Ranger Rick's Adventures - Completed Storyboard

I finished my Ranger Rick storyboard, so I'll be moving onto my animatic soon, finding voices for the characters and such. I've actually had a ton of fun with this storyboard, I enjoyed finding different camera angles to work with an although I found it difficult at times to get things looking right first time, I'm quite pleased with the final outcome of this.

 

Regrettably I had to use colour for some parts of it, as I found it was difficult to tell the location of the character in space, without the glow from the horizon.

 

I will now start work on my animatic, finding voices and music that fits the Ranger Rick Adventures theme.

 

Mighty Morphing...Morpheus

Here we are again, with more 3D work! I'm slowly coming to grips with the software now, which is awesome, considering it was one of the only types of animation I hadn't touched before coming here. I'm very interested in 3D Character animation, particularly for Games, so I guess it's probably good I'm starting to enjoy this :3

 

Our task was to put the Morpheus rig into several expessive poses, below are the ones I chose.

 

Fear/Repulsion

 

Happy/Agreeable

 

Annoyed

 



 

Down/Sad

 

Angry/Threatening

More Life Drawing!

Life drawing has rolled around once again, this time with my 4th week c: We had a younger female model for this session, which I found much more difficult to draw (mostly due to the lack of creases and wrinkles in her skin)

Session 4 

 

This first piece was a 1 minute drawing, so it turned out very sketchy and I made mistakes with it, for one the feet are facing different ways, the hand is bent awkwardly and the arm down her back is...I don't even know, but yeah, not good, not proud of this one :P

My second life drawing was very similar in teqnique to the life drawings I had done in previous sessions. We drew the model in 4 different poses in 2 minute intervals, all on the same piece of paper so that they overlapped. I think I did a much better job with these than on my first one, so I'm not so dissapointed with this.

Our third life drawing was more of an experimental technique. The model moved around whilst we were drawing her and the aim was to get as much movement into the drawing as possible. I did find this technique difficult at first but was quite pleased with the final outcome.

 

The Fourth drawing was yet another experimental piece and was more of a collaborative piece.We were given 5 minutes to work on a piece, then we had to more clockwise onto the easle next to us and work on another persons piece. We were allowed to cange their anatomical decisions or add more detail and shade. I started the above piece and three other people added detail to it.

Finally, the last life drawing was a 10 minute piece, I chose to work on black paper, much like the last piece of the previous session. I dew in only where the light was shining, however, this didn't come out as well as I expected, with her stomach area coming out very weird and distorted. I do think that her left arm and the legs came out close to real though, so I'm quite pleased with those two.

Personal Projects

I thought I'd update you guys with a little bit of my non-uni work :3 Just 'cause everything you've seen up until now has been uni related and why not? :D

Okay, so below is my character Torik Glythwing, who I play as in Dungeons and Dragons (I'm part of a group being run by the Table Top Gaming society in Falmouth)
Torik is a Druid Gritaur meaning zi (gritaur's don't have a gender, so zi and zir are used as the pronouns) has a beast form, which of course is an actual griphon.
I found drawing these concepts for zir a good way to get into character during D&D sessions (and I won't bore you all further with backstory information and such :P) but yush, below are some character designs of Torik Glythwing in different stances.

Secondly, personal storyboarding :3 Below is a storyboard I devised for a 'Multi Animator Project' I have joined recently, I have to animate some of my own characters to, a 7 second clip of 'The 12 days of Christmas' song by 'Relient K'

This storyboard is very basic so far and I have began with animating the first part of it in Flash. I am thinking about moving around some of the frames when it comes to animating it finally, so that the character falling in frame 5, falls in the final frame instead.

This is what I have so far, I'm not so pleased with the line art and hope with a bit more practice in Flash that I can get a cleaner feel to my lines.

Storyboarding Deep

During the completion of our main storyboarding project, we were also set a small, week long storyboarding task based on a screenplay called DEEP. The script for this involved a lady dressed in riding gear having a conversation with a man who doesn't quite believe in vampires she'd discovered on a case. Their conversation ends in conflict and he flees. Unlike our main storyboarding project, we were given a room to work within and shown different angles of this room. I found this was very good when it came to showing where the characters were in relation to the room, as I didn't have to make up the surroundings myself and the room we were given had wuite a few area's that could be used for focusing on in the background, like fireplaces, doors ect.

This took me 21 frames in total to portray. My final storyboard is shown below.

 

 

When doing this storyboard, I think I could've put the frames further appart to allow more room for writing dialogue/actions and I have now done this on my Ranger Rick one, leaving 5 lines below each frame and having 6 frames to a page.

 

A character take

Some more Paper Animation over here :D
This time we were asked to animate cubey reacting to something off screen by doing a cartoon take (as commonly seen in old cartoons, particularly the looney tunes)

I chose to have cubey react to a cake at the other end of the screen and to react to a never ending drop which was offscreen and placed just infront of the cake.

