Who am I? Why am I here? and What do I want to Learn?

We had a seminar on reflective practice on the 8/10/15. This reflective practice covered who we are and our reasons behind what we are doing. We were given a study task to answer five questions on our reasons behind our decisions.

Why you chose to study on this programme?
I was initially interested mostly on illustration and with the mindset that i needed illustration education for the type of work i wanted to do, which was comic books and manga, however as i went round universities i saw parts of animation courses which peaked my interest. So i had actually applied for the illustration course but as i had my portfolio looked through and had my interview the university suggested that i would be more suitable for animation based on my portfolio and and interview. So my interest in animation has only really been for nine months and why I chose here was because it gave me the opportunity to look at and learn about character design, narrative and back ground art as well as learning how to animate and animation.

• A recent and heightened interest in animation, from being exposed to new possibilities.
• Wanting to take my illustrations to a new level.
• To learn about character design, backgrounds and narrative.
• They will be more helpful for working towards what area i want to work in.
• The recommendation of the tutors here that animation is more suitable for me and what I'm interested in.

What do you want to learn?
As my interest is in comics and manga, or telling visual stories, i want to really work with character design, backgrounds to work with the layouts of the stories and understanding placement and layout. While the other part i want to learn about is the story telling or the narrative through the use of story boards and the writing of stories.

• Story telling and narrative, being able to move further than just an idea.
• Character Design and bringing those characters to life, taking them further and giving them movement.
• Creating backgrounds which work with the characters to tell the story and art just 'there'.
• Layouts and camera angles that work with the above, and of course…
• ANIMATION! and how to animate!

What skills do you think are our strengths?
As i have only had a recent interest in animation it isn't my animation skills, i think it will come down to my initial ideas such as story ideas, observational drawing as well as character design and the analysis of those designs and ideas.

• Initial ideas and starting concepts such as…
• Story ideas and starting of stories…
• Beginning character designs.
• Observational drawings which can be developed into work to be used.
• My analysis of those designs and ideas, what I've changed and considering what could be changed or developed.

What things that you want to improve?
I want to be able to move my initial research further, create clean, polished ideas. So to gain the ability to move the stories that i write on from just an initial concept and learn how to continue them on as well as improving my own drawing skills, getting more comfortable with drawing in digital and to take observational drawings and turn them into strong pieces suitable for presentation or developed into animations.

• Take the initial ideas further to turn them into animations and stories.
• To continue started stories into something that can be enjoyed.
• Get more comfortable with drawing on a digital format.
• Turn Observational drawings into a developed piece of animation having taken inspiration from them for backgrounds and characters, etc.
• Gain and develop writing skills to make stories that interest and draw in people

What ways you will evaluate your progress?
While doing sketchbook work i will note down and write my analysis and opinions on my work alongside the sketches, once those notes are done i will scan those pages into the computer and post them onto my blog and along with those on the blog there will be several pieces of research into animations and opinions posted onto this blog.

• Written notes in my sketch book
• Scanning these pages into my blog
• Blogging
• Independent research onto the blog
• Analysis in sketch books as i work.

Leeds Light Night

On Saturday Leeds had its Light Night event where the buildings were lit up with projections and music played alongside the projections. However it was a little underwhelming. It could of been down to my prior knowledge of Leeds Light Night which was close to nothing, but what i did see was interesting none the less. In front of the main hall there was several performances happening, specifically the one i saw (or part of) was the fire dancers, but due to the amount of people i could only see the tops of the flames unfortunately. I had heard that there would be something projected onto the Vernon Street College of Art building so i decided to see what was up there seeing my first piece of projection, lights and sparks following the lines of the building, creating cracks and sparks as well, playing music alongside the sound effects of sparks and flashes. It was interesting to see but i felt like it needed more of an explanation as a lot of what i saw that night was very unclear besides the fact light was needed to be used (i wasn't entirely sure what to make of what id seen).
Another piece i saw was a set of garments where these women were dressed in large billowing dresses with lit up head dresses, sleeves and skirts, while standing on stilts, visually i really liked how it fitted the bright and bustling light night and it reminded me of a workshop i had done in the past with costumoligists (we had to create a garment or clothing piece which incorporated a set of lights somehow).
The forth and final projection i saw was a game being projected onto the Leeds Train Station. It seemed like you could play the game on the big screen however what was required was unclear. i think that if the events were closer or there were more buildings lit up with just appealing imagery/patterns i would of felt more invested to look around and to stay out later but as most of the walking consisted of going through packed crowds and trying to figure out what was light night and what was light up signs sadly, however as i now know more about the event i would like to go to it again next year and see what i didn't see.

Photoshop Tutorials - CATCH UP!

Along with all the studio briefs we are going to be set we will also be having photoshop/adobe tutorials.

With the above image we learnt about basic tools like the select, layers, magic wand and the colour change tool. We were told to just try out the features and see what we can do. I used the select tool to take the upper beak and turn them into horns and the layers to get them behind the head. i used the colour change brush on the eye, tongue and beak tip. 

With this image we were shown the spot healing brush tool. With it we can remove unwanted images while keeping the background, to an extent. Using the spot healing brush we removed a building from the corner of the screen.

The next thing we used was the adjustments, specifically using the levels. Taking the initial image on the left i made the outlines darker and the body lighter so that it looked like a line drawing.

With the lasso tool i selected sections of the image and using the hue and saturation tool to change the colour.

With the below image we worked with layers and textures with fade out brush.

This week we looked at actually animating using photoshops stop frame animation and video timeline. The above animation is stop frame and uses frames and separate layers. We used a different colour on each frame and then tweened the animation. Tweening is making the frames in between the main actions.

The second animation used video timeline which incorporated the use of onion skins layers which let me see the previous layer and draw to continue the animation.