a particular event. However we notice that sometimes their facial expression or a secondary action gives this away. Their eyes may pop out of their head for instance. This gives the animation a more life-like feel.Secondary actions emphasise yet do not take the attention away from the character/primary action.


And finally, the last part of our 12 principles...

9. Timing: Because of our minimum of 24 frames per second that the human eye can see at without any flickering, animators work in twos. This means that to fill up 24 frames a second, which may seem tiresome, they duplicate two drawings. So rather, they are really drawing 12 frames a second!

10. Exaggeration: My personal favourite! Exaggerating may seem great for cartoon animation, but bigger and faster aren't always better and can seem very "in your face" at times. Subtle exaggeration like the movement of eyebrows to pragmatically indicate an emotion is a good example. If exaggeration is used all the time, it eventually blends in and cannot be classed as exaggeration.

11. Solid Drawing: Basic principles of weight, depth, poses, lighting and so forth all make up for good drawing skills. I often use references from other images and media when creating my own characters. Animators do exactly that so with practice, they can create life-like animation!

12. Appeal: Ever notice that even the evilest of super-villains seem appealing in some shape or form? Cruella Deville's long, slender physique (albeit horrid personality!) seems alluring in some way and good animators can even make an audience viewing the worst of characters conjure up some empathy for them!

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Explore - Pose Perfect!

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Below is a short pose to pose animation of a pendulum I made during our Animation Skills classes. I had great yet frustrating fun making this and had to redo many things several times to get it just right. However, albeit liking the overall of swing of things (no pun intended!) and the way the arc turned out, I must say that I could improve next time by understanding that the blue pencil does show when scanning in!

I should be a little more cautious and less frivolous when scanning! I need to think less about saving time by rushing certain steps and more about making sure every phase of making an animation is as important as the rest...

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Explore: Frame by Frame

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Here is one example of my frame by frame animation. To see more on this, refer to my other blog posts on frame by frame for more information. I particularly like the way the ball bounces as it hits the floor as it gives it depth and adds to the happy, bouncy atmosphere that I'm trying to give off (hence the sun smiling). However, in comparison to the example below, I find that mine has a long way to go.

Although I may have posted this earlier in previous blog posts, I just want to point out that I could've definitely improved this. I understand that the background is a little childish in the sense that it doesn't look very professional. However, this was just an experiment to try out some skills and was not making this for professional purposes i.e. for a commission. I did it feel that it needed some colour to brighten it up overall though so I think that's why I added such a garishly bold background.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Explore: Flippety Doo Dah!

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

After putting together a few flip book animations of my own, I later found this beautiful video from a French company called the Commando Group who decided on their final logo through the use of a flip book. So, I learned that a flip book not only has to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye and entertaining, but it can also serve a cold, hard purpose.

It can certainly show a fast-paced change between many decisions on possible outcomes, but it can also allow you to decide on what looks best whilst viewing hundreds of other images at the same time, thus allowing you to make a quick and informed choice.

I had a go practicing with mine. I tried squash and stretch animations using bouncing balls, tennis rackets and even a walk cycle! I particularly like this company's flip book animation as it shows a change over time of their decisions. There's a very real story going on over what logo they were going to decide upon. It's not JUST a short little story of a character running down a road or anything like that, it's a business decision. I do love imagination-based stories like the aforementioned, I just like this contrast in what the purpose actually is.




Flip Book Animation from Commando Group on Vimeo.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Explore: How to Make Proper Prime Pixillation

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

As I blogged about earlier, pixilation was one of the tasks our group had to study and take part in. Beforehand, before the brief had been set, we had watched a series of short pixilation animations on the presentation. A few of them were: Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel, Food by Jan Švankmajer and Neighbours by Norman McLaren.

After watching Food by Jan Švankmajer and the way he makes the characters walk, or rather shuffle across the screen, I decided that I did not want to take that approach in my pixilation as I wanted to try and make my characters look as if they were actually walking - a real walk cycle using real people.

