Characters

I started off by designing my doctor character as he is the main character and i thought he would be the most difficult.

i started off by collecting some images of what i wanted him to look like.















I then made a brain storm of what i wanted his personality to be to help me when designing him.















I then went on to sketching out some ideas for my doctor. I Found designing the doctor very difficult as i couldn't really imagine what he would look like in my head without thinking about the actual doctor who character. I didn't want him to look good looking but not ugly either.















These are the character sheets i produced for my doctor character. I found this a challenge as i found it difficult to draw him with different expressions and at different angles but still look the same.




































This is the doctor in the style that i want for my design. I think i need to make the line more sketchy but other than that i like the textures and colour i used. I think out of all the characters i designed the doctor needs the most improvement as i think he is dull. However im not really sure how to improve him without making him look worse apart from starting from scratch.

Then i went on to designing the doctors assistant rose.





























































I wanted Rose to be the opposite to reinette so that it would make it more interesting. I think she works better than the doctor because i think the way she looks has more personality. I do however feel that her facial features need improving as i think they need to be more expressive.

Here's reinette.








































































Reinette is my favorite character as i think she is the most successful especially the younger one as i think she is very expressive but simple. I think the colour versions of the characters work as the pattern works well for reinette's dress and i think the colour scheme for both characters are appropriate. I think their also successful because i could see them in that time period.

Here's the droid.





























































I think i need to think about colours more with the droid as his mask doesn't look right to me. Im not sure whether the droid has turned out as successful as the other characters. I found him quite difficult because he is a droid so he doesn't really have much of a personality apart from the fact that he is supposed to be scary. I do like his character sheet but think i need to improve on the colours i used for him.

Inspiration

After researching i then went on to look at illustrators to try and find inspiration for a style that i wanted for my work. I got an illustration book over the holidays which has some really great images and i then took their names and searched them on the internet to get more of their work.

I enjoyed looking at different illustrators as some their work is amazing and really inspired me and got me really interested and helped me get an idea of what style that i wanted. The reason i picked out these illustrators in particular was because i first looked at Miki Amanos work and she uses a lot of patterns in her work and that made me think of all the patterns in the palace of versailles. I liked her use of flat colours as well as using patterns which makes the patterned areas stand out more. I also really liked the pen like outlining to the image as well as it makes it feel like a drawing as well as a digital image. I then went on to try and find illustrators that used the same kind of style. Christian Barthold images i really liked as well and liked his line work in his images like where he adds swirls to the image and how he only colours part of the image not all. Finn Campbell-Notman's image i like because the style of it is a bit more old fashioned which i think would work for the script and again he uses the sketchy outline. I wanted a kind of contrast in my design but still work together as i wanted the spaceship, doctor and assitant to be more modern in style whereas at the place of versailles, rennette and the droid i'd like to be old fashioned. Which is why i looked at some illustrations done by delicatessen who doesn't use outline and just uses flat colour though im not sure whether this style would blend well with the other so would have to experiment. And Oliver Kugler who uses the outline that the others used but it looks more comic booky in style.

From looking at these illustrators im going to take aspects of their styles in particular using patterns, flat colour and an outline on top to make it look like a drawing. i think this style would work both ways looking modern and old fashioned.

I looked at tapestrys, fabrics and patterns of that time period to help me with my design.


































I also thought about colours that i would use in my design i wanted the spaceship to be very luminous in colour and the palace to be more browns and golds and rich colours but to be more toned down compared to the spaceship.

Pre Production Project: Research

To do the research for this project i worked with jenny, leki and harriet. We gave each person something to look at in each script i had props for titanic, props for pompeii, costume for palace of versailles, architecture for shakespeare and landscape for the chino planet script. We also drew out thumbnails for the scripts to show how we think it would look and be staged, i drew out the thumnails for the palace of versailles. To start off with i read through each of the scripts to get a feel of what was happening in them and noted down anything that i needed to research. I found that i enjoyed researching some scripts more than others and think that was because i found that time period or location more interesting. I really liked researching the costumes for the palace of versailles because i love the fabrics, patterns and styles at that time and they are very classy. When we put all the images that everyone else got as well i found that again i was more interested in the palace of versailles. It is very decorative and there are patterns everywhere which i really liked and decided that i was going to use this script.

My favorite character designs (so far)

Here are what i feel are well designed characters

Mike from monsters inc i think is amazing in design as he is so simple cause basically he's just an eyeball with arms and legs (and tiny horns). But he is so expressive and funny and it just proves that you don't need alot of detail to make a great character.














Eva again like Mike is so simple but really effective all they have to do is change her eye shape to show her different expressions. I think also that because she is so simple it draws your attention to her eyes.























And Wall-e this character shows emotions so well (even though hes a robot) and the audience instantly fall in love with him because he looks so cute and innocent, it makes you have to say "aww" when you look at him.










The beast who is a bit more complicated in design i think is great because he can look scary like in this image but he can also look kind and friendly. Even though he's a beast he has human emotions and the audience sympathises with him because of this.





































Stitch again cute but is also dangerous. He's also doesn't look like your stereotypical alien (doesn't act like one either) which makes him even more interesting. Again the audience sympathise and laugh with this character because of his many emotions and insane personailty but he can also be very vulnerable.

All of these characters are not oveerly complicated in their design which is why i think they work so well.

Group Project

For our group project we were given promotional as our theme and i was given the job of the designer, which i assumed was to design the character, environments and the look of the animation. Honestly i wasn't sure how well i would do as designer as i wouldn't say my character/environment designs in the past are that strong. But i am very interested in the design aspect of animation and it was nice as a change from animating. However our group all worked together on different aspects of the animatic which i think worked well because then everyone could add ideas to improve it. We started off by making a brainstorm of all of our ideas and ended up choosing hansel and gretel as the fairytale and we wanted to make an nspcc advert but with a twist.

