OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Acting Up: Thumbnailing & Initial Poses

OUAN504 - Initial Poses:


To start off with getting some ideas down for Character and Narrative, I began by sketching out some initial poses. These thumbnails make it easier to get a storyboard together, thus allowing me to have some form of reference instead of just going in for the kill, creating a storyboard from thin air, without any proof of concept. Thumbnails are a great way of jotting ideas down in a way that makes sense to you.

After my thumbnails, I thought about how many props I would need for Moom to interact with. There are five in total, listed below. There will be roughly one for each major pose/scene. I will watch some tutorials in order to help me model these as I'm certain they will be a challenge. I aim to create at least two a week, though that might be a bit difficult with other modules going on. 

Not many people have put much thought into backgrounds as far as I know, so I thought maybe it was time to start thinking about potential backgrounds. A fairytale scenario would be ideal as the song is featured on Shrek and I wish to give Moom some ogre ears to accompany the song lyrics.

I could always reuse my bokeh/sparkle background from my E4 Kawaii Girl ident created last year as pink and green would go nicely together.

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Acting Up: Drama Class

OUAN504 - Drama Class:

In order to boost our confidence levels and help us become the role of our characters, we took part in a form of drama class. Partaking in a range of warm up exercises, becoming comfortable with our bodies, and engaging in activities that allowed us to learn the different personalities we could become were all part of the process. I really enjoyed the class, despite being incredibly nervous. It's ironic that I happen to love acting... so long as there's nobody there to watch me!

Having to face that fear of being watched was a hard leap of faith for me to get to grips with. Having to deal with your brain constantly telling you that you're being watched is one thing, but actually knowing that you are is another thing. It puts you off being yourself, being confident and expressing how you want your character to act. I feel that if these classes were an ongoing thing, they might help relieve some of the anxiety that comes with having an audience.

Performance isn't all about confidence and the psychological aspect of it, though. Physical stamina, health, and lung capacity all play a large part in helping you become a top performer. Being physically fit can determine the difference between a rather sloppy attempt to exaggerate a pose, and a brilliant, sharp, striking movement. I understand this well as I'm not exactly top notch in terms of general health, and although my past may have consisted of being in an operatic choir (lots of lung capacity needed!), it doesn't mean I'm going to become the likes of Charlie Chaplin overnight...

In my opinion, recording yourself becoming a character and expressing yourself in that mentally is the best way of evaluating what you can improve on. I noticed that no matter how many times I recorded my performances, I could have stretched my arms out just a little more each time, pulled my stomach in more, and given myself overall a better posture to suit the character I was trying to become. I will keep at it, and try my best to be fit enough to allow myself to produce good enough reference imagery for future projects so that I can make sure my characters are as accurate as possible!

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Acting Up - Hey Now, All Star: Reference Acting

OUAN504 - Reference Acting:

In order to get down some basic poses for Moom for my chosen lyrics, I decided to act out some positions for each mini scene of the performance. The first scene features Moom talking to an onion, of which is one of the props. He explains that "somebody once told me the world was gonna roll me" and so forth. Moom grabs an axe and looks shocked as if he didn't expect it, he only wanted a sharp object to imitate "ain't the sharpest tool in the shed"! He throws the axe off in a terrified state as Moom moves onto the next scene. He acts out the finger and thumb on "her forehead" until he finally kicks the onion off the screen and grabs a basketball ready for the chorus.

After throwing the basketball off the screen also, he then grabs a guitar to strum on for a few seconds before chucking it off again and spinning around amongst "shooting stars". Close ups of his face allow you to see the happiness in his eyes and smile before the scene fades out.

I wasn't a huge fan of some of my acting in the first two parts. However, I tried to improve on my lack of emotion and performance skills by exaggerating a little harder and slowing down a bit as I find that when I panic, I speed up! I needed to relax a little, so I took a breather and tried again. I was slightly more fond of the last attempt as I improved on the last scene, making sure I kicked the onion off the scene and directed the last bit of speech at the camera, the audience.

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Acting Up: Hey Now, All Star!

OUAN504 - Hey Now, All Star!

After much debate over my song choice, I decided as per usual to go with the silliest, more logical choice of lyrics. Smash Mouth's "All Star" (featured on Shrek), seemed like a great idea as not only did I have plenty of ideas for all my other choices just as a back up, I kept going back to this one as Moom's overall appearance seemed to fit a more silly genre of song in comparison to the more serious and psychological options.

I have plans for my storyboards and will post these shortly when I get them finished. I have been jotting down many thoughts on what I would like Moom to do and how I would like him to act throughout each line of the song.


"Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me
I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed
She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb
In the shape of an "L" on her forehead...

Hey, now, you're an All Star get your game on, go play
Hey, now, you're a Rock Star get the show on get paid
And all that glitters is gold
Only shooting stars break the mould."

I have attempted thumb nails of certain poses and scenes and will upload these soon. I will also have a go at some reference acting, photographs and also reference photos of other people via the internet of clearer poses if I get stuck. I also need to watch tutorials of making the props I plan to use. This will take some time.

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Study Task 3: Strike A Pose

OUAN504 - Strike A Pose:

- Fear

Although this pose was rather difficult to obtain, I finally managed to get some form of fear into my pose. I remember this pose from a particular online game I used to play as a child where your character's pose ended up similar to this when showing fear. The hands are bunched up, tucked in, with the leg pulled up to the body as if in retreat. The larger image is the one I finally decided on.

- Anxiety

I wouldn't really know how to express anxiety in an overly exaggerated manner anyway, but I guess it would be similar to this as it's incredibly stressful to suffer from anxiety, let alone have to try and express it in a pose! It's a sort of consuming feeling, where all you want to do is tear your hair out and hide away. So, grabbing your head as if to make it go away is the only way I could portray it...

