The 'What?' Project Idea and an update on the work from this term.

First of all I would like to apologise for the lack of updates on this blog. I miss out on a post and then one thing leads to another. More work needs to be updated and then I'm left wondering how to update the blog sufficiently and fit it all in to an update which is a situation that is just horrendous. I will make more of an effort to keep this blog as active as I can. Especially now that this new group project provides the opportunity to keep track of what my duties were along the course of the whole production of the animation...Now onto the extremely huge update:

The What Project:

The group I am working with consist of Sian Ross, Nigel Kitts, Alan Matthewman, Chloe Ingram Gooden, Darrien Gibson and myself. It a big group and although it will help during the production of the animation we all came to see it does have its problems in the creation of ideas. This is because the people in my group are all creative individuals and the isolation of a single idea became harder than we thought. After much debate we had all agreed on "The Old Man Fight" idea.


I came up with a few quick concept sketches using a tablet before we were allocated specific roles to help give the group some images in order to visualise the idea.


The images were going to get used for the pitch the coming Thursday however we decided to change aspects of the idea by introducing an old woman as one of the main characters. At this point Chloe was assigned the role for character designer along with Sian to help, so these concepts were scrapped. But I think they are still important in giving a hint to where our minds were at the time of idea generation.


As I stated earlier we had assigned roles for this animation which were voted by the group at this point. My roles are as follows:

Director
Animator
Editor and Final Cut
Voices
Fixes
Compositing

We spoke to Derek Hayes at this point to help clarify bits of the script and animation that needed more attention. The pitch came the following day and I rehearsed and acted out the idea as much as possible as we decided the idea was more important than the style and concept sketches of the animation in the process of pitching the idea. I would like to think that the pitch was successful as the class seemed to laugh at the gags in the animation which proved to me that the "whats?" used and its meanings in the context of the animation were understood clearly.

As I was given the role of the Director I took the initiative to write the script which I had turned into a pdf and have given to all of the group to have a look at and use for reference in their allocated jobs. Unfortunately blogger does not let me upload files like pdf, so I have converted the images into jpg. I am sorry if the writing is hard to read. If you would like a full pdf of the script than please email me.






The script is not set in stone, it was just created again as a tool to help everyone in the group visualise the idea as much as possible. Chloe showed me some of the designs she created and I chose three of them for her to finalise for the final animation. Sian worked on the character designs for the Dog and I am still waiting for the coloured versions of Chloe's characters to make a decision on which colour the dog should be. We have asked Nigel and Alan to come up with some quick 3d Backgrounds for the animatic so we can have an idea of timing and so on, while I will see Darrien tomorrow for his concept sketches. Tomorrow we will discuss as a group whether we will go down a fully digital path using Flash animation, or traditional hand drawn for the 2d aspects of the animation.

Animal Firm:

I am working with Sian Ross on this project as we had similar thoughts on the way in which the Animal Firm concepts should be brought to life. We have come up with a billion character ideas and after speaking to Derek Hayes we decided to draw out the characters that we feel are important. We have split the character designs between us. I have worked on 3 of the 8 characters that I have been assigned this week:

The Bear: Russian Mafia Boss (Female, but no one really knows)



This character designed focused on the animalistic side. Sort of like a butch female "man eater".



This character design is similar, but i added a fur coat and changed the eyes. I have to speak to Sian and see what she thinks. Perhaps merging the two or changing aspects of either of them. Either way we have to decide on the final ideas of the characters together.


The Private Eye-Eagle:



I decided to give him a more British look, almost like a Sherlock Holmes attitude in this design however me and Sian agree that it doesn't really fit within the style of the story and its characters.



The character is a detective, so I thought i would give him the classic film noir, "fat, retired and out of the business" design. This is the one that Sian and I like the most, which means i will take him further into colour.

The femme Fatal: Cat



Me and Sian wanted to go for a sort of 1940s traditional Femme Fatal character who can't be trusted (even though she's actually really nice).

Overall I think me and Sian are both enjoying the process of the project, be sure to check out her blog for her side of the project.

Sketchbook Project:

I think everyone is giving Kathrine a hard time over a good project. All I can say is I appreciate the loose structure of the brief that she has given us. Here are a few chose works of week1 of the brief which I chose:

"Object of the Day"






Week 2: "Negative Space"





I again apologise for the horrendously long update. I will be sure to keep up to date this term. Thank you for your patience.

Flash Character Designs

I first began by trying to gather a style for the flash animation by first listening to the people as and jotting down ideas as I went along. I focused mainly on the eyes and the mouth as I knew they would be the symbols i will be focusing on animating the most. I went through some quick thumbnails in my sketchbook of all the kind of concepts i wanted to cover for the animation. Once I had all my ideas gathered I decided to concentrate on three ideas and see which one worked the most by taking the characters further. These included the idea of talking shoes, a boy and a girl sitting in a park and talking mushrooms. I decided to take the aspect of mushrooms further because this is a lip syncing project and since I am very unfamiliar and new to flash, I opted to choose a character that doesn't have any limbs to animate. This way I could focus on the narrative animated aspects of the eyes and the lips. I chose the mushrooms over the shoes, as the mouth of the shoes would just flap up and down and wouln't really be apropriate for this exercise. I went back to the sketchbook and came up with the following designs:

This character was a male, and the placement on the mouth was tried at the top before it was placed on the stem.

I felt that the eyes were the most prominent feature, so I focused on adapting each pupil differently in each character design, some were big others were small, again gathering inspiration from the voices of the people.

After I had an array of designs I took one into illustrator first because I am a bit more familiar with the software. I decided to work in black and white at first because I wasn't sure what colours to use for the mushrooms themselves.

I am still not sure about the colours I have chosen for this character however since it will be in flash I have the option of changing them quickly if I feel the need to. The mouth is not included in this exported flash image as there are multiple symbols (as there are for the eyes as well, such as eyes with eyelids to show sarcasm, anger, etc) as it is a component that is changeable as it Will be animated.

The process is the same for the other drawn mushroomed characters, (for the two girls) but for some strange reason Blogger is not working properly and is not letting me post more images as it has frozen, but I will add them and edit this post as soon as I am able to.

flash animation character designs

I first began by trying to gather a style for the flash animation by first listening to the people as and jotting down ideas as I went along. I went through some quick thumbnails in my sketchbook of what kind of concepts i wanted to cover for the animation. Once I had all my ideas gathered I decided to concentrate on three ideas and see which one worked the most by taking the characters further. These included the idea of talking shoes, a boy and a girl sitting in a park and talking mushrooms. I decided to take the aspect of mushrooms further because this is a lip syncing project and since I am very unfamiliar and new to flash, I opted to choose a character that does'nt have any limbs to animate. This way I could focus on the narrative animated aspects of the eyes and the lips. I went back to the sketchbook and came up with the following designs.