Tamim Sherif

I’m exploring Movement through cars and the community in the car culture scene. K00335424

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Extra Work

The top image is everyone's character with their own colour palettes and designs, focusing on shape language as that was one of our main focuses. and underneath it is each character's silhouette, emphasising our focus on shape language and how we can use to distinguish a lot of our characters.

The image on the bottom is a quick study of the port in Spain, the one that Alonzo is at when he meets the Spanish family he is trading with and this is also where Fatima joins him on his journey.

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Video of the Storyboard- Rough Animation

This is an Animation of the storyboard, it's very loose and rough as it's just trying to get the point across quickly.

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Storyboard

So this is my storyboard, it involves Alonzo meeting Fatima and her sneaking onto his boat surprising him and he gets caught off guard and he then talks to her and he decided to want to help her as he is going to Italy, he will drop her off at Morocco so she can be reunited with her family once more.

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Textures and Colour Palettes

I decided to do some textures for the art style of the show and how each of those textures would look in the each country, I have each countries' colour palette/scheme explained in the image above. The textures that I did were Concrete (Top Left), Metal (Top Right), Wood (Bottom Left) and Bricks (Bottom Right). Overall I really enjoyed painting these and working on them.

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Fatima - Character Sheet

So this is the design I went with for Fatima, I gave her a very simple outfit that's basic as she is a slave back in renaissance Spain and she is Moroccan. I have close ups of her face to the right and also the colour palette I went with. The colours are very warm as she is Moroccan and is in Spain so I believed that it would fit the mood perfectly. I also gave her a headscarf that has the same colours as the Moroccan flag which is green and red as a hint to her place of origin where she was forcefully taken from and brought to Spain.

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Research and Plans

This is what was up on our wall, showing the story/idea and general direction we want to go with the story

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Project 2 - Animation

So for this project I joined my group a day late due to me being asked to switch groups because there wasn't enough people in my current group so we got split in different groups. I joined the group that had the rhyme "Row Row Row Your Boat", and it was set in the Renaissance period and the genre was Adventure. When I joined the group, they already had the main idea down. Everyone in the group was given a main character to do research and be in control of and do future storyboards and art of. I was tasked with Fatima who is a Moroccan slave in Spain and she gets freed with the help of the main character Alonzo.

Research

Artist Research: Diego Velázquez

Las Meninas

Velázquez was a Spanish painter who worked for the royal court, so a lot of his paintings show people from high status. In Las Meninas, the main focus is a young girl (the princess), but there are many other figures around her, including servants, attendants, and even the artist himself. The painting is quite complex, but what stands out is how everyone is placed differently depending on their role.

The young girl is placed in the centre and is brightly lit, which makes her the main focus. Around her, other figures are darker or pushed to the side, which shows their lower status. Even though they are all in the same room, not everyone is treated equally. Some people are clearly more important, while others are almost overlooked.

This painting is useful for my project because it shows how young girls were positioned within systems of power. It also makes you think about who is being looked at and who is ignored. The setting feels controlled and formal, which reflects how structured society was at the time.

Artist Research: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

The Young Beggar

Murillo focused more on everyday life, especially people who were poor or struggling. In The Young Beggar, he shows a young boy sitting alone, wearing torn clothes, picking at food. The painting feels quiet and personal, and it shows a different side of life compared to royal portraits.

The boy is placed on his own, with soft lighting that makes him stand out. There is a lot of detail in the textures, like the ripped clothes and the rough ground, which helps show his situation without needing to explain it. The overall feeling is quite sad and reflective, but also calm.

This painting is useful for my project because it focuses on vulnerability and the experience of young people. It shows how children could be affected by society, especially if they were poor or without support. Compared to Velázquez’s work, this feels more human and emotional, which gives a different perspective.

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Final Animation

This is the completed and final animation, I'm happy with how it turned out. I can definitely see a huge room for improvement, but overall it's not too bad. Next time I would like to make the background and the Mini-Me fit the scenario a bit better and also it was really tricky to make the mouth movements fit with the audio exactly but I don't think it's too bad. This has been a decent amount of work but the end product that you see is only like 3 seconds long, which is what animation is, a lot of work that goes in that may go unseen or you may not realise how much work is actually needed for short scenes.

Overall I'm pleased with it and excited to work on my next projects as I hope on to keep improving with time and practice.

