fighting for my life so much rn

just for school

[md-drawz]

Organizational stuff

animation skills (tri 1) (tri 2)

illustration and animation practice (x)

sequential practice (x)

[md-drawz]

week 9 - background development

This week, I really focused on getting lots of the background art done. I started by doing some concept sketches for various elements of the backgrounds - floating island silhouettes, planets/moons with a variety of textures, some whalefall-inspired structures and black hole/whirlpool fusions, as well as a variety of space station/ship silhouettes. Like with the astronaut designs, I wanted the human-made technology to contrast with all the alien life, so I tried to keep the shapes sleek, taking inspiration from space stations, submarines, and already existing concept art of similar machines.

Then I moved onto testing out some compositions for the extended backgrounds, using some of the silhouettes and planets from my sketches to have a more clear visual of what the final rendered backgrounds might look like. I used gradient maps to test out some potential colour schemes for two of the backgrounds, focusing on a variety of saturated colours to create a sense of unearthliness. Originally I'd been thinking about having all of the space backgrounds resemble actual photos/footage of space/oceans, but since those are mostly (if not completely) dark and ranging from blue to black, I felt like that would be too boring. It doesn't make for visually interesting shots, and the backgrounds would feel like they all blend together. So I tried out a bunch of options.

After that, I realised that making a colour key would actually be a much smarter approach to figure out background colours. I picked out a couple of frames from each scene and slapped on some colours to get an idea of what each background might look like.

Since Audy mentioned wanting the first background to have lots of coral-like plants, I decided that one should look the most like it could be set underwater, so the "sky" around the island features deep blues and purples, with a large variety of saturated colours for the plants.

For the next background, since the third creature originally starts at the first background, I kept the blues and purples on the far left, then slowly transitioned into teals, greens, and a bit of yellow as the creature travels through space. This creates a completely different backdrop for the second main setting, which as of now I'm envisioning as more of a rocky area. The robot is on this second island, so I was thinking about how humans send robots to explore places that may not be safe for humans, so I was hoping that would translate into the background design. Audy also reminded me about the idea of human influence interrupting the natural order of things, so I'm also considering trying to include hints of a pollution angle in this section, but it's not something we'd really have time to explore in the film so it would have to be very clear visually.

The final section strays the most from real-life ocean/space visuals. I used warm colours (peaches, a bit of pink and orange) for the "sky" background so that it would contrast heavily with the previous ones - I wanted it to be clear that the researcher is in a completely different part of the galaxy than the robot they were checking on. Honestly, I didn't use any real-life inspiration for this one; since the background is mostly going to be the really long zoom out, I figured I could go a bit more unconventional with the colours, since the planets and islands etc that'll come into view will still communicate the space aspect. The planet the researcher is on is currently a kind of leafy foresty environment, though I think I might want to revisit it and push a more alien angle with the colours and wildlife.

I did my best to get the backgrounds mostly finalised, which didn't quite work out because of time constraints, but I feel like I made a lot of progress with those. I ended up using clip studio paint to render/paint everything instead of photoshop - partly because I have plenty of texture brushes there that I wanted to use to differentiate the environments, and partly because I know the program better, so that allowed for a much better workflow. I still have lots to clean up for the different angles of the first background, and there are other things I'd like to go back and adjust in the other backgrounds if I have the time, but what I currently have is serviceable for animating.

I was also able to do a quick test in after effects for the final zoom out shot. I have each of the different background elements as separate assets that will appear one by one as the camera pulls away. The timing is off right now, but I can adjust that fairly easily, and I think I might try to remember how we did our first year assignment where the assets are at different distances from the camera so that the camera is the moving object, not the assets (I did not word this well). Like all the background stuff, this is far from perfect right now, but it's serviceable and I think I have a good idea of how to clean things up when I get back to it.

Lastly, I used the spreadsheet template that Rachel gave us for the live brief project so that I could create a list of all the shots with details like which backgrounds I'd need, if there are any camera movements, and what audio would be included. It's a bit rushed, so I might adjust details as we go, but it's helpful to have as a checklist of everything we need to do.

