secondprojectyear1

[secondprojectyear1]

Stop motion, Dog movements

Because I decided to give my puppet the characteristics of a dog I decided to look at how they move so that I can animate my puppet more realistically. In my animation I have him pouncing and also jumping so I look at videos of animals doing this so I could get an idea of how they moved, for example:

and I looked allot at how lions also get real low to the ground before pouncing too and incorporated that in m character as I think it gives it a bit more characteristic and makes it even more playful.

I then tried to act out the lunges myself thinking about how my body moves for example when I was about to jump my body got real low to the floor then all of a sudden sprang up. I would like to think you can see that in my animation though in the last jump my puppet does when he jumps off screen to the left it doesn't look quite right with regards to gravity as he’s not falling down fast enough but other than that I don't think my finished stop motion animation looked too terrible (you can see it in another post).

#stopmotion #stop motion #puppet

[secondprojectyear1]

Case study: Rebecca Sugar

I decided to research into Rebecca sugar as she's someone whom I look  up to. Though she’s not a full time animator but rather more of a director I wanted to research into her background a bit more as she’s the creator of Steven universe and storyboard artist for adventure time.

Rebecca went to SVA an art school in new York city and then progressed on to pitching her own show as you can see from the clip above.

Here you can see how the team works as a whole on making the Steven universe film and I just love the way they all work so smoothly together. I think this cartoon is really unique as the backgrounds are absolutely gorgeous and the story covers some really important topics like same sex relationships, non-binary characters, dealing with loss, PTSD and lots of other really important topics too that you don't often see cartoons talking. 

There so many imteresting poses in this animation its so faced paced and crazy, its really interesting to see a side comparison of the animatic. I’m also impressed by the fact that Rebecca Sugar rights all the songs too as its a huge piece of steven universe. 

Originally I wanted to look at Rebecca sugar as her carreres so interesting but to be honest im more interested in Steven universe its my dream to be able to work on a TV show like this one as it has an amazing story and some really beautiful shots like this one for example that won awards.

Though this post was supposed to be a case study of Rebecca Sugar and her career to give me some idea of where I want to head in the future as I had no idea what was my ideal job, but after having a close look into Steven Universe its just made me realise that my dream job would be working on a show like that. I have no idea what role I would want to play in the making of said show but I have time to figure out what I particularly love about animation before I graduate weather that's storyboarding, animating or anything else. All I know is I’m going to focus on 2D animation and see if I can better my backgrounds as I love the look of them in this show so that's what ill be trying to do next year if possible (create a animation that looks really aesthetically pleasing and complete.)

#mediaroles #media roles #steven universe

[secondprojectyear1]

Behind the scenes stop motion

Even though I’ve already done a bit of research into some of the behind the scenes for stop motion, that was just to focus on how stop motion puppets are made this is for just general behind the scenes so that I can learn more about what its typically like for stop motion animators in the industry. I had to include this behind the scene shot of Coraline that shows exactly how much work goes into one frame:

This animator works so hard for just one single frame! I could never be that patienct which is why I don't want to do stop motion but at the same time its really interesting how they built all these really intraket scaffolding and mechanisms for the background as I always wondered how they got things like that to move. 

This also shows how much effort goes into stop motion, I quite like this video as it shows how the different departments work together and each teams exact use. I never heard of a Scheduler before and their job actually sounds really interesting as they make sure it all runs smoothly and on time, they know exactly what needs doing and when and they organize it all. That's really impressive especially considering the amount of work that goes into stop motion films and to be able to schedule it and timetable it perfectly is so important.

I had to add in this video because I never really realised how big the model is for the drill I cannot beleve how big it really is and the size of the riggs that they needed to support it, its as though they were building robots instead of puppets, its just really impressive.

The main reason as to why I include allot of Laika videos is because they have such good behind the scenes and explanatory videos plus it helps to put things into perspective considering ive seen all their movies and to know the work that goes into it just makes me appreciate it more.

#stopmotion #stop motion #behindthescenes

[secondprojectyear1]

life drawing perspective

In class one time (as you can see in a previous post) we did some perspective drawing of the classroom, this was quite a fun class as it was something different to what we usually do. So I decided to do some research on different types of perspectives. There are many different types of perspective but the main ones are one point perspective, two point and three point. BY saying ‘one point’ it means the amount of vanishing points a drawing has for example this drawing has one vanishing point and thus is drawn in one point perspective..

