Sem 2, Week 7-11: Final Project

 

For my final project I was given the word "hat". To start I spent some time thinking about what I could do with this word and after a while I managed to come up with several ideas. I started off drawing out a very loose storyboard. I decided that I would try something a bit different and instead of trying to fit in a lot of different angles like in my sem1 final I would instead only have 1 or 2 max.

My short film would follow a pretty simple plot. The sphynx cat character finds a top-hat, peeks in and after a sudden encounter with a crab he realises that the top-hat is actually alive (?). The top-hat feels threatened and begins attacking the cat by sending a bird flying at him and stuff like that. Finally near the end the cat manages to trick the top-hat into believing that he's harmless which is when he strikes. The top-hat ends up being sent flying and the cat walks off proudly.

After this I made a quick animatic to get a rough idea of how long it would be. Unfortunately I did end up underestimating the length of the short film (and how long it would take to animate it).

Once the animatic was done I decided that I should work a bit more into the characters that would appear in the short film. I started by making a quick character sheet for the sphynx cat which gave me a chance to get used to his shape, expressions, etc. 

As before I kept the cats main features: large floppy ears and a thin whip-like tail. I considered giving him a more "natural"-looking tail while working on the character sheet however eventually decided against that as I felt like I would be able to better express his emotions with his current tail. I tried to give him more personality in the short film by focusing on his expressions and body movement a lot more and I think I was quite succsessful.

After I finished animating the short film I had to add sounds/music. Once again i tried to contrast my sem1 final film and instead of mostly being silent I added a bunch of sound effects and even a bg track. I found most of the sounds I used on freesound.org however one or two also came from YouTube. I think the music and sounds are very important to the short film as without them it seems incomplete and has a completely different feel.

Naturally, my short film can definitely be improved however I believe that overall it turned out quite good and I'm happy with it. There are some problems with timing so that is something I will look out for in future projects. Alongside that sometimes the lineart is really messy since I didn't have as much time as I was hoping to have to go over everything. While I don't think that it has a major impact on this short film I do think that this is something I should pay more attention to in the future. Lastly the sound editing could use a lot more work. In conclusion I really enjoyed this project although I did find it quite challenging.

🌸 Sem 2, Week 9: Observational Drawing 3

 In week 9 we had an observational drawing class which focused on more... experimental drawing.

We were told to use different coloured/textured paper/whatever other material you could draw on instead of the usual white paper however since I was moving house I didn't have my supplies at hand so I did 2 rough digital drawings instead. The first one I did was a pretty simple drawing of a woman from the back. I made the canvas brown so that I could use it as a base and focus on the shadows/highlights. The second drawing I did was a bit more complex. Since I didn't have any older books on hand I got a scan of a page from The Great Gatspy and loosely painted a skull with flowers on it. The scan that I found had a yellow tint so I tried to only work with earthy tones. Overall I think both drawings turned out quite nicely but my favourite would definitely be the 2nd, I think the text adds a very nice touch to the drawing and it is definitely something I'd like to try out again in the future.

🌸 Sem 2, Week 5: Working from Reference

 For week 5 we were tasked with working from reference.

I started out by browsing an online library of different actions until I found one I was happy with. Following that I spent some time analysing the movement and after sketched out very rough keyframes. After I also quickly sketched in some quick in-betweens.

Originally I was planning to animate a stylised human character however I decided against it in order to work with a slightly different body structure and get a chance to experiment a bit. I used a random animal generator in to pick some potential animal characters I could animate and in the end I settled on a sphynx cat and a jerboa. 

I did some sketches for both and even started animating the jerboa however I found the long legs to be a little too tricky to work with for this action so I decided to focus on the sphynx instead although I am hoping to reuse the character sketches in the future. 

At first I found it a little bit difficult to work with the cats body as the proportions were quite different from a human however eventually I managed to make it look the way I want. Alongside animating the main body I had to think about the tail and large floppy ears. I left the tail as a simple line to make it a bit easier to animate however I think that in the end it ended up working very well for the character. Animating the ears at first was quite difficult however after experimenting a bit I managed to get them to move how I wanted. I thought that the ears flopping would not only add more character to but also make the cat more lively overall.

