Above is a piece of concept art I did for my bible. I used noir reference for the scene, but then made it my own with the characters and the colouring. Below are a couple of facial expressions for the Monkey character. I had fun doing these as I really like his character design, although I think I could have worked more on the colouring of his clothes.

Below are the images that I only coloured, as the sketches were created by Dorian Barry, a member of my team. I had gained a lot of experience at this stage with the colouring and was happy to take on the task.

http://dorianimates.blogspot.co.uk/

Final Test Shots

Here is a video of the final outcome of my test shots. I've tried to stick to the style as best as possible with the characters and now the backgrounds too. I struggled quite a lot with the backgrounds, as the ones seen in Rojankovsky's work are mostly of grass and woodland, whereas the setting for my story is more urban. Even so, I tried to get across the pencil strokes - this was quite different working in TV Paint rather than in Photoshop.

I looked at atmospheric audio that would put across the slightly eerie and tense situation Parrot is put in when he's about to discover the victim. I used sound effects such as footsteps, breathing and a squeak. As for the Chameleon, I wanted to use the short piano sound to indicate his surprise alongside his gasp.  

Over the last few days I have been working on more animation as a proof of my concept. I tried the Chameleon character this time, and this was very different from the Parrot I animated before. Here are two videos that show some progress. I still need to work out how to do the hands and integrate in what he's holding, but for now I'm quite happy with the animation. The colouring is in a different style to the parrot, as the chameleon isn't covered in feathers or fur.

As well as this, I've also drawn more for my production bible. This included a 'hand' sheet for the parrot, which was quite difficult to do when he has feathers, and a few different expressions for the moose character. As the moose isn't a main character, I won't be completing turnarounds for him for the bible.

Ticked Off (3)

Below is a more complete test animation I did for Ticked Off. It's not the final shot, and the characters have since been changed, so while I worked on model before, they are no longer correct. I'm quite happy with how this came out though, and I had more practice in working with the characters and the lineless style. It was also fun to make them interact.

Proof of concept animation

For my Preproduction module, I have to create an animation in the style of my artist. THis has presented a few challenges for me, and it took some tests to overcome them. The first two videos here show both of the tests I tried. One is where the frames are coloured individually using the same colour pallete and order. The second is using a stamp tool. I have found I dislike the stamp tool, as it doesn't flow very well and is very obvious, even though I tried to make it work. While the first process takes a long time, I discovered it did get the best results and that I would continue using this style.

Below is my final animation of the parrot running. The scene is taken from my animatic and has been edited slightly to fit the character model and has been inbetweened. I'm quite happy with the result, and now I will just need to add some kind of background and audio.

 

Paint on Glass Animation in Mob Psycho

This study block I found the free time to rewatch a show called Mob Psycho, which stood out to a lot of people because of it's quite unique animation style despite it being a Japanese anime. It seemed quite rough around the edges in some cases, but this was by choice, and it really made the 'bigger' scenes stand out. The director Yuzuru Tachikawa wanted to adapt the source material in fantastic ways, and I think he achieved this by working with Miyo Sato, a Tokyo University of Arts graduate and animator who has had her work nominated for multiple international animation contests. They  included Paint on Glass animation, which is a very different media from the usual. It was even combined with the digital animation in some shots, but I still think it worked well in getting across the stronger emotions.

Below are some examples.

As a continuation to the work I did in my preproduction module, I was lucky enough for my pitch to be chosen to move forward into the production bible stage. I am now producing and have a small team to work with, and we'll be designing and creating lots of art to go into the final product.

Here are some examples of the work I've completed for the bible so far. Working in the style has been tough but I think I have managed to capture it well enough to be recognisable if you are familiar with the artist. Having animal characters also provided a challenge when creating the expression sheets, but I think I managed to portray some quite well.

Modelling Environment Assets

For Pocket Pals I've started work on modelling for the environments. First I had a go at trees, making a few slightly different variations of Pine Trees (with a different number of layers or tilted). Everything is still in the low poly style, so the bunches of leaves on the more general trees don't have to look more detailed than that.

As well as this, I've also modelled three slightly different logs. It's hard to see now, but on one I have also included some moss, which will show up in texturing. These were more of a challenge to me and introduced me to a couple of new modelling tools.