In Neighbours by Norman McLaren, he took a very political approach to his animation by using two opposing parties to create a funny and amusing yet controversial conflicting scene between the two. I rather liked this take on making politics fun with his use of very slapstick humour. I thought about doing something along those lines theme-wise in my pixilation (I did in the end). I thought the very "retro" computerised, video game-like sound effects to accompany their actions was a great idea too as it added to the humour and made it seem more child-like although the message was very serious.

In Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel, I loved how quirky and outrageous the music video actually was! It was very abstract and used lots and lots of random objects in the animation doing all sorts of weird and wonderful things! It made the video extremely entertaining to watch as you did not expect what was going to happen. I did want an air of an unexpectedness in my animation, however not as strong as this! I wanted each action to have a particular meaning in mine.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Matt Groening's "The Simpsons"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Although it's been a while since I last watched this amazing satirical TV show, I still remember the good ol' first season like it was yesterday. I remember the hype about how good The Simpsons was back in primary school when I was around the age of five or six. I remember how unlike South Park (a very similar show in terms of humour, albeit a lot stronger and edgier!) there wasn't a massive divide in who liked The Simpsons and who didn't; we all simply loved it!

Although it first aired in 1989, it was the talk on most of our lips for a good few years as it was just so popular! From the way the characters looked - it was extremely unique in the Noughties (2000's) to see these bright yellow characters with blue, green and goodness-knows-what-else coloured hair - all the way down to their extravagant personalities, all of us remember The Simpsons.

The Simpsons' family consisted of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie. (Santa's Little Helper and Snowball (the family pets) came later on in the show) and were introduced slowly). Looking back, I liked how Groening slowly drip-fed his audience the hundreds of characters he had created over many seasons to keep his audience interested instead of simply throwing them all in your face right at the start. for a good few of the first episodes, I just remember getting to know the family and their individual personality traits and habits. This then slowly moved onto showing us their neighbours (the Flanders) and so forth.

Unlike a lot of animations, the opening sequence for each Simpsons episode was always different, and with my experience in watching these episodes, I'm fairly positive I could tell you exactly what episode was going to be shown just by the opening sequence. This kept the audience hooked right from the start and I understand that Groening must have thought about how dreary and repetitive most opening sequences were. He wanted to give us something different, something unexpected and because of that, I'll never forget the impact and joy The Simpsons had on/gave my childhood.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Trey Parker & Matt Stone's "South Park"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Following onto something completely different that isn't all sweet, cute and fuzzy around the edges, here's my childhood favourite of South Park! Created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, this animation was originally created using cutout animation as this was the only form of animation that the team could afford to express their bitter yet comical views on the world and society.

The pilot episode was actually the first and only episode to be created using cutout animation and thereafter, software was used to emulate that of the cutout techniques as they were finally able to afford such software.

Our protagonists Eric Cartman, Kyle Brovlowski, Stan Marsh and of course Kenny, are set in the small yet snowy town of South Park in Colorado state. It is here that they go on many wild and wacky adventures to figure out conspiracies, myths and so forth in a very tongue in cheek sort of fashion. The animation themes itself are very controversial as within the group of boys, there is Kyle: a strong Jewish believer (based on Stone), Kenny: a boy from a poor family, Stan: the everyman who keeps himself to himself (based on Parker), and of course Cartman: an obnoxious racist who is seen as the leader of the group.

Personally, I find this animation so appealing and entertaining to watch as i find myself reflected in this show as i am a very controversial and outspoken person who believes that anything is funny if it's created for a laugh and a laugh alone. Although there has been much criticism over this show, (there certainly was criticism of my parents for my letting me watch this when I was five!) there is no hurtful intent as it so garishly states at the beginning of the opening sequence:

"All characters and events in this show-–even those based on real people–-are entirely fictional. All celebrity voices are impersonated.....poorly. The following program contains coarse language and due to its content it should not be viewed by anyone." - Fagin Barry S. (May 2000) "Goin' Down to South Park: How kids can learn from 'vile trash'"

So, albeit the obscene taboo language, racist remarks (that are obviously jokes), and general criticism and poking fun at other sub cultures, trends and popular culture, I find that it's a perfect show for those who have an open mind and a great sense of humour!

