Cross Course Study Task

Due to personal reasons i missed the morning half of this task but the overview of what happened was that the courses of animation, illustration and graphics were all brought together and split up into groups made of students from each course. The task was to create a product to, at the end of the day, pitch to the rest of the groups going through separate iterations and versions, such as the groups being separated into smaller groups to come up with a product which is then practice pitched to the rest of the group to narrow down to one idea.

The idea that it got narrowed down to was an app that combined just eat with tinder, so food dating app called hangry Hi-5. We had to create a campaign and an advertisement video. The animators took on the advert as they were sequential thinkers and we came up with a storyboard and idea of food being angry looking on their phones and scrolling through hi-5 which penultimately means they meet up thanks to the app and do a high five. To make the animation in the fastest time possible we chose to do it in after effects with a class mate who has quite some skill in it animating and a lot of people designing rough sketches of the food characters. My role was to render them out and get them to our animator. So using a wacom tablet i drew the characters on photoshop saved them as png files and sent them to our animator. But i was working at a fast enough speed so i asked around and had help doing refined versions. Once our animator had all his assets i found myself going around and adding people to the google drive where all the work had collectively been stored for communal access so the presentation, assets and animation could be accessed by those who needed to send work back and forth.

Approaching the end of our production i noticed a different in the speed and urgency that illustration and graphics worked in comparison to animation. the assets being drawn by illustration and layouts being designed by graphics were being done with the intention to have them done by the overall deadline without the consideration of the animation advert. This made me more aware of the fact that when i work with an illustrator or graphics student that they may not necessarily be aware of the speed that is sometimes needed in animation so id have to explain this in a team with them which i wish i was more assertive when we did this task. On the other hand it did mean that the work they produced in comparison to the animators was more refined but this cost time on the actual animating.

Finally just as sound was being added to the animation after effects crashed! Our animator had to make the animation into more of an animatic. This was really frustrating as it crashed just as the deadline came. Again there was a difference in reaction to this from the animators to the other courses. Many animators were seeing if there was a possibility to save it while the others headed down to the lecture hall to do the presentation.

Inktober

During october i had decided to try and do inktober by following the prompts given each day. I started by just doing what ever came to mind and posted them onto instagram. After a couple of days i drew a little pirate character and thought how it might be interesting, good practice and fun to come up with a narrative using him based on the prompts. This went well until the work load started becoming too much as inktober was starting to eat into my regular university work as well as time for relaxation so after about 8-10 days i had decided to stop doing inktober, i was disappointed that i didn't finish it but i had to prioritise course work over personal work.

Character Design Challenge - September

During September i entered the character design challenge which is an online Facebook group that releases a theme every month and from it a character is created. The theme for September was Centaur which i had initially thought to be a really boring theme but after talking with friends we got some ideas going with an initially steam punk with spider legs centaur. This in the end became a victorian centaur ignoring the steampunk aesthetic as i wanted to try and create a character that had life and personality as that is a part of character design, not just the visuals but also the back story behind it. I also wanted to use this as an opportunity to practice photoshop drawing, painting and shading as well as using textures to try and make a more interesting character in colour. With the design i wanted to make her more rounded as 1. victorians were quite chunky (the films lie as do the corsets!) and 2. a horses body is very broad, for the hip to fit on the shoulders and look natural she was going to have to be a much larger woman. with the face i closed her eyes as it had fallen into the uncanny valley too much and was looking really strange as i had done the dress realistic while the face was more cartoony.

Light Night

Last year i went to light night and tried to experience it but it was very dull for me as i couldn't comprehend what it meant. This year i went to go and see my own animation up there.

A brief was set to make a one second animation that along with other one second animations, would be shown as a band from the leeds college of music performed. The theme of the brief was the four elements and the universe. As i only had a week to do this and i was very out of practice with my animating after the summer, I chose to think small, which in turn made me consider and think the theme on a small scale. When you hear the word universe you end up thinking of vast open space and unexplored star systems out there and its massive. But in comparison we are nothing more than atoms or insects in comparison so i considered the idea of a butterfly flapping its wings and within its wings was the galaxy or space, working with how we are all tiny in comparison to the universe.

