Anika (AJ) Sheehan

1st year Animation & Motion Design LSAD

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Re-Invention in Storytelling: 25/4/2024

On the final day of visual work for the project, we worked together to create the final storyboard and mastershots for our pitch on Monday.

We split the work so that Roisin would draw the frames, Sarah would draw them in one consistent style that Gabs would then put onto digital and do the line art for. He would then export the line art as a transparent file and then send to me to colour. Here are the completed mastershots I coloured:

And this is the process video of me colouring them:

I made sure to reference both Animatrix, Beyond and Violet Evergarden while colouring.

I then helped Sarah line her storyboard drawings and here are a few examples of those drawings:

And to end things on a high note; I created the animatic for our storyboard using all the work we made together:

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Re-Invention in Storytelling: 22/4/2024

I continued to work on the design of Mary and the courtyard on Monday. I drew a bust and decided on a design for her costume.

I had to keep in mind the colour palettes we had agreed on during our discussions about aesthetic the week before in which the queen, castle, and her robot guards are all in warm tones to contrast the townspeople. The primary colours being creams, golds, and reds. Red to symbolise power and bloodshed.

I then created a rough character sheet to work with:

I then continued to work on the background I was assigned:

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Re-Invention in Storytelling: 19/4/2024

On Friday, we were each given a character and a background to design by Sarah who was our leader at the time. I was assigned with Mary and the courtyard. For the costume design, I used a book that Roisin had gotten from the library of British fashion in the 1800s called Fashion Illustration in Britain - Society & the Seasons by Amber Jane Butchart. It drew from pictorials at the time such as The Dressmaker and Milliner, Ackermann's Repository of Arts, Britannia and Eve, and Beau Monde. Here are some of the pages I took inspiration from:

I then developed a few designs informed by my research:

I then very quickly sketched what I wanted the courtyard to look like:

I used the references we gathered in previous posts and I had a particular interest in that of Arundel Castle in West Sussex, UK.

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Re-Invention in Story-telling: 18/4/2024

On Thursday our group created Mood Boards to help us visualise and understand what the aesthetic of our animation would be.

I also created an animatic of our initial storyboard:

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Storyboard and Visual Research

On Monday our group had to make a storyboard for our animation. First, we all made separate drafts, then we read them all and picked out what we liked from them. We then came up with a finalised storyboard together. This was actually really hard to do as we had to make sure everything was cohesive.

We finished it on Tuesday morning and then talked to Paul about it, and he recommended switching some scenes around or taking scenes out to make it more fluid. This included putting the courtyard scene at the beginning, and taking out the scene of the robots being built in the factory.

We put the final storyboard together and then changed the script to match it.

We then started the visual research, where we looked at clothing, backgrounds, architecture, and incidentals.

We then had to pick an existing animation that we want to do our animation in the style of and we ended up looking at the episode "Beyond" from the Animatrix and the show Violet Evergarden. We picked these both for the character design and the incorporation of nature, as Mary's garden is a big part of our story.

Beyond:

Violet Evergarden:

We then worked on a moodboard to find a colour palette, using the three locations of the town, the courtyard and the castle. This helped us with creating a colour palette that would distinguish between the three locations. We tried to show the town as gloomy and lower-class while the castle and courtyard are bright and detached, unaffected by it.

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Re-Invention in Storytelling: Monday, 12/4/2024

We each had to make our own storyboards using the script we created. Here is the rough draft that I came up with:

We then came together and selected our favourite aspects from each of our storyboards to create a collaborative storyboard that we planned to put together on Monday.

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Animation Brief: Re-Invention in Storytelling: Thursday, 11/4/2024

On Thursday we were assigned our new brief: Re-Invention in Storytelling. We were split into groups and I was put into Group 2.

Group 2 is myself, Sarah, Roisin, and Gabs.

Each group was assigned a nursery rhyme, a genre, and a time period and were asked to develop an animation that involve each category.

Our team got Mary, Mary, quite contrary, Science Fiction, and the Industrial Era (1760-1970).

We were asked to each draft our own script for the animation after we had a lengthy discussion. Here was the results of my brainstorming and development:

We then compared our scripts and took our favourite aspects of all of our scripts and developed a final script.