 

- Confusion

The larger of the three images is the chosen one as I feel that the angle and proximity is a little better than the others. Even though the second, smaller one is closer and easier to spot the pose, my eyes were closed and I feel that confusion isn't really anxiety or fear, it's simply confusion.

- Shame

If you're shameful, you usually put your head in your hands, or slap your forehead in stupidity. The one on the left is better as you can see my face more without all the hair.

 








- Exhaustion

The left pose is by far better as it's really exaggerated in comparison to the lying down pose. Lying down is a bit lazy really and although you might really do that when exhausted, panting, hands on hips after a mile-long sprint is full of character and funny! You'd really imagine a character doing this!

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Study Task 2 - Animation Skills: Bouncy Balls

OUAN504 - Bouncy Balls:

I experimented with two different possible materials for these balls as I wanted to show a contrast between a soft, squishy ball and a hard, dense one. I imagined what both a bouncy ball and a tennis ball would act like if dropped on a hard surface such as a concrete floor. This is the outcome. I used my knowledge from last year on squashing and stretching.

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Study Task 2 - Animation Skills: Overlapping Action

OUAN504 - Overlapping Action:

Here is a short demonstration of overlapping action on Maya. Using the graph editor I managed to use the infinity tool to get a pre and post infinity cycle, meaning I would essentially get a loop of my animation with the smooth overlapping action I was after. I am really happy with this and love the techniques used.

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Study Task 2 - Animation Skills: Anticipation

OUAN504 - Anticipation:

Now, although this was a terrible attempt at using the graph editor, I still had a go and plan to redo my anticipation again with Moom doing a jumping action. I really struggle with anticipation as a whole so I may watch some tutorials or some reference animation to get me used to it and maybe give me some ideas as to how I can improve.

Please excuse how awful this is. I really need to work on a few of the principles of animation some more as they'll be fundamental to my work. Second year is the time to nail these and get as much practice in as I can. As you can see, the ball is attempting to get a run up before dashing off to the right. I used the graph editor to smooth out some of the lumpier looking parts, but I still need some time to get used to it.

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Study Task 2 - Animation Skills: Pendulum

OUAN504 - Pendulum:

I had a go at animating a pendulum, which of course is very simple, but allowed me to get to grips with the software and the idea of easing in and out, keyframing and so forth. I rendered this out as an image sequence instead of a playblast as I wanted to try out both methods to broaden my knowledge of what I can do with Maya.

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Study Task 2 - Animation Skills: Turntable

OUAN504 - Turntable:

Although I tried out a fairly simple turntable, I had to do it again as the one above was incredibly fast and didn't spin around at even pace. Although this is an easy procedure, I still need practice as it will come in handy when creating characters and creating turnarounds.

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative: Sound Induction

OUAN504 - Sound Induction:

In order to get to grips with creating our own sound for our animations, which is a fundamental skill required as an animator - we had a sound induction with Matt Burton in the AV Suite. The goals of this induction for me was to learn a little about how to mix, change, record, and export sound suitable for animation. I wanted to learn about levels and what file types and settings would be appropriate. I also wanted to see the technologies available in the college to use to my advantage and the wide range of kit on hand.

We played with the handheld recording devices with microphones attached so that we could get a better idea of how background noise could possibly interfere with our recordings. We discovered that for optimum sound recording, it is best to turn the sensitivity down when in crowded areas full of traffic or people. We got a good few hours of sound onto the handhelds and had a go on Adobe Audition, Audacity, Premiere, and After Effects.

I personally preferred Audition as you get a full range of effects and options, giving you full customisation over your work. It is also easier to view multitrack options and have multiple recordings on the same file. This piece of software is specialised for editing sound, so it seemed logical to make the most of it.

After a mere twenty minutes of playing around with the sound both groups had acquired and some copyright free sound found on the NASA website, I came up with some oddly catchy (yet very annoying!) dance music. Here is the finished masterpiece...

OUAN503 - Responsive - Individual Practice: Ohh Deer Annual Cushion Competition

OUAN503 - Ohh Deer:

Ohh Deer

The Brief:

"It's that time of year again, our annual pillow fight is upon us! We're looking of course for cushion designs to add to our collection.

Our cushions are stocked by lots of leading brands in the UK and we sell a lot direct to lovely customers through our website, they're one of the products people think of when they think Ohh Deer.


We test how popular your products are by putting them in the public domain. You can increase your ranking by getting your posts liked, tweeted and pinned (+ some other activity which you will see within your account) your entries will go on sale as soon as they're approved - you will get 20% of the profit (not the sale price) from each cushion, sales are heavily weighted and will dramatically boost your ranking.


The top ranking posts for the day will be visible at the top of the competition page, on the homepage and could be featured in our newsletters. You can submit a maximum of 4 designs (we're keen to see what your range might look like, so use the spaces wisely!)

How we pick our winners: designs will need to fit within the brand well, it'll need to be contemporary and have been shared by purchased by our audience."

Specifications:

All artwork submitted must be in JPEGformat.

The dimensions of your file must be 5315px x 5315px

Uploads close on the 15 November 2014.

My Thoughts:

I plan to submit four designs for potential cushions. I plan to have two of them with a target audience of middle age and elderly women as although younger people would use this site, the cushions would make good Christmas gifts for mums or grandmas. The other two designs plan to be for the audience of the website, young, arty people of around 16-30 years old. 

I am incredibly excited for this!

OUAN503 - Responsive - Individual Practice: What do I Want from Responsive?

OUAN503 - What do I Want?