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Pendleton Ward's "Bravest Warriors"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Created by Pendleton Ward, also the creator of Adventure Time, Bravest Warriors is yet another fun-filled action-packed animation telling a story of a group of teenagers who have been trapped in secluded dimensions and strange parts of the universe. Their goal is to save cute aliens and the habitats and worlds belonging to such aliens by using the power of their emotions.

This adorably entertaining animation uses the same art style - Ward's signature style - as Adventure Time and is similar in story and morals as it is aimed at children to teach them that being kind and helping others no matter how different they are always results in great things! By using cute characters and creatures to represent the aliens/teenagers, this attracts children more in comparison to grotesque-looking ones. This animation focuses on feelings, emotions and empathy.

The protagonists, Beth, Chris, Wallow and Danny have all been given very outrageous and "poles apart from each other" personalities. I think that this is to appeal to a wide range of children who are maybe borderline teenagers as their emotions and personalities might want someone to relate to. The characters come across as very "cool" and "hip" in the way they talk to each other. They all use slang to communicate with each other which would be appealing to teenagers and children and it would indeed seem "awesome" to them.

I think the message of this animation is that no matter how different we all are, whatever we are (be that alien or human!), we can all get along and work together because together we're greater than being alone. Pendleton Ward uses this moral in Adventure Time too as you never see the protagonist (Finn) alone. He also has his friends to help him through his adventures.

OUAN404 - Visual Language: Set, Series, Sequence

OUAN404 - Visual Language:

So, today we started a new brief called "Set, Series, Sequence" in which we were each given a piece of folded paper with a random word written on it. Hoping I'd get something daft and vague to work with like "log" or "shopping trolley" of which I could create many entertaining and fun drawings for, I got spider instead...

However, after much thinking and my brain feeling like It'd done almost as much work as Einstein's, I came up with a good dozen ideas to do with the word spider. As I am on the first part of this study task, "Set", I have to create 32 that represent that word. I can use any media I wish so long as it fits with the feeling and style of the image I am trying to achieve.

So far I have many ideas to do with spiders such as the way humans portray and see them, how owners who keep them as pets see them, how spiders see us, how spiders hunt, how some spiders eat their partners, how spiders eat, how long their legs are, how some are fluffy and some are bald and so forth! The list goes on...

I also looked at spiders in popular media and technology. For instance, how spiders are shown in Pokémon, in web comics (Spoderman), the spiders in Adventure Time, spiders with meme faces on them as they express emotion, Black Widow (Marvel), Spiderman (DC), Charlotte's Web, Incy Wincy Spider and again, many more!

I hope to finish all 32 images by the end of tomorrow and make a start on "Series", the 12 drawn up version of my best ideas.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Animation Toolkit: Pixilation

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Last week we were given a small brief to try some pixilation animation that we had been learning about. Pixilation is a type of animation where humans are involved and it looks very similar to filming in a sense that consistency is a vital part of this. Instead of simply filming however, the animator takes hundreds and hundreds (depending on length desired) of photographs of the characters moving slowly, frame by frame.

Most animators work at 24 frames per second and take 2 photographs for every movement. This means that there are initially 12 images per second. The images are then uploaded and stitched together making the final piece of animation.

This was incredibly fun to do and the outcome was quite rewarding as you accomplish almost anything using this method and can play tricks on the eyes and much much more. I enjoyed this as it was fairly simple and looked fun and quirky.

Above is my original storyboard (quick sketches) of my initial ideas and thoughts. I tried to turn up the contrast and turn the brightness down a little so that it would be easier to see the pencil sketches on my scans. 

Below is the final outcome. I took around 350 photographs for this 20/30 second animation. I chose the theme of host > parasite. I chose the theme of politics and created two characters (the paper "worms") the represent two political parties (red vs blue - hence the flags) that would eventually nag and taunt the soon to be host into voting for them that they couldn't compete any more so would then have to invade her mind (which is what politics subliminally does anyway) to control her thoughts.