BUT unfortunately due to time and my lack of confidence on my capabilities to animate after not animating for so long i chose to change the idea. I was still focusing on the idea of a small scale object and went for a match being struck, i was thinking about the idea of a small action sparking a chain reaction similar to when people talk about the butterfly effect.

The animation itself was done first by drawing the timing of the match in traditional hand drawn, scanned into photoshop and then painted over the top. I had to go back a few times removing frames and other elements to try and get the timing right but as it was a one second animation it wasn't something that required my full attention or dedication as the brief was optional. In conclusion I'm not entirely dissatisfied with it but i know for a fact it can be done a lot better.

PPP Evaluation

Personal and professional practice (PPP) for me hasn’t gone too great, I feel. When we were set the module at the start of the year I felt the direction and point of PPP was too vague especially for us as first years and myself personally. I felt that as a first year I needed a bit more direction on what I needed to do for PPP. When I first came to university I didn’t know how the blogging and lectures would work or what one would have had to have on their blog.

For the most part I don’t think any of my blog posts had coherency and I failed to follow up any posts with further development and progression. I started by doing a few on a some bits and pieces that id been doing, such as light night and my plans to further my drawing capabilities but I never really got round to acting upon these blog posts with more personal drawings or events other than those organised by the college (Manchester animation festival). So for the most part a large portion of the blog is posts about different animations that interested me but with each post I followed the same formula of writing a short synopsis and then going on to write opinions and how I learnt from it or could learn from it, while I know that it’s acceptable it doesn’t feel creative or open minded enough to be so fixated on that same formula which is why I would of preferred to of done more posts about my personal work, however due to the vagueness of the PPP module I have hardly any up, as I couldn’t feel confident I should have been blogging it as it could of just been a doodle. I did however enjoy blogging about the competitions I tried entering and in second year I plan on increasing the number I enter.

While I wasn’t happy about or confident in my PPP from this year over all as I didn’t have a clear plan or direction to it, now that I know what I’m doing I’m looking forward to second year. In second year I plan to lean towards the more comic book and illustration side of the industry ion the sense of drawing competitions, concept art contests as well as working towards making my own comic (hopefully). I don’t want my PPP to just be a bunch of thrown together blogs with no causal link between them all so I’m going to be continuing to blog on PPP over the summer in order to make sure I don’t fall out of practice with blogging as I develop and create the beginnings of a comic.

Disseminate - Villains Presentation

for my disseminate presentation i wanted to focus on the villains in stories as they are more interesting than heroes. 

Over all when presenting i think i gradually got more comfortable with the presentation but for the most part i was nervous and i feel i could of articulated better my thoughts and ideas. But that was also a problem that the majority of my presentation was made up of my own personal thoughts and opinions on villain archetypes, this i argue was because i had no clue on what to look at or into to find information to support my opinions nor to get any form of facts across. I realise now that i should of looked at books on character design and i also left mewling the actual presentation quite late so i feel i  need to be more prepared in the future.

Reflect - End of year presentation

For reflect we were required to create a presentation to talk about our time at Leeds college of art and our year in animation. we were asked to create something new for the presentation and this didn't necessarily mean animation but i wanted to work on making short gifs for the presentation to show my thoughts and feelings on the year. These little characters that I'm using were something i had come up with the year before during foundation and back then i knew i wanted to animate them at some point, i just didn't know how or when.

The first gif was to show my confusion towards how I've ended up in animation when i applied for illustration. i wanted the character to look nervous and apprehensive so i had him have his hands together in a defensive pose and had him look around because thats what i was doing at the start of the year looking at all my new classmates with a lot of worries. the head scratch is for his confusion and befuddlement over the situation.

With this gif i wanted to show my intrigue and enjoyment with 2D animation which i would of liked to have done in traditional 2D but i didn't have a light box to hand, if i did i think it would of been slightly more complicated with the character maybe contemplating the ideas of squash and stretch and such. i added a glow effect to show how the light boxes can be really blinding and i think its a good fit for this wide eyed characrer.