As part of Responsive, we were asked to identify key skills and other possible gains we could acquire and would like to have by the end of the year or in the future. I wrote down a list of "What I Want from Responsive" and it is all follows:

- A chance of a career
- New interests and broader horizons
- A possible business
- New skills and techniques
- New inspirations
- Possible contacts
- A little bit of fame
- To be taken seriously as an artist
- Professionalism
- Key social skills (negotiating, tact)

In order to get the most out of this module, I will need to learn:

- Time management
- Learn how to cope with social situations and not panic
- How to develop new skills quickly and effectively so as not to waste potential working time
- To collaborate with new people easily
- To choose briefs effectively and wisely and as much to my advantage as possible

However, despite learning all this, problems may still arise such as:

- Client wants a physical product creating
- Deadlines
- Difficult clients
- Money issues
- Unfair treatment/sneaky terms and conditions
- Client pulls out of deal

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Study Task 1 - Modelling Skills: Do It Yourself

OUAN504 - Animated Strawberry:

After creating my simple strawberry from the last session, I decided that it was time to test some animation using nonlinear deformers such as twists, bends, and squashes. I wanted to mess about and learn what exactly I could achieve with these amazing tools. I find them incredibly fun to use and give really nice effects to my animation.

I added several of these nonlinear deformers to the strawberry and set myself the task of making the wackiest shapes possible with the challenge of having to finish each of these silly overly exaggerated movements with the strawberry returning to its original form and shape. I thought it looked quite interesting and I wish to pursue my love of "mental" and nonsensical animation through using Maya. This could have some potential as it could be used for synchronising animation to audio.

Regardless of my experimenting and how strange my test animations seem, I have learned a lot and I believe that part of the learning process is to push boundaries of normality and make unusual things to stand out from the norm. You have more potential if you're willing to experiment, possibly be made fun of, and maybe even experience a few failures. All this will lead to some great animation in the end, hopefully...

OUAN503 - Responsive - Individual Practice: Reflecting on Chosen Briefs

OUAN503 - Reflecting on Chosen Briefs:

Regarding last week's Responsive session, I learned a fair amount about choosing briefs and whether on not they're fair and ethical for us as students. Despite thoroughly disliking the session, I got some good points out of it to take away and this allowed me to go back and take a harder look at the briefs I chose last beforehand.

I chose three briefs - two from YCN (BEAR and Cath Kidston), and the monthly brief from LoopDeLoop (of which apparently was not allowed, so therefore that one in particular would have to be changed regardless!) During the session, we talked about why certain companies aimed their briefs primarily at students and what the outcomes would be if one of us were to win. What exactly would be in it for us? A place at the company? Internships? Rise to fame? Sadly not. Most of them, after reading through the terms and conditions, offered a mere slap up meal and your name on the website for a while. Not much fame, no fortune...

Not all companies are out to get you though, you can't be too cynical otherwise you'll live your whole life avoiding possible chances at getting your work out there and then forever wondering "what if". Even the most reputable and through company could eventually screw you over in some shape or form, so in my opinion, you have to see if it's right for you. Don't sell yourself short, but don't expect too much. Nobody likes an arrogant artist!

As an animation student, I discovered that I could look at certain competition briefs and pick out which ones were most likely to get me noticed. A brief aimed at mainly graphic design students would be a good chance for me as you'd expect a good 90% of the entries will indeed be from those students/specialists in that field. Therefore if I took this from an animation angle and created say, a 30 second short or ident for example, that would more likely be seen as "thinking outside the box".

So, all in all, after thinking hard about all the potential briefs out there, I decided on Cath Kidston (still, because I'm not fond of it and don't want to be boring by sticking to what I know and love), and I've yet to decide on two more. However, I am currently entering two competitions outside of of the ones asked of us, so I'll focus on those for the next week to get a headstart!

OUAN503 - Responsive - Individual Practice: Choosing The Briefs Part 2

OUAN503 - Choosing The Briefs Part 2:

After having a glance over the numerous briefs from YCN, D&AD, and various other sites, I have come to the conclusion that the following three briefs seem very appealing to myself and seem applicable and suitable to my style of work and the topics I am interested in. Following the briefs are some short explanations of what I could do with the tasks at hand, why I have chosen them above the others, and what requirements would be expected of me and whether or not I could achieve them in the allotted time.



BEAR: - http://www.ycn.org/awards/ycn-student-awards/2013-2014/briefs/bear

"We want you to bring the alphabet to life on the back of our Alphabites boxes. We hope this will appeal to graphic designers and illustrators, but how you approach this is up to you. You might continue the idea of celebrating and editorialising 'one letter per box' or you might have ideas that bring in one or more letters at a time. What will the back of your box/boxes look like? How will the content inspire and engage kids? How will you build excitement among kids, and anticipation for future boxes? Will boxes look the same stylistically or will you propose variation from one box to the next?

You might want to focus on helping us do what we're already doing better, or taking a step back and looking at the Alphabet creatively from a different viewpoint." - Extract from brief.

My Thoughts:

This brief caught my attention as although it states it would be more suitable for someone from an illustration background or maybe even graphic design, I could easily see myself enjoying this and coming up with some great ideas for the company. I very much enjoy that modern, clean, crisp graphic design style that I feel would work nicely on the back of the cereal boxes as a potential design idea. It isn't too complicated, in fact it's probably more minimalist and basic! It would be suitable for the target audience - children - if the style wasn't too illustrative in the way that some styles can be quite sketchy and baffling. Quentin Blake's work (for example) is quite scratchy and although successful, I as a child could never understand it as it was too complex and "hairy" for me. As these boxes need to be printed, the cleaner the designs are, the better and I guess more cost-effective it will be for the company.

Anything design-wise appeals to me. Leaflets, campaign ads, cereal boxes! I'm definitely up for this and have many ideas already surging through my head!


Cath Kidston: - http://www.ycn.org/awards/ycn-student-awards/2013-2014/briefs/cath-kidston

"Design one new conversational print taking into account our brand values and print style. Examples of conversational prints within our range would include Cowboy, Garden Birds, Guards of London – these are prints with a recognisable picture within them. Classic Cath Kidston floral, spots or stripes would not be described as a conversational print.

The print should be designed to be used across three of our product categories; Women’s Fashion, Women’s Accessories and Home. We are looking for an original theme and a fresh new take on our unique visual style. Your print can take any visual direction you wish, as long as you believe it to be in tune with our brand." - Extract from brief.

