Concept Art!

This concept art was to get a general idea of the use of colours we'd use (we're aiming for a Sepia-tone - leaning towards red rather than yellow) and an idea of how we'd like the environment to look. One of my team-mate's, Phil, modelled a set out of cardboard HERE which has been incredibly useful for visualising shots and movement for our story as well as being valuable reference for concept art.
We want the environment to look real until the end of our 'scene' where it will be revealed to be a 'set', so thick shadows, smoke and the use of lighting will play heavily into creating this 'real' atmosphere and will hopefully echo the 'Film Noir' style I have been drawing reference from.

Gloria Turn-around!

Black and White turn-arounds of Gloria. (Colours to be determined). 

As the legs and part of the coat are to be separate I layered the turn-around so both can be referred to when modelling.

 I also thought it would be useful to create a head turnaround in flash, this was to give an idea of how the hair would look in 360, as well as helping my drawing/proportion/continuity skills.

Flash turn around of Gloria (click to view)

The hat is also an important aspect to our character but will be modelled separately. 

Research and Refining First Character Design

I found this character sheet from Lilo and Stitch quite useful when thinking about the shape and design for our 'main' character Gloria. By simplifying the design into key shapes the character can be blocked out and their key attributes highlighted.

Lilo and Stitch Character Design

For example, using round shapes adds to femininity - such as large hips etc. This is something I am trying to apply to our character Gloria by giving her the classic 'Hourglass'. However proportion wise she is mostly legs, illustrating that she is slightly out of balance and quite likely to fall over. It also allows us the chance to add comic effect to the Character's interaction by creating a large height difference between Gloria and the Boss/Inspector character. Using this idea of shapes it seemed natural for the Boss character to be opposite to Gloria - therefore  squarer and stouter, implying he would never fall over. (More of his development will be blogged later!) 

Our Character Designs thinking about Height 

Style wise I've noticed an upcoming animation from Walt Disney Animation Studios called 'Paperman', it's interesting as it blends 3D animation with 2D. I find the character design of the woman interesting and useful in terms of the fact it's quite simple/cartoony but effective, and her face has the balance of feminine and innocence that I've been trying to achieve with Gloria. Though we probably won't be having our cut-scene in black and white, the simple tones and lack of incredibly detailed/realistic texturing on the characters is useful to keep in mind.

Paperman Character Designs

'Meg' from Paperman's Hair also is quite of interest to our character design, as though it seems quite natural it also has a structure and simplicity to it - it's mainly made up of a few key shapes. 

 When thinking about our character's hair I have to take into account the fact that she will be wearing a hat for most of the time (until it gets knocked off), so have tried to make the top quite flat, only allowing curls at the bottom.  Luckily the style around the 1950's is quite 'set', so hopefully when this is modelled her hair can just be solid shapes that are later textured slightly/given a shine. 

Context of Practice Lecture - Psychoanalysis (Notes)

SWOT

The following is a 'SWOT' analysis of myself, in order to see where I need to improve etc.

Inspiration from Glen Keane's work to change Gloria

I haven't been happy with The Detective's face (- we've decided her name is 'Gloria Kendrick'). She's meant to be clumsy, enthusiastic with slightly misplaced over-confidence - so in a sense quite innocent looking. She doesn't realise the amount of work she'll have to put in to become who she wants to be. At the moment she just seems incredibly doll-face looking, as mentioned earlier this is probably also due to my drawing style.

In general we're also aiming for a slightly stylised look as this will allow us to mess and manipulate proportions (for example Gloria has incredibly long legs - easy to fall over). Siobhan has been working on some designs for our second character, and they illustrate enhanced proportions well. Seen HERE.

It's important the design of both characters correspond and compliment each other, we've thought of this to an extent (he is short and built showing he won't fall over - and also to add comic value at the contrast to her height) but I still think the current design of Gloria needs to be tweaked in order to 'fit in' with the overall style of our cinematic.

With this in mind I've been looking through 'The Art of Tangled' book I bought over summer. It's full of beautiful concept art, sketches and character development. More specifically to my design problems at the moment though, are the drawings of Rapunzel by Glen Keane.