[md-drawz]

week 8 - more pre-production stuff

Another busy week of trying to get as much done as possible!

I started by going over Audy's storyboard to flesh everything out a bit more; he got the essential narrative beats down, so I could focus on figuring out the compositions for each scene, how the characters would move across the screen, and when/how the camera would move. I may have gotten a bit ambitious with some of the camera movements, especially the long zoom out at the end, but that's because it meant getting to have more fun with backgrounds and how I might extend them. I used the updated storyboard to composite some extended background sketches together, which was fun to figure out since I've never done that before. We probably won't have all of these camera moves, I don't think they're all necessary, but I still think it was worth sketching out the possibilities just in case.

After that, I was able to put together a rough animatic. The timing is definitely not perfect, and the whole thing (including title card and credits) is a little bit over the one minute time limit, but I figured the timing of the camera moves and stuff would end up becoming shorter and some shots don't need to linger as long as I made them in the animatic, so overall it's a pretty decent visualizer.

Last but not least, I also worked on my little contribution to the character design by making a moodboard and some sketches for the researcher's design. I wanted to bring in elements from both old deep sea diving suits and astronaut suits, so I tried focusing on the similarities between them and how those could be merged together. I have a page with a couple of silhouettes that take inspiration from my moodboard, as well as some practical notes about the helmet/gloves/boots and life support system. I think the helmet probably needs to be more like astronaut helmets so that they have a wide view of what's going on around them rather than a very limited view in the front or multiple small viewing angles, but I do like the angle of having old diving helmets bolted to the breastplate, so I tried to incorporate that with clasps that attach the helmet to a breastplate/harness that expands into a life support system on the back. From there, I did more sketches in which I played around with various helmet shapes, options with and without a life support pack, and different ways the suit might account for movement since the outer layer would have to be very thick. As I made more sketches, the outer suit layer kind of turned into a similar structure to armour, with separate "plating" that overlaps to cover the joints but still move with them, which wasn't intentional but I do like the concept a lot. I didn't test out colours, because I figured I'd leave that to Audy for after he finalises the design, but I did tell him that I envision the suit as very sleek and streamlined, so that it contrasts heavily with all the organic backgrounds.

It definitely still needs refining, but I feel like this is a solid base to work with.

[md-drawz]

week 7-8 - 3D character design

So. This is a project I was very nervous about because I am not a particularly big fan of 3D modelling. The goal was basically just: make something as easy as possible. If I'm able to rig it, even better, but I really am just hoping to actually finish a model for once.

In my initial brainstorm my main thought was to create a cute little guy for a video game, super simple design, etc etc. As I was looking for ideas on google, I found this image of the mario party characters as n64 low poly models, and that was a pretty big springboard for me, especially looking at Toad, Koopa, and Shy Guy. I love a little creature. From there I also started thinking about games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and doing an animal inspired design. I ended up also looking at some pokemon and sanrio characters for similarly cute little animal guys, and found some examples of low poly models to get an idea of what the shapes would look like in 3D.

For my sketches, I started by playing around with shape language and some proportions based on my moodboard. I then tried translating that into some silhouettes (that I didn't really like), and a couple of potential animal ideas that felt a bit more like progress. Then, my brain kicked in and I did some studies of some of the characters on my moodboard so I could get used to drawing more chibi-esque proportions, and to see how their designs translate into both front- and side-facing poses.

After that, I made a couple of notes of characteristics I wanted my character to embody. Since I settled on a raccoon as my animal inspiration, I did a couple of sketches of raccoons based on photos I found to determine the basic shapes - though I did have to account for a bipedal design, so the placement of the head on the body changed a bit. I then used my aforementioned studies as bases for a raccoon design, testing out different head-to-body ratios, proportions, and shapes. I think my final design ended up being a bit of a combination of most of these sketches; I really liked the 1:1 head-to-body ratio, but decided I didn't want the limbs to look too thin/small in comparison. I elected to make them larger than in any of my sketches, and also to make them little blobs rather than paws with defined fingers/phalanges, like Toad on my moodboard. And I gave my character an oversized hoodie, mostly for fun and because I felt like it was turning into a little representation of me.