My Thoughts:

This is quite an interesting brief and is chosen to see if I can finally understand the hype and popularity around Cath Kidston. Personally, I very much dislike all things Kidston and have done ever since every girl in high school possessed a over-priced bag with the most simple and repetitive of prints on it. However, Cath Kidston simply MUST be doing something that appeals to all these women - I have even seen men (although not many) escorting their female friends and partners about town with a Kidston-clad messenger bag which means they're obviously not ashamed! So, I thought I'd take on this design brief to see if maybe working with all this "pretty pretty" changes my opinion on the current trends...

I have plenty of viable ideas, such as English garden birds (oh yes, very English!) and scones, teacups and all that jazz. A maximum of twelve colours are to be used, and at least three colourways must be shown in stepped out and tiled versions of each print.


LoopDeLoop - Go: - http://www.loopdeloop.org/october-november-2014-theme-go/

"Go is all about movement which makes it perfect for animation, and we’re interested to see how you’ll interpret it. Going to pieces, going out, going in, getting something to go, going too far, letting go, going on journey, go for it! Everyone has to go through it in their own way.

Get ready, get set… GO!!

The submission rules are simple;

it must be made by you,

it must suit the month’s theme,

it must be engaging,

it must be submitted in one of our specified formats,

it must not contain pornographic material, incite hatred or include defamatory or discriminatory content,

it has to loop!"

My Thoughts:

This brief seems fantastic and I'm incredibly excited to get my hands on this! The theme is "GO!" which could be interpreted a number of ways. My initial thought was "going to pieces" or "going to the dogs", you know, the term you use when all hell lets loose and you just break down from all the stress. Well, a fairly monotonous looking character could be trying to stick on that brave face, literally sticking an image of a happy face over his/her face until suddenly, phwoosh! They melt and collapse to the floor in a big messy puddle. They could then spring back up again and act like nothing ever happened, only to have it happen again and again and again... One big loop cycle. I'm getting carried away with this already! Considering it is specifically an animation brief, it seems suitable for me and will give me that well needed practice.

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Study Task 1 - Modelling Skills: Do It Yourself

OUAN504 - A Simple Strawberry:

Judging by my last feeble attempt at making a simple truck model in Maya, I decided to try my newfound love of animation making some other simple objects using the skills I had practiced on my previous endeavour. After watching plenty of tutorials on the internet, I decided to try my hand at a strawberry. I downloaded the leaf textures from the creator - many thanks to "3dEx" - and began the frustrating yet fun journey to complete my strawberry!

I started out with a very basic polygon sphere, the body of the strawberry. Using the face, vertex, and edge selection tools, I was then able to shape and manipulate my model into a strawberry. In comparison to the tutorials I watched, I did not want to simply copy what other people had done, I wanted to learn not just to copy, but to be able to create something slightly different with a touch more realism to it. So, instead of modelling the perfectly round "cartoony" strawberry in the videos I followed, I thought more about how most strawberries aren't wonderfully round and succulent; you get those huge deformed bobbly ones too! I aimed for the chunkier, more shapely variety as this seemed more realistic. Imperfection is perfection... To some extent!

So, after many hours perfecting the shape, I created the segments on the outside where the seeds sit. they are almost like little dimples, so using the extrude tool, I was able to make those dimples in the strawberry. I did make one mistake though and I plan to learn from it: DON'T FORGET TO ADD THE SEEDS BY MAKING A SET ESPECIALLY FOR THEM! (This will then prevent any further complications in the future!)

Here are some screenshots of my strawberry. I will try and remember to take "work in progress" ones in the future as seeing the finished product isn't really a great indication of how I made it in the first place...

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Acting Up: Understanding Character & Narrative: (Chet Zar - Tool)

OUAN504 - Chet Zar:

One aspect of animation I'm really interested in is animated music videos. I like the way they have to narrate a story in correlation with the lyrics being sung as it gives you a base to work off and allows you to develop your ideas quickly and effectively as you can work with timing and so forth. Chez Zar creates the animation and visual effects for Tool, a band that I'm interested in at the moment. Tool's genre could be specified as rock, often using strange rhythms such as six over eight and seven over eight which often leads to confusion from an unfamiliar audience. The animated backgrounds usually pulsate along with the rhythm which is nice, with often psychedelic colours and patterns, creepy characters and strange effects.

To illustrate the work I have been inspired by, here is a clip of some Zar's work in musical action!

Tool - Schism (the above clip) features mainly visual effects as it is made to look like reality is distorted. I prefer more of his other animations for Tool. Zar has also worked on films such as Hellboy (I and II), The Ring, and Planet of The Apes. His love for horror-based art and the supernatural began at an early age. His parents were very supportive and allowed his work to flourish which led him to become very successful. His love of exploring emotionally distressing subjects, odd-looking beings and otherworldly scenarios allowed him to stand out as an artist. His website is incredibly interesting: www.chetzar.com

Vicarious, another by Tool and Zar, is personally my favourite music video that he has worked on for Tool. It's fascinating to watch as it is so bizarre and strange. He seems to have a fixation with parasites, illness and eyes which I find all too weird, yet all too amazing. His work is something you simply can't take your own eyes off as the content is just to abnormal.

Zar uses both stop-motion animation and CGI to create the animation Tool's music videos.

(Above) "The Corpselicker" - Chet Zar 2012. Just another example of Zar's fascination with the dead, dying, and sick. It's interesting how he can create such amazing works of art and delve into the minds of the unstable, despite being perfectly sane and healthy himself. He has a fantastic imagination!