 

The final environment task I was given was to create bunches of grass. This was my least favourite of them all, but I still tried to find variety with the shapes and directions of the blades. 

Ticked Off (2)

Production has been moving along with Ticked off, and I have recently been asked to complete a test animation of the spider. The one I did before wasn't to model, but now I'm working with the references and the animatic to get it closer to how it will look in the actual thing. In the first video is my sketch, then the second shows the animation. I enjoy working in lineless, although I have had some challenges with getting edges to look smooth, especially on the legs.

 

My next task is to try animating the other character, Wick, in the scene too, showing his reactions and movement.

Inspirational Animation - Double King

Double King is an animation that I was shown by another student, and I found that it has become one of favourite pieces. The sound design is incredible, with the music and foley matching the animation perfectly. The characters have so much personality, and the animation flows so smoothly. One section in particular that caught my eye can be found at 6:45, where the scenery morphs and changes shape around the king. In some places the creator also uses some nice textures on the backgrounds, and it's something I might consider doing in my own work.

 

Pocket Pals

Another of the third year teams I decided to join is Pocket Pals. This is an app that is being created to learn more about British wildlife. For this project, I'm having a go at modelling which is new to me and is a steep learning curve. Even though I'm finding it quite challenging so far, it's good to learn something new and have the chance to work more with Maya. Once I've modeled and UV unwrapped, I'll have the chance to animate as well.

My first task was to create a model for a Wood Pigeon. We're working in a low poly style, so it doesn't look as smooth but still has character to it. These are my progress shots.

Ticked Off

Now I'm in second year, it is important that I spend time working on third year projects. It gives me a better idea on how a project is managed while working alongside a team. One of the projects I have chosen to work on is Ticked off. It's a story of a clock keeper who keeps getting bugged by a spider in the clock. 

So far I have only been creating little test animations and art, but I will post these here to show. The first is a image I drew to get to know the two characters a little better. They're in a very simple style, but I like that as well as the colour scheme the producers have chosen to use.

 

As well as the art, I've also worked on two different walk cycles for Wick, the mouse like character. The first I completed with colour, although it doesn't have many frames so the animation isn't as smooth. Even so, I made sure to include the follow through on his ears, which I think is a nice touch to add. The second is simply lineart to give a better indication of the way he moves. It's a slower, smoother walk, and I tried to include the way his head might move.

(Update with second video)

After working with Wick for a while, I was asked to try something with the spider, like the way he pops down from the top of the screen. This seemed like a fun task, and I have so far completed a small test. I used follow through on the hair on his body, as well as on his legs, and also made him bounce a little before coming to a stop. Another task was to try an include a cup of tea, which I thought through and made it so he'd have to catch the liquid on the way back up. 

In Preproduction, we've been working on creating our own stories alongside some writing workshops, looking into 3 act structure and the relationships between characters. To the left is my 'wow' image, a drawing that is meant to capture attention and get someone invested. I had to complete this in the style of my given artist, Feodor Rojankovsky, a childrens book illustrator who uses pencil, bright colours and creative characters. While I wasn't sure how to go about doing this at first, I think I managed quite well. Below are some examples of his work, as well as a couple more drawings I did in his stlye of two more characters in my story.

Alongside this image I also had to create an animatic of a chosen scene. First I had to storyboard 20 panels, then with added frames, timing and sound I was able to make them into an animatic. I was pretty happy with the way this turned out, especially the first section. I could have worked more on the scene where the Parrot looks out of the window and sees the criminal getting away though, and I might still do so in the future. I also need to work some more on my sound design, as at the moment it contains only the basic noises.

 

Above is just a very simple animation I had fun making in a short break I had.

Today I dedicated some of my time to working on a scene from one of the third year films, Big Top. It was only a short scene, but it's important to get it looking as professional as possible. Below is a playblast of what I achieved. I found it took some time to get my head around how to make the arms work around his large body, though I think I did a good job at this as well as with making his secondary animation look natural.

Self Portrait

I have finally finished my self portrait project, creating and editing all of my scenes before adding music for the final product.

After getting all of the bits and pieces like my photographs I needed together, I was able to shoot all of my stop motion footage. I came to the conclusion that I enjoyed the idea of looking back on my memories the most so would use photographs in a big part of my animation. Alongside these, I wanted to include a few of my belongings like badges or drawings that present a little more about who I am. I'm happy with the overall result, although I think that some of the stopmotion could have been a bit slower with more frames as the photos are quite hard to see at times. 

