To be frank, I have no reason for choosing character animation, I only chose it because the deadline was drawing to a close. I had an immensely hard time deciding between what pathway was right for me. I spoke to students and several teachers on the matter and thus concluded to choose character just because, and I believe I’d work better in a slightly more structured environment from what was being said.
My initial inspiration coming from animation is that of the works of Don Hertzfeldt, and the art of movement. I am passionate about film, but I am also passionate about art, and that combined fits to animation. Storytelling is of prime importance to me and my work, and I want it to be brought to life with the flexibility animation has to offer. Despite film being a close second, it can never recreate animation the same exact way.
I hope to explore and find out how I want to communicate storytelling in the means of animation, by learning its roles and working through group projects. I want to gain some understanding of what I want to do precisely, and what I feel I’d enjoy doing most.
Task two: research
I wanted to try and observe my surrounding environment by heading to the park and local Pret so I could do some life drawing. However, the search for creativity and attempt to innovate ideas was short lived, and I grew quite frustrated. I wrote about it particularly at Pret, because no one there was interesting, rather all the same.
Life drawing in park
Life drawing and annotation of Pret’s surroundings
It wasn’t until I decided to take a deeper look at who I’ve drawn, and remembered I was actually quite intrigued over this woman sitting at the bench for quite a long time. She wasn’t distracted by a phone, book or anything, just sat in contemplation. So, I thought to use this person as a character I could investigate and create of my own, of who I think she could be.
Here I drew a profile sketch with some visuals of my reimagined character inspired by this person. I believe, and I think, she is someone who still at an older age has no idea what to do, but the difference being she is content at where she is. I was also inspired by an older person I spoke to who doesn’t know what they want to do either, but they are happy regardless, and I feel the same way.
I also don’t ever draw or focus on older people, so this was quite a different idea and approach to my work.
I also went on to Pinterest to create a small online scrapbook of some work I like and am inspired by, mainly being some of David Lynch’s art work. It is visceral yet simple and strictly black and white which is what I’ve always leaned towards. I wanted to try an incorporate some of this into the triptych I’ll create
Insert board
Upon further research and lightly being inspired by the La Jetee featurette, I decided to narrate this reimagined character’s day through photographs. It was admittedly difficult without this person posing for I think she did through the day, and street photography didn’t feel right, because they weren’t describing this person. So, I took pictures of absence, narrating her day without the actual character being in the photo. I believe I could have done more experiments and further research on this and photography, but I am nonetheless content with what I have done. It was also the first time I actually noticed the first signs of autumn. Those details have really slipped past my mind.
Contact sheet
Hopes and dreams – Triptych
This is the concept sketch of what I want the triptych to look like. I want it to be a representation of the character’s stages through her life. From childhood to adolescence, and to where she is now. There is an air of hopefulness and excitement over growing up and wanting to do many things as a child, then uncertainty as a young adult. And despite still not truly knowing the answer at a wiser age, the answer to what she really needed and looked for was that she was content.
A rough sketch of Elodie in a sample shot I had visualised in my head.
The first rough drafts of what the twins could look like, I also added small notes for myself on the possibilities. Below is the final design of the twins.
Further concept sketches of the twins.
A small task we were given to creating characters on the spot based on shapes, and expanding in on our own imagination without reference.
A rough sketch of an Elodie side profile attempt, because I’d never sketched this personal character from different viewpoints.
The initial first background I tried to attempt in colour, before replacing the medium to photography/collage.
Here is the rest of the smaller experiments I made on the traditional animation approach.
Simple scrunched paper animation
Scribble to circle animation, with light box turned on. At the end of this outcome I personally preferred having the light box turned off, so I didn’t try this again for future experiments.
A collation of 24 different cards and letters I received over the many years addressed to me. The rest of the cards used ‘to’ instead of ‘dear’ which didn’t match to the animation, so I couldn’t use all of them.
Small ink animation experiment. An illustration of a vague memory of my bedroom and the pile of books as a staircase.
Another version of this experiment where I animated what the ink printed onto the other side of the paper.