Overall I think the final animation turned out quite good however there are definitely a lot of things that could be improved. If I had to remake this animation I would focus more on the ears as sometimes their movement looks a bit odd. Alongside this I would pay more attention to the timing as I feel that at some parts the character is moving a bit too fast.

🌸 Sem 2, Week 4: Observational Drawing 2

 For week 4 of observational drawing we had to focus on tone. 

Overall I found the class to be quite helpful as tone is something that I've struggled with in the past. I decided to work with watercolours for this to make it a bit easier for me to work with different shades and also because I wouldn't be able to easily erase my mistakes. Usually while working with pencils and other similar materials I focus too much on making everything perfect and end up not finishing the drawing so I felt like this would be a good way to get around this. I started by drawing a mug, fork + spoon and a bell pepper to get used to watercolours which is why they look quite weird. The apple and the portrait weren't too hard to do however the room gave me quite a lot of trouble. I rarely draw rooms and furniture so this was quite experimental but I'm really happy with how it came out. I'm hoping to spend more time drawing furniture/rooms when I have time in the future to improve.

🌸 Sem 2, Week 3: Working With a Partner

 In week 3 we had to work with a partner.

My partner and I started off by deciding on deadlines and other important things. Afterwards we got a few days to design our character and I went for a very simple boy as I felt like there would be a lot more you could do with a plain charcter than an overly complex one. On our decided deadline we exchanged characters. Alongside a simple full-body drawing I also provided 2 quick doodles of the boys head to make it a bit easier if my partner decided to make him turn or something like that.

After exchanging characters we got to work on each others key frames. I started by creating a very simple storyboard to have a better idea of how I wanted the sequence to go.

When I started drawing the first key frames I found it to be quite difficult as I had to adapt to working with a completely different art style. It took me a while to get used to it however overall I think I did well. I tried to give my partner a bit of a challenge by making the character jump, stretch and walk. I accidentally made more key frames than originally planned but I don't think it was really an issue.

I was a bit nervous when I was waiting to get my key frames back as I wasn't sure what to expect. I ended up changing some minor stuff to make the whole animation a bit livelier (eg adding a jump at the start instead of having him just walk into the frame normally) and I had to redraw some of the keyframes as they stood out due to the difference in art styles. 

Overall I would say that this was a slightly challenging but also very exciting brief. Having to work with someone else felt a bit strange at first but letting someone else decide how the animation will go meant that I had a chance to try something more abstract. 

🌸 Sem 2, Week 2: Observational Drawing 1

During the observational drawing class in week 2 the focus was on line.

At first I found the task to be a little tricky as I've always struggled with clean lineart however I think that after doing these drawings I improved at least a little bit. I started out by drawing a lamp and I tried to keep the line width quite consistent however at the end I wasn't very happy with the result. Next I drew a bell pepper with watercolours and tried using a variety of line weights/widths while drawing. I liked the end result a lot more than the previous drawing so I decided to continue in this style for the other drawings. After I drew a portrait of a man and then a full body picture of a girl. I found drawing humans with just lines to be quite challenging as the lack of shading sometimes made them look really weird but overall it was quite enjoyable and definitely something I'd like to do more of in the future.

🌸 Sem 2, Week 1: Human Walk Cycles

1st weeks task was to create a walk cycle.

I started off by reading about animating walk cycles from different books such as The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams. To remember the key points that I got from the books I made a quick walk cycle guide in my sketchbook.

Afterwards I decided to start by animating a walk cycle on paper. I quickly sketched out a very simple character and got to work. Overall I think it turned out pretty well however I think a few extra frames would help smooth it out a bit more.

Next I decided to work on a digital walk cycle so similarly to last time I quickly sketched out a character and got to work. This time I decided to challenge myself a bit and also give the character clothes which would be affected by the action. I'm not very happy with the outcome as the result is much worse than I expected however I do think that making this walk cycle has been valuable experience from which I'm hoping to learn and improve upon my mistakes.

 

I also decided to practice using After Effects so I made a very rough background that I could scroll behind the character. The timing is a little off so that is something I'll be paying more attention to in the future if I do something similar.

Overall I think I did alright with this task however there is definitely a lot of room for improvement, especially with the second walk. The timind is off quite a bit and he lacks weight so that is something I would pay more attention to if I had to remake it.