Finishing Up - Convergence/Divergence Unit

With the Unit deadline only 1 day away, I am pleased to say I will not be one of those staying up all night until the 11am hand in on Monday, as I have completed all my work in this unit.

All in all, I am very pleased with my work in this unit. As I thought I might do, I found a method of animating pretty early on in the Unit and stuck with it throughout, learning more as I went along and making more complex animations and sequences. 

I began the project with the wrong idea, believing my animation had to serve a purpose, but after talking with my tutors I re-wrote my learning agreement and decided to just focus on creating a fun animation which explored my character 'The Butterfly Dragon'. My animations that I had made previous to changing my idea all served as experiments and I gained a lot of knowledge of the software from making them.

I was torn between two ideas - the concept of making an animation about my existing children's book character, or making an animation based off of drawings I did at school when I was younger. After speaking with my tutors they were sold on the Butterfly Dragon, they really liked him as a character and pushed me to go down that route, and I am glad I took their advice.

I am very happy with what I have produced in this unit and am very pleased with the outcome of my work. I feel like my final animation is much better than I could have imagined, as I put a lot of time into it, and it really has paid off.

Final Animation - Finishing up (parts 8 and 9)

 Yesterday I sat down to finish up my final animation to wrap up the Convergence/Divergence unit.

The previous part of the animation sees the Butterfly Dragon sleeping after struggling to pick the pear. As with the last sleeping scene, the action happens in the background. We see the butterfly return again, this time followed by several others. Together, they pick the pear from the branch and fly off with it, and this wakes the dragon, leading on to the final scene.

Still of the group of butterflies from part 7.

After rendering this part, I sat down with my sketchbook to plan part 8, which will be the final part. In this part, the Dragon is given the pear by the butterfly, as thanks for helping him earlier. I needed to plan what kind of perspectives I would use and what I would animate in each sequence. 

I decided to re-use the 'waking up' scene from the previous part, but added an extended part in which the Butterfly Dragon looks down in shock, to see the butterfly with the pear, along with all of his friends. The dragon then smiles at the butterfly, as all of the other butterflies fly off, and he looks up to watch them fly away. 

Final render of part 8.

Although this is a nice ending in itself, I decided to add a little clip on to the end to wrap up the story. This clip isn't really animated, but shows the camera panning away from the tree and the dragon, as the butterfly flies up into the sky and out of sight.

I chose this opportunity to end the animation off with the title of the story and sign it off with my name.

Still from the ending scene.

Final render of the ending scene.

I am very happy with the ending, now comes the exciting part of putting the parts together in Adobe AfterEffects and rendering the whole short animation as one video.

Final Animation - Progress (parts 6 and 7)

I was up until 2am this morning working on the 6th part of my animation. Any part which involves the movement of the Butterfly Dragon's elaborate wings takes a lot of time so I wanted to get a head start on it. At the end of the session, I had done the outline and most of the colour work for the many different frames of the wings, leaving a small amount to finish off this morning.

Not much happens in this part however it is a driver for what will happen in the final part and be the conclusion of this short story.

Final render of part 6.

The next part shows what happens after the dragon gives up on trying to pick the pear, he retires to his cave for a sleep.

As with the last sleep scene, the action in this animation happens outside the cave. In the background this time, we see the butterfly swoop down followed by several others, only to pick the fruit that the Dragon failed to pick earlier. This sets up for the conclusion and final part of this story.

Final render of part 7.

All I have left to do is to plan out the ending of the story and begin to work on it. I aim to have it completed and rendered in full tomorrow.

Final Animation - Progress (parts 3, 4 and 5)

Last night I began working on the 3rd 10 second part of my final animation. This part introduces the storm which sees us through the first night of the animation. In this part I had to animate a number of individual objects such as the clouds and leaves, however I feel it was worth it as the animation looks a lot better.

This morning I rendered the video, and I'm very happy with this part as I feel it is a good transition into the next part of the short story, and I stuck to what I had planned in my sketchbook.