Eventually these thoughts and parasites would multiply in her brain and she would then expel them from every facial orifice in order to try and get rid of the parasites. However, as they keep multiplying even as she throwing them up, they begin to start eating her flesh from her feet up. She is then consumed by the sea of parasites and disappears leaving behind only a piece of paper with the message: "Politics Kills".

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Pose to Pose

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

So, just this minute I've come back from YouTube after uploading this little creature of animation. I've spent a good six hours or so learning the ins and outs of hand drawn animation when it comes to getting a pendulum to swing effectively. This method of animation is harder to correct, easier to plan and get down in final form but much much more time consuming in my honest opinion in comparison to computerised animation.

However, I did find this a fun experience and learned that although the swing of pendulum was a little stiff, not as powerful (the initial swings), the blue pencil showed up on my scans (despite not doing so on previous attempts back in high school) it went rather well as a first attempt.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Walk Cycles

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

In my spare time over the summer holidays before I joined Leeds College of Art I had practiced some animation using just Adobe Fireworks and my drawing tablet. I used reference images from a young chap I found on the internet (see other blog posts) and I drew up a smaller version of me as practice.

Originally, the animation was created to symbolise my urge to travel the world and possibly live and work in Japan, motherland of all things Manga, Anime, video games and beautiful clothes! I named it "Chasing the World".

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Photoshop Animations 2

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

After a fair amount of time trying to get my pendulum technique just right, I then went onto adapting my animation skills further by creating a short animation of a ball bouncing. I first made the ball bounce up and down, just like in my flip book. However, I do not have an exported copy of that file so will plan to get that up on here as soon as possible.

After mastering that process, I then went onto looking at balls bouncing across the screen using (yet again) the squash and stretch process. This is the first principle of the 12 principles of animation so was vital that I understood this completely.

Here is the exported MP4 file of that animation. Although this is a very basic animation, I was not aiming to make it completely aesthetically pleasing, I just wanted to demonstrate my skills. I have also done some walk cycles in my own spare time so will post those up later.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Photoshop Animations

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Here is a short animation I did with pendulums in photoshop today. I was not so keen on the first with the red and white Pokemon ball as it looked too jerky and was not very smooth at all so I decided to scrap that idea and labour over this one instead. Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball. This one looked much smoother indeed and albeit the bad editing, I was fairly impressed with the hilarious outcome...

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: John R. Dilworth's "Courage the Cowardly Dog"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

My mother often used to sit and watch TV with me whenever she had the free time. Mainly we sat and watched cartoons - even today, we still sit and watch cartoons! - featured on either Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Jetix or Nicktoons/Nickelodeon. However, one that she just could not stand was Courage the Cowardly Dog...

As frightening as it was back then, (too much so to be a child's TV programme!) I absolutely loved it for all it's gore, jumpy action and madness! Courage, the protagonist is almost a metaphor for the target audience; young, innocent children who are expected to be frightened of almost anything! Courage is often shown in scenes where there is nobody there to help him get over his fear of just about everything and thus he has to learn on his own.

Not only did I enjoy the animation itself, the metaphor and story behind the animation was more intriguing as you felt like you were part of that scene and you were just as scared as he was. Courage and his two carers, Muriel and Eustace Bagge, live in a rustic-looking farm house in a fictional place called the "Middle of Nowhere" in Kansas. This alone is enough to set the atmosphere and as pastoral and idyllic we assume "Middle of Nowhere" will be, is it in fact far from that.

It's up to Courage to save his new home which is a moral that many children could learn from. This animated cartoon teaches children not to be afraid of everything they encounter, despite how lonely they may be. The bright, colourful and energetic feel to this cartoon should not be taken too literally, as something creepy is always sure to happen!

Below, YouTube user "WatcherOfThe2000s" shows us some of the scariest moment from this series...

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Satoshi Tajiri's "Pokémon"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

At around the age of 6, I was treated to a top of the range invention that had only just hit the shops. My mother gifted me with a Gameboy Colour which was the height of gaming technology at the time. I will never part with this beautiful device as it has brung me much joy over the years despite the many other contraptions that have come and gone. Despite collecting many great games for the Gameboy, my all time favourite was Pokémon: Leaf Green. With it's pixelated graphics and catchy computer-generated music, I simply wouldn't put that game down!