[md-drawz]

week 7 - brainstorming and planning and stuff

Audy and I did a lot of brainstorming to bring our separate mindmaps together, and settled on the aesthetical intersection between space and the ocean since we both were drawn to sea creatures during our time at the museum. From there, we started talking about something inspired by certain shots from the animated series Scavengers Reign - specifically the shots of alien life on the planet, which are very serene. They're reminiscent of shots from nature documentaries that capture animals simply existing in their environments, which really stood out to me when I first watched the show.

This led us to wanting to use a similar structure for our short film - no main character, no narration/voiceover, non-diegetic camera, no strict narrative. I pitched the idea of a food chain/ecosystem thing so that there's still some sort of narrative for the audience to follow (starting with really small creatures and leading up to big ones), and we also listed out potential ocean/space phenomena that we could include (eg: black hole/whirlpool fusion, something inspired by whalefalls, planets and/or floating islands, some human presence through a researcher based on astronaut/oceanaut gear and space shuttles/submarines, and technology that interrupts the natural food chain).

I put together some moodboards, focused a bit more on inspiration for the backgrounds. They feature background/concept art from a variety of animated films (Treasure Planet, Wall-E, the Iron Giant, Princess Mononoke, Finding Nemo, Prince of Egypt, Ponyo, and Atlantis) and some alien designs from Scavengers Reign, as well as one drawing I made a couple of years ago that also brings together outer space and underwater visuals.

I then went on a slight tangent later that week after watching a couple of youtube videos about deep sea discoveries, and pitched a slight alternative (aka the bottom part of this mindmap):

I really like the idea, because I find it really interesting that humans have found ways to explore more of the solar system than the deepest parts of the ocean, and the fact that life in the ocean trenches is so bizarre and foreign to us is a really good mirror for what I imagine alien life might look like. Even in the most extreme environments, life finds a way to not just survive, but thrive, and that's something I'd love to explore alongside parallels between outer space and deep seas.

That being said, Audy and I talked through it and while we both think it would be really interesting, he pointed out that the potential storyboard I made for it doesn't really portray things as clearly as I'd like it to. I eventually realised that it's a project that would probably benefit from being much longer than one minute so that there's enough time to really show the progression from the zones closest to human life to those so far away that we haven't come close to exploring. Having a voiceover for it might also help clarify what's happening. Overall I think it's too ambitious for us to complete in a few weeks while juggling other projects. Shoutout to Audy for reining me in before I got too carried away with it, because I sure do love to complicate things for myself.

We agreed to go back to the food chain idea and he sent me a rough storyboard over the weekend which does have a much clearer throughline to tie all the shots together, and I whipped up some initial concept art for backgrounds based on thumbnails from both of our boards, and inspired by my moodboards. (First two are based on Audy's storyboard, last two are based on mine.)

[md-drawz]

week 6 - trying to actually animate

This is the week where I realised I couldn't keep focusing on the preproduction part of the gifs project, as much as I wish I could. I was actually looking forward to animating, don't get me wrong, I just genuinely wasn't sure how to translate the painted style frames into animated layers, since I think there are lots of moving parts and I don't want anything to feel purely static but I also know painting every single frame would be way too much work. Sivan and I talked a bit about animating the backgrounds on one layer with more of a simple boil so that they don't detract from the focal points of the gifs, and then animating bigger movements on separate layers that would still have their own underpaintings. So I think I'm going to have to trust the process there.

I spent most of class just trying to key the different walk cycles for the third gif - turns out that's a massive challenge. My thought there was to make sure that each character has their own distinctive walk/way of moving, especially the scarecrow and tin man, and that in itself is manageable. The bigger issue is the timing of their walks, since the gif as a whole needs to loop smoothly. So the plan right now is to key each walk cycle separately, then do some math to adjust the timing of the frames so that they all sync up at some point for the loop to work. Again, very much trusting the process. 🤞

(update from a week later: it worked! I did the math completely wrong at first, but I do now have a seamless loop)

[md-drawz]

week 6 - museum trip

Museum trip! It was neat.