Glen Keane - Rapunzel

With just a few lines Glen Keane manages to create a character full of expression and charm. In these sketches the eyes are quite rounded and wide giving Rapunzel quite a young innocent feel. In general her face is quite round, the lack of sharp edges giving her a cute, non-threatening look. Influenced by this style I've doodled and sketched a little bit, trying to make the eyes of our character - Gloria - more innocent and wide-eyed, and taken into account the fact her mouth should probably be less pouting and instead wider and expressive. The below image has the face I'm happier with, i still think some things, such as hair, needs to be tweaked, but overall our character Gloria's face is less harsh and 'made-up' and more innocent and expressive.

Face sketches and a better look for Gloria

UV Texturing - Alien

Last Tuesday we took the next step with our Alien models and recapped our knowledge on unfolding the UV map of our models. It was useful to do this with a 'humanoid' object, as previously we'd only really done this on general objects.

My texturing is quite simple, but I like it.

Silhouettes and the Detective's Face.

The aesthetic of the characters should clearly indicate to the audience the personality and purpose of the character, so we have filled in Character sheets (found on Siobhan's blog HERE) - highlighting key character traits - in order to influence the design of the Character.

At the moment I am focusing on the Detective character who will be tall with long limbs as she will be falling over at some point. This shows she hasn't much balance. However when blocking out initial character silhouettes we decided her arms shouldn't be too ridiculously long, and she should seem at least marginally proportional. 

I wanted to keep some of the 1950's style incorporated in her design, so her body shape is quite a strong hour glass figure, making her easily recognisable as a female. However she's mainly all legs, which should be a good contrast against our other character, who is meant to be quite short and stout.

I still think her face need developing - it seems quite Doll like at the moment (however that is also due to my general drawing style).

Future Events - Thought Bubble

I went to Thought Bubble last year and really enjoyed it, meeting talented people who were enthusiastic about their work was really inspiring and incredibly motivational. This is why I am intending to go again this year, hopefully speaking more to the artists about their work, making a few contacts and getting a few pointers on how to improve my work. It will be useful to see a range of different styles and approaches to comic books, as this could be influential to future story boards I draw. How the story is told is very interesting to me so ThoughtBubble, with it's vast and varied supply of comics should be useful and fun to attend.

http://thoughtbubblefestival.com/

Skills I want to Develop outside of our Modules

There are quite a few things I want to improve and/or look into that aren't necessarily covered specifically in our Course Modules this year.

A main skill that I'm always trying to improve is my drawing/illustration ability. I'm considering starting Life Drawing again to improve drawing anatomy (as well as finding reference with anatomy books etc) and also focus on bringing more expression and movement into Characters I draw. A book I am reading at the moment 'Character Mentor' by Tom Bancroft explains the importance of character poses and I am finding it very useful. In honesty I should challenge myself a little more to draw a range of things I wouldn't usually draw (as I mainly focus on drawing faces).

Speed and quality are aspects I want to improve too, as I'd like to be able to produce concept art at a quicker pace than I am at the moment, yet still keeping a good quality. I'm planning on practicing using Photoshop and generally sketching in my sketchbook in my spare time as well as researching how artists I admire create their work.

Something not really covered on the course is 2D animation. Over summer I started using Flash and found it quite interesting to use, especially hand drawing the animation. It's something I'd like to develop in my free time if possible, as it would also cause me to focus on anatomy and movement in drawings (- as stated above these are things I really need practice in) if I were to animate a character.

I'm also quite interested in getting involved in more practical things - building things etc -, which would get me away from constantly working on the computer. For example I'm interested in Set Design, which I am looking into at the moment.

It looks like it'll be a pretty busy year developing these skills alongside the skills we'll be improving and learning in the course!

Some Initial Concept Art

The concept at the moment has our female Detective-in-training Character seeing herself as a successful and suave detective. The above image is a rough indication of how she may imagine herself - it is not an indication of how she will look. I've taken into account the 'film-noir' style, which may influence the style of our designs, but the form of the woman herself will probably be more stylised and - in a way - 'cartoony'.

Building an Alien in Maya - Thinking about Topology

Last Tuesday we were set the task to build an alien from the reference images given. Keeping in mind how the structure (Topology) effects movement, as we will be rigging it in the future.

Though I understood the concept of topology and researched examples I struggled building the head of the alien at first:

struggling to build the head...

In order to visualise it more clearly I roughly - using other examples as a guide - drew out how I thought the topology should look.

 It helped a little, and after a few more attempts at modelling (and focusing on the body first as the shapes were slightly simpler) I've become more comfortable modelling with a focus on topology.

