Animation 2A: Sem 1, Week 5-6

 For the last two weeks of the project I mostly focused on getting the first sequence completed to the best of my abilities. Unfortunately I didn't get to spend as much time on it as I would have wanted as I also had to prepare for formative submissions for my other two courses which took up a large chunk of my time. That also resulted in me cutting off a large portion of the sequence and changing the ending a little bit but I believe it still works pretty well. Due to the lack of time I had to cut corners in some parts of the animation so it looks quite rough while other parts still lack inbetweens but I'm hoping to continue working on it when I have free time. I'm also hoping to complete the 2nd sequence in time for the summative assesment even if it's only the keyframes. Overall I am quite happy with what I had produced for this project but for the next project I will definately consider my other two courses while planning the sequences so that I could realistically get them completed in the time we are given. I think doing that would not only help me handle the workload but also make me happier with the final result as it will be closer to what I had originally planned.

Life Drawing: Sem 1, Week 6

I'm not very happy with the drawings I did this week as they all look very rough and the anatomy is all over the place but there's not much I can do about that now. I think I struggled the most with the arms and shoulders so that is something I'll pay more attention to whenever we have life drawing again or when I'm just doing practice sketches at home.

Drawings from the first half of the session:

4 min warm-up drawings we did after a 30min break:

Drawings from the second half of the session:

Life Drawing Week 4 Caricature Task + Extra

 After the life drawing session in week 4 we were told to create a caricature from the drawings we did which could be animated. For the first one I did I based it on the drawings from week 4 session and I mostly just tried to simplify the overall figure which resulted in these.

After I felt that I wanted to do an even simpler ver but this time using the drawings from the session in week 2. For these I mostly focused on creating a lanky appearance.

Although this wasn't part of the task I decided to also do some drawings of a more complicated character using the drawings from 2nd weeks session as reference. I think this was quite a fun little challenge as I had to not only try to capture the pose but also consider how a character who is visually very different from the model would appear in these poses.

Animation 2A: Sem 1, Week 4

This week I continued working on the animatic and managed to add the intro sequence for the elderly man. As before, I used Youtube and https://freesound.org/ for the sounds although I did have to edit them a lot more. Some of the sounds, such as the sound of the shair being pulled out, had to be slowed down while others, such as the sigh, had to have the pitch be lowered. I also added creaking sound effect whenever the elderly man moved in order to further emphasise how large he is compared to the girl. As with the girls' sequence, I made his cup of coffee pink in order to foreshadow it being good.

Although I am a little less satisfied with how the elderly mans' intro looks compared to the girls', I do think that I did alright for the week. If we had more time to work on the project then I would definately go back and redraw a few frames of his introductory sequence however that is not a major issue and I don't think it takes away from the overall sequence.

Observational Drawing 2

 This time I felt a bit more comfortable staring at strangers in a cafe so I got more small drawings done and tried to capture more action poses. I think my favourite would be the woman putting on her coat. My bus home also ended up being late so I managed to get three more observational drawings done of strangers I saw while waiting at the bus station.

Animation 2A: Sem 1, Week 3

This week my main focus was to draw the storyboard for the elderly mans' sequence. After a discussion during last weeks tutorial, I decided to zoom in in order to better portray the elderly mans' hesitation to drink the coffee, concern and eventually surprise and joy. Although this wasn't in my original plan I do think that this was the right thing to do. This would also create further contrast between the elderly man and the girl who is very expressive with her body and thus doesn't really need a zoom in. As previously, I filmed myself acting out the sequence and then drew the storyboard based on the video.

I finished the storyboard and still had a couple of days left before the tutorial so I began working on the animatic of the sequence. For this I also had to create a whole new font called "Coffee Cup" I'd use for the title screen as I couldn't find an already existing font that felt right. I ended up making a quick wiggling animation of the font and turning the u in the title into a cup with steam coming out as I thoght that viewers might get bored looking at a still title screen and not really pay attention to it which could also result in them missing the background sounds.

I aimed to have the viewers imagine a person walking down the street and entering a cafe by adding car sounds, footsteps and eventually the door bell at the very start of the animation. This was then followed by the zoom in on the two tables which in my opinion was a good way to set the scene and ease the viewers into the sequence instead of throwing them right into the action. One detail that I decided to add was making the girls' coffee cup green. In this sequence, green is associated with negative emotions (due to the elderly man being green) and I thought this would be a good way to foreshadow the awful taste of the coffee.

The sounds I used have been gathered from different sources. Most of them were obtained from YouTube where they were uploaded by different users who stated that they were free to use for non-commercial projects. I also got a few of them from the site https://freesound.org/. The background music I used is called "Daystar - Little Bunny". It was created and uploaded by the user 별 헤는 다락방 Starry Attic on YouTube. I felt that it would put the viewers in a good mood and help set the scene.