This was the longest gif but also the most fun to do. I think because not was the longest gif it actually encompasses the life of an animation student; a lot of work that can swamp you. He gets overwhelmed but then quickly makes a recovery as the work is always fast paced.

Going right alongside work load is time management, because theres so much work over the year I've found I've struggled to keep up with work in the form of handing in unfinished work and having a extension which has frustrated me. With my character i made do simple head turns looking at sheets of paper while in the background a clock is whizzing by to show how he's losing track of time.

If this one had a sound effect it'd be 'AAAAAARRRGGGHHH!' the frustration and impatience with digital animating is painful. So i made the character look fairly calm and then insanely zip all around as he tries to calm down, while i don't fly round the room i do have to step away when animating in maya and photoshop because one can only look at a computer screen for so long.

Now when i came here i wanted to be a comic book illustrator so i decided that for next year I'm going to focus on development of story and narrative, quite possibly in the form of comic books. Im looking forward to the freedom i'll be getting in second year. 

This final gif was really just to bring to attention how i need to get into a habit of sleeping properly and not crashing out in college as after I've done my final hand in i will be catching up on sleep.

Copyright Seminar

Copyright is the right to own ones work, this is shown using the © symbol. There are multiple different types of copyright and ownership laws, the first being the obvious copyright that we know of. this copyright allows for complete control of ones property and creations. These creations can be anything but overall ownership and authorship of these properties (intellectual properties) belongs to the maker in the independent market, or amongst studios and companies it belongs to the commissioning party/corporation. as animators and creators we need to consider copyright in respect of ourselves and of the work of other people. Unless for educational purposes copyright infringement covers copying to tweaking as well as renting and lending, so these factors have to be considered and permission has to be asked of the owner before use in commercial work.

Copyleft is similar to copyright in the sense that the author must be credited but further tweaking or usage can be done without the prior party permission, so it has been put out into the public domain for fair use across all mediums. Similarly creative commons is another version where one can legally share remix  and reuse other work but with more specifications such as the work not being used for commercial advertisement or for earning money.

Do it in Ten - Dark

Show me the animation is a website that has a monthly competition to create a ten second animation of a theme set for that month. For the month of February the theme was dark, so myself and my class mate decided to enter as we currently at the time only had drawing tasks and no animating tasks. We also wanted to try and compete in a competition for practice and possible show reel animation.

The animation we created was a three scene animation of the grim reaper and the devil playing chess with those who passed away as the chess pieces.

We worked together on designing the characters and the storyboard, then my friend worked on backgrounds and scenery, along with the lighting, while i worked on the animating of the characters and fire. Shading of the characters was shared between the two of us, majority of it was done buy my partner while i shaded the hand in the final scene. I collected the royalty free sound and we rendered each scene independently in after effects then rendered it in one piece with the sound on premier.

This was when i first experienced my 5 hour fruitless wait for rendering to finish, it was stressful to say the least.

Research 18 - Maleficent

Like the horned king i want to go into more detail about this villain as she has had to versions of herself created.

The first is the villainous and terrifying Maleficent from the animated movie, where she cursed the child, mostly because of an evil temperament and the fact she wasn't invited to the ceremony. She's calm collected and evil down to her core as a character who is out for her self. Twisting horns wrapped around a full body cloak with green skin and yellow eyes with a crow perched on her magical staff. Her sharp features reflect her cold and sharp personality as an uncompassionate creature becoming a quite literal cold blooded creature when she becomes a dragon.

In comparison Angelina Jolies Maleficent is driven by heart break and sorrow caused by King Stefan with whom she was in love with in their youth, which led to her cursing the princess. However she then feels guilt and love for the young girl and as she grows protects her from harm, even eventually freeing her from the curse. This to me was unneeded, Maleficent was already a well established and hateful villain, but doing this caused her to come across more weak and almost pathetic than her original representation, to make her the hero who saves the land leaves a very different story with no actual correlation to the original as it destroys the original view of this character.