Honestly I find it a bit hard to be interested in rocks, but I do love seeing fossils reassembled into skeletons, and approximate (but generally not accurate) interpretations of what extinct creatures might've looked like. It's fun :)

Did all of my museum sketches with a brush pen because I know I'd get bogged down by details if I used pencils or even charcoal. Pros of this decision: cool expressive sketches, managed to do quite a few in the time we were there. Cons of this decision: couldn't really do any shading, and my shaky hands always result in some shaky/thick lines here and there. But it was nice, I did some sketches I'm quite happy with and I was absolutely delighted by the plesiosaur model that I saw there.

In my mindmaps I mostly delved into a bit of research surrounding the plesiosaur and the megarachne, as they stood out to me the most during the trip. Overall I found more common information between the two than I'd expected (and by that I mean any common facts at all). Both fossils were definitely misinterpreted a lot, with the megarachne actually Not being a spider (it's a type of marine scorpion) and the plesiosaur's bones confusing researchers due to the length of its neck vs its tail and the fact that all 4 of its flippers look incredibly similar to one another (researchers kept mixing up the front and back flippers while trying to assemble a full skeleton). I kind of considered doing something with that - the idea that our understanding of things is rarely (if ever) accurate at first, and goes through an evolution of its own as we gain more knowledge - but I'm not great at turning abstract ideas into actual visuals/narratives (and vice-versa...) so I just let that sit.

... And then I did not think about any brainstorming for the rest of the week. I've been very mentally/emotionally/creatively burnt out lately. Plus Audy and I had talked about working together on this project, so I figured we'd compare notes and ideas once we both had a bit more.

[md-drawz]

week 5 - umm

Honestly... not my most productive gif project week.... I was sidetracked by the live project. Most of what I did was essentially the style frames for the separate shots within gif 2, as well as some keyframes for each gif.

I did my best to keep the colours consistent across shots - the backgrounds will all be fairly similar with the green floors and fiery everything else, and my main priority is ensuring that the characters will stand out as the brightest parts of the composition. Something about them highlighting the Truth or justice? I'm not sure how to word that better but it goes along with having most of the first gif be dark with the highlights being the wizard's head and flames, and the third gif be mostly light with the gang being in shadow. There's something thematic there, I swear, I just can't verbalise it.

Anyway that's pretty much it for week 5. Tune back in for more updates next week.

[md-drawz]

week 5 - wrapping things up!!

Crunch time at its finest after Monday's crit/review with our client! By then I'd done most of the colouring (pretty much everything except the wings and blush), and I think we were all pretty close to getting things wrapped up.

Stuff I finalised throughout the week:

updating the backgrounds so that the lineart wasn't black anymore, since that felt really harsh against the coloured lines of the animated elements -> I made them a greyish-brownish colour instead to match the colours I'd used to paint the backgrounds, and I adjusted the perspective on background 3 to match the perspective Ruby used in her shot (shot... 3, I think?)

finishing the colours for my shot -> taking care of the wings was a tedious process because of the stripes and the pattern around the edge of the wing, but I managed to get that (and the butterfly's blush) done. I also added Joe's animation of the frog into my tvpaint file so the full shot would be assembled there.

quick little design for one of the butterflies in our final community shot -> I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with my main animation shot so Audy very kindly offered to animate my little butterfly for me. He had to change the colour palette of it from my original tentative red-orange colours to greens to add more variety to the community shot though

compositing the final community shot in after effects -> not something I originally intended to do, but Joe was kind of struggling to give the butterflies some natural(ish) looking movements so I offered to help. I tried to find a nice balance between a more subtle/natural approach to them bobbing in the air, and Joe's approach of giving them more obvious movement so that they didn't look too static. It was a bit time-consuming, since there was a lot of trial and error, and I'm still not quite satisfied with the way our main butterfly is bobbing because I couldn't figure out how to move the anchor point for her to rotate more smoothly, but I think my work turned out okay overall.

I also kind of helped a little bit with the sound mixing - Risha did most of it, but I offered a second pair of ears and some feedback for the timing of the voiceover parts to make sure it all flowed nicely.