Overall I am quite happy with the work I had produced over the week but I was hoping to get a bit more of the animatic done.

Life Drawing: Sem 1, Week 4

 I think this life drawing session went okay but I definately need to try and plan my drawing layout a bit better so that I could fit the whole body on the page next time.

Observational Drawing 1

 I didn't really do much observational drawing in public before this so I felt pretty awkward and didn't manage to draw much. Despite this I do think that this was an okay first attempt.

Life Drawing: Sem 1, Week 2

I haven't done life drawing in a very long time so these were very wonky but overall I am pretty pleased with the result. Next time I'm hoping to draw quicker so that I could finish the legs/feet.

Animation 2A: Sem 1, Week 1 - 2 (Cup of Coffee)

After reading the project brief I decided to start by designing the two characters I would be using for for the two sequences. I started off by painting some magenta human-like shapes in my sketchbook using watercolour paint and after letting it dry I went back in with some black watercolour to draw in details. I ended up turning the shapes into a girl with a poofy low bun hairstyle and wearing a shirt with a black tie. Initially I was planning to have her be the sad character who drinks a good cup of coffee and the attire was supposed to suggest that she was a stressed office worker however this plan changed not long after. Despite this, I decided to keep the outfit as it was. After doing the initial page, I decided to do a second page in order to explore the different hairstyles I could give her. I used the same process as for the first page in order to create the second, using hairstyle references from sites such as Pintrest as inspiration. I considered using the hairstyle on the top right or the double low buns hairstyle below it however in the end I stuck with the original low bun. At this point I also started thinking about the composition and angles of the shots I would be using for the project so I did a couple more quick doodles of the girl.

Afterwards I continued by brainstorming ideas for the second character. I wanted to create contrast between the two characters which is why I decided to design an elderly man. As with the girl character, I started by painting some shapes with watercolour and then adding more detail after it dried. Instead of using magenta as last time, I decided to use yellow/orange for the base to suggest a difference in the characters' moods. Yellow/Orange is generally viewed as a happy colour and in the first plan the elderly man was supposed to be the happy character who becomes sad so I thought it would be fitting. I experimented with different beards, hairstyles, moustaches, accessories, etc in there two pages and eventually settled with the design that can be seen in the third page. The plan was to have him be quite large and bulky to the point where he nearly takes up the whole screen to contrast the girl character. Due to him being an older character, I also thought that it would be better if he wasn't as expressive as the girl character so his sequence would focus a lot more on the smaller movements such as trembling hands, etc.

At this point I also began thinking about background ideas. I didn't want my characters to exist in an empty void which led me to drawing a couple of quick backgrounds using watercolour and paint markers. I didn't want to make the backgrounds too complicated as I felt like they would take the attention away from the characters so I looked at the backgrounds made for the original Powerpuff Girls series for inspiration. I really liked the lack of proper lineart and the use of flat colours so I tried to use those in my background drawings. After I still felt like they were too complicated for my liking so I used the third idea on the left as a base and simplified it even more to get the final result. The end of the week was also the point at which I decided to switch the two characters roles which resulted in my colour palette changing as I felt like using yellow/orange for the elderly man was now unfitting. I felt that simply showing the still image on the screen for a few seconds wasn't very interesting so later on I came up with the idea of making a simple 3 frame wiggle aniumation and adding a slow zoom to not only set the scene but to also catch the viewers attention.

To finish off the week, I started working on the storyboard. Instead of making two separate sequences I decided to make one long one. I filmed myself acting out several different entrances into the scene for both of the charcaters and eventually settled on two which I liked the most. I didn't spend too much time on actually drawing out the intro storyboard as I simply wanted to capture the general idea of what I wanted to animate when the time came. The idea I had was to set the scene through the zoom in and then introduce both of the characters one after another instead of focusing on only one for the first half of the sequence. This would also allow me to add in some very minor character interactions which I felt would make the sequence a bit less boring. After I ended up also doing a few more of the character drawings just for practice.

I had a few days left before the first tutorial so I spent that time drawing out a very quick storyboard for the girls' sequence. I used the exact same method as for the intro storuboard where I filmed myself acting out the whole sequence in different ways and after settling on one I drew it out in my sketchbook. I decided to keep the camera at a fixed position so that I could focus more on the body movements and facial expressions.

Overall I was quite pleased with all the work I produced over these two weeks and I think I had a good start on the project. I do think that I could have spent some more time developing the characters and maybe created proper character sheets however that is something I'll have to keep in mind for the next project.

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