I thumbnailed and planned this first, all but the cake part at the end, which I added on because I thought it'd be a nice way to conclude the scene. When animating, I stuck to the principles of animation we were taught, as with the previous cubey animations. This took 77 frames to animate and I captured it using the line tester (Which unfortunately was having a few focussing problems when I captured with it, so my line test is not as crisp as my previous ones sadly D:)

So yush, my test is below

 

Until next (very soon) blog post o-o;

-Char

On Character Design

So the first bit of Character design I've put up here :D Good tiems.

We were set our first major project on the 26th August. This was a storyboarding project and had us choose from a selection of 3 different scripts. I chose a storyboard based on Ranger Rick adventures which starred 4 characters. A female fox by the name of Scarlett Fox, A male Racoon called Ranger Rick, a male Badger named Boomer Badger and a male Firefly named Felix.

I started off by making very basic sketches of the types of characters I wanted to be in this storyboard, before moving onto sketches of different poses this character could make, (to see whether I really liked the style i'd chosen) then finally I worked on basic expressions, colouring and turn arounds.

When designing these characters I looked up quite a few tips on character design, this page on computerarts came in very useful and prompted me to research the animals I was working with adn the audience this animation would be typically aimed at, before jumping straight in with designs. The concept of silohetting characters also really helped me. Making sure I didn't design characters with anatomy too close to each other, so even if they were all silohettes, they can be told appart. All the characters I designed are very simple and basic looking so that they work well and are easily distinguishable in my storyboard. "Animation 1" a book I borrowed from the library by Preston Blair was another one of the resources I used when designing my characters.

Scarlett Fox

Boomer Badger

Ranger Rick

Felix Firefly

Although designing and planning my characters in this way was a somewhat time consuming process, I feel it helped speed things up and really helped me when actually drawing out my storyboard. I didn't have to make up what a character looked like, could reference back to my turn arounds when I wanted different angles of the character and it allowed me to get a level of detail and continuity into the characters that I don't think I would've managed if I had drawn them straight in without thinking about design first.

A couple of pages of my storyboard are above, I have completed 70 frames of storyboard for this script in all, which I will post when I have finalised and completed them. My next task is recording scratch tracks for it and editing it into an animatic.

This blog is getting way too formal for me now however xD So I should probably try and stick to one writing style instead of switching in and out like this |D

Long time no blog...?

It's been a heck of a long time since I last blogged o-o and a heck of a lot of things have happened in that time, I have life drawing, storyboarding, character designs, some 3D work and another line testing to put up. So instead of putting it all up in one go and ending up with one massive garbled post, i'll seperate it into several posts.

So here goes, I'll start off with talking about Bradford.
The last time I posted  I was about to set off on a trip to Bradford to attend the animation festival that runs there between the 13th and the 17th December there. I spent the 12th travelling up on the coach with the rest of my class.

I made a ton of notes during this week and got lots of inspiration from the talks there, particularly from the BAF games section which was during the first two days of the festival.
So I'll sum up the week below (there is so, so much to talk about, I couldn't possibly write it all, so I'll just do a basic sum up of what I saw each day ect)

Tuesday 13th November 2012

• Oddworld Inhabitants - A talk by JUST ADD WATER games, the people working on the Oddworld pantology and inparticular those releasing New 'n' Tasty, a re-make of the original Abes Oddysee game. They talked to us a lot about New 'n' Tasty, Munch's Oddysee and explained Digital Distributions current impact on the gaming industry. Steam, PSN and XBLA account for more than 50% of all sales, meaning that Retail sales are a slowly declining form and will probably be phased out completely eventually (except collectors editions for people who want something physical in their collection)

• CD Projeckt Red - A talk with Tomek Zawada, someone who worked on the game 'The Witcher 2' which was produced and released by CD Projeckt Red. His talk went by the name of 'Choose your destiny, Movies vs Games' and he talked about the pro's and cons of working in the advertising animation and movie animation vs working in the games industry. This talk was somewhat biased but was very interesting. It was nice hearing from someone working in the games industry that was passionate about his job. The games industry is definately my main industry I will be aiming for, as video games are something I am very interested in and passionate about. He gave us some tips on portfolios for the games industry, saying that creativeity is more important than experience in this sector and to show off passion and a positive attitude. He said to try and personalise your CV and portfolio to the company and to keep your portfolio specific to what you're applying to do, not just a mix of random things.

• Official Selection - Professional 1 - A mix of different short animated films made by professional animators.

• Nyamyam - A small indie developer working on a game by the name of Tengami. This talk was by Jennifer Schneidereit and Philip Tossell who talked about founding an indie game studio, their reasons behind it and were able to show us some live gameplay of tengami in action. One thing I found particularly interesting was that they set a goal for the studio, a moral to stick by when creating games in the future and something they could use to stay true to themselves when making games. This moral was 'To create beautifully crafted games that express who we are and bring a sense of wonder to the player'. I really liked this idea as it shows they are making games for reasons other than 'it'll sell' so unlike some bigger developers, they're making games for their own reasons rather than making the next Call of Duty or other generic shooting fighter game, just because it is what's popular and is what will make them lots of money. They explained that Tengami is a game that is more about what is means to be human and not just sex and violence as other games have done. Nyamnyam are self funded and self published, have created their own engine and are releasing tengami for the ipad at some point in the future. I found this talk really inspiring as I really love the indie game industry.