The fairytale hansel and gretel would work really well for this idea as in the fairytale hansel and gretel are first abandoned by their father, they are then abducted into the witch's gingerbread house, then when gretel is told to sweep and hansel is locked in a cage we thought that showed exploitation and then finally they escape. We thought that we could add at the end that hansel and gretel escaped but not every child can.

Once we had chosen our idea we then looked at images on the internet to find a look that suited our idea.

When we searched hansel and gretel this image came up. We thought that the rough look of the image would suit our idea and thought the collage effect worked as well. We liked the colour scheme as well because the yellow makes the child in the cage stand out against the sepia background.








We also liked the look of this image as it was very dark and gives a gloomy atmosphere which suits the mood that we wanted. Using silohettes for the trees makes the scene look a lot scarier as well.







We were also inspired by this animation by Karolina Glusiec and liked the rough cut out style of her characters.










After we looked at these images we then went on to designing characters, layouts and backgrounds. These are the character designs that i came up with. I really like the crosshatching on them as it makes them look rougher and gloomier in character. I do find it difficult getting the facial features of my characters looking right which i really want to improve. I had a difficulty trying to get the characters to look cute and innocent but not too much. I also kept them simple as i knew they were going to end up as cut out characters in the animatic.






































I also designed some layout ideas for the backgrounds




















































The next day i helped put together the storyboard with matt. I added the characters and close up shots. After we presented the storyboard we were told that we needed to make some changes one being that we shouldn't show the witch being killed by gretel. This we understood as this action would make hansel and gretel lose their innocence and they would come over as more violent. So we decided to change it to just showing an over shoulder shot of gretel looking at the witch infront of the oven then cut to black and then see hansel and gretel outside the house. They also said that we needed to change our ending so we decided to keep the whole of the animation sad so instead of the bunch of kids looking happy infront of the castle at the end they would look sad.









We changed the characters and blending both mine and kat's designs as hers had better facial expressions but they were a bit too detailed and they wanted to keep my cross hatching so we ended up with hansel and gretel looking like this which i think looks a lot better.



















I then had to draw out the different parts of the characters so that they were ready for animating.









The last day we had to put it all together i had to add anymore crosshatching and shading to the characters and then put the stills together for the animation. I love the image of hansel and gretel looking up at the house as i think it is a really emotional image.




























This is what our animatic looked like at the end.

I was really happy with how it turned out and the voice and music that the writers found for us worked really well with the animation. I really enjoyed working with my group because everyone worked hard and there wasn't anyone that was left with nothing to do. I also think that everyone communicated well and we were pretty well organised. We also all understood what the look and feel of the animation was going to be so there was no confusion. I felt that everyone seemed to like and enjoy making the animatic and it wasn't just one persons idea it was a group idea. One of the things that didn't turn out as planned was the amount of time that we were left with to put the animatic together. I think this was because of the way we made the animatic and the amount of time we were given more than being disorgansied. Also the software we were using to put the animatic together caused some problems as well. Because of this unfortunately the smoky words that Pete made for "abandoned" "abduction" "exploitation" etc couldn't be added as there was not enough time. I think what went well with this animatic was the whole look of it, I really like the environments and characters and think it gives a sad gloomy atmosphere. I feel it makes the audience feel sorry for these characters which is what we wanted. I enjoyed working with the writers we had in our group as it was nice to have their point of view and ideas on the project and felt they did a great job with the voice over. Overall i enjoyed working on this project apart from the fact that it was stressful at times because of the time limit and i learned some points on character design from looking at kat's designs. I would like to work with the writers again as they knew alot more about storytelling than we did and again it was nice to have different views and ideas.

Experimental Finished

Working on this project was very enjoyable to begin with as i had never done anything this experimental before on this course and it was fun to use different mediums than just using pencil and paper. It was also a nice change to animate to music instead of someone talking and it taught me a lot about timing and i liked the freedom we had with this project as we could do anything we wanted . I do feel howver that i wasn't as enthusiastic and into the project as much towards the end because of the other project. Which is a shame but felt i did a good job and the animation fits to the music really well which is what i was impressed at the most.

I have to say my favorite part of the animation is the beginning half till the orange wave that i made in pastel as this part worked best to the music and was really bright with the colours and stood out. I especially like the first section of the animation with the circles as it worked great to the music. The rest of the animation got too fast and i think this was because the music gets quicker at this point and i did want the animation to get quicker but feel it gets too busy though think it still works. The other problem is that the next pieces of animation aren't as bold in colour specially the two people jumping but that was because of the medium as chalk isn't really that bold in the first place. The next part that i feel doesn't stand out is the squares as the line is very thin and should have been thicker to be bolder. To improve the animation i would have changed these aspects and made sure that the whole of the animation works and not just part of it. This would also have been because i did the animation in sections which did work to begin with but felt i spent more time on it where towards the end it was more rushed and i think you can notice this at points. i don't really think the triangle part of the animation works as well because they just appear instead of like everything else in the animation gradually appearing which makes them smoother. I also feel that the second half of the animation was harder to animate as the music did get quicker and more complicated which is why i think the beginning works so well because there are only drums in the music. Apart from that i do feel the animation fits the music really well and i am pleased with the result though i think i could have improved it if i had more time.

From this project i have learnt i need to organise my time better and not leave parts of the animation till the last week as it shows in the final animation. Though i did lose interest in the project towards the end i did find it refreshing to do an experimental animation and use different mediums. I think it would be a good idea to mix different mediums in my future animations as it would make the animation more unique in style and interesting to watch. I think this project has shown me the importance of timing and i have learnt a lot from doing it so will take what i have learnt onto my future projects as i know i have problems with timing.