E4 Sting Complete with sound.

Reflections

 

Thinking about all of the things that I have learned this year and overcoming problems and issues I feel as though I have done extremely well on these projects considering the short time scales we had to complete them by, and my complete lack of knowledge of animating I have learned a whole new bunch of skills that I can truly utilize next year.

For example, the first Project consisted of the more traditional approach but with an experimental feel, this really helped with being a little more free with my ideas and I got to learn the essential skills to take me further with character animation through learning the main principles of animation and also being introduced to things like rotascoping which is a really simple but effective way of animating things like walk cycles as you get a brilliant perspective of how the body moves.

I already knew the basics of storyboarding, and I really enjoy putting written narratives into a visual piece of work in order to show what you would like to portray. Learning how to further this through use of an animatic is a pretty useful skill to have and I’m thrilled to know how to do this now as before I had never used Final Cut pro or had a moving storyboard, I now see how useful this is in order to present your ideas clearly.

  

However, when it comes to 3D work I don’t enjoy building or rigging characters whatsoever as the programs are really complex and difficult to use. Given a good length of time and some clear directions of how to use Cinema 4D I may get better at it, but for now I would rather focus on the things that I enjoy and progress further with them rather than battle with a way of animating that I don't like.

 Things I would have done differently with all of my projects would have been keeping a check on my time management and not straying so far away from my initial ideas once I have started working on the projects. Also using my time at college productively on the computers and not leaving things till the end and rushing through them, as this could lower my marks by not completing all of the objectives within the modules. Clearly thinking through the entire module before starting a complicated idea and trying to be a little more creative when it comes to designing characters so not to make them without thinking about their personalities and possible traits, as I feel my 3D character lacked ‘character’ in his model sheets when actually he was supposed to have plenty. Otherwise I feel like I am constantly learning and developing new skills and I can learn from mistakes made in the beginning that will hopefully help to make future decisions better and more efficient to the modules. 

From this latest project I have learned how to use After Effects and it may be my new favorite program for digital cut out, as it is easy to use and it actually makes animating much easier and is relatively straightforward to use. I think that I achieved all of my goals albeit a little different from when I started but its worked extremely well considering the changes and I’m glad that I have had input from my peers to help mold the animation in the right direction as it looks great. The final piece is fit for purpose as its just really bongy and is basically a short surreal situation.

Things interesting about this latest project were how fast my animation was actually made with relatively less time than all the other projects that we have done so far that had a considerable length of time to complete. I chose to use computers even though I don’t feel that I work very fast or efficiently on them, However, with having less parts to a project really gives you enough free time to focus on the final product and making it excellent rather than all of your effort going into the research so it gave me more motivation and time to do things that I haven’t tried before.

At the start of this I really didn’t think that I had the skills needed to effectively finish the first year, but I have obviously learnt a lot more than I had first thought as now I feel much more confident with everything. When I have spoken to my peers family and friends about my ideas and they have seen the final outcomes they have all been pretty impressed surprisingly and totally got what I was going for, which is a surprise to me considering I had never animated anything before starting in September and it really has given me confidence to carry on and produce some more animations.

Final E4 Sting (without sound)

Here is my final cut for my E-sting all that is needed now is some sound, that a friend studying music production is making and it will be complete. 

E4 Sting editing

E4 logo has now been added as a background, ground animation is complete. Just need to tweek a few things before I am happy with it. Also the timing was a little off for the ending as i didn't really pay much attention to it whilst animating so I had to cut the smoke a little shorter to give a clearer ending.

Just for comparison I changed the background to give it a more subtle look. I think it looks better this way. Just a few more things to do before its finalized like fixing his face near the end and adding some clouds.

Animating my E4 sting - encountering problems and solving them

This was the first attempt at animating my E-sting and as you can see it needs more work doing to the likes of the actual character animation as the bunny seems a little solid, it also needs some movement in the ground as the bunny bounces about the place to show some weight and pressure on the floating island. 

 

The buildings have now all been animated turning into giant carrots by having the opacity turned up on them once the building in front has been hit and flashes the carrots will appear. Still need to do some ground animation and sort out the ending as it looks a little shabby and abrupt.

E4 bunny assets

I have drawn out all of the assets on separate layers in photoshop, they can all be re-sized once they are put into After Effects.

 The Bunny has several different expressions that can be switched out using pose to pose animation.

 After talking about the E4 logo placement its probably better if it's made as a background element instead of just being stuck onto something, as I don't want a reveal I would rather the logo being there the whole time.

E4 Bunny - Gilliam Inspiration.

Possibilities for animation styles for my E-sting. Well seen as my Initial idea was for two giant rabbits attacking a city this was a first thought as collecting assets for a cut out style animation would take far less time than drawing them out individually and the animating shouldn't take so long.
Gilliams work is absolutely hilarious and I think that once I'm feeling more confident with After effects and the likes I would love to make short animations like this in a similar style.

Time plan/Targets

By this time next week I hope to have my drawings/assets all drawn up in photoshop ready to be animated in After Effects. After that I hope to have the Whole thing animated before the 26th April.

Ask a friend of mine who is studying music production if she wouldn't mind making some sound effects/music for the finished E4 Sting.

Finish some drafted posts on my blog that I haven't got around to finish yet.

E-STING proposal

The idea of this project is to create a short animation that promotes the television channel E4 within an ad break with certain rules that allow it to be shown before and after the watershed without any things deemed unsuitable for the younger audience, such as extreme violence, swearing and things of a sexual nature. It must also contain the E4 logo either as a reveal type situation or it can be shown throughout the ten seconds.

