INSTRUCT

for this brief we were expected to make a 1 minute how to instructional video. for mine i chose to do an origami butterfly, i have three versions to choose from but i like the V1 better, and really its the easier to make out of the three in less then 1 minute.

i first intended to do the V2 butterfly because it has rounded wings and looks more realistic, and because of the size i thought using cartridge wold work. But as the folds tighter got it became harder to fold.


So thats when i decided to make the V1. as it has less folds but still maintains a butterfly shape and it. but because of time, and i used the last of the cartridge paper i had to you plane boring green printing/craft paper. But here is the final result.

risk assessment

After agreeing on the emote “fight” and the story/choreograph was set, before any filming could be done, a risk assessment as needed

Because of the original ideas having slow motion when the punches connect this would proved to Corse physical harm. As well as the small blackout area we were to film in. so this is my risk assessment and it covers the basics. Actor’s safety, surroundings and equipment 

like it says "they are fine with this" as the full body contact was their idea, they didn't want it to look fake. and over all the risk assessment was carried out and no harm was made (other then stuart's beating)

making a set

This was a new for me, I make characters and I never really took much interest in to the environment / set. But saying this I set my self a challenge. The characters I made live within the woods, this meant I needed to draw a forest, and I found it… I’m really bad at drawing trees.

Because of the background and physical description I made of the “twins” , (see  archetype blog) this meant the “twins” and the tribe/clan they belong to live within the woods and in round huts high in the trees using treetops to travel, And straying off the ground. With this in mid I created this mood board, most of the trees here are willow trees, as they grow tall, strong and in such a way it might me possible for live to live within or on them.

Studio brief 1 royal armouries/ Photoshop into

For this brief we went to the art gallery and royal armouries to take a range of imagery to us in Photoshop. I’m not the best at taking photos so the quality was not to good some were out of forces and others were to dark,

On the 26^th of September we had a Photoshop induction. In this we were show the right way to use Photoshop to it’s fullest and show some techniques and tricks. We were shown how to use a script that took three images of a cityscape and seamlessly merge into one to make a panoramic view. With the techniques we had learned over two days, we had one day to make something out of the images taken.

This is the monstrosity I created. It’s a mixture of about 25 different images, weapons, cloths, armours and bones and some animals

Character development

I enjoy creating characters but this was new for me. I’m use to just making one from the top of my head without needing to thing about its background.

In this brief we needed to make a development sheet on a character, information such as family background, their education, what they like and don’t like, and their personality. My original idea was to make “twins” a brother and sister, but I decided to develop one twin more.

 Following this we had to make an mood bored, and idea generator for the characters looks and behaviour based on the bio I made. As you can see the images I chose most if not all have some kind of armour piece or markings.

Now the background task is out of the way, I put all the ideas and background information to come up with this character cone named “ryuu” right now I am currently re-modelling “ryuu” as a 3D model using Blender. but i'll get back to that later

Animation/ after effects into.

Animation/ after effects into.

Following the previous brief where made a character. This brief will give it a life of its own.

in this brief we were shown how to make a two second animation (12 frames per second) using after effects. But 1^st we had to make a six key images they would be in the 24 frames. I chose to use both twins “ryuu” and “amaya”

I was happy with the outcome but it is also a little jumpy; I would have liked it to be a bit smoother flowing actions. And maybe added some colour to animation, and make it longer.

Bradford animated festival, BAF 2012, PART 3

Mark shapiro, LAIKA Studios (ParaNorman)

This was one final seminar I attended; the guest talker was Mark Shapiro, who is the Marketing and Brand Manager at LAIKA. He was here to give us a behind the scenes of the making of ParaNorman, and he took use through some of the processes taken when making ParaNorman and even some things about their last film, Coralin.

Mark Shapiro even had a model of  Coralin,  Norman ad one of the zombies, i regrettably was unable to take an pictures of it.

ParaNorman is about an eleven-year-old boy called Norman Babcock who is considered an outcast in his small New England town because he can see and talk to ghost. When a horde of zombies is unleashed on the town, Norman learns he must use his powers to make things right again. This film takes the classic stereotypes characters and gives them a twist. And this is the same with the evil ugly which that is protruding in a statue and towns history, but this is not the case... The un-dead are also not what they seem, they have they own story and goals.

In all ParaNorman is a very good stop-motion film, and because i loved Coraline i had high expectations of this film, and i was not disappointed. Some parts of the story may drag out for a bit longer than expected but it’s funny all rounds.

