ALLIE JAMES, ART AND ANIMATION

Hello! My name is Allie James and I'm a 2D generalist and MA Animation student at the University of Hertfordshire. Welcome to my blog!

[jambjars]

little holiday doodle of my pal's character for a secret santa we did :^)

[jambjars]

My senior capstone film from 2023 is finally out! The team and I were waiting until festival season was over and wanted to publish it during Trans Visibility Week.

It's a surrealist fantasy film about identity, dysphoria, and everything that comes along with it in the early days of transition. We hope you love it.

[jambjars]

final grease pencil doodles from tonight :^) my friends are fun to scribble

[jambjars]

grease pencil doodles 2!!

[jambjars]

grease pencil doodles ft. my favorite song on imaginal disk!

[jambjars]

[jambjars]

A few posts ago, I wrote about the opening sequence to the film. While I believe now I am aiming to make my submission a trailer for the final product and will not be including the tongues of fire I included in the previous post, the framing shot with the plants around the sun will still very much be included! Here's the final look of the sun in that sequence in a little loop.

The glow and wave distortion effects were inspired by this film I came across:

The Earth's atmosphere is the thing making the sun in these videos that striking orange-red color, so if it were our sun in Hell's Itch I would have made it more white, but Barnard's Star is a red dwarf so this would actually be more accurate to its proper appearance.

[jambjars]

Hello!

I have been working on the bridge sequence this week as planned in the production schedule. Here is a sneak peek from a shot in the film affectionately dubbed “SEQ3_SHOT2”, where Officer Glass pulls the lever to shut off the windows at the bridge. I’m trying out some perspective with her arms so that the movement is the focus and attempting to preserve the sense that she’s floating in anti-gravity. Obviously, if on Earth, one’s legs wouldn’t be flinging around in the air, but the force with which she’s propelling her arms back throw her legs forward. Referencing movement for this shot has been kind of tricky as a result, but the direction it’s heading is promising so far.

[jambjars]

It's here! The official first timing pass of Hell's Itch! I haven't added captions to the video itself yet, but I'll probably dub my own audio over top to get a better sense of timing in the coming days before I get my official line recordings from voice actors.

This thing comes out to around a whopping 4.5 minutes right now, but a lot of that comes from shots breathing (it's an atmospheric short set in space, after all). I'll definitely tweak timing and see what I can cut as we go, though. Hard not to be ambitious with a first animatic pass!

[jambjars]

Setting some guidelines for myself with Anneila's design. This is like an early do and don't sheet for myself; as I'm planning on the vast majority of Hell's Itch's animation to be hand-animated, I need to make sure my character designs don't slip wildly from shot to shot.

Anneila has a very soft face, sort of bean-shaped, and I want to make sure her jawline is never 100% distinct from her neck. There should be at least some area where it's hard to tell which is which. Additionally, her facial features should primarily be gathered in the center of her face instead of spread throughout evenly, leaving a large forehead and chin behind. She should always be flushed and have eye bags, too, but the hair can move around since she's in antigravity!

[jambjars]

Final Anneila Front and side views! This is the part IVA suit, part boiler suit uniform idea I wanted to go for. The customizability begins and ends with how much its wearer wants to partially zip their collar, and since Anneila is/was the station's botanist, she doesn't get any extra-special patches like Commander Rubin. The blue is based off the actual element of xenon, which typically shows up light blue with a dark blue glow.

Bonus: Anneila with sclera, which several of my friends vetoed. Say hello and goodbye to sclera'd Anneila. We hardly knew you.

Bonus x 2: The official uniform without any accoutrements or on a specific character!

[jambjars]

The infamous Lieutenant Bell's mug! This bad boy's only going to be in frame for a few seconds before its untimely demise, but I wanted to get an idea down for its design now. It's one of those fancy vinyl mugs people pretend like they take camping in the woods, originally emblazoned with "MANAGER? I prefer the term BADASS BOSS" before being vandalized by some of the crew to say "Lieutenant Bell :)" in curly pink script instead.

[jambjars]

Heeeeeere's Rubin! She has her jacket collar zipped down the most of all the Hypatia crew, but wears a navy turtleneck underneath it in company colors. She also has some decorated patches on her left sleeve to celebrate her rank, I'll design those soon!

[jambjars]

Getting closer. I've officially got a logo for Xenon Aeronautics, which helps a great deal with visual weight. Got some feedback from friends that the diamond shape is the move, but some of these look a little too fashionable to be IVA (intravehicular activity) suits like an astronaut would wear.

Bonus fact: I found out that astronauts wear three different types of suits! There's IVAs, which are for inside a craft and therefore are the lightest of the suits. Then there's IEVAs which can be use both inside and outside and protect against space a bit more, and then EVAs for outside only for maximum space protection, which is what we think of when we think spacesuits. IVAs are still pressurized in case of emergency, but you couldn't wear them outside a craft.

Thomas, K.S., Mcmann, H.J. and Springerlink (Online Service (2012). U. S. Spacesuits. New York, Ny: Springer New York.

[jambjars]

Final Hell's Itch storyboard pass of Pre-Production! I had an excellent time making these, seriously. I'm only sharing the finished ones here because the earliest ones were REAL ROUGH and I have a soft spot for being extra on the storyboard front. This way, I get a better idea visually of what I want for the final product and don't have to do so much thinking when I go in for the real deal. Doing my thinking ahead of time.

As it stands, I think the final shot (prior to the black panels) comes across creepier than I want in the finished version. A little bit of creepiness is cool, especially because the tree the flashlight focuses on is implied to have grown around Glass, but it feels a little horror movie right now. Adjusting the lighting might help.

[jambjars]

Early uniform explorations for the crew of the Hypatia! I'm not entirely sold on any of these yet, but I think we're reaching a decent direction with the 2nd and last, specifically. At any rate, big clunky boots are a must.

[jambjars]

CHARACTER DESIGN WOES

When going through the process of designing Lieutenant Bell, things weren't clicking at first. I had some feedback from a few friends about which direction to go. Some of them from the Enter Your Name team encouraged me to make him look sassier. Some of them (my poor long-suffering pal) ended up inspiring me to make sure Bell did not look exactly like one of them. The sassier Bell I mentioned is below. The heels on the boots are not staying, I am sorry to report, as they're not exactly functional while you're floating about in space. Nonetheless, this was obviously essential to the process.