Research 17 - The Tale of Princess Kaguya

My main reason for liking thus movie is how it was animated  which i will go into detail on in a moment. The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a japanese fairy tale about a small child that is found by a bamboo cutter once he cuts into a bamboo he was chopping. He runs back with the child to his wife to show her when the child grows abruptly into a small baby. The couple wonder where she came from and then went on to find some one to breast feed her but the woman then found her self able to produce breast milk and so went about feeding the child and caring for it as there own. The child grew quickly, being able to walk in just a couple of days able to talk and run around with all the other children of the village. She continues to grow to be about 8 when her father cuts more bamboo and finds gold in one and priceless robes in another, he took as a sign that their little girl, whom he village boys had called little bamboo, because of how fast she grew, was destined for much greater things. So taking the family away from the village and to the city they bought a massive castle for her to live in. She was also given a proper name, Kaguya, to mimic her beauty. However Kaguya did not like being away from the village, nor did she want arranged marriages or royal robes and loftily halls. she only wanted to be with her friends and to be able to play in the forest once again.

The art for the animation is made up of an old fashioned japanese drawing style, more closely based upon the old japanese wood blocks and less animesque. The lines are scratch and violent in some scenes and smooth and flowing in others. Its a really nice way to present the mood of the animation. Its really interesting to see the Ghibli art style in this muted white world of water colours.

The animation is a beautiful piece of art to behold it makes me want to try and do some traditional animation in the near future (hand drawn not digital). The scratchy lines leave an effect that makes the animation so much more appealing than if it was domelike a regular Ghibli film.

Research 16 - Spirited Away

Spirited Away remains to this day as the biggest block buster movie to come out of Japan. Its about a young girl named Chihiro who is moving to another town with her parents, and she's not happy. Her father tries to take a short cut and ends up in front of an abandoned tunnel of which the family decides to enter, going through the tunnel they happen upon what appears to be a deserted town but it is fully stocked with piping hot food that her parents start to gorge on. This concerns Chihiro and she runs away finding a young boy who asks her why she's here, telling her to go away. Frightened Chihiro runs back to her parents only to find that they have been turned to pigs. As the day turns to night the streets begin to bustle with shop keepers and customers of the spiritual variety showing a wide breadth of shapes and sizes. As Chihiro starts to disappear from the world because humans do not belong there the young boy comes up to her and forces her to eat so she can stay there with out turning into a pig. From there the boy, Haku, sends Chihiro to see Yubaba and demand a job no matter what and so her life in the spirit world begins.

Spirited Away is most definitely deserving to be called a master piece of animation. It immerses you in the rich Japanese cultures and beliefs of the people and for those who didn't believe in these things paid for it just like Chihiros parents did when they didn't heed the warning of the statues around the tunnel. It wasn't a place for humans. Once again Miyazaki is bringing our attention to change. how younger generations, even young generation parents, no longer had the willingness to believe what they were doing, Chihiros parents are a good example of this where they chose food over their daughter, took it with out asking, hadn't even questioned where it had come from and yet took it like it was theirs.

Unlike Nausicaa, Spirited away doesn't look at change on the world but on the people and its a great way to show the changes hat have occurred in society today. We believe in myths less, we take and don't give back, wanting only for ourselves. I realise i focused mostly on the parents gluttony here but i also really like Yubaba as a character for her fearfulness, as well as how much you can come to dislike her.

Research 15 - Nausicaa of the valley of the wind

Nausicaa is classed as Ghiblis first feature film, its not, but its the one that starts their long list of movies. Nausicaa is the princess of a small village set in a post apocalyptic world where an infected and diseased fungus has created a poisonous world thats slowly dying. Nausicaa loves all living creatures in the world even the infected and mutated insects and its because of this love for life she will fight to save all creatures through peace and diplomacy, in comparison a woman by the name of Kusharna has the same motive of saving the people but by using what was an ancient weapon that led to the original destruction of the world, she believes that to save the land she must destroy the insects and the forest however Nausicaa has other ideas.