Soon afterwards, Pokémon had become a popular television show. I was certainly one of the first of my friends to become addicted to this fun and inspiring animation and because of it's imaginatively created creatures - which are simply adorable! - and overly exaggerated facial expressions and so forth, I knew that was what I wanted to get involved with when I grew up.

I researched everything to do with how Pokémon was created, the story behind it's creation and even looked into character designs and concept art for the creatures themselves. I soon became immensely involved in the Anime and Manga animation style and since then have never given up on the dream of wanting to animate something as wonderful and as inspirational as Pokémon.

 Pokémon: Leaf Green (1996) from Gamatoes.com

Pokémon: X and Y (2013/14) from Gengame.net

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Roger Hargreaves' "Mr Men & Little Miss"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

A popular animation that has recently been produced from the original books came to mind yesterday when thinking about how I show motion in still sketches of objects, people or animals. When I was as young as maybe 4 or 5, I would endlessly read Roger Hargreaves' "Mr Men" and "Little Miss" books. Although the story for me - despite being approximately 5 years of age - was rather simple and not as complex as I wished for, I couldn't help but fall for a certain appealing charm of his illustrations.

Hargreaves' illustrations were simple yet full of charisma and energy albeit being still characters on a small, poky page. I often went back to the same images over and over and again and some of his techniques often featured in my own childish doodles! I realised yesterday that even to this day, a part of Roger's work has stayed with me since childhood...

Hargreaves creates the illusion of movement through his use of "speed lines" as I like to call them. To some they may seem childish and overly exaggerated at times, but after creating my flipbooks and experimenting with ways to show movement I felt that speed lines made my work look fun, energetic and appealing to the eye. I can only thank Mr Hargreaves for that skill! Below is a small example found on Google of Hargreaves' way of depicting movement and energy in his characters...

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Zealouscreative's "The Maker"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

We recently watched this in the studio with the rest of the animation crew and I instantly fell in love with this piece of beautiful animation. The Maker has a very unique, historical look to it which immediately appealed to me as I am a huge fan of all things Victorian-like! Lots of sepia tones and earthy colours made this piece feel warm and homely, like your grandmother's fireplace. However, this piece was far from joyful and comforting. In fact quite the opposite...

To begin with, the scene is set with the protagonist standing in a warm, poorly lit room with nothing but books, ancient-looking artefacts, cloth and textiles equipment and of course a sand timer. We think nothing of this at first as we see him racing against the timer to try and create what appears to be a female rabbit to accompany him. The narrative gets more sinister as when he eventually does finish his masterpiece just before the timer runs out, she doesn't awaken until he plays the most catchy yet spooky of melodies on his violin, his trademark (note the insignia on his face is that of a violin's carved out holes on its body).

Eventually, the female rabbit awakens and embraces him warmly. This drew me in and really tugged at the heart strings - so to speak! Suddenly the timer runs out and our protagonist passes his manual - of which he's been working from to create her - onto our new protagonist as he slowly slips away to his death in a cloud of dust and the timer starts all over again.

This may have a underlying message behind it. Maybe that everyone should accomplish one life-changing thing before they die, something to pass onto the next generation before life starts all over again. I love this strikingly romantic yet frightening look on life as an animation. This piece is incredibly beautiful!

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Explore: "Angry Animator", The Inspiration of my Walk Cycles

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

So, today we had great fun learning how to make flippin' awesome flip books! Not only was it thoroughly enjoyable, I found it to be a great stepping stone across the vast pond that is animation. I learned that broken down, squash and stretch isn't all that tedious and difficult and that - given a few fair hours - animating a walk cycle given just a pad and paper is slowly becoming second nature.

Given this opportunity, I decided to practice one of my favourite animation techniques - walk cycles. I had immense fun learning how to animate these via a computer over the summer holidays in preparation for this course. Now it was time to put those poses onto paper!



