#AX2002Mark

[jollyfoxanimations2]

I found this page of sketches i made when trying to imagine what the witch might look like when riding ion the broomstick from a back view, this was for the scene when the witch flys over the water towards the island.

#AX2002Mark

[jollyfoxanimations2]

When delving a bit deeper into finding out who the character designers of The Owl House are i came across the artist Matthieu Cousin, Matthieu is also know for his character design work for the show OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes (2017-2019) by Ian Jones-Quartey, i found a various amount of different sketch and concept ideas which will defiantly help when designing my character. 

#Matthieu Cousin #The Owl House #AX2002Mark

[jollyfoxanimations2]

Colour stylists for The Owl House

I found it quite interesting when i found out that Barbara Lynn Hamane and  Mariama Alizor were the colour stylists for the show The Owl House,  Mariama  is a self taught colour stylist, who also work on the colour styling for the show Final Space (2018-2021) by Olan Rogers and David Sacks and Barbara has worked on nearly every Disney film from Aladdin, the little mermaid, the lion king and princess and the frog just to name a few. It makes sense now why that the colour paletting for the series are so bold and adventurous when you have such talented people working on this animation.   

#The Owl House #Barbara Lynn Hamane #Mariama Alizor #AX2002Mark

[jollyfoxanimations2]

I also came across this picture by Matthieu Cousin, i know it isn’t Owl House related but its a nice picture that you can see how his style is used on other projects, these two characters are his own OC’s but i they wouldn't look too out of place if they were in the world of The Owl House.

#Matthieu Cousin #original characters #AX2002Mark

[jollyfoxanimations2]

When looking into who the character design artists are for The Owl House i though it might be just one main person but it would seem there was a whole team of people involved in the overall design of the characters, The sketches above are by the artist Marina Gardener, she was from what i can tell from her blogs on the show one of the main character designers.

#Marina Gardener #The Owl House #AX2002Mark

[jollyfoxanimations2]

For my witch character group project i am doing it in the style of the Disney series The Owl House, When looking into who creates the background designs i found that they are designed by Wendy Park, Wendy is a graphic and digital artist who is employed by Walt Disney Television Studios Production Company. She has gained notoriety through her efforts as a background painter for various movies and television series. Her notable efforts include The Owl House (2020-current), Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009), Ben 10: Alien Force (2009-2010), Fish Hooks (2011-2012) to name a few.

Looking into the way that she styles the backgrounds i notice that she uses a lot of red colours for the trees and purples and oranges for the sky, these are something i need to incorporate when designing my backgrounds plus the cream coloured fluffy clouds and blue coloured bushes are also a must. Another thing to note is that the shading is quite subtle and this is also something i need to think about when creating the landscapes and rocks. 

#Wendy Park #The Owl House #AX2002Mark

[jollyfoxanimations2]

Voice actress

With the help from Robby (a fellow student in my class) he was able to find a very suitable voice actress to voice the witch on our. We have rented out a sound recording booth at Uni and gave her our scripts. She was amazing and very talented, i had great fun helping to direct her to what sort of dialogue and  sounds we might need for the different students projects including my own, She was extremely skilled at being able to understand what i meant and amazing ability to envision the emotions of the character. I without a shadow of a doubt would definitely ask her to voice act again plus I will recommend her to anyone in need for a voice actress, in fact i have asked if she would like to voice my deer character for my other project and she agreed.

I find it very magical that voice actors and actresses can bring life to a character with their personalities and skills and look forward to meeting equally talented people later in my career. 

#AX2002Mark

[jollyfoxanimations2]

Here is a finish coloured and lined scene for my collaborative project. i am super happy with how this turned out especially the colour of the characters and buildings. i did not use any reference for the background i completely created it from my imagination and I added a few more mice to create more of a gathering of them. I even added a highlight node to the characters to give them a bit more lighting and shadowing beneath the characters to ground them to the scene. This scene really encapsulates the meaning of the idiom I chose, and I look forward to animating it shortly.

#AX2002Mark

[jollyfoxanimations2]

Next i need to think about the colour of the suits the rabbits are wearing and the possible different colours of the mices fur. For the suits i search online for 1940′s gangester suits and came accross the ones above and as for the mice i searched for different coloured fancy mice and got the picture above for my references

#AX2002Mark

[jollyfoxanimations2]

Here is the rough sketch i did of the initial design of the rabbit and mice characters i tried to utilize the design from the images posted previously plus the scene from the film The Goodfellas.