Nausicaa Shows how the same motive can be approached from two very different angles, both women want their people to be safe, but while one wishes to do this through peace and coexistence with the forest and the large Ohm insects, the other wishes to eliminate the forest through any method possible even using the ohms young baby.

Nausicaa is an example of great story telling that appeals to all ages, with exciting characters, fast paced action and blossoming romance, but it looks at a bigger picture we don't notice, and thats things such as climate change, our effect on the atmosphere and the world and how our world could be like that in 1000 years.

Research 14 - The Princess and the Frog

The Princess and the frog is a 2D animated movie of disneys that wasn't a huge success but i enjoyed it, mostly because of the jazz songs. Set in the 1930s in New Orleans, Tiana, a hard working full time waitress with two jobs, has a dream to open her own restaurant and for it to be the biggest thing in new orleans. However her plans are de-railed by a foolish and loose with his money playboy of a prince, Naveen, who got turned into a frog by the shadow man by voodoo magic. Now a kiss from a princess would turn him back but Tiana isn't a princess and thus gets turned into a frog as well and so their journey through the bayou begins.

I love the music in this movie as it has a jazz, swing, blues sound track to match the time period and it gives the whole movie such a good feeling that makes it enjoyable and because the soundtrack is reminiscent of the time period you get immersed into the world of New Orleans. My other favourite part of this movie is the characters, they are all big and larger than life characters with so much charisma, this includes the villain to the princess down to the side kicks, they all have motives and a feeling of purpose and direction in their own worlds.

In comparison to Guida that gives a happy feeling from the simple things in life this movie gives the same feeling but through an excited and adventurous happiness. Its also a good example of giving context to a time and place, or the setting, through music.

Research 13 - The Horned King (villain from Black Cauldron)

Now, I've blogged about the film but i wanted to dedicate a blog to the villain of the Black Cauldron, The Horned King.

He is a menacing and terrifyingly designed character with a ragged and tatty hooded robe covering his tall, thin and skeletal green body, with two sets of horns protruding from his skull, tearing through the hood.long, spindly, boney fingers with spots rot and over grown and sharp nails. A skulls head with empty eye sockets until he becomes enraged with pinpricked eyes of red or blazing red in the entire socket alongside jagged cut off teeth all placed within a withered and dried up face. Well he's designed to give nightmares isn't he?

His personality is fierce, dominating and powerful. He won't joke or have any humour to him and he has one goal, to have rule over all.

The thing that causes the horned king to be so terrifying for me is most likely ingrained into myself from when i was a child, watching black cauldron and being scared of this devil like character. His demonic presence haunted my dreams and left such an image on me that even now after many years, re-watching the movie i still flinch, wince tense up and hide my eyes away from him because of how i remember him. Even though I'm terrified i love how this character can still scare me after all these years, it shows an example of such good character design all the way back to the 70-80s, that can leave a life long impact on someone even in what was classed as a bad movie.

Research 12 - The Black Cauldron

The Black Cauldron is a Disney movie from 1985. Based on a Welsh tale it experienced little success and was one of disneys biggest failures. The story follows Taran, an assistant pig keeper who dreams of being a warrior. After he learns that the pig he's caring for has magical abilities to see the future and its this ability that is wanted by the villian of the story, the Horned King, probably the most interesting character in the animation only because he was the character that left the biggest imprint on me as a child. The story is a series of unfortunate events for the boy, pig, princess and a minstrel, as they interact with the king, witches and a small annoying troll creature called Gurgi.

I wouldn't have a large interest in the film if i hadn't seen it as a child and if the horned king didn't leave such an impression on me. The movie is one of disneys most dark and almost adult films intentionally directed towards children. It was also a few firsts for disney; the first PG rated movie they made and its also the first full length feature not to have no musical numbers in it, ironically they have a minstrel with a harp however.

There was something strange about a couple of the scenes in that white lines would surround the characters at times, to my knowledge its due to cel shading but i might be wrong. It was a movie that left a big impression on me as a child because it really broke what one saw as a typical Disney Movie, that being said it was a badly paced and over acted movie to me because the voice acting seemed very 'hammy'. I do however like how it breaks from its formula and was an unconventional change. Id like to keep a variety in my work as well as apply the idea of the unconventional to my animations every so often.

