New year, new work

As 2015 drop kicks 2014 into the setting sun and the new year's glorious self rises up, I have a new project ushered in by my university days drawing to a close and that eventual realisation that 'real' work is charging towards me like a knight in a jousting tournament. Nowhere to go but forward, grit my teeth and hope the joust hits its mark.

With my family owning a small hardware shop in my home village, my mother has asked me to create a short animation to be displayed in the window this winter. (already having to think about Christmas!) The obvious subject of this animation is of course hardware and needs to come with the typical wintery theme.
Original ethereal ideas just included a boy and his dog but then as our lovely Great British winter weather battered around outside, throwing rain at the window and wind in my face I realised this is our British winter, rain and wind, no snow (but on the rare occasion). British kids can't get the same enjoyment of winter as other kids in the world do because where in Scotland or Switzerland schools out due to a frozen duvet enveloping the landscape and so children can trade classrooms for snowballs, Britain gives children the misery of sitting inside watching the sky issue judgement.
And so this is my story, or I should say every British child's dream when winter approaches.....

Working Title: Snowless

Brief synopsis: A young boy dreams of building a snowman, but when winter weather brings only thunderous skies and lashing rain he decides to build his dream out of hardware.

Initial designs were just a Friday night doodle and when digitised became cute and cuddly illustrations. However I realised once they had been drawn that perhaps they were best to remain as illustrations. This is down to how they would move and I felt that the boy in particular wasn't well enough designed for him to move effectively. I think looking at how this design compares to my improved one, there is definite problems with outline thickness and character make-up. The line work is too thick so the character wouldn't necessarily look appealing when animated and his form I feel is too simplistic to get a sense his body could stretch and bend easily.

Initial doodles

 

 

First design concept

 

 

First designs- lines too thick and I couldn't imagine him moving.

 

 

Initial dog- The dog was fine for shape, just the outline needed thinning out.

 

 

Before I realised the boy wasn't going to cut it for style, I did a run test of the dog to see if his body shape would work moving.

 

 

And happily I think I've got him moving the way I imagined him too. All it requires is the finer details but seeing as this was just a test, it wasn't necessary at this stage. One tweak I might make is speeding up the run so he can get from one side of the screen to the other in a shorter time.

 

Going back to the boy, I looked for inspiration that might give me a better style to aim for. The main one being Ame from 'Wolf Children.'

 

 

Although anime is for anyone who knows me, a predictable path for me to look down as I completely adore the genre, I see a lot of traits that other styles don't embrace. Children come across as beings that have bigger heads and large eyes because they are growing into those proportions that accommodate those features. And this is exactly what anime reflects and why Ame is one of the best examples I've looked at for reference.  

 

Others include Pride/ Selim Bradley from 'Fullmetal Alchemist' for the baby-fat face

 

 

And Hikari from 'Nagi No Asukara' for the stick-out cheeks and small button nose.

 

 

Putting all these references together I came up with the current new and improved design which allows me to believe it has the potential of moving. This design may alter in the future, like making the eyes slighter bigger or altering the shape of the cheeks/chin but for now it's where I feel it should be.

 

 

 

 

 

Ducking and Diving

Aside from the third year films I'm working on I've also been animating a small piece of character movement to improve my anticipation, overlap and making my animations smoother.
In the past I've found some of my line work jitters because I don't clean my key frames up enough so when I come to put the in-betweens in I don't know where the true line is.
This time I have gone through the process of mapping out the rough key frames and tidying them up then putting rough in-betweens in and cleaning them up.

This short piece of movement actually originated from an anime I had been watching called 'Hyouka,' and I felt interested to know what this movement would look like if I animated it in 25fps instead of the Japanese 8fps which 'Hyouka' follows. The only aspects I took from the clip were the basic shapes for the key frames (rough keys from the video above). I then fleshed out the keys myself and added the rest of the movement without looking at the original. Going back and comparing my finished piece to the original now is astonishing in terms of how limited the Japanese movement is and the lack of anticipation and overlap compared to mine. It goes to show that if the Japanese had the budget, fluid movement such as this could be achieved.