  
When thinking of an idea for my E-Sting I had been looking at some old artwork of mine and I came across a doodle I had done about two years ago, it consisted of two giant bunnies with laser eyes destroying a city on a floating island. This is the basis of what I want but a little more friendly. I like the idea of games like Super Mario Bros where he jumps on objects and they ‘pop’ and Crash Bandicoot when enemies turn into apples, so from this I would like the buildings that he is shooting lazers at to turn into giant carrots, thus leaving him on the island alone with carrots.

So essentially my idea doesn’t have a particular storyline its merely a skit to make people remember the channel and I find the things that are quite surreal and weird are often the things that make people remember and come back. So in a nutshell my ten seconds will be some giant bunnies turning a city into a bunch of carrots with their lazer eyes.

The whole thing should be done as a cut out style either in after effects or cinema 4D. So I can make all of the assets on photoshop and open then into the program ready for animating as I feel that this is the best way to give it the charm and feel of a 2D game.

To potentially promote my final animation I could enter it into the E-sting competition as it would be viewed my a large audience particularly if it won, alternatively and what I think could be beneficial is uploading it to the likes of YouTube, Vimeo and my blog for extra views.

Morphing sloth

 Metamorphis animation that I made in photoshop of a wheelbarrow turning into a sloth. I would like to go back to this at some point and add some animation to the sloth and add some more detail.

Paul Hess

An illustrator who came into college who mainly uses Water colours and karisma pencils.

I absoloutley love his paintings of cows! 

Arthur Rackham

Arthur Rackham's work has such a good flow to it, I really like his line work as it has such fluidity and movement that his illustrations really stand out to me and they are utterly stunning even without lashings of colour as they are subtly hued to look more organic. 

The textures made with his shading are so natural and all of his work has so much emotion and life in it.

Ralph Steadman

Ralph steadman is my all time favorite artist, His work is instantly recognizable with the ink splatters and his messy line work along with dashes of colour. I am highly influenced by his work and working style, as I use marker pens and inks pretty much in the same way as Steadman.

His most famous work is probably his artwork for Hunter S. Thompson's 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' I feel that his style was perfectly suited to this drug fueled psychedelic story and it even adds to the scattiness and charm of the characters. 

Logorama

Logorama from Marc Altshuler - Human Music on Vimeo.

Logorama has been brilliantly thought out considering the use of hundreds of logos representing  things like buses, buildings and even people. Its narrative and characters are awesome as is the actual animation used, not in the style I would have used but it fits the purpose well.

Tyger

Tyger from Guilherme Marcondes on Vimeo.

The animation in this is pretty simple but extremely effective, the use of the giant puppet gives an enormous sense of originality and an organic feel amongst the city and animated parts. I love how the whole thing fits together its a truly amazing piece of work

Octocat Adventures

Octocat Adventures (HD) from David OReilly on Vimeo.

I absolutely love this animation even though it is so simply done and looks messy it just adds to the charm and makes it even more hilarious!
The actual voice had me in stitches as it suits the character so well.

I would like to try and attempt to make something just as surreal as this with the crazy voices as I imagine it would be a really fun side project and would help to further my animation skills as I would have to animate to sound or a script.

Matt furie

I found a really interesting interview on this site here about the Artist Matt Furie and he puts across a general idea of why he draws such crazy pictures and it mostly comes from his childhood and love for already existing characters from films that have inspired him to go on and put his own spin on them.

http://www.fecalface.com/SF/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=409&Itemid=92

His work is hilarious but really well done, I think that he is an extremely talented artist

Side projects and doodles.

My sister asked me to draw her a picture with pencils as I've only been using markers and photoshop recently. I like using new techniques on older styles of drawing and being messy rather than using clean line work as I feel it shows more character and emotion, especially if you don't like drawing people.

My friend asked me to draw her as practise. This drawing is miles apart from the picture of my sister but I think they are both pretty accurate to the people in them, not by being totally photo-realistic but definitely capturing the friend and sister that I know so well.

Studio AKA Varmints - Marc Craste

Looking at the short film 'Varmints' adapted and Directed by Marc Craste based on the book written by Helen Ward. I really liked the style and feel of the whole animation. I feel as though for the lack of speech the story is put across pretty well through the use of lighting and emotion in the main character.

The character design for this particular short film is pretty simple but works really well, even without eyebrows the main character is able to portray different emotions easily through is glassy eyes, something that other animators of considerably larger companies can't or wont do.

The contrast between the organic scenes and the more industrialized scenes showing the changes in a wasteful 'throw away' society that could easily become a reality.

Illustrator Line work

 I started using illustrator to create weighted line work of my fox character, Since this was the first time using the program i think i did quite well, although there is still room for improvement with a little more time and use of illustrator it may become a program i would potentially use more often for line work as it has a brilliant pen tool which is much easier to use than the one in photoshop. 

Once these are finished they will be coloured up in both illustrator and photoshop to see which i prefer and will used on a model sheet for my character with the pantone colours properly referenced.

Character development and poses.

Character rough elevations..

These are going to be the template for my 3D character in Cinema 4D.. Also need some clean line work and colour up for the Model sheets. I like the way they are looking so far and need to get on illustrator to clean them up a little.

Targets for the next week..

Draw up some different designs for the fox - different sizes, body shapes, proportions and colours.

Sculpt Fox head ready for scanning into the computer and make a start on building him on cinema 4D.

Playing around with different character designs..

Panda - Curved line work,  simpler to animate. I like this design however i feel as though it would probably suit a traditional style animation rather than 3D.

Fox that i will be working with as it has more scape to change the body shape and size and will potentially look alright in 3D.

Horse design - complicated to render into 3D - easy to draw in 2D