Doodling Characters

Messing about with the Sketches App (which I love) and tried drawing a rough character sketch.  Just a quick doodle but passed the time.

Here is the link for the app if anyone wants it…………………

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/tayasui-sketches-draw-paint/id641900855?mt=8

Used the 53 Pencil for this but I find it quite cumbersome to use.  It is very hard to get a fine definite line and the nib is so broad it’s not very good for fine detail.  I much prefer my Wacom tablet for detail.

 

 

Simple Animation

Just found this online and although it is a very simple animation it shows that even the simplest animation can be effective and engaging.

Final Evaluation

Collaborative Practice:                                    

The brief was a project for the RSA Brief ‘Moving Pictures’, for which as a group we had to produce a finished solution to animate the audio provided. There was a choice of two and we chose ‘Towards an Educational Revolution; Speaker: Debra Kidd’ by a majority of 3:1.

 

Initially key word sentences and highlighting key areas of text helped to discover ideas and suggest links that weren’t obvious. We also each constructed mood boards of images that we felt were significant or relevant to the audio.

 

 As a group we felt that the audio was aimed at prospective teachers to encourage them to bring out the best in pupils and allow them to experience new things in order to build dreams, motivate them and eventually be successful and flourish. It is a teacher’s job to provide a stimulating and enriching experience for the children. As a group we decided to go down a traditional illustrated animation route as, at the time, we felt this was the nearest style to the way we all work and to our individual mood boards.

 

 As I had never done this type of animation before my approach was to research various animation studios, such as Aardman, RSA Animate, Onanimation and also find styles of animation that I liked on Vimeo, Youtube etc. I researched relevant artists such as Glen Keane, Donato Sansone and Fiep in de Krant.  I also researched various software that you can use for animation which was especially relevant to my outcome and this helped me decide on media and techniques that would be suitable.

 

I found this project especially difficult because I had not done any sort of animation on a large scale before and I was very unfamiliar with any of the software and so had to learn everything from scratch. I also have problems with character design and storyboards as again I have no experience of either.  I found Pinterest very useful for character design by searching for animation boards and this gave me lots of ideas for drawing styles and head, eye shapes, expressions etc.  As for the software I found that most of my learning was accomplished through the VTC, Adobe Support Learning Centre/tutorials and videos other animators had posted on Youtube.com.  I also found it especially helpful to attend the illustration Symposium at Uni as this gave a better insight into other practitioners processes and way of working.

 

I began by attempting some very small quick animations and trials to test various software and initially used apps on my ipad (such as Animation HD or Animation Studio) or took a series of images on my phone and used them to make animated gifs.

 

The two workshops I found most beneficial were the one by Steve Chamberlain and Fabric Lenny – both of which were very different but I like them both in different ways.  Steve’s workshop was excellent as he had such a wealth of information to offer on animation techniques, film, media and thought processes.  I love the way he works in such an experimental way and uses such a wide variety of media and actively encourages students to find ways around problems and consider different visual solutions. Sellotape Cinema was great and I would consider using this method in the future.

 

Fabric Lenny is great and this was the second workshop I have attended, both of which I have enjoyed very much.  The process of stop motion is very time consuming from drawing the sketches to making the backgrounds and characters and then filming, but the outcome was a lot better than I expected considering we were all ‘newbies’. Again, I love how diverse Fabric Lenny is and how he makes animations using just an ipad but then branches out to do 3D sculptures and large scale presentations which are projected onto buildings. I think in this day and age you cannot be just a ‘one trick pony’. You have to be adaptable and run with the times.  Your work has to evolve to suit the ever changing audience and platforms that are becoming available and I think he has been very successful at achieving this.

 

I initially began documenting this project in my RVJ but quickly found that it was better to do an on-line blog as it was easier to show the animations in a digital form.

 

For me (and I think most people) the hardest part of this project was not learning the new software or deciding on media but the collaboration. I think when people are collaborating that are all individuals everyone has differing ideas and this can be a major sticking point when trying to decide on a group outcome that is acceptable for everyone. Sometimes a resolution cannot be reached and this is when a split or compromise has to be considered. This was the case with our group but I think has been resolved amicably.

 

I feel this project has been majorly stressful but fully enjoyable.  My emotions have ranged from exasperation and ‘I’m too old for this!’ to being really hopeful and pleased with what I have achieved. I have made characters from textiles, made gif animations, experimented with text manipulation in After Effects, did some hand drawn text, used my Wacom tablet the most I have ever used it, completed storyboards (and various revisions of), upgraded my Photoshop skills (I feel more ready for the Accreditation Exam now) and taught myself After Effects, to which I am by no means an expert but I can navigate my way around now and filmed stop motion of Mann’s and my own drawings – all in all a good result and I feel like this project has been a rollercoaster but I have learned sooo much!!

 

Overall I feel that in future projects, decisions need to made earlier as to what the form the project is going to take and who is responsible for what job within that project. I feel a lot of time was lost as people were all confused about what they were meant to be doing or were all working on the same thing instead of the workload being delegated out to the people who had skills in that area. For myself I feel that I need to be more assertive as I tend to go with other people’s ideas rather than offend people so this is something that I need to work on in the future.