Final render of part 3.

The next part of the animation is the storm that happens at night while the Butterfly Dragon is sleeping in his little hole in the pear tree. In this part I animated a few separate things to add realism, and I am especially happy with how the rain looks in the background.

I decided to add a few flashes of lightning. Here is what the lightning originally looked like before I added the flash inside the cave.

Here is my concept art for this scene.

Here is a still of the lightning flash.

All together this part doesn't involve much movement from the Butterfly Dragon besides blowing a bubble out of his nose in his sleep, yet I think the animation that occurs outside the cave is very good and I am pleased with it.

Final render of part 4.

The next morning after the storm, the little dragon heads outside to see the butterfly taking shelter under a leaf. The butterfly is cold and wet from the storm, so the Butterfly Dragon decides to warm him up with hot air from his nose and he is very grateful. Again with this part, I worked very closely to my plan which I had set out in my sketchbook, only making a few changes to perspective.

Final render of part 5.

The next part I have planned to make sees the Butterfly Dragon attempt to pick his pear and fail, and then the second night of the animation.

Final Animation - Beginning Progress (parts 1 and 2)

 Yesterday evening after I returned from work I began to work on the start of my final animation. I planned it out in my sketchbook prior to beginning on photoshop, so I knew exactly where to start when I sat down. I had already decided to re-use the intro that I had made during my experimentation as I am really fond of it and think it'd work well in my final piece.

I took on board the feedback from my tutors and introduced the character from various angles, having his wings pop up first and then his head, which he tilts inquisitively. Animating the first 10 seconds only took me the evening to complete.

Progress shots of my Butterfly Dragon coming to life.

The first part of my final animation completed.

Today I spent the whole day working on the second part of the animation which I had already planned. In this part, the Butterfly Dragon flaps his wings and lands on the branch in front of the butterfly. He then sneezes and accidentally scorches it, leaving it blackened. As this is a children's character, he does not kill the butterfly as my tutors had suggested!

 

The animating process for making the dragon fly up to the branch was slow.

The completed movement with colour.

A still frame from the final animation of the Butterfly Dragon looking at the butterfly.

The second part of my final animation completed.

The next step for me is to get back to my sketchbook and think about what I can do for the next part of my little short story.

Tutorial - Catch up with Paul and Gabrielle

Today I visited the studio for a quick catch up on my progress with my tutors. The last time we spoke, Gabrielle helped me to understand more of what the project was asking of me, and I began to re-think my idea.

I was originally set on creating a children's animation that would teach counting to 10. However, I was told that this brief was more set for us to develop our skills and direction based on our interests and not set ourself a goal as such, so I changed my theme to 'Characters' to give myself more room to explore.

I sat down with Paul and Gabrielle and showed my sketchbooks. They had a look through my work and how I have progressed and were happy with what they saw.

I presented them with my two final directions that my work could possibly take; Animating my 'Butterfly Dragon' book or animating my old storyboards I drew when I was younger. They had a look at both of the animations I had created, and the inspiration for both, and both tutors latched on to the butterfly dragon idea.

They began asking questions as to why my character is a butterfly dragon, and why I do not explore his potential in my story. They both agreed that he needs to utilise his 'dragon-ness', as he is way too friendly for what he is. Paul suggested to imply he is similar to Toothless in 'How to Train your Dragon' in that he is cute but can also be deadly and somewhat mischievous. They suggested a good idea would to be to explore the character. I should start working with the dragon, and a pear, and go from there.

In terms of my animating style, they liked it, except had a few issues with details, such as my linework being a bit scruffy and my line thickness not remaining consistent. They suggested I make note of what line width I use for my outlines and keep it consistent throughout. They also suggest I keep the wings of the dragon looking rugged, but keep his body lines being one line. Another thing Paul highlighted is that I do not need to show the whole character in the frame, unlike in the book, as in the animation I can show off his features in different frames.