The editing I did in Aftereffects was quite time consuming. I encountered the issue of having some of my files in the wrong frame rate, and it took extra work to sort this out; I have learned from this mistake though. I could also have improved some of my masking effects, although I did try hard to add other effects like shadows to give it some depth.

I have added foley and music to my 3D animation of Conan and the Dragon. Since the last time I posted, I added some length to the close up scene of the man, showing the change in his attitude with his expression as he decides to face the dragon. I pitched down the roars we created so that they had more of a rumble like a dragon would, and tried to make the footsteps sound heavier. I think I'll be changing the music as I'm not fond of how it sounds currently.

Self Portrait Animation

This week I've finally been making progress on my self portrait. So far I have a few little bits to fit together, and the main body of the animation will be done in TVPaint which I haven't really had the chance to use this semester. I'm quite happy with the style, although I still need to add little things like blinks and make sure all movements are smooth, like with the umbrella.

I still want to include some stop motion animation, with sand and other objects, which I will be creating later this week.

More Animation Tidbits

This week some very intersting animated videos have been released by the famous band Gorillaz. They've always had some great animation ideas, with their own style and creative characters, and I love seeing some new work. 

From the very beginning you can see some good use of parallax, something we've been looking into this semester in our 2D background project. I am much more fond of the 2D animation in this video in comparison to the 3D with the clean lines and shading.

From here, I've been able to look more into Passion Pictures, the producers of this particular video. I am able to recognise some of their other work too, so it really shows what a diverse range of different projects that can be taken on. When looking through the work presented on their website, I found a piece called Once Upon a Line. It only uses two colours yet halfway, things become very busy. It's simple yet clever.

http://www.passion-pictures.com/uk/animation-studios/project/once-upon-a-line/

Title Sequence Updates

For our group project we've worked more on the final animations and the videos ahead are the parts I've worked on or helped with. For the hand, I drew the final outline and coloured, although it still needs some editing to become a final product. The cup needs to blend with some stopmotion footage we have shot, but I created the 2D animation to link to the next scene. I was present for the stopmotion to help, giving opinions and using Dragonframe to try and get the best shot.

I've worked more on my final 3D animation, and I've now surpassed the required number of seconds. I changed my mind about what was happening a few times throughout the process, and there may still be some work to do with the shots/camera, but I'm overall quite happy with this. The animation will still need some work over the coming few weeks to make things smoother and fill in some gaps, although I've tried to keep both characters moving whenever they are in the shot. One problem I have is how the dragons wings or claws fall through the floor on occasion. It's not always noticable, but it's something I can change.

Title Sequence Contributions

We've gotten further down the pipeline on our Title Sequence project, and I contributed a few scenes to our final animatic that I've compiled here. They're quite basic, but they've helped in deciding timing and the order of our sequence and give us a good starting point for the final animation.

2D Background Update

After coming quite far with my digital painting of my animation background, today I had the chance to import the layers into AfterEffects and create a parallax. In doing this practice I was able to spot more flaws with my background and I can now edit them to make a better piece of work.

There are gaps in my artwork that I will need to fill as the layers move against each other. I also need the foreground to move a bit faster to show more distance between it and the far away layers. The camera move will need to be a bit smoother as it zooms into the bike, but I'm happy with the quality of my image as it doesn't drop when you move closer.

Final Animation Project

Over the past couple of weeks we've been working on a longer animation project, to have two characters in a scene together for 10-15 seconds. The characters we are working with is a warrior and a dragon, and after planning out how I wanted me scene to be shot, I've started working on animation the characters.

Above is the first few seconds of dragon animation where I've got the model appearing to chase my other character. There are still bits of secondary animation I want work on like how the wings move and the feet. In the later video, I have fixed how the elbows seem to pop due to how far the dragon stretches, and have also paid closer attention to the toes.

This was my second try and making this character run. I've been finding it quite difficult because of the size of the legs and his upper body, although the challenge is welcome. I need to fix my timings for the run as well as the way he slows down at the end.

The final video shows a bit more progress with both the dragon and the man and you can see where they are in the same scene. I've added a few more secondary animations, although I still have a probem with timing on the run I feel.