I think this is one of the easier perspective to draw but its not as used as the other perspectives. For example this is two point perspective:

In this drawing you can actually see the vanishing points he has drawn on the paper and the lines leading to it, Three point perspective is very similar to this:

Perspective should be used in all drawings not just ones of buildings (but it was just easier to show my point by adding these as examples) here are some examples of perspective with regards to characters:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVQxmyIOutGT4lmWlDN9pmA this Youtube channel has example videos on drawing perspective which is quite hand to see how someone actually does it rather than just the end result.

#lifedrawing #life drawing

[secondprojectyear1]

life drawing techniques

I decided to also do some research into some life drawing techniques to hopefully help me improve. While doing some searching the main thing each article I was reading kept repeting was that the only way to really improve is through proactice. Which makes sense, as much as I don't like life drawing its something I despreatley need to improve in.

At the moment in class what I tend to do is just draw without realy thinking about it too much, but the technique of trying to make sure everything is proportionate by making the length of the body about 7 heads long and the shoulders around 3 heads wide is something I used to do before joining the actual life drawing classes, so I think I might start to try and incorporate that in my drawings again.

or because we don't always have allot of time on each pose I might just use that as a rough guide on where to put the shoulders and waist and feet for example rather than making sure everything looks ‘perfect’ so that when I draw it wont take too long for each pose and its still quite expressive.

Another method is the gesture drawing method which is something I sometimes do In my work without even realising it so that I can get the basic shape down.

This focuses more on the line of action rather than anything else, typically you have three circles for the head, torso and waist with the line of action going through them all. I quite like using this technique especially as it helps with animation by getting the line of action down right to mak interesting and dynamic poses.

https://paintingdemos.com/5-techniques-to-make-your-life-drawing-class-fun/

https://paintingdemos.com/life-drawing-techniques-and-methods/

#life drawing #lifedrawing #lifedrawingtechniquees

[secondprojectyear1]

Analysing body shape.

In our acting classes we had with Sarah Perry we focused on body shape and the meanings we can convey through them. Sarah Perry is a movement director/ coach who has had many clients before including Marvel, Jellyfish pictures, double negative and many more. She started off as an actor but shifted her focus to director she often also works with university students (like us the BA Hons animators for NUA and many more.) 

In class she gave us a list of different actions that people perform without even knowing it, but as an animator we need to look out for these specific movements so that it makes our performance more realistic.

Travel, Stillness, Isolation, Transfer of weight, Jump, twist, turn, open, close, lean and fall. 

When acting out our own performances for the mystery box we had to look out for each of these actions to add them into our animation, Sarah also wanted to show us extreme versions of these actions (where we would exaggerate what we are doing in a more cartoon like fashion) to show us that while realism is somewhat important to be able to understand animation its not exactly necessary, what matters is making it interesting. 

We then went on to watch short slips of some animations like frozen and some Charlie Chaplin videos so that we could keep an eye out for the movements now that we know what to look out for. 

This was really helpful as it made me look for these in my own performances so that I could transfer them into my animation.

She also gave us a list of still shape forms that we learned how to recognize such as Pin, wall, Ball, Screw and Pyramid. While these are incredibly helpful for creating positions while the character is still (making striking and interesting silhouettes) I didn't find it as useful as the actions list Sarah gave us. Particularly the transfer of weight one as that really changed how I viewed my animation and I think helped to make it more realistic in a way.

http://sarahperrymovement.com/about/ 

#mysterybox #SarahPerry #Actingforanimators #mystery box

[secondprojectyear1]

Specialize in next year

After all the research ive done even though I really want to be able to specialise in both 2D and CG I’m not sure that A- I will be allowed to or B- I’m smart enough for CG. So for now I’m going to say mainly focus on 2D and if I can try to learn CG on the side.

#mediaroles #media roles #next year

[secondprojectyear1]

Different jobs as an animator

I was looking on screenskills in the animation section (https://www.screenskills.com/careers/job-profiles/animation/ ) as they have a list of entry level animation jobs and descriptions of what they include. After going through them all (background designer, story board designer, runner, etc.), animator interests me the most. They usually draw out the animations with a focus on the movement so often the frames are sketchy, they will also usually produce a few clear frames for an assistant animator to follow. This would be the ideal job for some animation company. But I also found that before animators get to that position they often have to start out as runners or inbetweeners and then slowly make their way up to animator.

#mediaroles #media roles #job roles

[secondprojectyear1]

Indigo Illusions.

This post is about  the company Indigo Illusions as I also asked them some questions for the media roles project. So this is some background information on why I asked them questions.