I learned how to draw such difficult poses with ease - I know well that most animators' least favoured task is walk cycles - thanks to a really helpful online tutorial by a man I can only describe as the "Angry Animator". I found this easy, broken down tutorial on a great website called "Idleworm"; a quirky site dedicated to all things drawing, animation and cartoons! I thank Angry Animator once again for teaching me how to apply these techniques onto paper and PC. Happy animating!

This short animation I made after being inspired by Angry Animator was created by using pose to pose animation, we we have previously studied as a group. It was created by drawing everything out frame by frame and then piecing it all together to form the final animation. I drew each frame out in Art Rage 3 (my trusty little piece of software that always comes in handy!) and then shoved it all together in Photoshop.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: National Media Museum

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

On Wednesday the 2nd of October 2013, the Animation crew took some well-needed time out and decided to go on an adventure to Bradford's National Media Museum! Although it was indeed a fun trip, I can safely say that it was rather educational too. Not only did we visit for the Media Museum alone, we also had the opportunity to visit the "Moving Stories" exhibition - which was aimed at young children, but who said animators had to grow up?

We had an immense amount of fun and took plenty of photographs - myself being the David Bailey of the group as always! We learned lots of interesting techniques revolving around animation, played some good old retro arcade games and learned about the history of animation, television and video games.

An exciting moment for me was seeing the original cel paintings on acetate from the creator of Tom & Jerry! With cel, being my favoured style of animation despite the hard work and lengthy process, it was most definitely a worthwhile experience!

(Obviously none of the images of work above belongs to me and belongs solely to the artists who created them.)

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Storyboarding: The Prologue...

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

As you may or may not know, I have recently had the joy of storyboarding the children's nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty" as part of my brief "Telling Stories". You may have seen the recent updates of my digitally rendered sketches for a few of my frames. Here's a post to inform you of what happened beforehand...

The process of storyboarding can be very long and complex in order to achieve the correct angels, dialogue, timing and camera shot etc. I didn't simply pick an idea out of thin air (albeit possible with my wandering imagination!) - it took a good dozen sticky notes to map out exactly how the story would work...

Here are a few images of my storyboard in the making:

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Storyboarding

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

After a long and tiresome day in the studio putting together our rough ideas on garishly yellow sticky notes, I trudged back home and whipped out my Wacom to begin the long and brain-tangling process of creating a fully rendered masterpiece of a storyboard.

We had to choose a childrens' nursery rhyme to draft out using technical terms for angles, shots, etc. We had to then map out what would move at what time, when the dialogue or sound would overlap with what parts of animation and so forth.

I chose the good old nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty". As soon it was mentioned, my mind immediately thought of the comical edge to it, and how Humpty could fall off the wall and crack his egg-like head on the floor and make an omelette-like mess on the path next to the "toast soldiers" of which would "dip" themselves into Humpty's mess and be eaten by the horses.

Although this probably isn't child-friendly in some respects, I was aiming more for the humour, exaggerated facial expressions and entertainment side of things. So in that context, it would appeal to my target audience of children. Which child doesn't love a bit of gore in their cartoons!?

So far so good. 3 frames down, roughly 17 to go!

                                                                 

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: The Cgbros' "Brain Divided" CGI Animated Short

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

I came across this short CGI animated film whilst on YouTube (once again) by the name "Brains Divided". I instantly noticed straight away that the style was very very similar to that of Pixar's and Dreamworks' as the characters looked extremely similar with their flawless skin, shimmering hair and huge glowing eyes.

Although I'm not a massive fan of that style of character design and CGI, I decided to give it a whirl and watch all 5 minutes of it. I actually really enjoyed it as the story was humourous and featured two characters inside the protagonists' brain - Left and Right - of which controlled his every action during a date with a rather pretty young lady.

It showed the difference in his two personalities and how the woman responded to them. The left side was geeky, techy and approached every move with caution and consideration, whereas the right side was laid back, suave and very cool towards her. The two personalities of the protagonist were shown by whether he was wearing his glasses or not and how his hair was styles. This was very easy to pick up on.

