Character Animation Completion

Character Animation

Animatic finished :D A couple of the frames are maybe a bit rushed and sketchy so will come back to it soon and fix those, as well as the timing in certain places, but more or less finished! Awesometimes.

Animatic would be here!

Also photoshopped my model sheet from my sketchbook - it was pretty disproportional and a bit painful to gaze upon ^^ Finished version is much better in my opinion, so worth the work.

Isn't he adorable :D

Looking to get his movie up on youtube soon - from my other module Time Based Narrative - if I can get silly Mikey to show his face and finish the last shot for me :D Watch this space

Time-based Narrative

For time-based narrative, our submission was to create a 3 minute title-sequence for a film from our imagination. For this i created a story about a man named Lewis, also used for character animation module, he is a doctor from southern England who suffers from nightmare disorder, slowly morphing into insomnia. Various flashbacks from his dreams are slowly causing him to believe that they are in fact predictions of the future, and he eventually becomes what we would perceive as insane. The title sequence that i created would show Lewis in his nightmare, running away from an invisible entity that is chasing him tirelessly. At the end he jumps off a cliff and wakes himself up, thus the audience learns that it was all a nightmare.

I found this project very exciting and interesting to do, and coming up with ideas while shooting the footage for the shots was really good fun. I am very happy with how my sequence has turned out, i went through many hours of editing to get it just right!

It's not completely finished yet, but most of it is finalized.

External files: The Battle of One (draft), Sketch/notebook

Next steps: Finish final draft of storyboard, up from drafts and finish reflective essay

3D Production Design2

For the second semester of 3D production Design our submission was to build, map, and texture a 3D vehicle, environment and character.

Vehicle

Vehicles were never really something i was interested in, making this part of the submission really difficult for me. I came up with my idea from looking at the shape of a jaguar's body, deciding i would like to design a motorcycle around it. My concept changed slightly since the beginning, but my finished model was that of a chopper design, with a large powerful back wheel, and a curved body. This model I am least happy with, due to my lack of skills back when i made it, if i had the time i would love to build upon it and make it better, but there are other things that i have to finish before i would consider re-doing it.

Environment

My environment i decided to base loosely around my group's entertainment design concept, and i designed a small tribal village. My original idea involved there being a lot more buildings but in order to stay under the maximum polygon count i had to try and make the whole thing a lot simpler. I completed this a lot faster than my vehicle, using techniques that i'd learned such as duplication to speed up the UV mapping process. The totem pole was the only really difficult piece of this model.

Character

For my character i was going to model a character i had designed for my Entertainment design module (the Demigod of Mischief) but dismissed this idea, for whatever reason, i don't quite remember why ^^. I decided instead to try and model a lion, a feat that i never thought i could have managed so well. Since none of my course-mates i had seen had attempted to model anything animal-based, i got really excited about this design, and spent many hours at a time trying to make it the best that i could make it. I enjoyed every minute of making this model, simply because it was something i wanted to make! Even though i encountered countless problems which caused endless anxiety, I feel that making this model showed me just how much my skills have progressed, which was satisfying indeed.

I named him Rory :D

External files: Sketchbook work

Next steps: touch up all 3 models, write reflective essay

Possible summer project: Try to get a copy of maya and continue building confidence!

Character Animation

For character animation we had two main submissions. The first was a hand-drawn animation featuring an object that does not normally have human characteristics and emotions - this object being a sack of flour. For my flour sack, in order to have him show more than one emotion, i created a scenario where he is happily playing the guitar until he manages to break a string, and then is so sad about this that he gives up and leaves. I found the process of making this animation, although very time-consuming and sometimes even really difficult, rather exciting because i have never attempted a hand-drawn animation before.

My almost-finished flour sack animation can be found here!

The next and main part of my Character Animation module was to design and create a character to be used in an animation. We first had to design our character's personality, qualities and attributes before we even started to draw him. After going through various ideas including a vegetarian zombie, I decided to explore further into the character i created for my other module Time-based narrative. His name is Lewis, he is a doctor from southern England who suffers from nightmare disorder, slowly morphing into insomnia. Various flashbacks from his dreams are slowly causing him to believe that they are in fact predictions of the future, and he eventually becomes what we would perceive as insane.

I have yet to produce a suitable quality character layout and emotions sheet, but have done various sketches and paintings of my character, shown below.

Also part of this submission is to write a script for a 30 second animatic that would show more than one aspect of our character's personality.

I have recently completed my storyboard for the animatic that i am to create for the final submission in this project. This was an enjoyable experience because i have come to know my character fully inside-out and i enjoy drawing him and building on his story ^^

External files: Storyboard/script/description, Animatic (unfinished), sketchbook

Next steps: to complete model sheet, expression sheet, animatic

Possible summer project: Continue with animation to produce full short story

Entertainment Design

Entertainment Design was the module i worked on the most at the start of the semester. For this module, we were arranged into groups comprising of computer arts students, visual communications students and computer games production management students alike, and were tasked with creating a game in the group. My group were down a member from the start, which posed us little problems, as we already had enough artists as it was! And we had little problems with effort and turning up at all, in the beginning. We all got on together very well, making me really enthusiastic to work for them, and produce the best that i could.

Our game concept is called "Gods" (which is still a working title, i believe ^^)
It involves a tribe of african/south american-like tikki people with problems in their lives, that can only be solved by praying to the gods for their help. It is a mini-game based game where the player has to work their way through all the mini-games to please the chosen god and fix whatever problem they have chosen to fix.
My role within my group was mainly concept design. I produced multiple sketches and paintings for the aspects of the games that i chose/was tasked with creating, and had a really good time doing it. The first character that was finalized was the main protagonist of the game, who will be the player's avatar through the mini-games.