Conclusion, the three days spent at BAF 2012 was worth every second, in the time there i have seen the other side of animation, from student work (good, bad and high level work) to professional. And the one thing that was said (or suggested) in each event was no matter what level you’re at in animation, games or visual effects, they is a place for everyone.

The was also things said and shows are an event exclusive, meaning most of the stuff you can’t find in research or on the web.... in short if the opportunity should arise again, i would enjoy going again.

Bradford animated festival, BAF 2012, PART 2

Student panarama 2:

In student panarama 2, I watch 8 different students work ranging from traditional animation, drawn to 3D, but the one I enjoyed the most was Right of passage

Ride of Passage was directed Christian Bøving-Andersen from Denmark and the short animation is about a small child called Toki, who is sent into the woods by his tribe to bring back the dead of the biggest animal he can find. In return he will have gained the respect and honour of the tribe. But things don’t quite go as planned..

I like this because it uses a mix of 2d and 3d animations. At the start its 2d silhouetted and shows the right of massage (three tribe members each with a bigger animal then the other) and again at the end credits, with Toki and the chameleon. And the 3d element was beautiful animated and designed, with simple ‘chunky’ shapes and limbs.

The animation didn’t have any speech, so it relayed heavily on the action and pace of movements. But also the fantastic facial animations done to show Toki expressions and the animals. In all a beautiful animated short, and a very nice story. It’s a must see.

You can watch the short here, aswell as a making of..

http://theconceptartblog.com/2012/03/28/ride-of-passage-curta-para-o-the-animation-workshop/

http://rideofpassagefilm.blogspot.com.br/p/awards-festivals-press.html

Ride of passage EVAN feacher in 3D world magazine

http://www.3dworldmag.com/2012/05/21/new-cg-short-ride-of-passage/

Bradford animated festival, BAF 2012, part 1

I attended Bradford animated festival  [BAF] for three days, in that time a number of talks, screenings and seminars, and were shown not only professional work, but also students work. Out of the tree days and ten events/showings i attended here are three of the events i enjoyed the most.

Valerie kausen: chuck jones centenary:  Feed the Kitty

We had a guessed talker, Valerie Kausen, Chuck Jones' granddaughter.  She talked about her memories of working with her grandfather. In this seminar they had three of Chuck Jones most loved animations. before showing us ‘Feed the Kitty’ Valerie Kausen mentions about how hard Chuck Jones worked on getting one Sean too look perfect. The Sean is where the dog ‘Maec Antony’ has an innocent look on his face and pointing to his self as to say “who me?”

 The only work I saw of Chuck Jones was Looney Tones (bugs bunny and daffy duck) . i had never see the tree that were shown, and instantly liked ‘feed the kitty’

‘Feed the Kitty’ is about a dog named Maec Antony who brings in a stray kitten into the home and try to look after it in secret afraid his owner would take the kitten from him

I enjoyed this animation over the other two because it was funny from start to finish. And it had a nice story. The emotions shown in the dog were over exaggerated but it worked.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of my all-time favourite stop motion film.

T.N.B.C is about a character called jack skellington, known as The Punkin King who leads the festival of Halloween, but he has grown tired of the same old thing. As he’s thinking for now ideas he fined himself in the holiday wood, where he opens the door to Christmas town. After seeing the wonders of Christmas town, he goes about making his very own Christmas holiday. But things don’t go to plan

I love this film because if the exaggerated characters and the emotions they all use, jack himself  has around four hundred heads to express every possible emotion and action although he is a skeleton, no eyes, or lips, just a round head with a menacing long grin.

I also like the instant different use of colures in Halloween town and that of Christmas town, Halloween town is all dim colures such as grays oranges, dim greens, dark blues…colures related to Halloween. Whereas in Christmas town its worm colures some beings white, greens, blues, and red.

The film is a musical, but this helps build the story and the character’s emotions. And it all works very well, it also containing some interesting sayings that are true such as “just because I cannot see it doesn’t mean I cannot believe it”

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!

Scooby-Doo, Where Are you!  Is a 1969 animated cartoon, created by Ken Spears and Joe Ruby, the show follows four teenagers Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, and Norville Rogers  (A.K.A Shaggy) and a talking Great Dane dog named "Scooby-Doo" they all work as team to solve mysteries. 

The artwork and character design for “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!” were done by Iwao Takamoto, was a Japanese-American and was best known for his character designs for Walt Disney Productions films such as Sleeping Beauty.