He approaches character design through his own art style and uses this to create interesting and often abstract and psychedelic narrative to accompany Tool's music. He often begins by making a scenario completely unrecognisable to the audience in a rather baffling manner by revealing usually all the characters in the opening scene. Considering the shock-factor of the characters (grotesque features, disproportionate limbs, odd colour choice, and a genuine feeling that they are meant to toy with your mind), you feel as though everything has been revealed you all at once yet with still no knowledge of the narrative as the characters start by behaving in a strange manner which is oddly appealing as you are encouraged to watch and discover their intentions. Slowly but surely, Zar reveals the motives of the characters which usually have hidden meanings and messages entwined. You feel slightly enlightened by watching his animations, almost as if he's shared a secret about the world with you through his beloved, unconventional characters.

Zar's way of storytelling interests me as it his often weird animations and artwork feature plenty of subliminal meanings that can't usually be immediately seen by the naked eye. His narratives involve some form of unpicking and due to his covert way of planting ideas in your head, he can get away with expressing himself more and sharing his insight of the world without it being obvious to such organisations (the government) the band is singing about.

"Chet's art is beautiful & scary. His style has a modern twist crashing into a classical approach. I think Chet is a master painter on his way to making a great mark in our little world. Wanna do something smart with your money? Invest in a Chet Zar painting." - Adam Jones (TOOL)

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Study Task 1 - Modelling Skills: Keep On Truckin'

OUAN504 - Keep Truckin':

As a first actual attempt at making a model in Maya as part of a module, we were asked to make a model of Mat's toy truck. I am thoroughly enjoying Maya so far and find it not as confusing as my previous failed attempts. Here are some in progress screenshots of my truck. I got a little bored of its appearance so added an exhaust pipe and a license plate... It'll probably look much more realistic soon (I'm hoping)!

Behold, Trevor the truck in all his untextured, poly glory! Polygons are relatively simple to use and work with and you can create some fantastic shapes from using fairly straightforward commands. I am looking forward to improving my skills greatly in the future.

I used the truck toy for reference as reference is always an important place to start otherwise you find yourself running into so many different problems! From then I slightly changed the truck's rear and added some form of plate on the front for the back to hang onto. It's looking a little better, but I think with some colour and texture it would look immensely better.

I find that using a four view screen is incredibly helpful as it allows me to align any odd shapes easily without worrying about them being slightly off centre or in the wrong place. I find that if you constantly use a single view when modelling, you may not see certain angles of your model and the height might be an issue or bits might stick out where they shouldn't. I'm really thankful for different perspective views as they prevent making silly mistakes.

Beep beep!

OUAN503 - Responsive - Individual Practice: Choosing The Briefs

OUAN503 - Individual Practice:

After having our Responsive briefing today with Fred, we were told about a number of mandatory requirements needed to successfully pass the module, one of which was to partake in least five significant briefs/commissions either through competition, commission, and so forth. I had plenty of ideas of what would work for me as an animator/character design specialist/student. Creating characters, graphics and illustrations for companies, websites, or even personal commissions would be a good place to start. However, I really liked the idea of participating in weekly Qwertee T shirt design contests as this would be a quick and easily accessible way of getting my name out there. You're not putting too much risk out there by creating a large portfolio of work and then being told to scrap it; it's just an image. If it's not successful, suck it up and move onto the next attempt. Creating band merchandise, logos, wallpaper, giftwrap, greetings cards, short comics, place settings, posters, leaflets, badges and stickers were also a few ideas of products that could accompany a set brief.

I've previously been commissioned by my high school - Harrogate High - as their newspaper team contacted me to ask for a pair of rather "Yorkshire" characters to go on their "Agony Aunt"-type column. Phillis and Steev, so they were named, became quite successful and stirred a number of students' interests throughout the school as they saw them as humorous and the sort of people you'd want as your grandma and granddad. I had to work within a set time limit of approximately two weeks, sticking to theme of "Yorkshire farmer/lad" and "huggable/loveable old lady". After many failed attempts and scrapped designs, we finally decided on the couple that became the face of HHS' problem page. Albeit the terrible quality of the images due to the editors stretching my work and distorting it, (they weren't experienced with graphics!) I was quite happy with the way they looked, although I would obviously change so many more things about them were I to be asked to remake them in the future.

 

Well, they may not look much now by today's standards, but they were quite the icons!

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative: Planning Out

OUAN504 - Planning Out:

Creating some form of plan seemed a logical way forward into getting my head around this module in a clear, concise, and organised manner. It made perfect sense to create a rough breakdown of when I was going to put in the time into certain aspects of the brief set and all the extra tasks in between.

Breaking up my plan into three major segments (pre-production, production, post-production), I was able to categorise the work I needed to do accordingly.

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative: Maya Tutorials

OUAN504 - Acting Up:

In order to create some props, or even begin to think about them, I needed to watch some tutorials on how to start modelling, texturing and begin to apply lighting. I looked at creating a simple strawberry so I get some ideas for if/when I created my onion for Moom.

I am very keen to start modelling and plan to get some practice in within the week. I have previously made several attempts as 3D modelling last year, but only got as far as making a doughnut and a ball shape without any texturing or fancy shmancy detailing. Obviously I plan on taking my skills further this year and actually getting round to creating a working, poseable, rigged character at some point. I specifically want to focus on facial expressions and texturing as these are two things that really interest me when it comes to 3D modelling. 

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Acting Up: Understanding 3D Modelling (LAIKA)

OUAN504 - Character and Narrative:

LAIKA Studios' Techniques on Facial Features

In LAIKA Studios' latest release, The Boxtrolls (an animated film in which cheese means status and where box-wearing trolls are the lowest of the class system), the intuitive technique of mixing stop motion with 3D printed faces that are digitally painted from scratch and then slotted onto the characters is big business!

This imaginative means of animating has lead this film to be not only very successful, but incredibly popular in terms of how it was made. It isn't just animators that are talking about this! LAIKA have literally been applying century-old techniques to their work but with 21st century technology. They started out in using computer generated imagery and effects since their 2009 Coraline and has been used by them ever since.