A last version of this experiment where I attempted to add a character. I could have been more expansive on this line of experiments.
A recount animation of my childhood room, where I don’t use my light box, and try to draw blindly instead.
The beginning phase to my final outcome, at 15 frames.
On the final rotation, we were introduced to the importance of how a storyboard structures and finalises a story.
We’ve exercised and ran through different tasks focusing on how to understand this in both a traditional and digital standpoint.
The first task we explored was to quite literally create a 1 panel storyboard that was also meant to be done in a short time span under a particular brief. This was to help us highlight an important moment or action that would be represented in one panel, as well as trying to explore how that action would be represented shot-wise.
For my outcome, I chose to represent two characters, one of whom the other hasn’t seen in a long time and notices them from the crowd.
We also got onto working on a hands on drawing task where we had to illustrate the class in continuous line and move round to produce a somewhat interesting perspective. Being accurate in perspective wasn’t the main objective, rather that we just had to try and draw the whole class in a time frame. This has both strengthened my skillset in drawing from life, as well as loosening up and not worrying too much about making it look ‘good’, and being in a time constraint. I often struggle with time and taking too long, so having a time limit helped me focus on getting to the point and trying to finish the drawing.
I was quite content with the outcomes and didn’t expect it to, because I am not particularly skilled in perspective. Though it produced quite an interesting recurring style that made the outcome compelling and different.
For the next task, we went on a trip to the Tate to do life drawing. The difference was that we weren’t drawing a model posing for us, rather real life people that don’t know we’re drawing them, which is what made it the ultimate challenge. We also had try and find stories out of those people and whatever they were doing. We had to keep our eyes peeled and try to make sense of the details we often walked past by. I relatively enjoyed this, because it has helped not only with life drawing in general and improving on proportion, but also extreme yet unpredictable time constraints, because people can move, get up, walk away, or notice we are drawing them. I had to remain curious and try to find people I could draw, and situations I could try and interpret into my drawings.
Insert drawings.
For the second part of the task when we had to find a story from any of those people, and to try and capture it, I really struggled. So, I decided to go to a cafe later on, and capture more people and stories then. It was easier, because most of the time in a cafe, people are sat down, and aren’t paying attention. This led to a variety of more outcomes which I am quite content with.
3 panel storyboard
This outcome is based on a drawing I made of a couple smiling together in the cafe. The story is about a woman’s life who tries to find ‘the one’ assuming there is someone at the end of the red string. On the last panel, the string is no longer visible, because she let go of this constant search, and instead simply wanted to live presently, rather than in the time ahead. It is not known whether the man smiling with her could be the one, but he might as well could be. Time is far too fleeting to wonder.
Titled ‘The One’.
Final outcome
My concept to the outcome revolved around two existing characters I have created in the past that hold a significance to my journey through animation. My reason for choosing to begin with a personal idea in response to the task, is because I haven’t yet explored the notion of placing the characters in a situation and experiencing a conflict.
What we’ve been asked to do has helped me to refine my personal concept by understanding the characters more using storyboarding, and essentially bringing them to life. It has also brought new ideas I hadn’t yet thought of and will help a lot with future inspiration.
I believe I have been significantly successful in creating an impactful storyboard that holds an interesting conflict leaving the viewers to hope for what comes next. Despite the task asking to create a storyboard surrounding a conflict between two characters, I instead chose to have the characters be the ‘conflict’, in which they both relate to.
I have had to go through several drafts of the storyboard before refining it into the outcome. One way I could have improved on this rotation, was by working more efficiently within the time frame. Overall, I am relatively content with what I have created, and have learned a lot from this rotation, specifically, refining an idea into a clear and concise storyboard.
Process: At the start to this rotation, we were introduced to several animators and artworks, namely, ‘Conversation With a Whale’. This was to spark some inspiration, which in fact did to myself on potential future projects. One aspect that I really liked was its unconventional take on how they presented the animation, more specifically on how much of the process that was shown to the audience. Pencil shavings, rubbed out frames which is normally hidden and kept out of an animation perfectly encapsulates the mood of the animation which focused on the struggles of being an animator and rejection.