In the original program the backgrounds/scenes/back-drops tend to be more detailed, shaded and darker colour then the main characters that had little to no shading on them. However if a character interacts with the background, or item in the background they will move i.e. the bolt head door in this image that Fred has opened. Because it’s now being animated, it’s drawn in less detail and has a much lighter colour tone then the main background.

Although I don’t really watch the new Scooby-doo or the films, I do still watch the origin season  

Nick Park\Aardman Studios\ Chicken Run

Nick park is an English stop motion animator who is best known for his work in Wallace and Grimit, creature comforts and my favorite chicken run, in 1985 he joined the staff of Aardman studios where he worked on the music video “Sledgehammer” where he worked on the dance scene. He then later on to made Creature Comforts which matched the soundtracks of people’s interviews on versus subjects to animated zoo animals. 

I like nick park’s work because it is of the wide range of characters and sets designs used, and the feeling of smooth flowed movements in the actions of the models, giving them life and character to the models.

I’m not really a fan of Wallace and Gromit much, mainly because of the stories, but my favourite film is chicken run.

Chicken run is about chickens who are trying to escape the farm, till one night Rocky, a Rhode Island Red ends up hiding with them. He promised them he will help them escape when its wing has healed (which he is faking) 

I find it funny because it’s an adaptation of the fill The Great Escape, but with barn chickens. The detail that is put into the characters and sets are amazing, as each chicken has its own personality and design.

Dot.

Dot is the world’s smallest stop-motion animation, and it’s made my Aardmans youngest creative team Sumo Science directors Will Studd and Ed Patterson.

Dot is about a 9mm girl who has to following a path made from formulator items such a nails, coins, pencil savings, and others, event some small flowers and a bee was used to set the scale of the animation.dou to her world rolling up and chasing her. In the end she pulls two pins and makes herself a blanket of the world that was chasing her.

The character was made using a rapped 3D printer prototype and she was painted by hand, they made multiple copies of the same pose because duo to the 9mm size, she would break. Each 9mm each model was hand painted and had a very fine wire form the top of her head; this made animating her tweezers a bit easier.

When I first saw Dot it was an advertisement on YouTube, I had no idea what it was but I loved it and wanted to find out what it was. I first thought it was normal sized (everything replicated but bigger because the animations on the character seemed too good and smooth to be anything but normal scaled animation. Then when I found out it was made by Aardman, I was shocked, as most of the work from Aardman studio that I have seen is clay-motion stop-motion.

Dot doesn’t really have much of a story other then escaping the winding world that’s chasing her, but despite that it is a very well done animation. It goes to show, no matter how big or tiny the subject matter it, you can animate it.

Billy & Mandy

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy was in is still my favorite cartoon and was shown on cartoon network it was created by Maxwell atoms. The series follows two children the 1st is Billy, he has a low IQ and is a hyper child who acts without thinking and cores the most trouble. The 2nd is Mandy, she is a cynical and arrogant girl who treats both Grim and Billy as her slaved and rather than her friend. Grim is The Grim Reaper and after losing a game of limbo he is forced to be forced with them both. Although he fantasizes in killing them both, but he does show he cares about them.

This show had a unique character and art designs. And over time the characters appearances (design quality) has changed, for example (left image) Billy, Mandy and grim are the original designs and were seen in episode 1, but this changed in episode 2 (image below) as they look kind of different more cleaner and less round, more sharper lines, even the background deign art changed from blocky shames to more detailed stills.

Some trivia: the created Maxwell atoms, you can hear his voice in reversed at the end of the credits saying “no, no this is the end of the show, you’re watching it backwards”. 

Sintel

SINTEL (aka the durian project) is the 3rd open source film by the blender foundation. The film is about a young woman called Sintel who finds a baby dragon with an injured wing, she names Scales. Some time goes by and scales can fly again, but as soon as he’s flying once more an adult dragon grabs Scales out of the sky and flies away. Sintel now is on a quest to save scales and ventures though different lands, such as snowy land, bamboo forests and rocky cliff sides.

The 15 minutes was produced by Ton Roosendall (who is the chearman of the foundation) and directed by Colin Levy who is an artist at Pixar animation studios. 

The concept art for the durian project was done by David Revoy he did the deigns for Sintel. The city, young/adult Scales, and others

i like the concept art and the movies because unlink the previous two films, As the 1st film big buck bunny was animals a big buck bunny, and three squirrels whereas the 2nd elephants dream contained two characters both human formed, but with exaggerated feathers. i.e. long faces/fingers, bodies, and ever exaggerated movements. But Sintel is human.