• Sony Entertainment - This talk was primarily about the technology involved in Sony's new gaming add on, the Wonderbook. We were talked to by Joel Smith, someone who worked in the London Sony Studio, a large gaming studio that employs 300+ staff. We were shown many different aspects of the Harry Potter - Book of Spells game, from the concepts to the completion. They shared some of the hurdles they came across when creating it and how the overcame them, so overall it was a very interesting talk and a nice insight into how different studios work.

• Bethesda - This was a talk by Lucas Hardi from Bethesda games, it was an incredibly useful and interesting talk as he went very indepth about working in the games industry and the game creation process as a whole. During the talk, he made points about Graphics VS art style making reference to The Style Triangle by Scott Mccloud and the theory of the uncanny valley. He explained and pointed out the trend of games going towards achieving realism with the intention that 'the more real it looks the more real it feels' and is this really the case a lot of the time? Does better graphics and a more real looking game really make you more immersed than a game heavily influenced by art? and isn't gameplay the most important thing of all. Some other really interesting points he made were the differences between environments in films and environments in animations and games. In film you can caprure lifes natural processes automatically wheras in games and animation this must be done by hand. Modeling the environment, texturing it to add colour and detail, lighting it to draw the eye  where needed, shading to show how surfaces react to light, the animation of the camera to mimic the way a film camera would move or to move the player around in the game and finally simulating the eye (bloom and visual colouring such as moonlight looking more blue to the eye). How animation and artstyle can be applied to games was also talked about, such as games animation not being able to follow the rules of anticipation as the player will expect movement as soon as they press. Hardi explained that the fundamentals of becoming good at game design is to establish a style as soon as possible and once established, stick to it. To draw, draw, draw. To use trial, error and discovery and finally to remember that 'great games are played, not made', get a prototype working as soon as possible in the creation process to see if it actually works.

Wednesday 14th November 2012

• Brutal Bus -  The speaker for faceware, our first talk was stuck in traffic, so Christine Phelan who was set to speak to us later as the Valve talk talked a little about a bus, based on brutal legend that a small group of people, including herself made for the Los Angles Soap Box Race. It was really interesting to hear about how they made and tested this and it ended up looking really good and getting them a win! I found this talk really interesting and it was nice to know more about what animators did in their spare time.

• Faceware -  This talk was held by David Bennet, CEO of the company 'Face Ware'. Faceware is a tool used for animating facial expressions. David explained that whilst working at Sony Imageworks, he became interested in facial animation and how it doesn't seem quite realistic enough. He mentioned the term 'dead, eyes' during this, which is when human facial expressions and eyes in CG just don't feel real and may seem even creepy. The films 'The adventures of TinTin (2011) and The Polar Express (2004) are two CG films that are often critisized for having these 'dead eyes'. David told us that body language is something we are conciously all doing, without being aware of it and the facial and eye movements can be so minor that it's hard for animators to pick up on what to add during production, thus producing the 'dead eye' look. This facinated David, causing him to work on facial animations for many games whilst working at Sony. He was able to really focus on facial animation whilst working at New Zealands Weta Digital, on Avatar. This was where 'Face Ware' really began, when he experimented by mounting a camera onto a helmet, suspended infront of an actor. This could then be imported into Facewere where points could be set onto a 3D character, each point would have to correlate to the point on the face of the actor that was moving. For example, the pupil of the actor to the pupil of the model. After this short manual process, the program would then animate the face, exactly as the actor acted it. This program allowed you to add very detailed facial movement with very little effort and the could add very small detailed movements into the eyes, making the characters of Avatar seem more alive. After the production of Avatar, David moved on to where he is now, pioneering his own company FaceWare and leading the art of facial motion capture in CG. Since then, Faceware technology has been used in over 50 video games and a good handful of films.

• Valve - This was an amazing talk given by Christine Phelan, an artist and animator currently working at Valve. She gave us a massive insight into the video games industry, telling about her carrer, experiences at other video games companies as well as giving us an insight of what it's like to work at Valve, telling us how to improve our showreels and giving us tips on how we can get into the industry. She started by telling us about her career, she took a masters degree in animation
• Amanita Design
• Bioware

Thursday 15th November 2012

• Double Negative
• Official Selection: Short Shorts
• Professional Panorama 2
• Official Selection: Student 1

Friday 16th November 2012

• Bridging the gap from university to professional animator
• Animation and Games for new platforms
• Mark Shapiro LAIKA Studios
• ParaNorman
• Official Selection Music videos and Commercials

Saturday 17th November 2012

• Brave
• Will Becher Aardman Animations
• The Pirates! An adventure with scientists
• BAF Awards Ceremony

To be continued...