The photograph above is from SIGGRAPH 2014 and shows some of the 3D printed faces of one of the characters. These are then simply exchanged and reused throughout the film. Here, you can see Fish, one of the characters, being put together:

An interview carried out by The Los Angeles Times was a very interesting watch as it gave an honest opinion from the LAIKA team on how difficult it was to actually use stop motion as a method for making the film. One scene even took them 18 months to complete! 

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative - Acting Up: Song Choices

OUAN504 - Acting Up:

Taking a very different turn from last year, I have decided I would like to tackle this module from a rather sinister angle. I plan to choose very deep and meaningful lyrics for this brief despite using a very humorous looking character for the animation that is meant to accompany the voice acting. In terms of how the mind works and the many difficulties encountered, I chose these few songs to eventually narrow down my final choice to, simply because I can identify with them very well and think I'd have a better chance of addressing people with pragmatical lyrics that revolve heavily around psychoanalysis.

For this brief, my intention was to move away from humour and try a different perspective as I want to be able to broaden my skills by trying out different emotive techniques, for instance, I have already managed to entertain through humour and silliness - childlike and adult humour. I wish to work on using sadness, shock factor, romance and horror in my work, to name a few.

Tool, a metal band of which I am quite accustomed to, are known for their terrifyingly eerie animated music videos that make little or no sense, revolve around the idea of parasite/host situations, and feature plenty of images of eyes to create the illusion of paranoia.

Tool - Lateralus:

Black then white are all I see in my infancy.
red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
lets me see.
As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn beyond the lines of reason.
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must
Feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines.

Lateralus makes me imagine myself slowly whispering the lyrics and alternating between that and screaming and laughing. Moom's eyes would often roll back into his head in an attempt to search for thoughts, maybe he could be reaching out and closing his eyes, looking for something. A shadow of himself could be the prop for this, slowly separating itself from him, floating away.

Matchbox 20 - Unwell:

All day staring at the ceiling
Making friends with shadows on my wall
All night hearing voices telling me
That I should get some sleep
Because tomorrow might be good for something

I'm talking to myself in public
Dodging glances on the train
And I know, I know they've all been talking about me
I can hear them whisper
And it makes me think there must be something wrong with me
Out of all the hours thinking
Somehow I've lost my mind

I remember my mother used to listen to this band and I remember this song very well!Albeit seeming sad at first, I think it's quite inspiring and hopeful. I chose these two verses as I imagined Moom sat in a room with himself, playing with objects and overthinking to himself. As much as I wanted to go for a cheerful song, I thought about the possibilities of Moom having a bit of an existential crisis and breaking down. He looks so lighthearted and fun to animate that it would almost push the envelope of what I could achieve with him. One a lighter note, Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" is a very beautiful song that inspired me for this project:

Fleetwood Mac - Landslide:

Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I'm getting older too
Oh, I'm getting older too

I take my love, take it down
I climb a mountain and turn around
And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Will the landslide bring you down
And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Will the landslide bring you down, oh, oh
The landslide bring you down

However, in true Grace style, I had to have at least one silly song with daft intentions. Here we have good old "All Star" by Smash Mouth. Yes, that song from Shrek. For this I pictured myself speaking slowly yet quite abruptly in a very strong Scottish accent. Moom would be green for this, hold an onion and dance around and point a lot at the camera as if telling this to an audience.

Smash Mouth - All Star

Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me
I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed
She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb
In the shape of an "L" on her forehead

Hey, now, you're an All Star get your game on, go play
Hey, now, you're a Rock Star get the show on get paid
And all that glitters is gold
Only shooting stars break the mold

This seems like a fantastic idea as it wouldn't be right to choose anything to psychological as Moom doesn't seem fit for that purpose. My audience is the class and with all this workload going on, I wouldn't want them to feel more down and dreary about the whole module! So, I thought I would evoke a better reaction from a daft choice.

OUAN504 - Character & Narrative: Maya & Moom

OUAN504 - Learning Maya:

Today we were briefly introduced to Maya using a pre-rigged character that goes by the name of Moom. Despite having lemon curd tarts for eyes and the goofiest set of teeth I have possibly ever come across, he's an adorable little guy that has really helped me get a grasp of Maya and the basics (ironically, nothing seems basic as of yet!) I'll need to create 3D animation.

I had a play around using the scale, rotate and translate tools. It very much reminded me on being in my maths class, playing with graphs, moving objects and just solving problems in general. I had some great fun trying out some test animation on the timeline, making Moom partake in some badass karate moves, do a little ballet and even a few football kicks in the process! I managed to make the fingers move successfully and I'm not striving towards actually making my own character at some point with working limbs and facial expressions.

My next plan of action is to start learning how to make a prop in Maya for Moom to use for this brief. I had some ideas that relate to some of my songs (of which I plan to narrow down to one eventually) and had some vague thoughts on what I could use for props for Moom to use, such as a giant happy onion, a shadow, etc. I plan to get some decent ideas together and sketch out some storyboards until I have a final plan of action. 

OUAN406 - A Tale in The Sting: Ceramics Induction 2.1

OUAN406 - Ceramics Induction:

Although I couldn't attend the last session due to illness, I still took part in as much as I could. I managed to get my first model finished and began to make a start on the clay head of my model. The objective for this was to create an enlarged model of the head of my previous character in earthenware clay. This material is fairly new on the market and is sturdier and more flexible than stoneware clay as earthenware has a slightly springy, rubbery texture meaning it has the ability to be stretched and pushed into odd shapes a little better and has less chance of cracking in the kiln or when sculpted with.

I much preferred using the clay to the plasticine as it was easier to mould, had a smoother texture and allowed me to sculpt much easier as it was a lot more pliable and didn't necessarily need to be warm to be soft and pliable like the plasticine. The clay was much more malleable and when used with the clay "slip" - a wash made from a clay bowl and added water mixed in, making a runny clay glue that was extremely strong - it had the opportunity to make strong sculptures.