The film has no set time period, and I have no idea what time its from, but I think it’s set around the time before modern industrialism, before technology, where swords magic and wonder rules the lands. I like this idea so that’s why in my character designs are  influenced by this trying my best to sat away from tech or future weapons

his work on Sintel can be found on his website, as well as other work he has done

http://www.davidrevoy.com/2-portfolio.html

Kingdom Hearts characters

Kingdom hearts creator Tetsuya Nomura who is also the director, Concept Designer and Main Characters Designer for all the Kingdom Hearts games. Kingdom hearts has a very large variety of surroundings, characters and enemies. The game has a great number of enemies such as the heatless (KH:1), Nobodies (KH:2), the unversed (KH:BBS) and finally the dream eaters (KH:DDD).  Each enemy group has their own art style and designs. Here are some of them in their groups.

The enemies all carry a trade logo, with exemption of the “shadow” (top right heartless) that does not have the “heartless logo on it” and most have the same colour code (shades of blues, black, purple and reds)

Here is the development of the games protagonist Sora, left image is one of the first concepts of sora and the last one is the final look of sora,

Sora was designed by Tetsuya Nomura as the main protagonist of Kingdom Hearts. he mad sora with the concept of disney characters in mind. this resulted in an animal like boy, although the final design is human. s you can see sora originally had a chainsaw like sword, but this was changed into a Keyblade.

small trivia:  sora's cloths have tMickey Mouse's trademark white gloves, red shorts and giant yellow shoes

Tim Burton

Tim burton is one of my most favourite film directors, but I love his character deigns concepts and ideas. Most of his characters all share the same physical appearances, this being top heavy. With long thin limbs, small feet, short or small bodies and large heads, I enjoy this style of character making but like in the films it does cores problems with stability.

This is just me, but I some of his character's look a lick. A very good example of this is the main protagonists Vincent and Emily from the copies bride, and jack skellington and sally from the nightmare befor Christmas although the two films have nothing to do with each other; the main character's appearances are very similar. That being said, jack is much slender and taller than Vincent.

But not all his character deigns have this top heavy feel to them, an example of this is the design of Edward scissorhands hands. The design still has a slender feel but the limbs are more proportion to the body.

I like character designs that don’t follow a traditional human like form guild line. So this is why I like Tim Burton’s work and why it inspires me and influence me in my designs.

EDDSWORLD

EDDSWORLD is a British flash animation comedy mad using Adobe Flash and was created and written by Edward Gould who sadly died age 23 after a six-year fight with cancer on 25th of March 2012

EDDSWORLD consists of over 35 episodes (APA eddisodes) that would last from 30 seconds to 10 minutes and it also has over 150 short panel comics, flash games. The show follows the comical lives of Edd and his friends Tom, matt and Tord, 

The character drawings, animation were done by Edward Gould and co-written by him and his colleagues/ friends Thomas Ridgewell (Tom),  Matthew Hargreaves(Matt),  Tom Bown, and Tord Larsson. After Edward died the show EDSSWORLD was left under direction of Thomas Ridgewell. 

Gould had created over 170 comics that would be made public every week. They are generally four panels long that follow the plot structure as the episodes but with more on puns and word play. The comics mostly only featured Edd, Matt, Tom, and in the earliest comics Tord. Whereas the episodes contain a range of characters they all interact with

Through the 8 years the show has been running, the characters have developed and became more detailed; when it first started the characters were simple childish or rushed scribbles drawings. But they became more professionally drawn, this also shows the creator Edd and his friends skills in using Adoby flask got better.

spiral knights design




the first concept design of the knight

Ian McConville works for Three Rings Design, Inc and he is the Lead Artist behind the character and playing world of spiral knights the early designs of the knights were too complex and techy robotic.

later on he developed them to be more simple and cute. Following an anime styles, (if you have played the game, from the side the knight’s head is the same form as an chibi anime characters face, big forehead, small pointy nose) the end result is a top heady designs of characters and enemies. Big heads. Small stocky bodies “peg-legs” and small limbs much like a Nendoroids models, this also made the knights more kid friendly.



a final draft of the designs



this is what the female knight looks like


I enjoy ian McConville ‘s character designs and the style of them because they are simple.im not one for the big heads, but I like the idea of a character with a stocky body, slender limbs with  big-ish hands. With this look of cuteness you wouldn’t picture them being deadly mysteries.