Overall it was a bit of a stressful project, but I really did enjoy the teamwork aspect of things. I think our group worked well together, we managed to stay pretty organised and up-to-date with our individual contributions, and we were all very open to feedback from each other. I do worry a bit that I contributed less than I would've liked overall, but I was out of commission for a week because of the flu and I did cover the backgrounds on top of my shot, so I might just be overthinking things a bit. So... shoutout to my group, and to Joe for leading us through the production process!

[md-drawz]

week 4: style frames

You'll never guess who ended up making more changes to the storyboard.... (it's me)

During my check-in with Sivan, we talked about a couple of things that might need changing:

Having close up shots of the characters before the third gif (aka in gif 2, since I'm still feeling good about the gif 1 composition) so that it's more clear who they are since gif 1 just has them silhouetted

Having more of a difference between gifs 2 and 3. Sivan pointed out that they are kind of hitting the same story beat by both showing the gang threatening/attacking the wizard.

I realised there was a quick straightforward way of killing two birds with one stone here: I swapped gif 3 in for gif 2 (replacing the shot of their shadows looming over the wizard with the cuts between close ups of them each attacking him), and then pulled one of my gif 3 alternatives in to give the set of gifs more of a resolution. I think that makes for a stronger story arc, and it allows for me to still fit in walk cycles like I'd originally included in my first storyboard pass.

Also I did some quick sketches for the other 3 shots that will be in gif 2.

I have the keyframes sketched out for each gif, though I probably need to tweak the timing for things a bit. I think gif 2 will have the bulk of the animating since it has 4 shots, so I'm relieved that gif 1 is on the simpler side and I'm hoping I can find a way to streamline the animation process as much as I can. I still plan on keeping the style really rough and expressive, so I just have to make sure I don't get lost cleaning up details.

Speaking of the style... I also put all 3 of my colour sketches into one big canvas to make more adjustments and finalise the style frames. Here's a before and after :)

Most of my changes were small colour adjustments to keep some colours consistent across gifs - especially incorporating the golden yellows and oranges from the first gif into the second and third ones

I updated the background of the third gif to be a more abstract representation of the city, and to have the blues from the sky blend into the darker and warmer blues of the ground

I adjusted the colours in the second gif to be more vibrant, bringing in some of those light background colours from gif 3 into the lion. The first and third gif have a lot of dark/light contrast between the characters in shadow and the light backgrounds, so I wanted to do the opposite with gif 2 by having the characters stand out against a dark background. I think I've managed to keep that while still having really saturated colours and playing around more with the hues and complementary colours to create contrast. Hopefully.

In gif 3, I also added some highlights to the characters - mostly just the eyes and blood splatters, and a bit of bounce light from the yellow brick road - to give them more definition. I want the blood in particular to stand out because I want to highlight the violence in this version of the story (which I've also done in gif 2) and also because it is the complementary colour to the wizard's greens, so there's this idea of them embracing the red/blood as they reject the wizard and his false promises.

Looking at this, I think I'll probably have to make (looser) style frames for the other 3 shots in gif 2, actually. Mostly just to figure out the colours so that they're cohesive with the lion's shot and within the larger set of gifs. It's a bit of extra work, but it is probably a smarter approach than just trying to wing the colours while animating. Especially since I haven't really figured out the best way to animate in such a painterly style. I did not think that far, unfortunately.

[md-drawz]

week 4 - lines

Not really much to say about this week. All I had to focus on was cleaning up my shot, aka doing the clean lines. Nothing too complicated, just a bit tedious for me especially since I struggle with clean (and closed!!) lines. I also ended up having to readjust a lot of the frames to make sure the feet lined up properly for the walk cycle and that was a bit annoying, but overall pretty manageable.

[md-drawz]

week 3 - gifs development

Still kinda behind I fear.... Had to play catch up in class so let's start with that!