In order to make the skull of our character hollow and save on weight and clay, thus cutting down cost and unnecessary clay use, we made sure that we sculpted two individual halves to the head and stuck them together using the slip. We had to be extremely careful when doing so and had to prick a little hole in the base when done to minimise the chances of the finished sculpture exploding in the kiln and causing tragic damage to other people's work too.

OUAN406 - A Tale in The Sting: Ceramics Induction 2

OUAN406 - Ceramics Induction:

For our second session and much of our first, we focused on creating the base and supporting pole for our model. This was done using simple MDF board at a few inches thick for sturdiness, cut into a square model base with enough room for the pole to be fit into a drilled hole in the base. The pole was made by measuring and sawing off a piece of metal rod then by bending it into an L shape using a hammer and vice, it was able to slot into a hole drilled into the base. This would be used to model the character around so that it was given support.

Here are some photographs of the model I chose to make from the design sheet shown earlier:

 

OUAN406 - A Tale in The Sting: Ceramics Induction 1

OUAN406 - Ceramics Induction:

In order to get us even more used to the college and to learn some new areas and skills within animation to prove that it does not simply have to be limited to computer-generated styles, we were introduced to the ceramics department along with the woodwork and metalwork rooms. We were given the task of creating a character that we would then eventually create in 3D by using a range of materials; clay, plasticine and then a glaze to finish off our clay sculpture.

I throughly enjoyed these inductions and although I was ill for the third and final part of our induction, the first two were great and allowed me to expand my knowledge of stop motion animation and the processes used in creating a model.

The first session was introducing us to creating a character on paper that would be suitable for a model to be created from. We started by drawing out a character of our choice, measuring out the height of roughly 7 inches on the paper. This would give us an indication when creating the model of proportions as our models would need to be about 7 inches high in total.

Although you can see I have used a colour scheme that I would have liked to apply to my character, we were challenged to stick with only one colours; red, black or white. We learned that simplicity was key in creating stop motion models as it can often be tedious to swap the faces and expressions, body parts and so forth if many colours have been used as it can look very messy! Drawing the character in a T pose with arms splayed out meant that if we modelled our character like this with the armature in a similar shape, it would be easier for movement as the arms could move a little more freely. 

OUAN406 - A Tale in The Sting: Finished Idents

OUAN406 - Finished Idents:

Finally! A finished Discovery Channel ident! After a long day on Photoshop and After Effects once again, I managed to get a jump that I was happy with as it had the arc I wanted - a principle of animation right there - and what dynamic enough for me to notice the ease in to the jump and ease out as it lands. I also had some secondary animation - the grass rustling and tail moving slightly - to throw into the mix.

OUAN406 - A Tale in The Sting: Idents Before Correction and Completion

OUAN406 - Nearly Complete Idents:

OUAN406 - A Tale in The Sting: Final Crit

OUAN406 - Final Crit:

After managing to finish two out of three animations, I was finally able to show them to the class and receive some constructive feedback on how to improve my animations, other than the obvious of finishing the Discovery ident of course.

I showed my E4 and Cbeebies idents after explaining the issue of not being able to finish the Discovery channel ident due to corruption of a nearly finished file. (I have certainly learned from this and will try and back up my files a lot more often than usual due to the unreliability of my hard drive and laptop!) The feedback I received was constructive and helpful and some things were picked out that from a creator's point of were not obvious to me. Things such as the run cycle of my E4 girl could do with a bit more squash and stretch as she almost floats across the screen in a very linear fashion and doesn't bob up and down like a person who is running would. Her head stayed in pretty much the same place throughout with little movement or emphasis. He legs also stayed on the ground all the way through despite the contact point being the only point through the cycle that is meant to stay on the ground. She definitely needs some work leaping through the air and maintaining an anime-like style. The E4 monster also loses his arms half way through the ident and then regains them for no clear reason at the end! This needs to be fixed! Some sound effects could also do with some adjustment as some don't quite fit with the timing of the animation.

In terms of the Cbeebies ident, this got some positive comments such as the style was nice, it was cute, the colours worked etc. However, the logo does pop off the screen at the end, a feature that occured with a lot of Cbeebies idents probably because the logo has two long protruding "b"s that stick out wherever you place the logo... The Discovery channel ident will take up most of my time this week and then corrections will finally take place along with a presentation for my PPP module and other tasks for the end of year show.

In terms of time management, despite the mishaps with the corruption and loss of work, and the issue of me having flu for nearly a week and a half due to parents and partner passing it backwards and forwards to me over the Easter holidays, I feel that I've done rather well at managing my time and think this has been one of my stronger modules and I can finally see a slight improvement in my animation skills! I hope that this can only get better and I can only keep improving!

OUAN406 - A Tale in The Sting: E4 Lip Sync Solution

OUAN406 - Lip Syncing:

A dilemma I came across when thinking about speech and voice acting was that it would take me an immense amount of time to labour over every little mouth movement for my E4 ident. I got around this by thinking about anime I have watched. Not all anime have elaborate mouth movements and most just have a simple two movements. Take Pokemon for instance: the characters' mouths move very simply yet still give the effect of speech. This method doesn't ruin or distract you from the fact that it is not a very detailed lip sync. I like this and will study this more to see how anime characters' mouths are animated.

OUAN406: A Tale in The Sting: Discovery Background

OUAN406 - Discovery Background:

In order to create the Discovery channel background, I used a various amount of inspirations to fuel my ideas for the background. One of which, oddly enough was music. After spending a day listening to Asia, Toto and Fleetwood Mac, all of which are predominantly 80s rock bands, I had this strange sense of inspiration to create a beautiful savannah with orange sands and gold skies. Also, looking back at old photographs of my many holidays to mainland Spain, Ibiza and various other hot climate destinations, I was really in the mood to create something gorgeous.