I particularly enjoyed the way facial expressions were used - I'm a fan of over exaggerated expressions as I often find it difficult to read human expressions, so animations with this feature make it very clear to me how the characters are feeling.

All in all, The Ringling College of Art and Design (producers of this animation) did a brilliant job and brought a moral to the story right at the end: You don't have to pretend to be something you're not, just be yourself and people will find you attractive.

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: TomSka's "ASDF Movies"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

While searching my internet history for entertaining animations to watch, I remembered a short series of animations by a fellow named TomSka that I used to watch back in high school. Albeit simple in terms of artistic ability, these cute little sketches lasting merely a couple of minutes each never fail to make me smile.

The ASDF movies are an animated Adobe Flash series created from several small skits consisting of occasional dialogue and garishly "in your face" stick characters. They originated from the ASDF comic strips that Tom originally posted on a website called "Sheezyart" of which became viral very quickly...

(Above) ASDF comic strip by Thomas Ridgewell (TomSka)

The very first ASDF movie was uploaded in 2008. In the space of just three years he had over 19 million views on Youtube! 

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: NHK's "Domo Kun"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Recently this evening I was researching my least favoured of the "genres" - so to speak - of animation: Stop-motion (or known by others as stop-action).

A few years back I vaguely remember being obsessed with a cute, brown, monster-looking Japanese mascot that went by the name of "Domo-kun". After scouring the internet for some short Domo animations, I came across this interesting little jewel on YouTube. This was an advertisement for the popular American supermarket chain, Target. I instantly fell in love with this as it has a lot of comical qualities such as exaggerated expressions, comedic sound effects and extremely animated characters!

In terms of history and context, Domo kun is the official mascot of Japan's television channel NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai - Japan Broadcasting Corporation). Domo first appeared as a mascot for NHK in short sketches lasting roughly 30 seconds each. Tsuneo Goda is the stop-motion genius director that works his magic from behind the camera to create these fun, quirky episodes!

Domo has recently broadened his publicity and name into Manga (Japanese comic books and graphic novels) and video games which makes him more accessible for his target audience - children.

I absolutely love this style of stop-motion as it seems clean and more consistent than most others I have seen and most of all... It's refreshingly fun and cheerful! What's not to love about these adorable little characters?

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Pendleton Ward's "Adventure Time"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

Here's a beautiful animated series created by Pendleton Ward that goes by the name of Adventure Time! Starting out as a short for the well-known kids' channel Nicktoons, it soon became viral via the internet and very quickly gained a large audience thus allowing Cartoon Network to snatch it from the hands of Nicktoons and create a full length animated series.

Each episode lasts roughly 10/11 minutes and are usually shown in pairs to fill half-hour slots. This is very a much a storyboard-driven animation series as the producers rely heavily on storyboards to draft out the dialogue and action sequences in a scene. We are currently learning the precise and time-consuming art of storyboarding in our course and I know only too well how difficult it must be to use a storyboard template to draft out both dialogue and action!

Relying heavily on animatics, this show cleverly creates "conflicting emotions" with the intent to make the audience both happy and frightened simultaneously...

OUAN403 - Animation Skills - Identify: Cyriak's "Baa"

OUAN403 - Animation Skills:

After watching Cyriak's animations in our course studio room, I instantly became fond of this little animation titled "Baa". Not only did it bring an immediate smile to my face and plenty of chuckles amongst the class, I became quite attached to the way Cyriak uses a lot of repetition in his shorts.

According to "http://www.fastcompany.com"'s article: "The Cyriak Method", Cyriak Harris uses Adobe After Effects software to manipulate imported videos and photographs in different ways across different layers, thus building up a very strange, very beautiful and very subliminal piece of humourous animation.

However humourous it may to some - including myself - I notice a number of important messages that Cyriak brings through in his work. In Baa, the message that came through to me was the concept of what our world would look like and how animals would evolve if genetic cloning was popularised. The idea of the sheep is also relevant to this theory as this could relate to "Dolly", the first genetically cloned animal of whom was in fact a sheep.

Cyriak's quirky entertainment mixed with almost deadly and frightening messages both add up to make great animation in my opinion.