Hello! In this blogpost, i'll discuss my plans for further cleanup and editing for my OGRELORD project. Since my last blogpost, I have finished the initial cleanup for all the shots, outside of those that required further editing, and now my plan will be to complete those scenes, and then polish up the rest. My hope is to fully finish the cleanup process by the end of this week, so that, starting next week I can switch focus to final compositing, sound effects/editing and being the research and production process for my promotional video.
1: Animation
As of now, as stated before, I have finished up the initial cleanup stage for my animation. While it still has a lot of notable issues and areas for improvements, of which I listed in white text across various shots, most are minor, and of which I will focus on fixing if given enough time. However, their are certain shots that I think are more in immediate need of fixing, mostly being shots XX (XX:XX) and YY (YY:YY), which I noticed had some pretty glaring inconsistencies within the construction of animated elements, the lady's head and ogre's shoulder guard respectively. As I feel these are the most glaring problems, they will be the first I focus on fixing after finishing up my leftover shots. Then i'll try to move onto shots that I was warned to improve by my tutors, such as shots ZZ (ZZ:ZZ) and XX (XX:XX), both of which I was told to improve the backgrounds for to help make the story, of lady who's running into the forest, be more clear and readable.
After that, i'll try to fix other shots, and otherwise include new ones to improve the story, such as including more reaction shots of lady to help re-emphasis her as a major character.
Of the shots I need to do further editing on to finish, the most important are the deaths of Sword and Knife wielder, to make them less similar. I've had several plans to do that, including switching up the deaths of both, so sword wielder gets torn in two right after getting slammed down, cutting sword wielder's death early so we don't see them getting swung by the leg, or re-drawing one shot entirely. After discussing the ideas with my tutors, I was told that knife wielder's death was already good, and that it would be better to re-do or re-edit the death of sword wielder. I'll need to, in the near future, create an edit wherein sword wielder's death cuts faster, to see if that flows well together, and if so, i'll try to use that, and, if not, then i'll try to make a more complex re-edit.
As of now, I'm feeling relatively confident about my timeline, of finishing up my animation work by the end of this week, and that by the end of this term, I should have a respectable final animation.
While I do fear the final work won't be as polished as I would ultimately hope, I belive it should still be at least within a finished-enough state to tell the full story I aimed to tell.
Hello! In this blogpost, I'll once again discuss my progress on my cleanup animation for OGRELORD. As of now I feel i'm close to finishing my initial cleanup, hopefully by the end of this week, which will then leave me around the next two weeks, or so, to do any further editing needed on the shot, including the final animation for a few shots I 'skipped over' for the purpose of doing further rough editing.
1: Animation
Since last time, i've been adding the final polish to a lot of shots, including the coloring and backgrounds, with me having about 8 scenes or so, which weren't intentionally left out for further editing, I need to finish, including a few (XX-YY) which need me to do some further animation, either of OGRE herself, or her hair specifically, though, my hope is that since these shots are mostly those where she is in silhouette, this animation process should go a lot faster, giving me more time to focus on editing.
I don't have much to say on the animation process itself, since again it's been rather simple, going over my roughs with a 5-pixel turnip pen, and then using the fill-bucket tool to fill in the coloring.
During the cleanup process, I also noticed, with the help of my tutor, various shots in need of improvements, which I added markers to as potential shots to edit with spare time, the most pressing to me being shot X (YY:YY), wherein the characters head-shape shifts notably, in a way which I don't think happens, or isn't as noticeable, in other shots, and which i'll try to edit if given the chance. Some other areas of improvement, again noted by my tutor, included some shots feeling as if they need general improvements to their backgrounds, animation or compositions, like shot y (zz:zz).
I also did some minor editing to previous shots, to help better tell the story, such as in shots X (XX:XX) AND Y (YY:YY), wherein I changed the characters face to start of smiling, before returning to a frown/surprised expression following a new issue/scare, to help make the story flow better and make the intentions of the character feel more clear, that their running from the rain and thunder storm in the forest, and are happy when they notice it.
My plan, going forward, is to finish the rest of the shots in my project, around 8 or so in total, by the end of this week, and then use the next week/two weeks, given how much editing needs to be done, to refine my work, it's timing and flow. Some shots in need of drastic editing I have already skipped over, including the two shots of the poachers getting thrown by the legs, as one needs to be edited for the sake of adding diversity to the work, or the shot of the poachers sitting together, as I was told to try and edit that shot to make the poachers feel more intimidating.
Another area of improvement I've been noted of, if I'm able to do in the time available, is how it feels like my characters are disconnected from the backgrounds, due to the different in their color pallets and artstyle (the backgrounds lacking texture or lineart, as an example. Another major way to improve my project, time permitting, would be to try and add some greater connection to the animation and backgrounds, such as with shading and color grading, which i'll try to get to if time is permitable. My hope is to still be fully done with the animation process by the end of july, so I can use the last few weeks of the project to do elements like final comping, sound design, uni blogposts/research and the editing for my promotional video and 15-minuet evaluation presentation.
While I do feel I still have a lot to do, and will be cutting the deadline close, so far I feel rather confident i'll be able to reach this goal in time.
Hello! In this blogpost, I’ll discuss my research, so far, into various forms of promotional videos I've found online, which i’ll use as inspiration for my own video.
So far, I've found 3 major styles of promotional video, that being standard advertisements, pitch videos, and art portfolios, all of which have their own strengths and weaknesses.
Advertisements:
Advertisements, like trailers and teaser trailers, are some of the more obvious/recognizable forms of promotional video, given their prominence in regular culture.
One of the main benefits of trailers, and other forms of advertisements, is the creative freedom you are offered within them. Given how they are designed in such a way to get audiences excited for or interested in a new product, while at the same time explaining the story, genre, characters and tone of said work, they can be very varied in editing and presentation styles.
The most common form of trailer/advert would be the use of small clips, taken from a larger work, which are put and edited together, often alongside backing music, voice over/narration and descriptive text, to create a truncated version of the final project, which expresses the major plot beats of the work. Often, these trailers will try to match or express the tone and themes of the project through themselves, turning the trailer into a work of art/narrative in of itself.
For some examples of advertisements and trailers, of this sort, we can look at trailers like Hexed | Teaser Trailer (Walt Disney Animation Studios, 2026) or Blood of Zeus | Official Trailer | Netflix (Netflix, 2020), both of which feature shots from their respective works, placed together in such a way to portray a clear outline of their story, using only explanations and scenes found within the work itself (assumidy). Within the context of Hexed | Teaser Trailer (Walt Disney Animation Studios, 2026) the trailer suggests a story of a troubled girl who finds herself in a magical world, and in the case of Blood of Zeus | Official Trailer | Netflix (Netflix, 2020) suggesting a story of a war between gods and giants, and the rise of a main character who is the son of Zeus.
(2026, Walt Disney Animation Studios)
Alternatively, advertisements and trailers may instead involve characters from the project/work interacting in new or unique scenarios, in a which either explains or express the story and themes, by having the characters explain what’s happened in universe or to the audience, or by presenting new scenes in the same scope and style of the main project. These scenes can be intertwined with footage from the work itself, such as in the case of Animaniacs (Official) Trailer | Hulu (Hulu, 2020), which begins with an opening skit making fun of the idea of a reboot series, before then moving on to clips from the shoe (assumedly), or the new scenes can make up all/most of the trailer, such as in the case of Invincible - Season 3 Teaser | Prime Video (Prime Video, 2024) wherein the entire trailer features unique scenes of two characters talking, both in terms of events coming up in the next season and which took place in the previous, alongside making meta commentary and references to the response and reception of the previous season, all for the sake of building hype and connection with the audience.
(Hulu, 2020)
(Prime Video, 2024)
As I stated before, given how trailers and other forms of advertisements aim to express the story of the project, and build hype within an audience, they offer up a lot of variety in terms of their style, editing and pacing.
As an example, Minions & Monsters | Official Trailer (Universal Pictures & Illumination, 2026), takes on a very comedic and action-focused style, with the use of pop music, high energy scenes and quick cuts which focus on funnier characters and reactions, fitting for a kids comedy film, while Wolfwalkers — Official Trailer | Apple TV (Apple TV, 2020) takes on a slower and more subdued tone, focused more on the characters, beauty and drama of the film, more fitting for the more thematic and dramatic film it advertises.
(Universal Pictures & Illumination, 2026)
(Apple TV, 2020)
As such, creating a trailer would offer me a large degree of creative freedom in how I present my work and project, which may even allow me to further express my skills and personality within the design of the promotional video, in of itself, rather than purely through what it showsthe style also has some limitations.
Most notably, advertisements exist to build hype within a project, and express the project’s general story and tone. Given how my project is an animated short, only being around 2 minutes long, it would be hard to try and present a more ‘truncated’ version of the story in the traditional, trailer format, as my final work is about the same size as the expected, promotional video, and I further doubt that i’d have the time/resources to create an entire, second animation, in accordance with the second trailer style, to advertise OGRELORD, meaning that this style is likely not well fitting for my project.
Furthermore, as trailers are designed to advertise projects, in specific, I don’t think the format would work well to present myself or my work. While I may be able to present some amount of personality and focus through the format, depending on how I edit the footage together and what manner of text and narration I add overtop, and other elements like sound and music design, I don’t believe I could easily fit in elements like development footage and concept art, easily, into a trailer/trailer style promotional video without it reading as cheap and/or lazy.
Ultimately, then, while I definitely think it would be beneficial to take inspiration from animation and media trailers, especially those in a similar genres and mediums to what i’m working within, I don’t think my promotional video itself will be a trailer or traditional style of advert, though I am interested in taking inspiration from specific elements, like the use editing and presentation that matches the tone of the project being advertised.
Portfolio:
Another example of promotional video I can find, both presented and discussed, are art portfolios. For animation, these are often videos which feature a variety of different work, set to music or sound (when needed) that show off the various skills of the animator. These can be longer clips, from pre-existing works, or shorter clips made purely for the portfolio.
One of the main benefits for creating a portfolio is the mere fact that I have made several before, as part of my uni work and enrollment, and thus am already aware of the process used to make them, furthermore, the simplicity of the format, often lacking excessive flair or editing, would make the process of creating the promotional video easy, as all I would need to do is match some clips from my project, alongside various pieces of development work, with music and sound. This style should also work well to present myself and my work process, given it is the primary goal of a portfolio.
However, it would also come with some major drawbacks, mostly in how I don’t believe the style, which relies mostly on random clips with no greater explanation, wouldn’t work well to promote my project. As my promotional video needs to promote both myself and my work, the style I use, ultimately, needs to do both, and while a portfolio can easily show of my work, it would be hard, within the style, to explain, promote and build hype for the OGRELORD project, without the use of text and narration.
Once again, then, I think that, while it would be useful to take inspiration from the style of portfolios, such as their use and focus on the creation side of animation and work, would be useful for my own promotional video, I don’t think it would make sense to create a portfolio-style video myself, as it wouldn’t be very useful for promotion of my project, only myself.
Pitch Video:
The third style of promotional video I found were pitch videos, which can often be found, online, on crowd sourcing websites. These videos, rather than being designed to build hype for a project, in audiences it is marketed towards, instead serve to entice and promote a project to potential investors, in hopes of securing funding for a project, or otherwise sell it or secure publishing deals.
In many ways, pitch documents act as a middle ground between trailers and portfolio pieces. Like portfolio work, they focus a lot on the creative and creation side of the project, discussing how the work was made and will be or continue to be made. These discussions will often stretch beyond the process of creating the work, however, but will also discuss the development process, including elements like the target market for the project and what research went into creating it. Furthermore,they will often discuss the development process of the project, showing how the initial idea was turned into the project being pitched.
At the same time, they will often take inspiration from trailers, in terms of many pitches aiming for some amount of thematic consistency with the idea being presented. This can take on a number of forms, including styling the pitch around the project’s theme, genre, tone and story, or by including short snippets of trailer-like video and clip complications within the larger pitch. We can see examples of both in This is my Real Life?: Animation Pilot (Andrew Vasqueze, 2026), which features clips and design work form their project in the beginning of their pitch, to help show of the style and idea for the project, as well as framing the interview/description segments in a style which mimics early 2000’s era culture, internet and computing, fitting with the 2000’s nostalgia which seems to be at the heart of the project, which ties the description to the project itself, tonaly.
Animation Pilot about roommates trying to make it in a zany world. Show setting will be LIKE Roger Rabbit/CN City/Gumball/ 2000s Era.
(Andrew Vasqueze, 2026)
As such, I think that a pitch video would be the best style of promotional video to create for this project. Furthermore, Pitch videos aim, in comparison to the singular focuses of trailers and portfolios, to present and advertise both the project itself, and the team and creative forces behind said project, to secure funding for both, which fits in well with my need to promote both my project and myself within my own, promotional video.
Pitch videos also offer me a greater degree of freedom in terms of how I can express myself in terms of my style and work, as, in comparison to other forms of advertisements, wherein either the project or the artwork is meant to be the standout element, within pitch videos we often see creators take a far more center stage, likely to give a face, name and sense of security to the project. Oftentimes, this involves the creators of the project directly explaining and discussing their work and project in detail, either as narration or through recordings of themselves, with pitch documents normally overlaying said audio to clips and showcases of the project, in its development and final stages. Some examples of pitch videos, which stood out to me, included Sun Chaser - A Filipino Animated Fantasy Adventure (Sun Chaser, 2026), which I thought stood out for its professionalism and its clear focus and presentation of the production process, and FLY: a A Magical Black Boy Series - Pilot (Jason Raymon, 2026), which stood out for it’s description of it’s project and it’s presentation style, which focused heavily on the creator, description and showing of the development process of the work, which I believe is most fitting with the expectation of my pitch video as given by the uni.
An animated adventure-comedy made by the Filipino diaspora for the world. Help us make more episodes!
(Sun Chaser, 2026)
A coming of age story about Black kids who finally have power to fight back against systems designed against them.
(Jason Raymon, 2026)
Ultimately, then, as of now, I believe it would be best for me to make my promotional video a pitch presentation, as it offers me a lot of freedom in terms of editing and style, while fitting the necessity for me to promote both myself, the project and my work process, all at once. To help make sure my video is informative and engaging, however, I still think it would be good to take inspiration from trailers, and how their focus on story and thematic editing builds hype, and portfolios, and how their focus on the artwork itself helps highlight the skills of its creator, within my pitch video.
Some ways I believe I could do this would be to use some of the more flash editing techniques and styles often associated with trailer marketing, such as cutting on music and action in such a way to express tone and story, while also aiming not to overexplain my work process, and instead allowing the artwork itself to shine, on its own merits, in the same way as is often seen in portfolios. To do this, I could include a short snippet of a teaser-like trailer for overlord, within my promotional video, to create a more sharable, hype-focused segment, or I could include segments wherein I discuss my project over shots and videos of my development and work, explaining the story and concept of my project while I allow the artwork itself to shine, separately.
Going Forward:
Now that I have discussed and researched these promotional styles, and come up with a plan for what style I would like to use within my own, promotional video, I believe my next steps are to do some more research into specific trailers, portfolios and pitch documents of interest, to look into any specific elements of inspiration, before then creating a script for the final video. My hope is to begin the final editing of the pitch within the last 2 weeks of my project, starting around august 3rd, as by then, with any luck, OGRELORD itself will be finished, or near enough in completion to offer me plenty of different clips to take from. I have already set about recording footage for the pitch document, including a timelapse of my rough animation process, and of clips of me creating my 3d logo, though obviously I will need to make sure I still have plenty of different clips and a variety of different work to include within my final video.
Hello! Within this blogpost, I will discuss the begining of my cleanup animation process, which I did after a short round of minor edits, in my second round of cleanup animation.
While I initialy planed a larger cleanup process, I realised recently that I was wrong about my deadline, which I assume to be on the 24th but intead it was on the 17th of august, meaning I didn't have as much time, as I hoped, to clean up my work, so instead I plan to do cleanup aniamtion for my work, and then, if I have any spare time left after, I will try to edit scenes that I feel are in need of further refinment. While I do fear this may lead to a worse, overal product, it should at least mean I remain on track to get out a final piece of work, regardless.
Second Pass and Cleanup Animation:
For my second pass on my rough animation, I made some minor edits to shots that I thought looked particularly ugly, this included shot X (XX-XX) where I changed the movement of the character, so, rather than leaning back in a strange way, which breaks the perspective of the shot, they 'jump' backwards, still dodging the axe but in both a more exagurated way, and one which better flows into the next few shots of them crawling backwards. I also edited shot Y (YY-YY), wherein the character leans foward to grab Ogre's hand, changing up their leg and hair movement so it doesn't act so strange and break the construction/anatomy of the character. Furthermore, I edited shot Z (ZZ-ZZ) to try and make the three poachers look more intimidating and animated, having one lean in, in a hopefully intimdating fashion, and having another rub a cloth across their sword, again hopefully to add some life and intimtidation to the shot. I also did some more minor edits, fixing up the proportions of characters between shots, to make characters and the work more consistent.
While I am largley happy with my edits, I have been told, by my tutours, that the shot of the three poachers at the campfire could still be pushed further, and made more intimidating, though how I could do so, i'm still unsure about. One teacher suggested I do some close-up of the characters faces, to make them look immediatly angry and intimdating, though i'm not sure of other ways to do so.
Their are also some edits to shots I would like to make, but thought it was worth first seeing if I had the time to make said edits, the most common being adding in some more reaction shots from Lady, to place more emphasis on her and her safety, such as between shots X (xxx) and Y (yyy), having the lady dodge and freak out about the knives being thrown.
I would also like to reanimate shot Z (zz:zz), so that, rather than having Knife Wielder get killed by being swung by the leg, in the same motion as Sword Wielder, after kicking Ogre in the neck, they instead die a different way, like getting thrown to the floor by being grabbed around the stomach or such, simply to have less repetition in the animation, though I fear this would require a more complex re-animation process, and wasn't sure if I would have time to impliment.
Still, all in all, I feel confident enough, with my rough animation, to have moved on to the cleanup portion of the project, which i've set a timeline of getting finished by the end of july, though I would prefer to get it done, hopefully, by the end of next week, or sometime the week after, to give me more time for editing and refinment.
As for the cleanup process, while I began it last week, I thought it would be best to wait to discuss it when I had some more done. So far I feel i've been able to get cleanup done at a faster pace than my rough animation, which helps me feel confindent that i'll get it out and done on the timeframe set, with the process itself being simple, simply drawing over, in my turnip pen (set to 5px size), my rough animation sketches. So far i've gotten to around XX:XX of the rough animation done, though as can be seen, i've skipped over some shots that I wanted to save for the end, in case I had extra time left to further improve them. This includes shot XX (XX:XX), wherien I plan to re-draw the forest so it is furhter away from us, so it better matches the view of Lady looking at the forest in the distance, and shot YY (YY:YY) wherein I would like to, if given the chance, improve the animation of the man swinging the axe.
In a few of the shots, i've also avoided doing some animation that I wasn't sure how best to do, such as in shot ZZ (ZZ:ZZ), wherein I wasn't sure if I should hand animated the movement of the characters as the 'camera zooms out', or if I should simply use clip studios keyframe tool, or premier pro, to resize the characters for the action. While the latter would save me time, it would likely look worse in the former, so I thought it was best to save that process for the end, when I had more time to know what process would be best to go with.
So far, i'm, mostly happy with my cleanup process, though I have been told and been made aware of various ways I could improve my current animation.
First of has been, in shots X (XX:XX) and Y (YY:YY), I could have Lady look more pleased/relieved to see and be inside the forest, and out of the rain, to help signify why she is running in the process, and adding a level of irony that every time she feels safe, things keep getting worse, though, luckily that should be a simple process of re-drawing her face slightly, which shouldn't take more than a few minuets per frame.
I have also been told it may be worse having some more still-frames and zoom in's on certain shots, like Z (ZZ:ZZ) and have more of the storytelling be carried by the sound effects of the project, though, this would likely take a much longer time, requiring different shots to be re-timed and re-drawn to fit a change in framing and shot composition.
As stated, my current plan is to carry on with my clean up process as is, and use whatever time I may have left after to further refine my work, needing to have a final animation ready by the end of july, to give me time for any final composition and sound editing, alongside the creation of my pitch video and final analysis presentation.
Hello! Within this blogpost, I will begin to discuss my plans and ideas for my project's Promotional Video, a 1-2 minuet video I need to produce to introduce and explain my project and practice, to be distributed over the internet.
Based no my brief, this video should be a promotional tool for both me, as an animator, and my project, and be suitable for an 'informed general audience' which I take to mean that it shouldn't be overly adult.
To begin with, based on a recent lecture I had, I will discuss my project and promotional video plans, to see what they may say about me, and my practice, and how I could best present my work to promote myself and my skills.
What does this project say:
When presenting my work and self, as an animator/artist, the main elements I would like and assume would be best to put forward would be my skills as a character designer, storyteller and my ability to create impressive animation, in terms of action, staging, etc preferably in terms of more emotional/dramatic scenes and scenarios, as those are the areas, genres and emotions I would best like to explore and work within professionally.
For Ogrelord itself, I would argue that the main thing's it shows of are my abilities in animating action and silent storytelling, while presenting me as someone who works best in or around adult, action. It also presents me as someone who works a lot in historical and fantasy settings, alongside a lot of my previous work.
Given as such, I think it would be best to focus on the character design, project development and action scenes of the project, as I feel they would be the work and elements most fitting to present, given my future career aspirations (With me wanting to take part in the more developmental side of animation work, such as directing, story boarding, etc), given how the project's storytelling is rather minimal and would be hard to express. I think it may also be good, even if I do mention it's adult content, to now place to a great a focus on it, as I believe it would be better to present my work as being usable for multiple age ranges, rather than being specialized to only adult animation, as doing so may risk limiting my career opportunities.
I believe the best way to make sure that my promotional video is able to capture and present my skills, as well as the project itself, would be to place a lot of focus on the development and creation process of the work. This could include showing the development process of the art style and character designs, presenting various concept art at different stages, or creating a time laps of the development of me creating a scene, from rough animation to final rendering. I could then combine this footage, with clips from the final animation, text and shots of me talking, to both present and advertise OGRELORD as a short, and discuss it's development and my work process, to advertise my work and how I created it/my work process.
It may also be good to show of some screenshots of my uni blog, to show my skills in ideas research, scheduling and self evaluation.
Elevator pitch.
To help me identify the best way to present my work, to advertise both OGRELORD and myself, I thought it would be good to write up two, short elevator pitches for both, to nail down the core identity.
Ogrelord:
Ogrelord is an animated, fantasy action short, aimed at older audience. It follows an ogre fighting against 3 poachers, with a focus on dynamic and bloody action.
Myself:
I'm a 2d animator, who has interest in character design, IP development and story creation. I've worked on a number of animated shorts, in various styles and genres, both for myself and within groups, with my having experience in all stages of production.
From these two elevator pitches, again I believe it would be best to focus on the production/development and creation process of OGRELORD, as it would be the best way to show of my diversity as an animator/artist.
Plan going forward:
Now that I have laid out the general plan/foundation for my presentation document, my next step is to continue my research into the various ways people/corporations present, advertise and promote their work, which I can then use as the base for my own, promotional video.
Hello! In this blogpost, I will go over my first pass of the rough animation of my Orelord project, mostly in terms of discussing my major struggles in terms of the process, and what scenes I hope to do a second pass on by the time I start animating, which, based on my pre-existing timetable, should be some time next week, hopefully on Monday, though I gave myself some wiggle room to start as late as Wednesday/Thursday.
I didn't make a post for last weeks work, as I was getting close to completing the first pass of the rough animation, and so thought it would be better to wait and do a longer discussion once the work as a whole was complete.
Rough Animation:
Since my last blog post, wherein I completed Scenes 1-23 and 37-42, I have since completed my first past on the middle scenes. These shots took a lot longer, and more time and effort, to complete in comparison to previous ones, as they were the main, action shots of the work, and required a lot more camera movement and motion, achieved, mostly, through creating long backgrounds and animation sequences that I then moved around, across the canvas, using Clip Studio Paint's keyframe tool. While this worked to get the basic movement I needed, it would often look strange choppy, due to the system not being able to move layers in arcs, only straight lines, so I may need to export the work into a program like after effects, which offers more variability in movement, speed and smoothness, for the final edit.
I had some trouble these shots, though not in the areas I expected. While I belive I found the transition between various shots/camera angles to end up looking rather smooth and, if not great at least passable, such as scenes 26-27 (which I combined together, 1:01 - 1:05) and scene 24 (0:50 - 0:56), wherein we pan from a front to side/behind angle shot of characters, I ended up having a lot more trouble when I had to follow curving swings between shots. Examples of this would be when the swordsman swings his sword in scene 25 (0:56-1:01) or in scenes 30 (1:08-1:11) and 35 (1:26-1:34), when ogre is swinging their enemies across the screen. In all these instances, I feel that the motion of the movement/swing gets lost and makes the action of the scenes (Us following the swing of the sword as it cuts into ogre's arm, in scene 25, or Ogre swinging the enemies over their head to either throw them or smash them into the ground, in scenes 30 and 35), end up hard to follow and understand. I think in these cases, the issues may arise from the animation on the characters, as we're panning across as ogre swings her arm or the swordsman swings his sword, being both animated through the keyframe movement and frame-by-frame animation, which obfuscates what were looking at. Futhermore, I think these shots also suffer from some weak animation in of themselves, in terms of how the movement of the characters feels strange or hard to follow considering their action, such as how the 'blur/swing' of the sword doesn't feel right for how it should be moving, and ends up looking more like an undefined blur/line than a sword strike.
As I discussed in my last blogpost, I looked at some ways to make action scenes more interesting, and one of the elements I noticed was cutting on movement/actions and otherwise incorporating movement into the shots, which I tried to do throughout my roughing process. To help make the action feel more dynamic, I combined scenes together, such as the pre-mentioned scenes 26 and 27, and otherwise changed up the timing of actions from my original animatic, to allow more chances for some invisible cuts between actions, such as cutting between shots 27 and 28 with ogre immediately raising her hand in the air, the logical next action following what she had previously been doing, which I think works well to blend the two cuts together.
However, on the action front, I do think it could still do with some more movement, such as in shot 27, wherein ogre is attacking swordsman. Currently, within this first pass of rough animation, I have the two characters simply standing next to each other, which can lead the action to feel static, and may be improved, in a second pass, by having it so that Ogre is walking forward as she attacks him, giving a greater sense of power and aggression to her attacks, by having them be so strong as to drive her toward and the sword wielder back.
Another area of general improvement I can note for my second pass would be to tighten up the consistency between characters in different shots, as, currently, I feel their are several times where their proportions can shift about between and through shots. While this is most often seen in ogre, with some shots making her seem thinner, such as scene 24 (0:50 - 0:56), while others may have her, or her hair, be shorter or fatter, such as scene 33 (1:17-1:23), I don't think it's as big a deal, given I made her silhouetted to allow me some freedom in her proportions and allowing to focus more on her posing and movement, though for other characters, like the lady, these issues become more obvious. An example would be scene 40 (1:48-1:50) wherein, as the lady goes to hold her hand out to oger, while she is meant to be leaning forward and moving her legs down to the ground to rest on them, it appears more as if they simply 'disappear' of screen, with no clear/connected movement in her body to make the change in pose feel justified. While some of these issues could likely be fixed up in the animation process itself, wherein I'll be more focused on consistency between frames, it is still an important element to look out for in my final work, and some shots, such as 40, may require a second pass to fix any inconsistencies in movement/design which require full reanimation.
Second pass plan:
As I have discussed before, my plan is, now that I have completed my initial, rough animation, is to do a second pass of the work, to fix up timing and improve upon scenes that I feel have any major issues or could use further polishing, hopefully to be finished, at the latest, by Wednesday next week, so I can beginning animating and planing for my compositing and sound design work.
In terms of what I'm looking for, in a second pass, is to either fix up major issues within the animation of a shot, such as the per mentioned inconsistencies with characters and their designs/movements, or to generally improve the animation/polish of a shot to a significant extent. Given I have also set a limit for myself to complete these second passes, I'll thus be limited in how many scenes I can focus on for second passes, and thus need to designate them based on how important a second pass is.
First would be scenes 12 (0:30-0:31), 40 (1:48-1:50), 33 (1:17-1:23) and 17 (37-39), as I believe each have some pretty glaring issues, both 12 and 40 having some strange perspective/movement (such as how, when lady jumps back in 12, it looks less like she's leaning away from the camera and pushing herself up, and more like her head has shrunk), while 33, as mentioned, has ogre be far larger than she is in other scenes, which may read as strange or sloppy to the audience or potential employers. Finally, as I discussed with my tutor, shot 17 requires multiple improvements, both by making the tackle of ogre feel more sudden and violent, perhaps by making her lunge forward in a jump, similar to a jump tackle or the movement of animals like gorillas, that charge at enemies/prey, and requiring the shot itself to be reconfigured, bringing axe wielder forward (perhaps, in front of the other two poachers) to make it obvious that they are going to attack lady, and not the two other poachers, as the current distant feels more ambiguous, and makes it seem impossible they could hit her at all. Shot 17 is especially important, given it is the first appearance of ogre and thus needs to be easily understood to the audience, with some ways I have to fix the shot including moving the axe wielder forward (either in all shots or just that one, and assume he walked forward), and by having the camera angle be lower down, so it's as if we're seeing through lady's eyes herself, however, these changes may make it hard to keep the other two poachers in frame, though I could move the camera to bring them into frame, or have them be standing behind axe wielder and only get revealed after he gets tackled by ogre.
Second would be scene 25 (0:56-1:01), 30 (1:08-1:11) and 35 (1:26-1:34), all of which suffer from pretty messy swinging animation. For both shots 30 and 35, my main plan would be to add some more animation to ogre's swinging animation itself, as I believe making her swing animation less choppy should help make the shot's movement less choppy as well, being further fixed when I move into premier compositing and can make more smith camera pans. meanwhile, scene 25 will require a full reanimation, and some research into how cameras can/will/are normally used to follow the movement and curve of an object, to make the action and swing more readable and smooth, as I fear the issues of that scene go beyond simple choppiness, and more so into the readability of the shot.
After those scenes, I can then go about focusing more on some polishing to shot, such as 26-27 (1:01 - 1:05), with me further refining the impact and movement of ogre and swordsman as they fight, 9 (0:20-0:22), wherein I plan to further refine lady's fall animation, having her struggle more on the edge before more suddenly leaning forward and falling and 11 (0:35-0:37), wherein I plan to re-draw the shot and add some movement to the three poachers, making them read as more dangerous early on. Some ideas I have for these animations would include them brandishing or otherwise flaunting their weapons, such as having sword wielder sharpen his sword, or simply having them lean toward and down.
Other areas of improvement would include shots 24 (0:50 - 0:56), which could have the jump animation of sword wielder be improved, given greater bounce and overshooting, and scenes 38 (1:40-1:45), 40 (1:48-1:50) and 41 (1:50-1:53), all of which feature hand movements which, given they are simply static frames which I use the key-frame function for, look very basic and boring, and could be made better with greater use of making them fully frame-by-frame animated. Finally, as discussed with my tutor, they believe that shot 4 (0:11-0:13) could be improved, by re-drawing the shot so we aren't as close to the forest, to make it clear that lady is looking at a forest in the near distance, and is not already inside one.
Alongside these changes, their are some more general ideas for improvements i've considered and discussed, though would need to spend some more time planing as to where to implement them. As discussed with my tutor, they believed that a way to improve my work would be to add in another reaction shot of the lady, watching the violence in front of her, to further sell the brutality of the work and set up her fear of Ogre, though I am not sure where such a shot would best fit. One idea I had was to replace shots 36 (1:341-1:37) and 37 (1:37-1:41(, to be close ups of lady, watching knife wielder get torn apart, rather than more far away shots, to further push and focus upon her reaction and emotions.
I also relive my work could be improved by adding some more diversity to the fight choreography, since, as of now, it follows a formula of 'Ogre gets hit, ogre attacks back and eventually beats their attacker, by grabbing onto their leg and swinging them. A way I believe i could fix this is by having it that so, rather than knife wielder kinking ogre in the chest and jumping away from her, she instead starts crawling across ogre's body and trying to stab her, until ogre grabs her by the hood and swings her forward, the camera tilting as she does to get the same, side-on-shot, which should avoid the issue of the different scenes being to similar, though this would likely require an entire re-creation of the scene.
Finally, though largely possible through the final animation process, I would also like to try and further push the exaggeration of the animation as a whole, adding more wind up, follow through and frames to make each scene feel more smooth and real, and to make it seem as if the characters have weight, alongside more generally making the animation push the emotions of shots further. On example of this would be in scene 42, the final shot of the film, where lady hugs ogre, who is confused and hugs her back, with me thinking it may work to push ogre's movement more, either having her lean down into the hug, making it more 'big' and comfy. Alternatively, my tutor suggested that I make it so, rather than hugging lady, ogre awkwardly pats her on the head, making it seem as if she's more confused as to how to respond, and comforting her in a more deliberately understated way.
While my exact priorities ill need to discuss with my tutor, as a whole, my plan is to try and get out a second pass of the most-important scenes of my animation, before I can move on to clean up and then, later, coloring and comp.
As of now, I am feeling mixed on my project. While I am around where I expected to be, as a minimum, this far into my project, I was hoping to be ahead of my expectations, to free me up time for further refinement, meaning I'll need to focus a lot, over the next few days/weeks, to make sure I get out as much work as possible, to make the best final project possible.
Hello! As part of the feedback I received for my animatic and production document, of Ogrelord, I was told that I could do more to try and push the animation/action of the work, to make it feel more impressive and interesting, since, as of now, It all feels somewhat static and simplistic, in terms of elements like framing, camera movement, etc.
To help me develop the action scenes further, I have looked into various fight scenes, which I think seem particularly interesting and impressive, to try and find potential areas for improvement and inspiration within my own work.
In this blog post, I will discuss these fight scenes, what I think works well about them, and how I may incorporate those elements into my own work, hopefully allowing me to make a more impressive, final project. I tried to look at scenes and series which better fit the tone and style I was going for, meaning more close up action sequences,
1: Cowboy Bebop
The first series i'll discuss, in terms of it's fight scenes, is Cowboy Bebop, counting both the original TV series (1998) and it's movie (Watanabe, 2001).
(Hall Of Heroes. 2025)
(jabberw0k, 2020)
Between the various fight scenes in this show, The main elements I took notice of were their use of the camera, specifically in terms of movement and cutting. In many of the fight scenes, such as the office (2:45 - 6:10, Hall of Heroes Video) and Tower (9:18 - 14:56, Hall of Heroes Video) fight scenes, many of the shots are held on for a while, with the camera panning along with the characters during their fight choreography, both through more simple, side on shots, and more complex ones, shot at high up or low angles, or wherein the characters more around through a more 3d like space, getting closer and further away from the camera.
This helps add a greater sense of movement and reality to the fight scenes, as the audience can more clearly see the characters as they move through their environments, notably treating them as fully physical spaces rather than flat plains, moving back and fourth in such a way that helps add a sense of depth to the shots. This helps add to the action of these scenes, as it allows for more complex and readable action choreograph, due to the scenes holding longer and the movement being made more clear, and adding a slight uncertainty to the scenes, as it becomes less obvious exactly what action the characters will take next, which thus adds to the suspense and excitement of the scenes.
This is helped by the action choreography itself, which matches a good balance of smoothness and scrappyness to the fights, with characters making very dramatic and flowing movements, which helps give the fight scenes a feeling of skill, while still adding clear overthrow and bounciness to each action, and seeming slowdown to individual hits, which helps retain a sense of weight and reality to the movements, with the very graceful attacks ending with a more jarring and rigid impact. This comes together well, giving the fight scenes a feeling of skill and impressiveness through the characters movements, while still retaining a sense of reality and impact through their imperfections, seen in elements like the bounciness and overshooting, and the immediate stiffness offered when an attack actually hits, clearly distinguishing the impact and offering the feeling of the graceful movements being interrupted by the combatant getting hit.
Another notable element of the fight scenes, seen most clearly in abberw0k's (2020) clip, is the editing of the fight scenes. with many shots cutting on a transition between actions, such as a character getting hit, then a cut to see them fall backwards, which helps make the fight scenes, as a whole, flow well together. The style of cutting used, often utilized to follow the action and flow of the fight between shots, helps keep the action clear and readable to the audience, as they can instinctively follow what is happening between shots due to their connection and follow-through in terms of movement, while also helping to hide the editing from the audience, as the follow through helps blend the scenes together and hide the fact that a cut occurred, even if the change in perspective, angel, etc is relatively drastic.
Taken together, the most notable element of the Cowboy Bebop (1998 & Watanabe, 2001) fight scenes, to me, was the way in which it's choreography, camera work and editing all came together to help make the action clear to the audience, maintaining a consistent environment and flow by following actions through both panning camera movements and a cutting style that followed actions between shots.
2: Samurai Jack
(Adult Swim Europe, 2019)
(Adult Swim Europe, 2021)
Another Work I looked at, notable for it's action sequences, Was Samurai Jack (2001 & 2017). Like Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Jack was also notable for it's use of editing, choreography and camera movement to add a sense of energy to ti's action sequences, however, more distinct and noticeable for Samurai Jack, especially considering it's very geometric and simplistic art style, was the use of posing within it's animation.
Due to Samurai Jacks geometric aesthetic, it allows the work to heavily focus and emphasis the posing and silhouettes of it's characters, as they are made incredibly readable and obvious to the audience, while being more easily stretched and exaggerated without breaking the design of the characters or illusion of the world. This allows Samurai Jack to place heavy emphasis on the posing of it's characters, leading to fight scenes often featuring fast movement which quickly jumps from key-frame to key frame, leading to a fast pace style of action wherein the hits and misses of the characters are given greater emphasis, quickly jumping between each and being able to be held onto and focused upon more heavily, which creates a more action-packed feel to it's fight sequences, due to the greater emphasis on the hits and misses of the characters, in place of the movement between them.
Samurai Jack also places emphasis on the silhouette of it's characters by holding upon certain frames and poses for long periods of time, suggesting movement through the static pose and camera rather than through the animation itself.
This greater emphasis on the posing of the characters allows the action to feel more impactful and readable, as all the focus is placed upon the beginning and end of the characters action, which is made clear through the simple designs and strong silhouette, meaning the audience is less likely to be confused through the animation and movement of the characters themselves, as they can focus upon the posing of the characters to help tell the story of the fight scenes.
3: Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker & Blue Eye Samurai
The climax of the Batman Beyond movie "Return of the Joker" where Terry, the new Batman, gives the Joker an amazing verbal beat down.Batman
(AgentOliver, 2010)
(Netflix, 2023)
The final to works I looked at were Blue Eye Samurai (Netflix, 2023) and Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (Geda, 2000). Both works show of many of the same elements I recognized from the previous works, including strong posing and impressive camera movement, though both also exemplify two more, seemingly significant element of action sequences, that being their use of vertical and detail-focused editing.
In terms of verticality, I noticed that both fight scenes, like the previous, didn't focus their fight scenes as being on purely flat planes, but instead incorporated a sense of height to them. This was seen both in the literal environments of the fight scenes, which featured multiple levels for the characters to fight on and move around, but also in the action choreography, wherein characters would jump or get punched into the air, or knocked to the ground and crushed from above. This sense of verticality helped add to the sense of space, weight and reality to the fight scenes, as they made the environments feel more fully realized as they moved around them in a number of different ways, enhancing the dynamism of the fight scenes.
It also added to the sense of weight and impact of the fight scenes, as characters were pushed around and fell to the floor in pain, or jumped up into the air before a strike, making hits feel more impactful as it had a more clear and present effect on the characters. The use of verticality also, often, helped made the fights more readable, as the lower a character was often signified that they were on the back-foot of the fight, either being more open to another characters attacks, or by being so wounded as to be falling to the floor in pain, with this pattern thus making the action and story of the fight scenes more clear to the audience, as the height of the characters helped signify the hierarchy of the fight.
The other major element I noticed, especially in blue eye samurai, was how the camera would often focus on the most important detail of the scene, both in terms of keeping the action and movement of the fight sequences as the central focus of each shot (such as how, often, characters who were not currently engaged in the fight not being focused on in the shot, as they added little to the current sequence taking place), and in how the camera would often cut to close ups of characters or items whenever they were hit, near hit or would otherwise become significant later into the fight. This no only helped maintain the flow of the action between each shot, as the camera was always focused on the central action of fight sequence, but also helped make sure that the actions and consequences of the sequences were clear to the audience, such as how, by cutting to a character nearly getting hit, the audience is singled that they are in danger and that the people they are fighting are a threat to them. This helps not only maintain the flow of the action, but also helped the audience follow the sequence of events and maintains the threat, energy, drama and story of the fight sequences, by highlighting both story and action significant elements through the cuts.
4: Areas for Improvement in my own work.
All together then, through the various fight scenes I looked at, I identified a number of elements to consider when creating the rough animation for my own action sequence, In ogrelord.
For one, I'll need to make sure the choreography, camera work and editing of the fight scenes flow together fell, maintaining a balance between impact and movement to help the fight choreography feel interesting, while utilizing both camera movement and smart editing to make sure shots flow well together. To do this, i'll try to focus more on longer shots in my action scenes, having shots blend together either through purpisfull cuts, or by listing camera movement to follow characters through their fight sequences and actions, replacing individual shots with longer ones, wherein the perspective and the framing of the shot is transitioned through via movements in the camera and characters. This goes along well with the signifance of the editing of my action sequences, with me needing to make sure that each scene's focus is placed upon it's most important element, be that the action itself, or smaller elements like character reactions and emotions, to make both the action and story of the fight sequence clear.
Another major element I'll need to take notice of is the posing of my characters, making sure each attack has a clear and readable buildup and follow through, which pushes the actions to an energetic and credible extreme. While It's somewhat difficult to identify how exactly I would achieve this, given how simple the goal is, I will try to make sure that the key frames and major poses of my rough animations feel appropriator dramatic and interesting, to make the action both readable and enjoyable to the audience.
Finally, I'll need to try and incorporate some verticality and depth into my fight scene, to make it feel more dynamic and varied in it's approach. While the environment of the fight scenes is somewhat flat, their are still many ways I can heighten the sense of verticality of the fight sequence, including placing greater focus on the size difference between the Ogre and Poachers, having more shots of her punching down and towering over them, alongside having the impact of attacks be more varied, such as a poachers block forcing ogre's hand to be pushed up into the air, or her punching down on one of them and causing them to fall to the floor.
Now that I have done this research, and set out these goals, to add more movement, dynamic posing and vertical to my fight sequences, I'll attempt to incorporate them into my rough animation process, editing and re-designing/configuring scenes, as required, to push my project to be the best it possibly could be.
REFERENCES:
Hall Of Heroes (2025) The Best Fights of Spike Spiegel, Baby... | Cowboy Bebop | Hall Of Heroes. 29th of August. Available at: https://youtu.be/bZdd8k6wKsI (Accessed: 04/06/2026).
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001) Directed by Watanabe, s [Feature film]. Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan.
jabberw0k (2020) Spike Vs Thugs. 23rd of August. Available at: https://youtu.be/6SSsfNy5ZPQ (Accessed: 04/06/2026).
Cowboy Bebop (1998) TXN Network, 3rd of April.
Adult Swim Europe (2019) Samurai Jack | Jack Fights The Six Daughters | Adult Swim UK 🇬🇧. 19th of May. Available at: https://youtu.be/EDezpt2Qc9A (Accessed: 04/06/2026).
Samurai Jack: Season 5 (2017) Adult Swim, 11th of March.
Adult Swim Europe (2021) Samurai Jack | Jack vs. The Guardian | Adult Swim UK 🇬🇧. 27th of January. Available at: https://youtu.be/eCxT0RDLwzg (Accessed: 04/06/2026).
Samurai Jack (2001) Cartoon Network, 10th of August.
Netflix (2023) Blue Eye Samurai | Cliff Showdown | Official Clip | Netflix. 5th of October. Available at: https://youtu.be/kCVl5LR8A5o (Accessed: 04/06/2026).
Blue Eye Samurai (2023) Series 1. Blue Spirit. Netflix Animation Studios. J.A. Green Construction Corp & 3 Arts Entertainment. Available at: Netflix (Accessed: 04/06/2026).
AgentOliver (2010) Batman Beyond Fighting the Joker. 25th of October. Available at: https://youtu.be/8LikMS5gDDI (Accessed: 04/06/2026).
Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000) Directed by Geda, C [Medium]. Warner Home Video
Hello! This is the third blog post of my final animation project, I don't have much new to say, within this blog post, and am mostly uploading it to show of the current development of the first pass of my rough animation. Like last time, A lot of the animation, I think, needs work. and I fear, because of that, I am still somewhat behind. While I am on track in terms of my initial timetable, I fear that, in terms of needing to go over the animation a second time, I will need to speed up the process to make sure I have the time to do so, especially as I do fear a lot of my rough animation, so far looks very choppy and ugly, and will need a second pass to be presentable for a final project.
Rough Animation:
In terms of my work, since last time, I've rough animated scenes 10-23, and scenes 37-42. I skipped over a large chunk of the project, as, from feedback of my animatic, I was told that I should try and push the animation of the action scenes more, in terms of elements like scene composition and framing, so, before I got onto animating the action sequences, I wanted to have a discussion with my tutor to see wherein I could improve the animation/plan, as well as do some further research into animated, action fight sequences, especially those I like, to look for some inspiration.
As for the animation I've got so far, like last week I think a lot is rough and could use a second pass, though given the time I have left I may need to pick what areas to improve on most. As such, scenes I think I could improve upon, either due to the changes being minor or due to the scenes needing drastic improvements, I'm looking towards scenes 9, 11, 16, 17, 38 and 42.
In terms of each individual scene, 9's changes should be minor. During the section where the lady is struggling not to fall, off the edge of the cliff, I would mostly like to make some minor changes to the motion of the shot, to make the fall feel more natural, by having her struggle be more static and having her lean forward be more hand animated, rather than smooth via key-frames.
For scene 11, I would like to add some animation to the poachers, having them hold their weapons and do something threatening, though, as that may require a drastic change to the shot and composition, such a change may not be possible with my time constraints. (Given I need to finish rough animation, at the latest, on June the 24th).
For scene 16, I need to make the animation feel more complete, since, as of now, it just involves the axe-wielder dipping his head down and the axe swinging into frame, with me instead needing to have an actual, full animation of the axe wielder swinging the axe over his back in it's place. For that, I'll likely need to animate his full body and motion, and then pan the camera across the screen as he swings, to make sure the action feels realistic and 'correct' in terms of the action being taken.
For scene 17, I want to re-do the animation of the Ogre capturing the Axe Wielder, switching it up from the ogre running across the screen in a short loop to having them move more aggressively, jumping across the screen and tackling the poacher. It may help to add some more animalistic movements to this shot, such as having the Ogre run on all fours as well, to help add to the sense of aggression to the shot. As of now, I fear, due to the nature of the tackle, the scene reads as goofy, rather than silly, due to the comical nature of the shadow running across the screen and picking the Axe Wielder up, so making the tackle feel more aggressive should help fix this tonal issue. This scene is very significant to the short, given it is the first scene to introduce Ogre and is meant to help build up her threat by having her aggressively tackle the poacher, so making sure this threatening tone is achieved in the shot is especially important, meaning that a re-do of this scene is a must.
For scenes 38 and 42, the changes are much more minor. For scene 38, I want to change up the animation of the ogre swiping her hand down, to make it look more aggressive and sharp, as this should help lead into the ladies surprise that Ogre is actually handing their hand to her.
For scene 42, I want to change the animation of the Lady and Ogre hugging, to push the movement, posing and emotions more and generally make the whole scene read as a lot more comforting and sentimental, having Ogre lean down into lady with her hug and wrap both arms around her.
Their are a lot more changes and improvements to the work that could be made, obviously, but as of now these are the major I would like to focus on, as I think they would be the most important to improving the feeling of the project as a whole, in terms of making it's animation feel more appealing and making sure it's tone and emotions are clear.
As a whole, I think i've found that I struggle a lot with expressing emotion though my animation, and find it difficult to make work which pushes the posing and movement of characters, with a lot of my work feeling static, lifeless, stiff and robotic, due to the movements and posing being to subtle and rigid, which will be the main thing i'll have to try and push against during this project, roughing process and the second pass I do, if possible, after finishing these initial roughs.
Hello! This is the second blogpost of my final animation project, and it's been a while from the first. Over the few weeks, i've mostly been focusing on getting out my final project proposal, A document that my university uses as the basis for my final project ealuation and production. As it was mostly going through old work and re-itterating old points, I didn't see much reason to create a blogpost about the process.
However, since monday, I have been able to start my rough animation process, going over my earlier animatic and begining to add some movement to the work.
The process has been difficult, so far, as i've been dealing with outside forces which have limited my ability to focus on uni work, though I have managed to stay on task. Through this post, I will discuss my animation process so far.
Rough Animation:
As I stated before, this week i've mostly been doing rough animation work, creating some basic background and sketchy animation to which I can then clean up for my final animation.
The process has been somewhat simple so far, based of my earlier animatic which I then added inbetweens and greater movement to.
It's somewhat difficult to come up with much to say for the process so far, as it's been very simple. To make the animation, I used a pencil tool, while to make the backgrounds, I used various multiply layers of silohets to create a sense of depth.
Through this process, again as i've been somewhat tiedup with outside factors, I wasn't able to create as interesting animation as I hoped for, as I think alot of the movement so far feels pretty stiff, energyless and lifeless, so I belive, once i've finished up the first pass of the rough animation, I'll then need to go back and do a second run, improving shots that feel to boring or simple, like the shots of the lady running, though to do so, I will likely need to start outpeforming my intial planning, to make up time for the second pass. Though, hopefully i'll be more free in the near future and be able to get some more work done.
I've also noticed some areas that could do with a change in timing, through this process, as I feel alot of shots go by to fast or cut at the wrong time to make them easily readable, such as when Lady looks up to see the forest, with us not getting enough time to see her face and reaction to what she sees, or when she trips up on the root, with the cut happening just as she does and making the flow of events feel a little confusing, though that second issue may be fixable once I add some sound effects.
Ultimatley, as of now i'm a little disapointed on where I'm standing, having hopped I would be either more ahead in terms of time, or have some more hich quality roughs to work from, though hopefully, as it's still early into the project, I'll be able to make up this time in the comming weeks. It's esepcially important that I lively up the animation on my second pass, as creating some more energetic and dynamic animation, with lots of movement and interesting posing, was a big part of this project, for me, and if I fail to do so, not only may it worsen the overal marks and quality of the work, but would also make it a failure in terms of what I set out to do, so I'll need to make sure, no matter what, that my final roughs have an approriate quality to them.
Hello! This is the first week of my final semester on my masters animation course, during which I will be creating a final animation project, based on my pre-production work last semester.
The first thing I have to do, for this term, is create a final pitch document to get signed of-on by my university, and am waiting on my feedback from my previous project to do so.
As I still want to be productive while I wait for my feedback, this week I have been working on getting various assets and visual plans ready for the final project.
In this blogpost, I will talk about my project's logo, and some animation test's I have done.
1: Logo
I don't have much to say, in terms of my logo design and influence, as I already discussed it's greater development process in a previous blogpost, found here:
💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 0 · Uni Blogpost #Practice 2: 30 - Pre-Production 20 (25/04/2026) · Yo! Within this blogpost, I will discuss the final art styl
💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 0 · Uni Blogpost #Practice 2: 26 - Pre-Production 16 (16/04/2026) · Yo! Within this blogpost, I'll show of the logo development
As I stated previously, I wanted to turn my earlier logo design, which was a 2d image, into a 3d render, as I thought it would look good and make the logo stand out form it's contemporaries, which were normally very simple, text-based logos.
As such, with the free time offered, I decided to experiment with making the logo 3d.
I made the logo in blender, using a relatively standard method of taking a cube and then slicing and remodeling each cube into the require shape for what I wanted, and then using subdivisions and smooth shading to give the logo a more smooth and professional look.
To help identify the project as aimed towards adults, and as slightly dark/gritty, I wanted to add some wear-and-tear to the logo, by adding some texture to the wood and metal. To do this, I first made my own textures, on clip studio paint, in color, and then turned them black and white to create some bumbmaps.]
(My wood texture and Bump Map)
(My metal texture and Bump map. Distress taken from PNG Play, NA)
To create these textures, I used layers of add and multiply layers of different patterns, all using the same, base color, until I got an interesting and fittingly usable texture.
I then set my objects to use these textures and bump maps, which added a sense of depth to the model, as well as distress in the case of the metal.
To further add a sense of grunge and distress, I also moved around the logs slightly, tilting them and having them sit toward or back, to make them look uneven.
After I created the logo model, I then added some lighting to the scene, at 3 different angles to get some interesting highlights and colors and then then Rendered it out, as a transparent png.
I then took the 3d model into clip studio paint and added on my text, setting it as a saturation layer to help show the underlying shading and texture while still making the text readable, as well as editing the final model slightly to make it look better, most notably in duplicating the eyes of the ogre head as to make both shine bright, using the same color as the logo text.
Ultimately, I'm mostly happy with how my logo turned out. While it could definitely use some improvements, I don't think the text stands out much and could likely do with some tweaking to draw the eye more, and I think the distressing on the metal looks a little blocky and unnatural, and could do with some further smoothing and enhancing, as well as making the texture of the wood more pronounced, I think it turned out pretty well, all in all.
I think the logo stands out, looks pretty good and gives of the vibe I wanted. I also think it has a slightly retro, early-3d looking vibe because of it's blocky nature, shininess and general shape language, which I am a big fan of.
If I am to further develop this logo, I will focus mostly on making the text stand out more, and tweaking the textures to make them look better, as I'm mostly happy with the more general shape and design.
2: Rain Tests
Alongside creating a final look for my logo, I also did some experiments into the artstyle and animation of my project. More specifically, I did some experiments into the look of rain in my project, given how the opening scenes are set in the rain.
(Test 1, No blur)
(Test 2, Blur)
The process of creating the rain effects was very simple, as I simply made a few, repeating frames of various, white lines, at various sizes and widths, which I then cycled through to create the illusion of rain. I also experimented with having the rain start and end, by creating frames of increasingly more raindrops, going form a light to heavy rain, which I think looked good and created a very smooth transition.
As a lot of the project, especially the raining sections, will be set in the dark, I decided to make the rain white, as it would read better as rain without risking making the screen look to dark.
I did two tests, first creating the rain using a thin, brush pen, at 2px width, and then a second test, after creating the animation for the first, wherein I added a vertical motion blur. I think I prefer the second look, using the motion blur, as it gives the rain a somewhat transparent and fast-moving look which better sells the effect of rain, while the non-blured lines looked to thick and solid, appearing more like randomly appearing and disappearing lines than actual raindrops, so I will likely use the blruing effect in my actual project.
Right now, the rain is made up of 12 frames, playing at 24 frames per second, every other frame (on 2's), though I may try experimenting playing the rain on ones, since, as of now, I feel like it looks somewhat choppy due to the slower frame rate.
3: Conclusion
As I said before, going forward my hope is to create a final project document to submit to my university, which should then be agreed to and allow me to start the roughing and animation for my Ogrelord project, so, once I get back my feedback, I will begin work on said project document.
I'm looking forward to developing my final project, as I've gotten rather attached to the project, and hope it will turn out good in the end.
References
PNG Play (NA) Scratches Vector, Scratch Marks, Grunge Texture PNG. Available at: https://www.pngplay.com/image/352492 (Accessed: 13/05/2026).
Uni Blogpost #Practice 2: 32 - Pre-Production 21 (26/04/2026)
Yo! Within this blogpost, I will discuss my completed, final project, what I think I did well and what could have done with improving.
Reflection:
When I first began this per-production project, I imagined creating a pitch document for an animated series, with a focus on world building and abstract, strange and unnerving environments.
However, through the development process, this evolved into me creating an animated short film, staring an ogre who fights of some poachers to protect a lady, having a twist wherein, though the ogre is originally presented as villainous, they end up being far more friendly.
As such, I would argue that, on the most basic note, I failed to meet my original expectations for this project, in so far as it went in a completely different direction, as the needs for portfolio work were taken into greater consideration.
After moving on to creating an animated short, based on my market researched, I decided it would be best to try and create an adult (20-25 year olds), action short, as their seemed to be a growing movement of animation fans who find appeal in such works. To meet the expectations of this group, I decided it would be best to make sure my work focused heavily on interesting, fluid and bloody action, trying to create impressive and interesting movements, animation and shots.
As such, I tried to make sure my work would appeal to this audience, by creating designs that would be easy to read in action scenes, trying to aim for distinct silhouette and simple shapes that could be easily warped and move around, I also used two, different color pallets through the project, a more subdued color pallet for non-action scenes, which featured blue backgrounds, and a more bright, saturated color scheme which used a bright, red background for action scenes. I did this to help add to the sense of energy and threat to the action scenes, by giving them a more distinct and aggressive color pallet, which I think, so far, looks good.
I made it so the backgrounds were simple and somewhat sketchy, using blocks of color without outlines, while I tried to give characters distinct, black outlines, to help make them stand out from the environments and place the focus onto them.
All in all, I feel somewhat mixed as to how the pre-production project has turned out. Given I had spent a lot of time unsure as to what idea and project style I was going to take forward, it left me feeling somewhat behind when I started going forward with my development work. This meant that, while I do feel some elements of the project got an appropriate amount of iteration, such as the design for the main characters, Ogre and Lady, other elements, like the design of the three poachers, felt somewhat boring and undeserved as I needed to rush them out, with the story also feeling somewhat under baked as I didn't have much time to come up with any greater theming or purpose.
While I am mostly happy with how the work has come out, I think my pre-production has left me a good base to go forward with next term, with the basic art and major character designs looking good enough, I do think the project could have done with some improvement.
For ogre's design, I wanted something that could warp between scary and likeable, while for Lady's design, I wanted something that was sympathetic and expressive, both of which I think I managed to achieve. Meanwhile, For the three poachers, I wanted designs which read as intimidating and villainous, however, given my limited time with them, I think they came out as far to plain and generic to elicit any strong emotions.
I also think, as of now, the style of the project still falls flat, and I need to do some more experimentation with line width to get something that truly pops, though i think, as of now, it's at a good starting point.
If I had more time, or could re-do the project, I would have decided upon a final idea faster, so I could develop it out more rather than wasting time being indecisive, and would have spent more tine on the design of the poachers.
Uni Blogpost #Practice 2: 31 - Poem 5 (26/04/2026)
Yo! Within this blog post, I will show of the final version of my poetry project, and discuss the projects development and final form.
(Bleached Memories By Lucas Wong. 2025)
Since my last blogpost, I haven't made to many changes to the project, outside of adding in some subtitles and credits, alongside some minor changes to the timing and action of shots (such as making the bacon fly up higher when it is tossed).
As for the project as a whole, I think the final project came out well. While their are certain elements that could definitely be improved, such as the ripple of the water in the final shot, as a whole I think the animation came out well. For this project, I imagined a somewhat simple and sketchy look to the artwork, similar to chalk on a chalkboard or the sketching of pencil lines, and an overall abstract and fluid feel, wherein each scene flows into the next using different forms of transition.
I think I achieved this goal rather well, with the artwork clearing having a somewhat scratchy look, while still being clear and polished, and with the work having a good mix of more abstract and obvious imagery, in a way that helps keep the story moving while clearly identifying the tone and theme of the work.
I can't say their are many elements I would have changed for this project, and am happy with how the final product turned out well. I think using a more sketchy style worked well for this project, as it allowed me to be more iterative and lose with my production style, more easily able to change up animation and scenes as the art style helped smooth over any potential issues in translation, and, again at most, I would simply further refine the project beyond what I have already created, if given more time, rather than make any drastic changes.
Reference:
Wong, L. (2025) Bleached Memories. Available at: https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/bleached-memories/ (Accessed: 20/02/2025)
Uni Blogpost #Practice 2: 30 - Pre-Production 20 (25/04/2026)
Yo! Within this blogpost, I will discuss the final art style of my project, looking at it's backgrounds and the art style as a whole.
1: Background Design
(Campsite Layout)
(Background design, Left for action, Right for non-action scenes)
For my background art, I took inspiration from work like Samurai Jack (2017) and Wolfwalkers (More & Steward, 2020), which featured very unqiue, stylised and flat asthetics. I decied to try and go for a similar, flat and abstract style, with objects mostly using 1-3 colours, or having the forest itself be made up of layers of multiplied gradients, within abstract shapes. I decided to go with this look, as I thought it would be make the process of creating the backgrounds, within the final project, easier, due to their simple and geometric designs. Furthermore, by having the background be made out of pure shapes, without outlines, it should help me easily distinguish between the background and characters, even within the action sequences, where the background takes on a bright pink/red, as the black outlines of the characters should immediately distinguish them from the backgrounds.
(color pallets of the backgrounds, left for action, right for non-action)
(background object design)
I made the backgrounds of the action scenes simpler, with less colors, to help focus more on the bright red of the shots, which I hoped would further build on the energy of said scenes via the domination of the bright, aggressive color.
2: Style Test
(Various style tests)
After creating my animatic and designs, I did some style tests. I decided, for the final project, to limit shading to only scenes wherein I thought it could have a massive benefit to the scenes mood, to help the general animation process, by limiting the amount of time I would need to spend with shading. I also thought shading wouldn't be as necessary with the style I have gone with, given how distinct the background and characters have been made. For the characters, I also wanted to give them somewhat large, bold outlines, again to separate them from the backgrounds, and also because I thought it would give the characters a sense of structure which would help the artwork pop. As of now I'm not sure if the test width is a good size, or if it could be made thicker, but as a start I think it all looks good.
3: Logo Design
As for the logo of the project, as stated before, I wanted one that stood out from it's contemporaries.
I decided to go with two designs, a more complex one, featuring a sign with ogre-like elements, with OGRELORD written over top, and a simpler one, featuring just the text, with or without a red trim, with both being used for different situations, depending on which would serve said situation better. For example, the simpler design may be more appropriate for professional events and situations, as it looks more clean than the more complex design.
My plan is, during the future production of my project next term, to make my logo in a 3d software, to help give it a more solid, real and detailed look, which I think would serve it's design well. My hope is that such a style would make the text, if kept appropriately cartoon, to stand out more against the rest of the logo.
As for the design itself, I am rather happy with how it turned out, so far, thinking the logo stands out well, and gets the idea of the project across easily.
References:
Samurai Jack Season 5 (2017) Adult Swim, 11th, March
Wolfwalkers (2020) Directed by Moore, T & Stewart, R. [Feature film]. Wildcard
Uni Blogpost #Practice 2: 29 - Pre-Production 19 (25/04/2026)
Yo! Within the next few blogpost, i'll show of my final artwork for my OGRELORD project. within this blogpost, i'll discuss my final character designs, while in the next, I will discuss all other, final design elements.
Character Designs:
(Character Height chart and colour guide, left for non action scenes, right for action scenes)
(Turnaround for Lady, left, and designs for poachers, right)
(Ogre turnaround, regular, left and silhouetted, right)
For my character designs, I didn't make to many changes since their previous versions, as I thought both lady and ogre's already looked pretty good, outside of needing some slight tweaks to their original color pallets, and thought, though somewhat boring, the three poachers designs worked well enough for secondary characters, each being at least somewhat distinct.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I decided, for the final project, to have scenes feature two, different color pallets, an action and non-action one, with the action color pallet taking on a slightly more saturated and abstract look, with darker-darks and giving each color a more red or blue tone. I think this works well, alongside the bright-red background design, to give the action shots an inherent sense of energy, due to their color pallets, and allowing the characters to still stand out, despite the bright background, due to their use of darker dark's as contrast against the red of the background, and with their slightly more blue tints.
For the colors themselves, I decided to give lady and ogre matching blue clothing, to stand out from the rest of their colors and to connect the two characters together, while I created a pool of colors which was shared between the poachers, to tie that group together. This thus helps more easily identify the good and bad guys of the project via their shared colors, and should hopefully make the viewing experience easier. Each character also has a distinct, primary color, lady's being blue, sword wielder's being green, axe wielder's being cream, knife wielder's being dark grey, and ogre's being a mix of red and light grey, or black when she is silhouetted, which should further make each character stand out from the others, despite their shared pallets.
Ultimately, I am mostly happy with my final character designs. While, as said before, I would have liked to go through a few more passes of the poacher characters, if I had given myself more time to do so, I think both ogre and lady's final designs came out well, with lady feeling easily sympathetic, while ogre's is able to have a good mix of intimating and cuteness, though tricks like removing her pupils when she is trying to be intimidating, as to make her harder to understand and read emotionally. I think the switching of colors for action scenes also look good, with the characters colors remaining clear despite the change in palet.
(Ogre colors)
(Lady colours. Left Action, Right non-action)
(Axe Wielder colors. Left Action, Right non-action)
(Knife Wielder colors. Left Action, Right non-action)
(Knife Wielder (No Cloak) colors. Left Action, Right non-action)
(Sword Wielder colors. Left Action, Right non-action)
Uni Blogpost #Practice 2: 28 - Pre-Production 18 (20/04/2026)
Yo! Within this blogpost, I'll discuss my current, final plan for my projects story, which I will use as a base for the final style experimentation and tests for this project.
1: Story idea and development
Within my previous post, about my initial plan for this project's story, It began with a short section building up ogre as a major antagonist, then cut to a woman walking through a forest, who is then attacked by some poachers and saved by the ogre, who turns out to be far more friendly than expected.
Since this original idea, I have changed up the story slightly.
My initial plan for this story was for it to take on a style similar to that of a fairy tale, and as such, i began with opening narration, discussing the tale of a forest, home to a great and terrible ogre. However, over time, the fairy tale influences of the project became a lesser focus, in comparison to the action of the project, and, given I thought the use of a narrated opening would take a long time and could lead the project to have a somewhat sluggish tone, I decided to cut the project down, now opening on the lady running into the woods, and foreshadowing ogre through signs, warning of her and her danger.
Outside this change, however, the project largely follows my original outline, still focusing on Lady as our main, point of view, character, into the world and Ogre as a way to justify and heighten the fear initial given to Ogre, and with it still building up to the twist of ogre being far more protagonistic than she original appears, with most of the changes being used to streamline the story and make it flow better, while keeping the major theme of not judging others by pre-concieved notions in tact.
For the animatic process, I first began by making a more simple, thumbnail-based animatic, as to block out the basic action and timing of the project, before then creating a more detailed and completed animatic.
(Thumbnail animatic)
(Final Animatic)
Through the animatic process, I decided on some stylistic choices for my final project.
I decided, for the action scenes of the project, I would shift the style of the work, making the backgrounds more simplified and switching up the color pallet, making it more dominated by saturation and red, to help add a sense of energy and danger to the action via this heavy use of read. This idea was inspired by games like Okami (Kamiya, 2006) and Earthbound (Itoi, 1994), which, when in combat, will take you into unique battle sections, with strange and abstract backgrounds. I liked how this gave a unique energy and identity to the works, both as a whole and within their action specifically, and thought, since action is a major focus of my project, it would be good to take inspiration from this effect, to further highlight my action by giving action scenes their own colors.
I also decided, for the action scenes of the work, to have Ogre appear in silhouette. I did this as I thought it would allow me to focus more on her movement, posing and energy, rather than consistency in her design, freeing me up for some more dynamic action. Furthermore, I also thought it helped make her feel more intimidating, by making the character seem more mysterious and unrecognizable thought the lack of distinguishing features.
As a whole, i'm happy with my animatic so far, even if It could do with some further refinement in terms of it's action, though such refinement could likely be achieved during my rough-animation process next term, wherein i'll be more aware of the timing of each movement and how poses come together.
Despite that issue, however, I think the animatic, as a whole, gets the general idea I have for each scene, and the story and atmosphere of the project as a whole, out pretty well.
Now I have created this animatic, my next step will be to use it as a guide, to create some final style tests and come up with finished looks for my characters, environment, logo and etc, before I begin to focus on my final write up for the project.
Uni Blogpost #Practice 2: 27 - Pre-Production 17 (17/04/2026)
Yo! Within this blogpost, I'll talk some more about my target audience research. Previously, my researched focused around the general ideas of my projects, trying to identify good audience's for them, while, within this blog post, I'll talk about my research, conducted throughout this project as a whole, into my target audience themselves, works of interest for them, and what elements I should take forward and inspiration from into my own work.
1: Identifying my target audience
Based on my previous research into fantasy and 2d animation, I noticed a lot of works seemed to be aimed towards older audience, and, more generally, we could notice a growing trend in critically and commercial acclaimed, adult animation.
Samurai Jack (2017)
As such, I believe my work should also aim towards an older audience. I decided this as, given I plan for my story to be action focused, I thought it would be more fitting for an older audience who could handle more intense/blood action scenes, I similarly thought it would be good to make the action more bloody, as it would help strengthen the main crux of the story, that being how Ogre, thought initially appearing dangerous, is actually rather antagonistic, making the action more bloody would help add to the sense of danger within the character, by making their actions more violent to the bad guys.
More specifically, I plan to aim my work towards young adults, aged around 20-25, who are fans of action and fantasy animation. I wanted to aim for this demographic since, as mentioned before, it would allow me to push a more gritty and bloody tone, which I thought would fit well with the story I plan to tell. Furthermore, I thought it would be good as, again mentioned before, their seems to be a growing trend in adult focus animation, both within and outside fantasy genre, as seen in works like Samurai Jack (2017), Castlevania (2017), Invincible (2021), Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022), Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc (Yoshihara, 2025), Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (2019), The Legend of Vox Machina (2022) and Blue Eye Samurai (2023). This suggests their is a large market of animation fans, specifically older ones, looking for more serious/action focused works targeted towards them, and, given I think it's good that these works are not only pushing the bounds of the idea of animation only being for children, but also doing so with heavy success, that it would be good to try and aim towards this market to try and further this perception.
I have identified, then, my target audience towards 20-25 year old animation fans, who like adult focused, fantasy and action works. I wasn't able to find much research documenting the genders of such a group, to identify any particular one as my main focus however.
(Castlevania (2017) trailer, taken from Netflix. 2021)
As such, I looked at various works, including those previously mentioned, alongside more general fantasy and action works, like Wolfwalkers (Moore & Stewart. 2020), The Boy and the Heron (Miyazaki, 2023), Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (2023) and Arcane (2021).
2: Research into target audience
As mentioned, I looked at a number of works which seem to appeal towards my target audience.
From this researched, I noticed a trend between the works, specifically the ones aimed towards adults, as having a heavy focus on action.
More specifically, while the action between the works varied, with some having more grounded styles which took inspiration from live action choreography and filming techniques, such as Blue Eye Samurai (2023), and others had a more exaggerated style, focus on quick movements, strong posing and dynamic choreography, such as Samurai Jack (2017), they all seemed to focus heavily on their action scenes, as a core part of their appeal and identity.
(Blue Eye Samurai (2023) episode, taken from Netflix, 2023)
Further more, many of the shows seemed to try and add a sense of tension to their action scenes, and adult edge, by making them more bloody and gory, either in a more subtle way, such as, again, within Blue Eye Samurai (2023), wherein there is a distinct, but minimal use of blood, or in more exaggerated, explosive ways, such as within the huge explosions of gore within Invincible (2021).
This greater use of blood seems to be a defining element to many adult, action focused animation, likely as both a way to help further add stakes, tension and dynamism to the action, with the appearance of blood quickly signing to the audience that a hit was impactful and deadly, and thus adding a feeling of weight and readability to the fight scenes, as well as clearly denoting the work as for adults, given how the use of blood is often avoided in kids work, as it is seen as potentially harmful, and thus works that use blood get marked and identified as being adult.
The action also seems to aim for a more dynamic and captivating feel, often through more natural and minimal use of cutting, letting scenes flow together naturally between actions, or otherwise holding on shots for longer periods of time to let the spacing of the fight scenes be made clear to the audience, using techniques like camera turns and pans to move the action through the space in way that adds a sense of reality to the world, by mimicking the movement of a camera through real, 3d space, rather than using cuts to make scenes feel more separated and abstract.
As such, Making my fight scene clear, dynamic and bloody will need to be a major focus of my story and project, as that seems to be a core appeal, of many adults, in terms of animation.
(Invincible (2021) trailer, taken from Prime Video. 2021)
Another major pattern between the works I looked at was their seeming attempts to tackle more adult topics and themes, such as the need for pacifism and violence in Samurai Jack (2017) or grief within Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (2023). This likely appeals to older audiences, even if the work itself may be aimed at more general audiences, as these more nuanced themes and messages help offer the work a sense of depth a which helps give it a more adult feel.
While I don’t plan for my work to be very long, and as such, with it’s action focus, think it would be hard to delve deeply into any overly complex themes or subjects, I do think the main crux of the work is the idea of not judging others based on ill-conceived notions, given how the main twist is how Ogre is far more antagonistic than she originally appears, so, even if not a particularly deep or nuanced idea, I hope such an idea can appeal, if at least not turn away, my target audience.
While, if given more time, I likely would have looked for a more complex subject to discuss, as of now I feel my plans, alongside what time I have left, means I’ll be unable to come up with a greater theme, at least in a way which will feel natural and be sincere, and I fear trying to shoe horn in a theme without planning nor appropriate integration would be an insult to the work and audience.
As for artstyle, it seems to me that their isn’t any one, particular style that stands out as a pattern within these works, with some taking on a more simple and geometric or sketchy look, like Samurai Jack (2017) or Wolfwalkers (Moore & Stewart. 2020), while some try to appear like comic books, such as Invincible (2021), or use a standard, anime style, like Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (2023). As such, it seems the quality of the artwork and animation is more important to this audience, rather than the style itself, and as such, again, I’ll need to make sure my artwork, action and animation is appealing.
3: Conclusion.
For OGRELORD, my target audience is young adults, 20 - 25 year olds, who enjoy adult, action-fantasy works. To appeal to this audience, my work will focus on dynamic, interesting and bloody action.
Going forward, then, into my final, story production, I will try to make sure the story fits around this focus on action, as to best appeal to my target audience.
References
Netflix (2021) Castlevania Season 4 | Official Trailer | Netflix. 29th of April. Available at: https://youtu.be/L7iWXfZzEMc?si=DRbnadRBjzVnw8KY (Accessed: 17/04/2026).
Netflix (2023) Blue Eye Samurai | Hammerscale | Full Episode | Netflix. 1st of November. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm73ma6Ibcs (Accessed: 17/04/2026).
Prime Video (2021) Invincible – Official Trailer | Prime Video. 19th of february. Available at: https://youtu.be/-bfAVpuko5o?si=s7oGX1KkTfWAamGW (Accessed: 17/04/2026).
Samurai Jack Season 5 (2017) Adult Swim, 11th, March
Castlevania (2017) Available At: Netflix
Invincible (2021) Available At: Amazon Prime..
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022) Season 1, Trigger. Available at: Netflix
Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc (2025) Directed by Yoshihara, T [Feature film]. Toho
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (2019) Tokyo MX. 6, April
The Legend of Vox Machina (2022) Available At: Amazon Prime.
Blue Eye Samurai (2023) Available At: Netflix
Wolfwalkers (2020) Directed by Moore, T & Stewart, R. [Feature film]. Wildcard
The Boy and the Heron (2023) Directed by Miyazaki, H [Feature film]. Studio Ghibli.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (2023) Nippon TV, 29th of September
Uni Blogpost #Practice 2: 26 - Pre-Production 16 (16/04/2026)
Yo! Within this blogpost, I'll show of the logo development of my project, starting with some of the research I did into various logos, from works which I thought were similar or which I took inspiration from for OGRELORD, and then showing of the logo's themselves.
1: Research
The first step I took, in developing OGRELORD's logo, was to look at similar works, in terms of genre, tone, style, target audience, etc, to spot any commonalities, in which to either take inspiration from, or try to use as a guide to spot potential areas for uniqueness.
I looked at a number of works, including many I have already discussed, such as, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (2023), Wolfwalkers (Moore & Stewart. 2020), The Boy and the Heron (Miyazaki, 2023) Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki, 1997) and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Jackson, 2001) and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo, 1998), in terms of more general, fantasy logos, as well as works like Samurai Jack (2017), Castlevania (2017), Skyrim (Howard, 2011) and Mork Borg (Nilsson & Nohr, 2011), in terms of fantasy series more specifically aimed towards an audience that is the same or similar to my own, that being aimed towards young adult (20-25 year olds), action fantasy fans, especially those with a slightly more violent feel.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (2023)
Wolfwalkers (Moore & Stewart. 2020)
The Boy and the Heron (Miyazaki, 2023)
Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki, 1997)
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Jackson, 2001)
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo, 1998)
Samurai Jack (2017)
Castlevania (2017)
Skyrim (Howard, 2011)
Mork Borg (Nilsson & Nohr, 2011)
From these examples, I noticed a pattern that most logos seemed to take on a very simple, minimalist appearance, often being flat, singular-coloured text of the work's name. While some, such as in the case of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo, 1998) and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Jackson, 2001) were slightly more complex, featuring added visual elements and more detailed, 3D text, the general pattern seemed to be minimalism.
Futhermore, it seemes that, depending on the work's tone, different styles of font's are used for the logos. As an example, the more serious works, like Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (2023), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Jackson, 2001) and Skyrim (Howard, 2011) using more professional and clear text, seemingly taking inspiration from typewriter fonts through their uniformity and simplicity, this is likely done to give the work itself a sense of legitimacy and seriousness. In contrast, a work like Mork Borg (Nilsson & Nohr, 2011), notable for it's heavy metal inspirations and dark, intentionally disturbing tone, uses a more hand-written, scratchy and grungy look, likely to help enhance the sense of grim-darkness to the work and it's logo, by making the logo itself feel rough and 'wrong.'
Furthermore, it seems a lot of the logo's, regardless of their tone, feature some amount of distressing on the letters, be it scratches, small cuts or wholes, or other such effects. This is likely done to give the logo both a sense of grit, similar to that of Mork Borg's grunges, but in a more controlled way to keep the letters looking clear and professional, as well as giving the letters a sense of age, as if the logo itself has been worn down over time. This could both serve to help identify the work as existing int he fantasy genre, which often positions works in the past or in a setting influenced by the past, and as such, this sense of history is included in the logo by making it appear as if the logo itself has been worn down by time, or it could be done to help add a sense of prestige and history to the work and series itself, through much of the same connections, as positioning the logo of the work as series being form the past, and as such positioning the work as a long standing/running work, series or institution.
2: Font Design
Having looked at these various influences, I then decided that the first step in designing my work's logo would be to design the logo's font, considering how, since many logos are purely text, the style of the font would likely become a core part of the logo's identity, and thus that of the projects.
I tried to go with a mixture of styles for this project, using both various distressed looks (1-2 and 4-6) and looks designed to appear more historical, like those written on medieval text's (3 and 7-10).
For my medievil inspired looks, I also took inspiration, more specifically, from the logo of Wolfwalkers (Moore & Stewart. 2020) and various, illustrated text's in medieval books and bibles, featuring a more heavily detailed, opening letter, while the rest of the text, though still being somewhat complex, being more relatively simplified.
I quite the look of this design, as I think it makes the logo stand out from many of the others I looked at, due to the heavy, medieval theming, and adds a sense of grandeur and significance to the work and logo. However, I fear the detail of the first O in the title may make the text, as a whole, hard to read, and the somewhat religious suggestion of the logo may not fit with the more simple, action story I plan to tell.
Noticing that OGRELORD, when stacked, had two R's in the same place, I also tried to incorporate that into one of my logo designs, as I noticed that some logos within my research, such as Castlevania (2017), would make certain letters within their logos more pronounced, by giving them extra size and detail.
To do this, within Logo 5, I made the R of the logo twice as tall, acting as the R for both the top and bottom half of the logo. I am mixed on this look, as, while I do think it helps add some character to the design, it may also risk making the logo hard to read, as the R can separate the text in such a way wherein people may read the logo as Oglo Red, or something similar, given how the R can break up the text.
Of the fonts, my three favorites were 5, 8 and 4, although I had issues with all three, since I thought 4 may be to similar to Mork Borg's logo, and decided to make them the focus of my further development.
3: Logo Design
I wanted my logo to stand out, and, as such, I tried to do some experimentation, with different styles and framing, to avoid simply making another minimalist, text-based one, which could risk my logo blending in with others to much.
I looked at various ways of framing my logo, such as framing it on a physical object (3 and 4), trying it in with ogre-based imagery (5 and 6) or simply trying to add a sense of depth and 3d-ness to the logo (1 and 2). I did, also, do some experiments with having the different fonts in different colors (6 to 13). Of these tests, my favorite was 4, which featured my double-sized R text placed upon a sign, which features a prominent, ogre head around it. I liked this look as I thought it stood out from other logos I looked at, and thought, given the dark colors of the sign in contrast to the bright red text, it still allowed the logo text to sign. This makes the logo distinct, both in terms of the greater sign and the text itself, while still leaving it easily readable.
To further improve this design, I think I could try to design the logo in 3D software, such as blender, and animate it within said programs. I think this would work well for the logo's design, as it should hopefully add a greater detail and sense of weight, depth and reality to the design, while allowing me to make it more detailed without risking making it's animation process, if it does need to be animated, overly complex, as I could simply move the static, 3d model within the animation software, relatively simple in terms of 3d animation.
Going forward, after I complete an animation for my project, I plan to create a final design for this logo, which, during my creation process next term, I will then try to turn into a 3d model.
References:
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (2023) Nippon TV, 29th of September
Wolfwalkers (2020) Directed by Moore, T & Stewart, R. [Feature film]. Wildcard
The Boy and the Heron (2023) Directed by Miyazaki, H [Feature film]. Studio Ghibli.
Princess Mononoke (1997) Directed by Miyazaki, H [Feature film]. Studio Ghibli.
Samurai Jack Season 5 (2017) Adult Swim, 11th, March
Castlevania (2017) Available At: Netflix
Howard, T. (2006) Skyrim [Video game]. Bethesda Softworks
Nilsson. P & Nohr. J. (2020) Mörk Borg. Free League Publishing. Available at: https://morkborg.com/ (Accessed: 20/02/2026).
The Lord of the Rings: The Twin Towers (2001) Directed by Jackson, P [Feature film]. New Line Cinema
Nintendo (1998) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time [Video game]. Nintendo