Research 11 - The Master (MAF)

The mater was a very disturbing yet thought provoking stop frame animation. It shows us a sausage dog which appears to be waiting for its owner to return and after some time, checking the door every so often we see a caged monkey is also in the room which is very strange. The monkey seems quiet violent scaring the dog especially when it breaks out of its cage and starts to destroy the house, however this is when the film starts to seem more symbolic. The monkey begins to don the clothes of the owner of the house and moves on to abuse the dog, buy food and even sleep with the dog. This ultimalty leads to the death of the dog when the foolish monkey finds a gun and once the dog dies from the gun shot wound as well as having had its leg broken by the monkey, the monkey proceeds to shoot itself in the mouth committing suicide.

Its a very morbid and disturbing animation with taxidermy like designs for the characters which makes it seem disjointed from reality as if the events between the dog and monkey are happening in another world. The actions of the monkey towards the dog reminded me of what an abusive relationship could be like, the monkey hits the dog as it whimpers ad runs away then the monkey got food as an apology, even sleeping together at one point but then returning to fearing the monkey once it started to drink and get drunk leading to the dog hiding under the sofa. Other views could just look at it with dominance over others but to me its dominance in a relationship and an abusive one at that.

I like how it was possible to have multiple interpretations of an animation with its true meaning being rather obscure. It has a really curious concept to it where it comes down to how a person views a situation.

Research 10 - Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty is one of Disney's well known, princess classics. Story follows the princess, Aurora hiding away in a forest for her whole life because as a baby she was cursed to prick her finger on a spinning wheel needle and sleep for ever on her 16th birthday by an evil woman called Maleficent  She was hidden away in a deep forest and cared for by three blundering and loving fairies who bestowed gifts upon her to counter the curse, true loves kiss will awaken her from this curse. As she grows up she meets a young prince with whom she falls for in time but this doesn't last long as she then falls under the curse, so her prince must fight his way through the thorns and battle the evil Maleficent.

Personally I'm not all that interested in the movie or the story. The story is taken straight from the fairytale and its got pretty ok characters, except for Maleficent. An example of a very scary and overbearing villain with so much power and dominance. The backgrounds have a really nice geometric theme with overlapping layers of colour and shapes with a really appealing look to them.

Personally, the main reason i looked into sleeping beauty is for Maleficent as she is such an interesting character to watch through her actions. It shows just how blatantly evil and corrupt a character can be causing the audience to enjoy her presence yet despise and fear it.

Research 9 - Guida (MAF)

While at Manchester Animation Festival i saw a lot of animations and this is possibly my favourite. Guida, a fifty something woman has lived her life quietly and happily working in a library allowing the time to pass by. She then notices a small ad in the paper from people looking for a life model, she laughs it off, smirking to her self finding the idea of herself as a greek statue with saggy breasts amusing, but she finds that the idea is constantly on her mind, reminding her of her dream and of her childhood as a dancer. While she poses, the drawings of her become different possibilities and lives such as a violinist or a boxer and as she looks around at the drawings of her she finds herself feeling happier than ever before

https://vimeo.com/132668364

The above is a link to the video. What i love about this animation is, well all of it. The art style shifts fluidly with smooth transitions from one moment to the next, with a really relax line on sepia toned backgrounds done in water colour gives the whole animation a soft inviting feeling as if its made to be warm. The sound tracks fairly minimal however near the end there is a lovely song playing as she begins her life modelling and it feels as if it signifies a new beginning for this woman. I love the fact that the story is almost plebeian and is merely about the life, no big adventures or terrifying revelations just a woman passing through life.

The simplicity of the story really shows how animation can be used to show a simple lifestyle or just give off a good feeling and warm feeling. Happiness is a difficult thing to convey in animations and sad stories are much easier but if you succeed in making a happy film you can convey a much stronger feeling and response from your audience, it won the MAF award for a reason.