Original clip

 

 

 

 

Comparison

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

Clawing into animation

More tests, this time taking a shot from the animatic and testing the movement of the bear in relation to his surroundings, in this case, his house.
The style wasn't quite pinned down when this sequence was created so I tested scribbly shadows instead of  more perfect 'Disneyesque' shading.
It's now been decided to do the line-work in TV paint and the colour in photoshop in order to get the sketchy feel the director wanted so any tests after this will most likely only show line-work.

Picture taken from animatic

One is with the outline, the other without so I could see how the scribbles affected the shape of the bear and whether going without an outline would make it difficult to see arms etc.

 

Dapper meerkats and spiffing giraffes

An update on The Bird project called for character designs of a meerkat, giraffe and hippo to be dressed in human clothing to portray a sort of dream sequence Tilly goes through as she day-dreams about returning home to Africa.
So far only the meerkat and giraffe have designs as I wait to hear back about the design for the mother to be approved, as she will be the hippo so I require the design of her dress.

Unfortunately after meeting with the team, the director suddenly realised the meerkat is in fact supposed to be the maid in the story so the lovely dapper gentleman of a meerkat needed to have his gender switched to female. Procedure went according to plan.

There was also a discussion in the weekly about altering the movement of the zebra herd slightly as they all moved the same which felt noticeable to the others. Obviously the issue was how to alter the movement seeing as live action footage depicted zebra's galloping together in the same way anyway so I opted to move legs in the cycle slightly for a few of them and change the way the head moves to depict the illusion they were all done differently. However factoring in how long the sequence is visible for in relation to the animatic isn't very long, roughly 3 or 4 seconds with a camera zoom so spending too much time on this sequence is better spent in the more detailed character scenes.

Hooves, Trunks and Claws

I've been working further into 'The Bird' by developing an elephant walk for another of the African scenes alongside altering some of the animation on the zebra as there wasn't enough variation in each zebra for the viewer to not notice they were similar.
Below are the results of the zebra, I've not done much to the actual movement as all zebras move the same in terms of gait, so I've altered the head movement of a few and changed stripe design.

I found the elephants easier to animate, probably because they don't exhibit the same flurry of legs the zebra does and they move at a slower rate. Below are two cycles, one of an adult elephant, another is a baby with the baby completing a cycle faster than the adult because there's the obvious factoring in weight and size in comparison.

And then for Claws for Concern I coloured the bear to see how he would fit into the background and after the weekly feedback session I was asked to remove the outlines completely as the background itself doesn't have any outline work so the other experiment is to see if no outline can work. TV paint didn't totally remove the outline however from what was achieved with a faint outline it didn't look too bad as the issue was removing the outline would cause the arm and legs to become lost within the body.

Before I removed the outline from the entire animation, I did a test image, one was completely removed, the other I swapped outline colour so a dark grey outline accompanied the light grey body and the light grey outline went with the dark grey shadows. I felt toning the black outline down might look less detracting and bold but it didn't make much difference.

The shadows were also redone in the test below as it was mentioned in the feedback session I didn't quite get the lighting correct in terms of where the bear was in the background.

Claws For Concern

Also began working on 'Claws For Concern' by doing small animation tests for the bear. This bear walks on fours and twos so below I've done a walk test of the bear standing up walking, with an all fours test coming soon.
I did begin a run cycle on all fours but it looks slightly too mechanical when looking at the head, possibly needs a bit more movement to look more natural.

Zebra are 'a' running

Finished a small herd of galloping zebra with just two variations of stripe design, just so it doesn't look like an obvious copy and paste job.
Eyes are empty at the moment just because I'm waiting for the background so I can see where the light is coming from in relation to where the reflection is going to go in the eyes.

Also renewed the original zebra designs I posted after altering the shape to suit the animation. This version is slightly stockier in keeping with the real life version of the animal.