His name is Ikki ^^

He came to life through a series of sketches that my group caught me doodling, and instantly liked, so i decided to develop him, and this is how he turned out!

The next character that i designed was one of the Gods, shown only as a picture in the menu/loading screens (and represented during gameplay as a hand in the sky). To create the Goddess of the Harvest, i continued with the concept that all the characters in the game are wearing masks (a concept that was my own :) and built her a costume with the themes of nature and feminine charm. The rest just seemed to fall into place, and i had a finished concept in no time, which the group approved of greatly.

This is how she evolved, near the end of her creation, the last image is to be used in-game.

A character that i was asked to design, but sadly never made it into the actual game concept, was an angry bear that Ikki would have to face to prove his courage. Bears being one of my favourite animals, i was happy to delve into this and make a lot of sketches into how the character would operate. When this was dropped i held my chin up and moved onto the aspects that were going to be implemented ^^

One good thing that did come out of our bear was our group logo xD Still to be finalised.

The last character, and easily my favourite, was the character of the Demigod of Mischief - the trickster who would try to sabotage Ikki's rituals and prevent the tribe from recieving the help it requires. I went through many different initial designs for him, using research that both myself and my manager Bill had found from the deepest depths of google. When i finally settled on a style, i became very excited and produced a number of paintings featuring him, trying to get his look just right. What i ended up with was a very sinister looking, imp-like character, with a mask like the other gods, created with a coyote skull, but which he seldom wears (rebellion!). I decided to try and get the right balance of cute and evil, and will admit that maybe the final design is slightly too far on the evil side of the scale, but i think it works well, as did the others, so here he is!

He's aaaaaaawesome :D

So that's it for the concept design, mostly. There were a few other little things i contributed to, but these are my babies. More recently i've been trying to get some animations done for the gameplay, and they are scattered all over the place, but most can be found on the group blog here .

One of them, featuring the Trickster sabotaging the first mini-game, is this here. Still under development, the character is far to tall, for example, but gives a good idea of the kind of style i've had to go for ^^

External files: Sketchbook work

Next steps are: finishing animations and bulking up portfolio of work for submission

Semester Two!

Semester one of second year, although seemingly stressful and difficult at the time, was nothing compared to semester two! xD
For starters, having four modules with submissions instead of two doubled the work amount. Furthermore, the standards seem to have shot up into the sky, putting more and more pressure on me to make everything the absolute best that it can be.
My modules for this second semester have been: Entertainment Design, 3D Production Design, Character Animation and Time-Based Narrative. Each of them requiring huge amounts of research, development and presentation work, as well as essays!
Oh dear oh dear.
But, as much as i complain, i enjoy it all thoroughly ^_^

I am still working on my semester two work, as it is still ongoing at this time, but will continue to post my work so far, and explain where i intend to leave it for the submission in May.

Entertainment design

Entertainment design! My favourite module of the first semester. For this module we had to create a large scale concept of an interactive media piece as well as a small interactive piece of our own. My large scale concept and interactive submission were both about the same game concept, involving a cat and a dog trying to find their owners after they are left alone at home.

After a huge amount of sketchbook work and after dismissing many many ideas, i settled on this idea because i had very high hopes for it.

After i developed my idea i began to work on the large scale concept, because that was easier to think about at the time, rather than how i was going to make an interactive piece with next to no knowledge in actionscript at all. My idea morphed into a full game design, where the player chooses to utilise the abilities of the dog and the different abilities of the cat in order to progress along the levels.

For my interactive piece i decided to implement the only piece of code that i could get to work, which was a scrolling background and controllable characters that can walk across the screen. Even this in itself was a daunting and terrible task, as an artist. Actionscript just doesn't ever seem to want to listen to artists! But in the end i got it finished, and all working correctly, even adding in a special ability button, and a swap character button, which i was indeed very proud of.

Here's a link to the finished interactive piece, which i titled "Unity"

3D Production Design

3D was a subject i felt, at the end of first year, that was the pain in my neck. No matter how hard i tried to concentrate and take in all the information about this hideous program Maya, i just couldn't get it to do as i wanted it to!

In the first semester, following the tutorials along with Ken was easy enough, as he was always on hand and knew exactly what we were supposed to be doing. Even taking notes was tricky, as i seem to work by remembering images and not words, and all the images looked the same!

First semester was no where near as daunting as the start of the second semester was, but i did manage to learn a lot of major techniques, including UV mapping which i'd never even touched on before, a gigantic leap in 3D modelling for me, personally.

As there was no submission for this module in the first semester, i have nothing to post other than - man am i glad i managed to get better at this eventually :D

Life Drawing

A module which was carried on from first year was Life drawing. This was a module that i openly admitted to disliking in first year, but will honestly say that i really enjoyed in second year. I find this was due to the improvement of my skills in this area of art, and my growing appreciation for just how important it is for any kind of art course. I particularly enjoyed the submission part of this module, which was an observational drawing sketchbook. Sitting drawing my friends and actually being able to recognise who they are from the drawings was a very satisfying task!

First Semester

During the first semester of second year i had 3 core modules plus an optional choice module to complete. For my optional choice i chose to study Japanese, a subject which i enjoyed but was glad not to carry on with it for the second semester. Landing me a B17, i found this module helpful to me because, like learning any language, it builds confidence as well as knowledge about the culture of the people of the world. As well as the end of semester exam, there were hand-ins to complete such as an animated mange presentation, which i found good fun due to my interest in art and design ^^
Rach, my character for my manga presentation.