They were students that attended NUA like Kelly Holmes, but in their third year decided to start their own animation company together. Ever since they have been working freelance together. They mainly work with clients to help with advertisements especially in After effects, but my main interest with them is the fact the got into the industry as part of a team which is what I focused on while asking questions (look at my media roles template for more information about the interview and the questions I asked them.)

This is their website so you can have a look to see the type of animation they do and the fact that they keep putting their work out there so much clearly works as I knew about them before this project because of their Instagram.

https://www.indigoillusions.co.uk/about 

#mediaroles #media roles

[secondprojectyear1]

Kelly Holmes

Here’s some background information about Kelly Holmes as I interviewed her for some advice on careers in animation.

 Kelly Holmes is a 2D and CG animator who graduated from NUA in 2015 and now works at Jellyfish pictures. Kelly now has a fixed position at Jellyfish pictures after mainly working freelance for years, she moved her way up through the company to land a position as an animator there. This is her work experience from since she left university at NUA....

#mediaroles #media roles #Kelly holmes

[secondprojectyear1]

first media roles presentation

This was the slide I made for our first group presentation. Its all about forensic animatioin which at the time when we first got the brief I was interested it. It had a mixture of everything I love both 2D and CG animation and you also get to help re-construct crime scenes to help with investigations. I got into more detail in the slide. But as I did more research and saw the main focus of these animations was just to obviously show what happened (making sure its right with physics and other maths related things) I realised I also wanted to be able to make animation that are visually pleasing which you don't really get much of a chance to do as a forensic animator so I just began looking into general freelance work instead, where I could take on any projects I wanted.

#mediaroles #slideshow #media roles

[secondprojectyear1]

Character sheet

I started with lines to make the character in proportion then did a really sketchy outline of the character.

[secondprojectyear1]

Character design for lip sync

This evening I was working on the character design for the lip sync. Originally I planeed on just having the simpilest character design possible but I wanted to do something I bit more detailed and interesting. After a couple of concepts I came up with this design.....

After using the colour generatior on coolers I put together my faviourate colour schemes I know they are not realistc colours for a person but then again my designs not exactly realistic either I knew I wanted a purple ish skin so I went and used this scheme.

I then coloured in my character but I wasn't sure what variation to use, after asking my friends I settled on number 3 as I like that one the best so far, this is what the design looks like.....

This is the look I’m going for right now and then once I’ve done the animation and I’m pleased with it I plan on adding shading and highlights (more detail to make it look more painterly) 

#characterdesign #lipsync #lip sync

[secondprojectyear1]

TV paint tutorials

I’m trying to improve my 2D style so I’ve been watching a few different TV paint tutorials as this lip sync project would be the perfect time to experiment with that as its not as though I have much to loose.

My main concern is colouring and shading inside of TV paint as I have basically no knowledge about this but I thought while I’m learning about that I might aswell start at the beginning and try to learn as much about TV Paint as possible. This tutorial was really handy as they showed how they make a quick movement but also include likes to the other tutorials they were refrencing inside of their video.

There is also this video done by TV Pint about CTG layers which is something I was curious about since downloading TV paint myself. This explains it very nicely and will definatley save time having to colour everything in but I still want to know how im able to shade using this.

Ok so this tutorial came up after watching the previous tutorial and it looks super helpful!!!! I am 100% going to be experimenting with this in my lip sync animation! Now I’m going to check out what other tutorials TV Paint has.

These tutorials are great but I also noticed they don't exactly shade/ highlight everything that may need it so I plan on playing around with those techniques to find one I can use to make shading easier.

#tvpaint #lip sync #lipsync

[secondprojectyear1]

lip sync experiment done

Ok so I know this looks bed but I just did this as fast as I could so I can spend longer on the actual lip sync animation. I didn't even design a character for this I just started doing it but at least when I do the actual lip sync animation I’ll have a good comparison of what it looks like when I take my time and experiment and really try as to when I don't because for the actual lip sync animation I’d really like to make something I’m actually proud of for once.

#lipsync #lip sync

[secondprojectyear1]

Media roles research

Allot of the research I’ve done for the media roles project has been typed up into the media roles template that was given to us. So most of the research has been uploaded here but some of it just went straight onto the media roles template.

#mediaroles

[secondprojectyear1]

lip sync progress

I’m still working on the experiment (the two second short clip) and I’ve added a face with some slight movement and a bit of colour. I’m not going to be putting as much time into this one as I will with the other as this is just a practice run and I want to be able to spend as much time as possible on the actual one, as I want it to look somewhat decent.

This is not smooth at all but again it was just a practice for the basic mouth shapes I really just want to move on to do the actual one and experiment more then with character design and acting etc.

#lipsync #lip sync #progress