Both Paul and Gabrielle gave me the idea that my animation should be a series of little shorts perhaps, relating to how the Butterfly Dragon is trying to get the pear. 

Gabrielle showed me a French animation called Cocoshaker, which is a series of little shorts about two characters fighting over a coconut tree.

Animation - Bringing old drawings to life

 The other day I was looking around in a box of my old drawings from when I started secondary school and I found something that I felt really inspired by. When I was younger, I used to be a big fan of Disney's Lilo and Stitch, and used to create my own characters and draw them - often on the back of homework or school worksheets. 

One particular character I created caught my eye. This character was called Bellow and I had numbered him 567 (like the characters in the series). He is brightly coloured and I happened to draw a few storyboards involving him, which I think would be great fun to animate.

Here are a few drawings of the character:

This is a scene that I had drawn on a small A5 piece of loose paper. This scene was inspired by the Lilo and Stitch TV series and includes the character which I designed. In this sequence, you can see the Experiment 567 pod roll off of a market stall and into a puddle, where it activates into the character - much like what happens in the animated series. I knew as I set out to make this animation that it'd be a complex one, but I feel like it'd be worth it to bring an old drawing to life.

This scene I believe was based off of scenes from 'Stitch the Movie' as well as the Lilo and Stitch original TV series. It was based off of the scenes in which the experiments are activated, such as this one, in which the characters activate Experiment 221.

I am very happy with the final result. I feel that I could add more frames to the ending if I wish to in the future, however I am pleased with what I created with my day today!

Animation - Butterfly Dragon book opening

Today I decided to give myself a larger animation to complete. I have decided to theme my project around 'characters', so what better than to animate the beginning of my own original story 'The Butterfly Dragon and the Pear Tree'. The beginning of this book involves a lot of movement and sets the scene, so I thought it'd be a nice part to begin with.

The pages I used for my animation are:

The first page

The second page

And the first frame on the 3rd page!

 I really enjoyed making this animation. It consisted of 3 parts; The scene setting, the reveal of the dragon and the close up. This complex animation took me an entire day to complete, despite being 9 seconds long, due to the complexity of the colours and detail.

This was a fun animation to make, it was lovely seeing my story which I wrote 2 years ago come to life.

Research - Disney Animated Shorts

Feast is a 2014 animated short film produced by Walt Disney Studios, about a Boston Terrier who loves junk food. 

It was animated using the Meander system developed for another Disney short; Paperman, and was the first time the tool was used in colour.

The characters and environment feature a line-free style with solid blocks of colour. The view centres on Winston and the food while leaving the human characters generally out of focus. Because the film consists of a series of very brief scenes cut together, the foods portrayed had to be appetising and recognisable at first glance.

I really love this animation, everything from the style, to the characters and the plot. I find it really inspiring how we are able to connect so well to the character and develop an attachment in such a short animation, and this is something I hope to create in my animation as well.

Here is a short video showing The Making of Feast and some images that show how the character was developed.

Animation - Counting Intro

Today I set myself the goal of creating a short intro for what could be a counting animation for young children. I wasn't feeling particularly ambitious, and just wanted to create something simple that would show how the character animates, yet this turned into my most complex animation yet.

This animation consisted on a number of still and movie frames, and changed between these to allow movement of the character. Additional frames were included for colour.

This animation was aimed to be a short introduction that would provide a transition into the counting animations, it involves the text appearing followed by the character, but as I worked on this I began to add more features and movements.

The transition out of the intro still involves the dragon covering the screen with a burst of red fire. This was something I decided to add at the very end of the animating process and I'm very happy with it.

I think this animation is a step in the right direction and I'm getting the hang of utilising frames and colours.

Research - Kévin Gemin

An animator who really inspires me is Kévin Gemin, a French animator who is fascinated by birds and the way that they move. Gemin approaches animation in a very interesting way, using very basic software on his Nintendo 3DS, as well as TVpaint every now and then. I found Gemin's work by chance while browsing Facebook, and I have come to admire his very quirky and unique style.