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Lips

These are the most common mouth movements when talking. As you can see on the left image, I have what sounds these typically make.

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Life Dog Drawing (My Dog)

I unfortunately couldn't go on the FOTA trip so instead I decided to draw my dog.

I mainly focused on the shape language, and perspective. I was going for a quick sketch sort of vibe instead of detailed drawings, just trying to get the idea down quickly.

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Mini-Me - Finished

Here you can see the progress from the first step, I first created the nose using 3 pieces of foam, 2 on the side and 1 from the bottom, and I created the neck by using an empty roll of tissue paper and I wrapped it in the same foam as the face and I stuck it to the back of the face.

For the Ears I created it by using 2 layers of foam per ear, so the layer on the top has holes cut out in it to represent the holes and grooves in the ears, whilst the bottom layer was just the shape of the ear so when they are layered on each other it creates this minimal 3D effect of the ear. For the piercings I created it using just white card paper as the art style is very simple and I didn't want to over-complicate it.

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Mini-Me - Work in progress

I started with the plan first and then tried to break down the face and how to change my face shape into the face shapes in the book.

I started the Mini-Me face, for the materials I used foam, I decided to go with a very 2D style to match the style of the book, the faces in the book are very simplified and I tried to emulate that in this face.

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Background Painting

Here is the finished painting of the background, It is an A2 page. I decided to keep it very loose and rough following the art style of the book "Bear Island", I also kept the line work very messy and I used water colours for the same light effect as in the book. I used fine liners with different thicknesses to emulate the same effect and I made sure to show variation in line weight. For the watercolours, I made sure there was a but more water than usual for the same light effect, although this was a bit tricky because I can't layer the colours that much due to them being dark and it would ruin the whole painting.

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I decided to go with this background for my animation as I really liked the wide view of it and how you can see how close or far away each aspect of it is, I also really like the trees in the background and I think it's a good background to show what People's Park looks like.

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Artist & Book Research: Bear Island

Matthew Cordell is the author and illustrator of Bear Island. His style is very loose and expressive, using rough lines, simple shapes, and soft colour to tell the story. The book follows a girl who travels to an island filled with bears, and instead of focusing on a detailed or complex narrative, it feels more about atmosphere, imagination, and personal experience.

What stands out in Cordell’s work is how simple the drawings are, but still feel very expressive. The lines are rough and not overly clean, which makes the images feel more natural and less controlled. The use of watercolour adds soft textures and gives the scenes a calm and slightly dreamlike quality, especially in the sea and landscape. He doesn’t rely on detail, but instead focuses on mood and feeling through composition, colour, and mark-making.

This links to my project because it shows how effective simple drawings can be without needing a lot of detail or realism. It relates to my own work in animation where I am using basic line work and focusing more on clarity and visual style rather than making everything perfect. Cordell’s work encourages me to be more confident with loose marks and to allow the drawings to feel more natural and expressive instead of overworking them.

This is why I have picked this book to be my main inspiration for this project.

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We went to People's Park to start researching and sketching our backgrounds, I struggled a bit in the beginning but I got the hang of it as time went on.

After in college Paul said to get some more references and a bit more sketches and ideas from around the college, but I still ended up liking the one at People's Park more than these ones, but they were very good for practicing quick background sketches and being fluid, I even ended up doing a a technique where I don't look at the page at all and only at the subject I was drawing to get a much more fluid and free drawing and to practice drawing from a live subject.

We then went to Limerick City Library to get our cards and then we got books to base our background and Mini-Me art style based off, I picked these books because I quite enjoyed the Line art in the "Bear Island" one and I quite like the sketching look to the "Honey For You Honey For Me" and I really like the shape language in "There's a Tiger in the Garden"

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For the first day of the animation elective, we worked on understanding texture and mark making. I made two sheets where I drew different textures like brick, wood and other surfaces. On the first sheet I could only use lines, so I had to think about how the direction and thickness of the lines could show the texture without using shading. On the second sheet it was the opposite, I could only use tone and no outlines, which made me focus more on light and dark areas to show form. Doing both helped me see the difference between line and tone and how they can be used in different ways. We also did a group task on a third sheet where we were given a question and had to draw our responses, then pass it to other groups to add to. This was more quick and creative, and it made me think faster and respond to other people’s ideas. Overall this task helped me improve how I show texture and will help later when I add detail into my animations.