Draft 1:

Draft 2:

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Trip to Fota Wildlife Park & Cobh - Tuesday 9/4/2024

On Tuesday, we went to Fota Wildlife Park and participated in some life drawing studies of the animals there. Here are my quick little studies:

And some reference pictures:

Then, some of us went to Cobh by train in the evening and here are some of the pictures I took:

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Return from Easter Break - Monday, 8/4/2024

Returning from Easter, we explored the idea of teamwork by participating in some group-building activities.

We participated in 4 activities:

The first was a game in which we were divided into 3 groups. Each group were drawing one segment on a page folded in thirds; drawing heads, torsos, or legs, without seeing the other parts. The results were quite fun.

For the second activity, we were split into groups of 4 and 2 people were to play with children's toys (e.g. Lego, farm animals, Jenga, etc.) while the other 2 draw them. These were some of my quick studies:

Next, we were given prompts and told our own stories and anecdotes based off of said prompts. We were then asked to draw something based off of that.

Lastly, in groups, we wrote about what teamwork means to us.

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Animation: Week 2, Friday 21/3/2024

On Friday, with my model and background complete, we were taught how to animate our mouths onto the models using adobe animate.

My notes when learning how to use Adobe Animate:

I went on Photoshop and added my mini me to the background. Here are the results:

Then, using the mouth shapes I drew below, I animated the final piece.

And here is what I ended up with:

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Animation: Week 2, Thursday 20/3/2024

On Thursday I completed my 3D model. I deconstructed my original attempt at the model as I now understood how to work with the material and made a model with clean folds and a character style redolent of Riddell's work whilst simultaneously being entirely my own.

Pictured below is the layout of the head and the completed model in front of a greenscreen.

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Animation: Week 2, Tuesday 19/3/2024

On Tuesday, we went into town to draw from life once more. This time, we focused on architecture. I learned some new techniques in the previous week's life drawing that I was able to apply this time around.

Here are the quick studies I did in the city:

Here are some of the reference pictures I took:

After returning from the city, we returned to the studio and began experimenting with a different and looser version of a study on large scale. While it didn't work out exactly in my favour it was interesting to work with a new form of study.

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Animation: Week 2, Monday 18/3/2024

On Monday, I continued to work on my background as we weren't on campus due to the bank holiday.

Using the studies I had done and the reference picture below, I developed an A3 2D background for my animation making sure to make an apparent distinction between the foreground, middleground, and background.

Here was the background before I added the greyscale:

And here is what it looks like completed:

I used a mix of watercolour markers, acrylic paint markers, and colouring pencils in order to achieve the desired effect.

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Artist Research:

Chris Riddell

Chris Riddell is an author, illustrator, and cartoonist for the Observer. He wrote and illustrated both the Ottoline and the Goth Girl book series, awarding him the Costa Children's Book Award in 2013. On top of his award-winning acclaim, he has collaborated with famous authors such as Neil Gaiman, Paul Stewart and Michael Rosen. He was appointed the UK Children's Laureate in 2015.

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Below are some of his breath-taking illustrative works:

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Animation: Week 1, Thursday 14/3/2024

On Thursday, we returned to the studio to begin constructing our 3D miniature selves. While contemplating on what style I wanted to recreate, I remembered a book I loved when I was younger.

It was a book called 'Odd and the Frost Giants' by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Chris Riddell. In the book, Riddell drew these wonderful bending trees and exaggerated landscapes and for this project I wanted to take inspiration from it.

When creating this model, I wanted it to match the monochromatic style of the book and I thought a 3D model made of paper or card would lend nicely to it.

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Friday 15/3/2024

On Friday we recorded audio for the animation. The line that I chose to record was: "I didn't want to go."

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Animation: Week 1, Tuesday 12/3/2024

On Tuesday, we went to People's Park to draw natural landscapes from life. Due to the weather being somewhat miserable, I sat beneath the shelter and drew what I saw until I couldn't stand the cold.

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Animation: Week 1, Monday 11/3/2024

World Building in Animation

On Monday, we were given our new brief for the following 2 weeks: 'World Building in Animation'.

In order to research for the upcoming project, we went to the local library to look for illustrators who depicted both natural and architectural landscapes in children's books. I looked at a handful of books that I found to have a unique style. These books were:

'The Wind in the Wallows' by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross

'Grandad's Camper' by Harry Woodgate

'Stardust' by Jeanne Willis and Briony May Smith

I then chose 'Stardust' to study once we returned to the studio in order to understand further how the illustrator depicted these backgrounds. I found that each of the books I had chosen had quite distinctive painterly styles.