‘Conversations with a whale’ a film by Anna Samo
PRACTICAL TASKS
On our first practical work, we were tasked as a group to interpret and animate paper cut out shapes. For instance, I had cut out a triangle, the person next to me had a circle, so we had to animate from one shape to another around the table in order to have a complete looped animation of different shapes.
This task somewhat pushed my boundaries, because I never focused my attention on paper stop motion through the use of basic components such as shapes. This similarly also reflects the motion graphics rotation, which helped us exercise our creativity by simplifying ourselves as shapes and not heading straight to a detailed illustrated character as the majority of us would do.
Final rotation outcome – group task
For the outcome of stop motion, I worked collaboratively as a team, and learned how to successfully put together different ideas from each person in the group. What helped structure this was brainstorming notes of each concept we had, which was then refined into a storyboard. Storyboarding really helped us to understand what exactly we needed to do when we got to filming and made the process a lot smoother.
The reason why we had to combine our ideas was because each of us drew differently for each sound on the task that was given, so we used each drawing and made a concept out it. For instance, one of my teammates drew text bubbles reminiscent to the ‘cafe noise’, so we made newspaper cut outs to represent the ‘chatter’ and used replacement animation in the outcome. I drew relentless scribbles to represent how overwhelming the atmosphere was which was then translated to a wired knot that was put into the animation as a character that represented one of the noises in the audio.
insert drawings I made from the task
The overall concept worked well with the sound which brought the animation to life. We were considerably successful in experimentation and figuring out how to animate the shapes in various ways, i.e. growing/shrinking in size, movement, replacement, overlaying etc. One way we could have improved was by taking in more inspiration and having that show more in the outcome.
Behind the scenes set up of final outcomePaper cut outs that we made and used for the animation
Time wise, we were very short on it, which pushed us to work within time constraints and successfully complete the outcome. What I learned the most on the rotation was understanding teamwork, and exploring other areas of animation I hadn’t really stepped into, for instance, replacement animation.
I am, however, overall content with what we have created and learned, especially when working together as a group.
Chapter one: exploring motion graphics in After Effects
On my first day, I am introduced to my first rotation being motion graphics. Upon the introduction, we were also introduced to the program, Adobe After Effects.
However, before turning on the computers, we were asked to close our eyes, and think of ourselves as a shape. How do we look? How do we move, what does the shape sound like?
I was slightly struggling at first, but then I realised that it didn’t necessarily have to be a regular shape like a triangle, it could technically be any form of a shape, regular or irregular.
We were then asked to sketch a couple rough ideas of our shape (image below), and I would say I’m quite content with how I drew it.
We were also asked to draw the shape of someone we like or are friends with, so I picked my partner; steady and swift in pace, constantly fluctuating with bursts of different particles.
And lastly to someone we don’t like, so I described the shape as bulky and stubborn, constantly trying to draw attention by moving in heavy drawn out steps. And it actually made a lot of sense.
After the shapes were drawn, we were then tasked to learn and follow through the program after effects, and create a 5 second animation outcome out of it with our shape. A somewhat representation of our personality or who we are.
Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application developed by Adobe Inc.
It is used in the post-production process of film making, video games and television production. Among other things, After Effects can be used for keying, tracking, compositing, and animation
Am I familiar/do I have any experience with After Effects?: Yes, actually I do have some prior experience to the program, though not in the aspect of animation.
I used to edit a lot of my favourite film and tv series in a variety of ways through transitions, music etc. So my previous experience, specifically knowledge in graphing and understanding of keyframes has made this rotation significantly easier for me through the learning process.
Despite the fact I have had experience with after effects, I have still learned a lot of new areas of the program I’ve not yet explored.
THE SHAPE LAYER
I was aware of the shape layer, though I had never explored it that much. This was one of the first things we learned about on the program. This can be created by going to layer>shape layer. A purple layer will then be displayed in the composition, and any particular shape can be created via the shape button.
Animation on after effects can be quite handy and particularly efficient in the time it takes to create it.