I started with a few gradients to distinguish the sand from the sky, but this was very subtle and blurred cleverly to look like waved of heat in the middle where the horizon meets. I then used some silhouettes as mentioned earlier in my blog of trees and branches. I wanted silhouettes so that the warm tones stood out very much from the black and created the illusion of sweltering heat with the trees being the escape from the heat - shade.

After following these steps, I then decided that a foreground of some grass would be appropriate, but because of the suggested heat of the savannah, the grass would be brown and wilted, not green and lush. I added the grass and still felt like the background was missing something. A sun! What better way to inflict heat upon the audience than adding a large, beaming solar flare filter. So, after creating an entirely black layer and testing out solar flares, I found one that was perfect. I set the layer to overlay so it blended over the other layers and made a beautiful orange glow. It worked! I was impressed! I then grabbed the blur tool and made some points where the sun's light refracts and juts off in different directions. This is the outcome.

Here is a tutorial I followed on creating a nice solar flare without it being too harsh: http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/17438/how-to-create-a-realistic-sun-lens-flare-using-photoshop

OUAN406: A Tale in The Sting: Background Reference E4

OUAN406 - Background Reference:

In order to create the most authentic and stylised-looking background for my E4 ident, I had to look very closely at other anime that had a similar cutesy theme to mine. I noticed very quickly that there was lots of running shots just like my ident featuring city skylines and tall buildings that resembled those of Tokyo or New York. The building usually featured pastel colours and light greys, muted tones and very subtle shades to fit with the romantic, cute and girly theme. I watched scenes from Tokyo Mew Mew, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Senpai Club to name a few to see how their use of background set the scene and atmosphere.

After having a good idea of what I wanted to create for my two backgrounds that would interchange a few times during the animation, I set out on a journey to find some tutorials. Then I found this:




This brilliant tutorial allowed me to create a very similar skyline effect but in a style representative of E4. I started out just as shown, with outlines of buildings, slowly filling them in and eventually finishing the foreground buildings of my background (if that makes sense!?) which then allowed me to create the buildings behind the ones just made so that I could create a parallax effect when my character ran, which is also used very often in anime.

The pink sparkly background was created following a series of online tutorials on how to create a sparkle effect, how to create anime-style shimmers and glows and so forth. I do not have the exact links for these, but mostly, I created this from my mind bearing in mind all the anime clips I had watched previously.

To create the sparkly background of which an anime character's face is usually shown with a close up shot in these situations, I used a royalty free texture from Lost and Taken, a site that a fellow third year friend showed me. I used this as an overlay. Here is the original file called "bokeh".

OUAN406 - A Tale in The Sting: A Series of Unfortunate Disasters

OUAN406 - A Series of Unfortunate Disasters:

Yesterday evening, I decided it would be a wise idea to back up all the work I have done on OUAN406 so far as I was gathering a fair amount and my external hard drive may possibly corrupt at any given moment. Upon backing up all the pre-production work that I have accomplished so far, my laptop decided it wanted to send me into hysterics by crashing, buzzing and groaning for a good few minutes, then proceeding to delete every byte of work I had ever done of OUAN406. I was not a happy bunny and by this point I was contemplating throwing my laptop (and hard drive for that matter!) out of the window in hope that it would hit a fellow passer-by so they could feel the pain I was in!

However, that wasn't going to solve anything and albeit spending a good four hours trying to "unCHK" the hundreds of .CHK extension files that my work had been churned up into, the files were far too corrupt to even fix manually. I eventually decided it would be best to suck it up and stop being a whiney little child about it and was optimistic that at least I hadn't placed any finished animations in that folder otherwise I would have been doomed. I learned massively from this lesson and thought that in future, when I plan to back something up: don't. It was incredibly bad timing for it to corrupt considering I was just moments away from backing up a good few months' worth of work.

Never again will I back up anything. No, in all seriousness, I will learn from this unfortunate accident and back up on a regular basis of about once a week. I tend to a significant amount of work each week so then would be a good time to do this. I then proceeded to spend the remainder of my night redoing all the work I had lost: backgrounds, animatics, testing files, printout sheets and more.

Oh well, s^&* happens.

OUAN406: A Tale in The Sting: The Next Step (Cbeebies)

OUAN406 - The Next Step:

After much debate over what background colours I should use when shooting the Cbeebies animation, I eventually decided to trawl to every nook and cranny in the haberdashery industry in terms of shops and possible places of which I could acquire some fuzzy felt! Eventually after much trekking, "umming and ahhing", weighing up which colours worked best, I decided to buy two shades of green that I felt would work with the animation.

I scrapped the idea of a dark green background as in contrast with the bright foreground colours that would make up the characters, I certainly couldn't (so I doubt young children would!) see the characters very well on a dark background as they sort of blended in a bit and didn't stand out as much. I played about on After Effects with backgrounds and tried putting my characters on different shades of green. Light, minty-coloured green was the best option as the characters weren't drowned by the brightness and saturation of the background, but weren't muted and dulled down because of it either in comparison to the darker shades. I also tried a lime-coloured green and quite liked this.

I hiked around Leeds in hope to find the right shades of green that I so badly sought after and eventually came across Samuel Taylor's just behind House of Frazer. It was perfect and so full of wonderful things that I ended up buying several other bits and bobs too... Oops. My first attempt at finding some felt was a disaster and caused my animation to be several days' worth of work behind as I thought logically at first and went to the Fashion department of college and patiently waited for the shop to open (of which took a while). They did not sell any felt... Despite being a Fashion and textiles shop. Never mind. CraftWise in the Merrion Centre seemed logical too, but upon walking there earlier this morning, I had discovered that it had in fact shut down! Brilliant!

Third time lucky and I bagged some felt! Now time to crack on with animating!
Below are the two shades of green that I went for. (At a rough guess!)

PANTONE Sharp Green 13-0535 TCX

PANTONE Summer Green 14-0156 TPX