Developing the Detective and thinking of Style.

We've been looking into Detectives to inspire our Characters, and decided on the more 'classical' style, specifically the wearing of a Trenchcoat. It's quite an iconic look that's still used today (for example in BBC's Sherlock), so would clearly indicated the role of the character. This has led us to researching older fashion styles and films etc (roughly around the 1950's). As the 'main' character is a woman we're looking into the fashion of women of that time too, specifically hair, makeup etc.

Below are some initial sketches and notes of mine, influenced and referenced from the book 'A Pictorial History of Crime Films - Ian Cameron'. I've tried to highlight the key aspects which enhance the 1950's style, for example on women - the dark eyes/done hair/ and lips, as well as look at the overall use of light and heavy shadows. Something quite noticeable is the smokey effect these photo's and films have - which is perhaps something we can incorporate. 

Initial Ideas! - Moodboard

We are working in teams of 3 to create a short 'cut-scene' in Unity (using Maya etc. to create models/animations) inspired by one of the following titles: 'Exchange/Stolen/Surveillance'. These were our initial notes:

• Exchange: Conflict - Mix up of objects between people - knock into each other mix up.
• Stolen: - stolen Identity - Stealing something - pick pockets? - Objects being stolen - grave digger? - tomb raider style?- alien abduction? < more futuristic < (set on alien space ship?)
• Surveillance: - cctv - cameras (on wall?) - prison - shopping mall - supermarket - student halls - office blocks - future/spaceships? - aliens surveying humans? - detective? - private detective? - hidden/stalking following - peeping tom - army - spy - first person hand held camera - robots - helicopters - satellite - big brother.

We decided we were all leaning towards 'Surveillance' so decided to develop ideas in this section further, beginning to draw inspiration from films, games and animations.

Surveillance:

We've now begun developing the idea of a young female detective taking part in a training test, overseen by her boss/an 'inspector' character - as our cut-sceen needs to have interaction between two characters - this would be set around the 1950's.

Final Fantasy 13 Cinematic - Game Art and Machinima

So Second Year starts with Game Art and Machinima, to prepare we were asked to choose a 'favourite' cinematic/cut-scene from a game

http://youtu.be/cdxVdZHDPaQ

I chose the beginning cut scenes of the game 'Final Fantasy 13', as I was always impressed by the quality and style of them. (unfortunately I couldn't embed the video so to view click link above)

The above stills are from the first 'half' of the video, and are pre-rendered. This is shown through the amount of detail in the characters and their surroundings. There is a level of detail in reflections, textures and animation that would be difficult to render in game, for example in the use of glowing/light effects. The cinematics of this game are, in my opinion, it's main appeal, as they are so visually impressive that they serve as an incentive to play the game further in order to watch more.

Around the 3:50 mark of the video it turns to in-game footage, as the quality of animation is slightly lessened and then easily blends into actual gameplay, there is less of a 'finish' to the scene. (Stills below) It is useful to see the difference between pre-rendered and in-game 'footage' and the way they can be mixed to create a narrative for the game.

In this module we are going to be concentrating on Machinima ('Machine Cinema'). Creating a 'cut-scene' through real time rendering in game. We have to keep in mind there are certain constraints when using Unity (where we'll be creating the cut-scene) and the quality of animation may be hindered slightly, however a successful narrative can be built in game, with good setting and sound design as well as considered movements of characters.

Over Summer...

So Summer's over and it's time to start the second year of Digital Film, Games and Animation!

It's been quite a long break, so I've been trying to keep busy. One thing I thought I'd try out was using Flash, as I'd been watching a few animated films and become interested in 'hand-drawn' animation, and giving characters life. (Click To View)

Using Flash to draw a full head-turn around has helped me practice drawing more consistently and at different angles. It's also made me more aware of illustrating volume in drawings. 

Coloured (The colour quality is lost in exportation)

I also - whilst reading 'The Animator's Survival Kit' - decided to try a walk cycle. Though the process took time, I enjoyed creating movement through drawings, and hopefully will experiment with Flash further in my spare time or to create animatics for future projects.

I've been sketching a lot over summer, attempting to challenge myself with different references, as I want to improve my technique. Ever so often these have then been transferred into Photoshop where I can practice colour too. I've been quite interested in the use of light recently, (especially since seeing Danny Boyle's film 'Sunshine'), so have tried to experiment with that in my work.