 

On a final note, I have fallen in love with the animation studio on the second floor!  This is where Mann and I spent the whole of Thursday doing our stop motion after completing all the drawings. Tony Davis said the room was going to be a mess and we would need to clear a space – he wasn’t joking! After the initial shock and clearing a space we then found that one of the spotlights didn’t work. Another one we found had a different plug on it that didn’t fit the socket.  We were told we couldn’t hire one unless we booked it on-line and then came back later. We couldn’t get the lighting right and kept getting flickering in the video and didn’t get it sorted until 12.30pm so it began disastrously but after all this I really enjoyed this day. The room is peaceful, has no windows and you can just get on with your work in peace, I love it! AND we did get the stop motion finished eventually.

 

Roll on next project, can’t wait!

Final thought on After Effects

Using after effects was very daunting as I have never used it before but I found the best way to learn it was to just have a go and do lots of trials and eventually you learn where everything is.  If I got stuck I either looked up tutorials on the Adobe Support site or checked out Youtube tutorials from other animators.  I am very pleased that we have been offered free access to Lynda.com as this will be extremely useful for future projects.

I have got the hang of the keyframes and effects and how to add animation etc but I still have a lot to learn.  It was awkward trying to fit the audio to the animation but I eventually worked out how to change the animation to fit.

The hardest part was getting the audio to render with the animation as I could not find the setting to get them to render together.  At first I was only getting the animation on it’s own and then I was only getting the audio on it’s own. The only way I could find to do it was use the audio output and the video output and run them through a video joiner or another program like Wax.  Every tutorial I watched made it look really simple but it didn’t explain the settings correctly.  Anyway, I finally found a tutorial that was detailing enough and I managed it.

I then had the problem that I couldn’t upload on-line to places like vimeo as the video was too large so I had to find a video compressor to make it smaller and convert it to a .mov file.

Using After Effects was not the only program I had to learn but it forced me to find and use other programs and utilities to solve further problems and no doubt there will be future problems that will need solving.

I found it a very steep learning curve but I am very pleased to have found After Effects and I intend to continue learning and progress on to learning Premiere Pro as the next step.

Colour!

Wondered what the sketch I did yesterday would look like with colour.  Just messing about with my Wacom tablet to test out blending etc.  I have never been very good at colour so I need to force myself to use it a bit more.  Just happy I got my Wacom pen working again after accidentally flipping it into my coffee the other day – thought it was a goner but a hairdryer and a bowl of rice and a warm radiator later and we are up and running again thankfully.  Anyway, not bright colours (not that brave yet) but here is the coloured version:

Sketching for fun

Did this tonight. Wanted to see how I would go with shadows and light reflections.  Seems ages since I did any sketching, nice to get back to it………..

Ryan Woodward

Another of Ryan Woodward’s Animations. I love his work sooo much.

Final Animation for Submission

Did a few more little tweaks, added the sofa with the handsome man and the small child, a few more effects an audio track (which I am not keen on to be honest, I would have liked something a bit more upbeat but trawled through hundreds of tracks and couldn’t find anything I liked – maybe it would have been better to leave it without audio??) and also trimmed the audio and video so it ends in a good place.  Didn’t get time to do the whole audio but at last now it ends at an acceptable place as the other one continued with the audio after my animation had ended.

Just got to get to uni and submit it now.  My husband is even glad this project is finished, says I havn’t spoken to him for a month lol 🙂

 

First draft of final animation

Used some of my original drawings and combined them with Mann’s drawings and the stop motion we did last week to make this:

In the end (mostly due to lack of time) I used a combination of the original story board and the stopmotion that we made.  It’s not perfect but we have enough to hand in for the deadline on Tues.  We only need to submit 20 seconds worth of animation but in this one I have managed around 32 seconds (that is why the audio continues after the animation stops).  I would have like it to be much better but considering it is my first go at animation I am quite please with it and i have managed to get the animation in sync with the words which was not the easiest.

I might try and do some more to it before Tuesday as I have just finished my evaluation so I have a little more time.  I have also sent the video to Mann so she can have a mess around with it and see if she can make any improvements too (two heads are better than one eh?).  Anyway, if I manage to do an improved version I will post it here before Tuesday and from then on it is fingers crossed for marking.

 

Change of Plan

In the end Man and myself decided to try some stop motion as we were seriously running out of time.  We spent a whole evening drawing up all the components from the storyboard that we thought we might need and then arrived at uni the next day armed with everything we thought we would need including, tape, scissors, fishing wire, pipe cleaners, wire, card, tissue paper, all the props we had made, tripod, ipad, paints, pencils, cutters the full kit……….

This day was fraught with stress.  Our deadline was looming,we got to the animation studio  and firstly had to clear a space to work as there were so many other projects in production at the same time.  We finally settled on the animation station (don’t know the technical term but it has a work surface and light mounted either side and a zoom bracket ‘thingy’ that you can attach your camera/ipad to) only to find that one of the spot lights was out.  Tried to use another spot from around the studio and the plus was a different fitting and wouldn’t use a standard socket.  The main lights as these new fangled dimmer switches and would got the lights on but couldn’t turn them off again.  Then to top it off, we were using my ipad to film as we wanted to use istopmotion to film it and we could not get the lighting right and kept getting a flicker running across the screen when filming.  PS. if anyone knows how to solve this please let me know, is it just an ipad/iphone thing as we weren’t getting in with a camera but we needed to use istopmotion.  I presume it is something to do with the autofocus or refresh rate.

Anyway got the stop motions done in the end with the kind help of Steve helping us to sort the lighting, so long day but well worth it.

Videos of stopmotion: