For my personal showcase, I took a look at some of the areas where my portfolio was lacking in order to determine where I should focus my efforts. Looking at jobs I would be likely to apply for, it seemed that I should focus on character design and concept art, storytelling and graphic design for motion graphics.
To cover these bases, I decided on three main projects:
Fairy Character Design Revamp
For this project, I will redesign all 8 of my current fairy characters, taking reference from current animation and implementing better storytelling into their designs. I’ve decided that I would like my cartoon to have more focus on history as this was something I enjoyed up until sixth form, so it seems right that costumes and character personalities should reflect the time period they’re from. I also think it would be cool for the story to involve some key moments in history, either re-enacted or referred to.
The characters include:
Aeli (Main character, Air elemental)
Juniper (Earth Elemental)
Gille (Water Elemental)
Zoe (Fire Elemental)
Rowena (Flux Fairy)
Tyl (Time Elemental)
Alasdair (Space Elemental)
Aoife (Sprit Elemental)
As an addition to this project, I think some environment design would be helpful too in order to demonstrate an understanding of perspective.
Possible Environments:
Fairy Treehouse - where the core cast live
Otherworld Temple - where the elemental fairies reside in the Otherworld dimension
Rowena’s Lab - where Rowena, the flux fairy, conducts her experimentation on Fae and Mythological magic
Earth - several environments could be drawn up of the post-apocalyptical Earth, such as where the ‘Time Reverse’ missed a spot and left half a skyscraper, or where Juniper raged at the modern world and covered an interchange with vines and cracks in the ground.
Everything designed in this section of the project will have to meet industry standard, as referred to in art books and cartoon bibles.
Short Animatic
As my final major project is already quite big, in order to meet the storytelling requirement for a storyboard artist position, I would create a short animatic (not animation) to show my abilities. I haven’t yet decided on what this will feature, however it could be a short scripted scene between fairies.
I will have to check if copyrighted music is permitted on a portfolio, as I do have a few ideas in that regard that could be fun.
Graphic Design
In this project, I will research the rules of graphic design, such as hierarchy, values etc. This will require borrowing some books from NUA’s library on the subject and finding brief online courses. I have some experience in design from my time at Long Road Sixth Form, however it was only really covered briefly.
With this, I would create some short animations in Adobe After Effects, possibly transitions for my showreel, in order to demonstrate an understanding of design.
One hurdle I came to face during the animation process was how I was going to animate the squiggled lines of the adults. I would attempt to animate these, starting with the first appearance of this form, but it seemed to jutter around too much and was jarring.
I decided to look into other places this was implemented successfully, such as in Bojack Horseman.
This example only has a squiggled form over the face but it works without being too jarring. The forms don’t look very related (keyframed) and yet it looks cohesive.
This is the final version of my animatic, as shown to peers at a group tutorial on January 10th. (Awaiting feedback from Helen S.) Peers said the drawings could be more clear on some expressions and movements.
For this second pass, I tried to highlight certain parts with colours to make them stand out more, and make their link more obvious, including the meteor and the wings. I added certain other sections, such as Zoe sniffing her food happily in order to give context to the flashback. I reoriented that shot also (of her sitting on the table eating from a can) so it matched her orientation out of the flashback. I gave Zoe more of a reaction to the explosion. One peer had the feedback in my last pass that the sirens weren’t quite clear, so I thought to add a flashback of Zoe being dragged away from watching the police out of the window. However another peer - which I agreed with - said that this felt futile and could be taken out. Another change that was made was that Zoe isn’t the aggressor in the final confrontation with Juniper, and instead raises her hand to protect herself.
First version of my animatic, shown to peers for feedback. The feedback included how confusing it was that Zoe got into trouble, and that she doesn’t really react to the school exploding. People were also confused by what happened at the end.
I have very little experience in drawing environments, so this is something I definitely have to develop for this project. To begin with, I compiled some reference images of British secondary schools, including the one I attended - Parkside.
I wanted to replicate the theme of my own secondary school as it’s something that I’m personally familiar with, it being an older in design and having an odd layout - the main school was in a circular shape with a quad in the centre.
I played around with similar designs, varying between more traditional and more modern styles. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to have much nature nearby to the school in order to emphasise how uncomfortable it is for the main character to be there, and to emphasise that it’s quite a cramped school in an urban area.
I settled on quite a simple design, having it be symmetrical in layout. This particular design may require another pass or two as I’m not sure about the colours and, for the final concept art, I want to show the surroundings of the school (which will be urban buildings closely encroaching on it’s borders).
Continuing my style development, I worked on creating an establishing shot background for my new animatic. I started by looking at references from Gravity Falls and Adventure Time - two shows that have different art styles that I would like to replicate or meld together.
I tested drawing evergreen trees, first taking inspiration from the red spruce tree which is prominent in England. I decided against this as the more complex branch pattern was going to be tricky to replicate at a high frequency in order to make a forest like I wanted, and would be distracting due to it’s silhouette. Due to this, I decided to go for a pine tree with branches that face downwards.
I wanted the establishing shot to have a nature theme, so I decided that this should be where we are minorly introduced to Juniper - the Earth fairy from the extended universe.
At the time of this development, I had begun to experiment with new brushes in Photoshop, taking inspiration from artists I admire. One of these was SamDoesArts and the rake brush he uses, being used to leave sections of lines in places of shade.
I continued this pattern into other backgrounds, including this flashback image of an ashtray on a windowsill.
To begin production, I decided to borrow the book Layout and Composition for Animation by Ed Ghertner in order to ensure that the basis of the project is as strong as possible. The book begins with a breakdown of the script, which made me realise that I hadn’t originally written down the structure of the short film. This prompted me to write one, which in turn got me to reconsider the structure and how everything is communicated.
My feedback from Ba3a stated that the animatic was hard to understand, which I could definitely see. As a rewrote the script, I tried to alter it to show more (in order to make up for the lack of telling). I changed some of the flashbacks and their position in the script, spreading them out completely instead of having them all happen suddenly at the end.
Following further guidance from my feedback, I’ve looked into cutting my animation short in order to make finishing it more achievable. This cut starts at the cafeteria scene, as this is where the first flashback now lies and will help to demonstrate the character’s emotions and backstory as much as possible.
Reducing the workload further, it was suggested that I try and make a robust storyboard primarily, and perhaps only animate one of the scenes in order to provide high quality work for my portfolio. As I’m redoing the storyboarding this is certainly something I could work toward, however it will depend on how quickly the work is completed.