For instance, when it comes to the process of digital hand drawn animation, you must draw each frame carefully, however, After effects does all the work on the in between’s for the start and end keyframe.
The only thing you need to tell after effects is to type in whatever it is you want the shape to do (whether it’s position, rotation, scale etc), and keyframe the beginning to the end product.
eg. I want to move a circle to the right, so I keyframe P for position at the beginning of the layer to mark the start, then drag another keyframe across to the end and type in the number needed to get the circle across to the right.
After effects will then automatically animate the movement, and the only thing that you need to change to your liking is the graphs, which controls the speed of the animation.
My understanding of this isn’t new, so I will talk about what I personally learned that was new for me, and sprouted some inspiration alongside new ideas.
I was aware of the turbulent displace effect, though I never particularly used it to my advantage at the time, nor did I properly look into it.
However, after watching the tutorial, it has opened my eyes to various new possibilities in animation I hadn’t thought of before, simply because I’d never actively considered after effects as a medium to animation.
I have made a rough few in the past, though one of the many things I thought it didn’t have was the ‘boil effect’, and that strayed me away from using it as much as procreate.
After trying out the tutorial, it made me realise I can replicate the hand drawn effect quite well, and I am now perhaps even considering trying out a couple sample animations of my own to see what kind of outcomes I could make.
Another small tip I learned myself was the ability to speed up a rotation, as well as being able to rotate it more than once. When clicking on R for rotate, there is an ‘_’ x, where you can add how many times you’d like for it to be rotated (this helped formulate my final outcome quite well).
As well as this, I learned how to animate the simple squish and stretch with the shape layer, which again had honestly flew over my head through the three years of using after effects. It again made me realise there are many aspects and possibilities to the program.
Lastly, I also realised for transitions, specifically for the shape layer, you can animate with the pen tool to morph and manipulate the shape in more detail.
Process and evaluation
For my outcome on motion graphics, I was fortunate on having a smoother process and journey into the work I created. This is because I have already had prior experience. Despite this, I still included a lot of areas into my outcome that were new and learnt primarily from the rotation. For instance, exploring the shape layer and learning how to animate it using the keyframes, as well as the anchor tool, and recreating the boil effect; a common occurrence with hand drawn or painted animations. The concept of the animation derives from the task we were given, which was describing ourselves as a shape. ‘How would we move? How would we look?’ Naturally, it would have been surprisingly easier to draw a physical character, instead of a simple shape, though I have come to believe that restricting one’s freedom could push our creativity further, because we are forced to think and make something new out of something insignificant. I am incredibly content with my outcome, because I responded to the shape I was, and animated its ‘personality’ quite accurately.
One thing I also know about myself that quite literally can correlate to a shape is the fact that I really love hats, specifically top hats. This is mainly because of an animated character named Theo I created just over a year ago, which was also prominently inspired by the fact that I am quite endeared by old music and clothes, specifically the 1960s. So, I thought I should make the shape a hat, because it does in a way represent me. This is where I used the new rotation tip to make the shapes and lines go incredibly fast, to replicate someone who really has just time travelled. I duplicated my fluctuating shape and positioned it differently each time, as well as changing the colour, to make the transition more intense and fuller of colour.
We were also asked to choose a sound, so I created my own and took advantage over the fact that I play piano and used the keys to make a build up from a C major scale. It was simple, though I believed it was quite effective for my outcome. One way I could have improved was by learning even more about the software, considering I knew a lot of what the tutorials were explaining already.
I ended up creating three different versions of ‘my shape’, though I think the first one belongs more so to a specific emotion I sometimes feel, being anxiety.
I asked my mum what her personal take on the first one was, and it actually made her feel quite uncomfortable, and uncertain, which is exactly how I feel when I do get quite anxious.
There was a particularly negative air to it, especially with the way I made the shapes move.
The second animation was simply a draft to the final outcome, though I had actually made some changes to the concept. I know I wanted it to be constantly fluctuating and out of place, though I felt like there should be a somewhat finish to it. That’s when I tried to think more about my personality, and perhaps the positive traits I know and am passionate about.