#AX2002Mark

[jollyfoxanimations2]

When i was thinking of what my rabbit characters might look like i came across the first image drawn by an artist called ipoke, i really like the shape of the eyes of the character and the way the character stares so i will try to utilize this in my characters, I am not sure who drew the second image but i came across it when i was looking for character design ideas and i really like the way the character is designed especially the line work. Second i need to think about what animals would the rabbits be selling their contraband products to. i am not sure why but i decided to do mice, i remembered a drawing of a mouse character drawn by artist named SophieCabra which i really like so i decide to map my mice characters of this design.

#AX2002Mark

[jollyfoxanimations2]

Collaborative Project

When i think about the idiom that i chose and how it was described to me i immediately thought of doing a scene with some gangster rabbits selling dodgy things to other animals but not in the home town, first i had to think how could i show the audience that these rabbits we not just selling things on their own high street and i needed to think of a theme. When i brainstormed i thought back to the 1990′s film The Goodfellas directed by Martin Scorsese, in the film there is a scene of two lads selling cigarettes out the back of a car and after watching the scene again i fell compelled to recreate it with my gangster rabbit characters.

#AX2002Mark

[jollyfoxanimations2]

AX2002 Collaborative project

My new assignment for AX2002 is a collaborative project with some Chinese students (In China) . The assignment is to create a 3 second animation from an idiom, I have to find some English idioms and the Chinese students must find some Chinese idioms and we then swap them over. The challenge is that idioms have different interpretations in other countries, and it was our job to figure out what these idioms mean. I felt that I would not be mean, so I chose reasonably easy idioms for the Chinese students, 

1) don't cry over spilt milk  

 2) the light at the end of the tunnel 

3) spill the beans 

4) bigger fish to fry 

On the other hand, I found it quite difficult to understand the idioms sent by the other students, some of them were to simple and then when I asked for the definition it made things a bit more confusing, for example an idiom I was sent was, 

 守株待兔Waiting for him, Meaning: General metaphor stick to experience, inflexible. It is also used to satirize the fluke psychology of wishful thinking for nothing.Origin:"The People of Song dynasty had cultivators. There was a plant in the field, the rabbit touched the plant, broke its neck and died. Due to the release of its lei and shou zhu, Ji Fu rabbit. Rabbit can not recover, but as the Song laugh."Example：You should not trust to windfalls, but should be active in contacting your customers. 

The other issue I had was that because the Chinese idioms were not easy to decipher, I found it quite difficult to envision what they might look like for a 3 second animation. there was one idiom which was, At the front gate a net can be set up to catch birds, at first I didn't understand what it meant but after asking the student who sent me the idiom she explained that it means that if you are lonely, you have no visitors and no one ever comes round to your house you may as well stick up a net to catch birds on your front gate. Once explained I really liked this idiom but again did not know how I could transform that into an interesting animation.  

 In the end I was getting quite bogged down that couldn't choose any of the idioms they sent me so I messaged one of the students and asked her if she could find me another idiom, she asked me what sort of thing would I be interesting to animate, I told her my strong points are drawing animal characters so she found a few animal related Chinese idioms, in the end she found me the idiom Rabbits don't eat the grass from around their own nest, this when described is a reference to the fact mobsters or bad guys don't do business on their own front door because it attracts attention. I really like this idiom so I have decided to turn that into my 3 second animation.

#AX2002Mark #collaborative project #idioms

[jollyfoxanimations2]

i watched this short tutorial on how to add highlights to my animations, Mark my tutor did go over this very quickly for me the other day but i watched this tutorial to refresh what he told me the other day. i have found this very helpful and i have been able to add it to my animations already, using this node is so much more easier than having to add highlight by hand to my characters. 

#AX2002Mark #AX2002Mario #research

[jollyfoxanimations2]

 i watched this very interesting tutorial on how to do parallaxing in After Effects, i am starting to watch more tutorials on how to use After Effects as i feel it is a very interesting software, even though you can do a lot of the things in ToonBoom After Effects allows you to do even more and i feel it will be a very helpful software to get to understand better and add to the list of software skills.

#AX2002Mario #AX2002Mark #Research

[jollyfoxanimations2]

Here are a few more images of ocean islands that i found quite inspiring either becasue of their shapes, sizes or colours.

#AX2002Mark