Kévin Gemin uses photos from the internet to inspire the little animations he creates and the characters that he comes up with. He then animates using FlipNote Studio on the Nintendo 3DS, which is a program I have used briefly but found very difficult to use, due to the size of the screen.

This French animator also animates to music, with his characters moving perfectly in time with the beat to the selected track. Here are a few of my favourite animations that he has created with music.

Kévin Gemin mainly uses FlipNote Studio on his Nintendo 3DS to create his animations, however more recently he has been using a program called TVpaint. 

I'm thinking if I were to do animations that involve dancing characters or a lot of movement, I'd be better creating characters that are simpler in design and are not complex, to make it easier to animate their movements.

Practice Animation - Flying Characters Together

On Adobe AfterEffects I imported both of my recent flying animations in order to combine them and have my two characters flying side by side. I used my knowledge of AfterEffects from my workshop to help me with this.

I imported the videos of both characters into the program.

I put both of the characters on loop and exported the video.

Practice Animation - Butterfly Dragon Flying (Take 2)

After creating my flying animation for the BumbleFox character, I decided to do an updated version of the flaying animation for the Butterfly Dragon. This was inspired by how much better my other animation looked after I put a bit more motion into it. 

I re-drew out the character, in the same way I had done before, except this time I did not include the tail.

I animated both the wings and tail on separate video layers, and this time put more care into the line work and spent more time making sure the transitions were smooth.

I am very pleased with how this turned out, I think it's a massive improvement from the one I had created previously.

Practice Animation - Butterfly Dragon Counting

To further play around with my idea of creating an animation of the Butterfly Dragon teaching to count in a short animation, I started working on a small tester animation showing counting using numbers of fruit. 

These frames were stills with animations of the numbers appearing above the fruit, with a small animation of the dragon appearing at the end. Not a very adventurous start, but something to get the ball rolling. The fruits being counted are 1 Apple, 2 Watermelon slices, 3 Bananas, 4 Oranges and 5 Pears, with the pile at the end consisting of just a random number of each fruit.

The final frame has the little dragon popping out of the pile, it's a very cute end to the animation.

I feel like this animation is a step in the right direction. Although not much really happens, I feel like the character looks really good in this style and lends itself to this kind of animation. I will continue to experiment with different ways of animating sequences similar to this.

Practice Animation - BumbleFox Character Flying

After creating my flying animation for the Butterfly Dragon, I decided to give it a go with the little fox character that I created. I imported the scan of my sketch into Adobe Photoshop and traced over it with the paintbrush tool. For this experiment, I chose not to use colour.

The first step was to get my outline completed.

I then copied and pasted the outline onto 4 frames, moving it upwards slightly each time. The wings were then added on an animation layer to give the flying effect.

I then imported my video into Adobe AfterEffects to loop the flying animation.

This is the end result after being exported from Adobe AfterEffects

After exporting my first version, I decided to go back to my animation in Adobe Photoshop and make a few adjustments. This involved removing the tail and eyes from a few of my static frames in order to animate them, to make the character's flying motion seem more realistic.

I feel like the animation is a lot more successful with the addition of the extra movement and I am very pleased with how it has turned out.

Practice Animation - First Flight

Today I thought I'd test out an animation of the little Butterfly Dragon flying. Nothing too ambitious at this stage, just a short looped animation of the butterfly dragon flying in place. This would be an animation to test the movements of the wings, as they are pretty complex in design.

I started out by drawing the body of the Butterfly Dragon and moving it into different movie frames, with the body moving up a little each time, and then down. I then drew the wings on in a separate movie layer.

To make both wings the same on each side, I duplicated them using the select and alt key, and then moving it over to the other side of the body, and then transform to flip it horizontally. I did this for each position of the wings to make sure they were the same each time.