As well as correcting mistakes, I'll be working more on the next few seconds of my scene over the coming week.

Some animation Tidbits

Recently I have found a few animations that I really love. 

The beginning 14 seconds of this ending for Little Witch Academia caught my eye. The lineless colours flow smoothly to form some interesting shapes, starting off very simple with just the black and white and becoming bright and colourful. This feel could potentially be something I look at for my experimental project.

Another thing that I'm quite excited for is the new season of Samurai Jack. It will be interesting to see this animation looking restored and fresh. I love the mostly lineless style, like in the previous video too, and it might be something I incorporate into my future animations. It looks very well thought out, and I can imagine that the storyboards were important, so I tried to find some examples.

I have yet another playblast of my Tiger animation. I worked more on getting the correct weight through the body posture, and also added some small animation to the parts where he's stationary.

As well as this, I've started working on some digital painting for our 2D background project. I haven't got much experience with digital painting, so these are my first attempts at some trees. I need to work more on getting the tonal range in the leaves.

The artist I'm interested in and am taking inspiration from is called John Pototschnik. I really love the colours and the lighting, especially in the first image.

Experimental Animation

Yesterday I also got the chance to try a few different methods of animation using something physical things in front of me. I think using the sand has a lot of potential, although I'll need to use a finer brush to get the detail I would want in my animation. The video below shows my first test.

I have made more progress with my Tiger animation, which is shown in the videos below. I've added more movement, making the tiger stand from it's laying position although I found this was quite difficult to find a reference for and I feel I still need to work on it more. I've included secondary animation with the tail, and I think the facial expressions still work quite well with the head tilts. Some of the movements are still a bit stiff, or the body doesn't move enough at some times.

This week I've been working on the same tiger model, but this time using it to act out a scene from The Big Bang Theory. So far, I've tried out the lip sync, as shown in the video. I'm having a lot of fun with it, even if it is challenging to get some of the mouth shapes and facial expressions accurate on the tigers face instead of how they might look on a human. I still want to work more on the movements, although I think my timings are quite good.

As well as this, I've been building up my 3D environment in Maya. My wild west town is slowly coming together, and I need to start working on UV unwrapping so I'm able to apply textures. Here's a screenshot of my progress.

Here's some more progress I've made with my tiger walk. It's now at 100 frames, and I've added some more secondary animation. It was still quite difficult to get the legs moving at the correct times, although I've tried to get the correct speed by thinking about how many steps are taken over a second. I also need to focus some more on how the torso itself moves, how it go up and down and sways with the tigers movements.

I made some more progress with my 2D animated skip, which is shown in the two videos below. However I have decided to continue to focus more on my 3D animation, so more updates with that are to come in the future. I still want to work on completing the final outline in the second video, as well as include hair or clothes that would give me the chance to try follow through animation.

As well as this, we've been looking at animation backgrounds and I've been really interested in looking at this blog that was suggested to us - http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.co.uk/

I enjoy exploring the tonal ranges of various existing backgrounds, and it's good to understand the balance of an image. I think I've managed to capture it quite well in the pictures below, although I think I could pay some more attention to where there are also highlights.

Making Decisions

This semester I initially decided to continue with my 2D animation work, attending the first session last week where we were able to study other peoples walk cycles and look at the movement in more depth. This lead to us being set a task to create a skip cycle. I worked on an initial sketch to first explore the movement, and then moved onto the version below which supplied more of a figure. It's still very simple so I will be working more to add a body and some character.

I have always been a bit on the fence about which style of animation I'd like to choose, so alongside this initial skip, I have also worked on the 3D task which was the animate a tiger for 100 frames. The video below shows my progress after only a short session of working on it. I had to study videos (such as one and two) of tigers walking to understand when each legs moved, alongside the turning of the feet and the sway of the body. I tried to include a little secondary animation too with the head and the tail, although this isn't so important until I get the primary animation to a good standard.

Start of a New Year!

It's been a while since I posted anything on this blog now, so I've decided to update with something I worked on today.

Just a simple walk cycle but this time with four legs. It was a bit more to concentrate on, and I still need to work on keeping things the same size throughout the animation, like the shape of the head and the horns or the length of the tail. I also tried making the wings move, although I think the action is a little too fast and could be drawn out longer. Overall though, I'm quite proud of this one and I'm excited to start learning new things at the beginning of this semester.