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.