Moodboard:

the lobotomy corporation designs of the scarecrow and the tin man since I know I want to base my designs off of them

old German expressionist movies: mainly the cabinet of dr caligari (a movie I watched a few years ago for a university class), though I did also include the poster of metropolis as well. These are here because I want to take inspiration from the sets, and because I think the use of contrast is really well done to guide the viewer's eyes

some frames from Disney's night on bald mountain for an animated take heavily inspired by German expressionist films

a bunch of paintings from pioneers of the expressionist art movement - Edvard Much's the scream, and a couple of paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. I'm really hoping to draw inspiration from the bold colour palettes, as well as the way they play around with proportions and perspective, since I tend to keep my art in the realm of semi-realism.

a couple of other illustrations that I found when looking up expressionist art - included for style inspiration.

I kind of struggled with storyboarding the gifs - mostly because it's hard to get the little details across. I wanted to show that the oz gang turned on the wizard when they realised he was a fraud, but my first storyboard pass didn't really show that moment of realisation. And I realised I set myself up for a big struggle with wanting to include the gang walking in the second frame, since that's 4 walk cycles - one of which is 4-legged. And the third gif feels like the most complicated because I couldn't figure out how to convey the actual murder part.

My second pass shows the wizard's fraudulence in the first gif, with the giant head malfunctioning in front of the gang. I think that's a pretty efficient approach. Then I have multiple options for both the second and third gifs. For gif 2, some variants of the gang's silhouettes advancing on the wizard to have some strong contrast between the shadows and the light, as well as a version where they expose him to the people of Emerald City because I wanted to keep the mob idea somehow if possible. And for gif 3, two variants of the gang actively killing the wizard, and one of them walking away from the city covered in blood (and with the lion holding the wizard's head in his mouth). I asked a friend for their opinion about which frames conveyed the story best, since I am incredibly indecisive and needed a second set of eyes.

I also did some quick character design attempts - inspired by the lobotomy corporation designs, though I put my own twist on them to make the characters (especially Dorothy and the lion) more recognizable. I decided to lean more into jagged shapes to convey their rage and aggression, and tried to do the same with colours. Not really sure how I feel about the colour attempt, it was mostly just me feeling things out while using the paintings from my moodboard as reference. I think the scarecrow came out nice, though. :)

And then I did a quick colour pass over the storyboard sketches. I took more of a painterly approach here, with a red-orange underpainting that still bleeds through a bit here and there. That element felt important to me - partly as a storytelling device (red, anger, violence, etc etc) and partly visually (very bold colour as the base to keep the gifs saturated and striking). From there I used dark blue and a bit of purple in the shadows to contrast against the bright yellows of the background, and tried incorporating some green in each background as well because... emerald city. I went a bit experimental with elements like the disembodied head, the wizard in the second gif, and literally everything in the third one. Some of it worked, I think, because the head and the wizard turned out kinda cool, but I'm feeling pretty dissatisfied with the third gif overall. The composition feels crowded and I got nervous when I was painting because I feel like it's really hard to read compared to the clear silhouettes in the other two gifs. I'm honestly considering changing it completely, I just don't know how to right now.

Had a chat with Joe because I was still so dissatisfied, and he suggested doing something with cuts between each character for the third gif. I decided that sounded like a good idea, because it feels more clear than having each of the main 4 attacking the wizard at the same time, so I did some sketches of them in various attack poses and put together a colour key/loose style frame for the lion. Pretty happy with it!

[md-drawz]

week 2 - gifs concept development

I had to miss class because I caught the flu, unfortunately. I've been super exhausted all week so I'm a little bit behind on developing my concept, but I think the plan is to go with the wizard of oz as my base fairy tale.

Option one within the wizard of oz idea is to stick with the classic tale - Dorothy gets whisked away from Kansas in the tornado, follows the yellow brick road to the Emerald city and meets some companions along the way, then defeats the wicked witch of the west and is able to return home. Option two, which I find more interesting, is doing a darker twist in which the quartet find out that the wizard is a fraud, and kill him when they realise he fooled them into believing he'd help them. I did some quick storyboard sketches for both options, sticking to the main story beats I mentioned above. Right now everything is still pretty vague unfortunately, since I'm a little behind, but I'm hoping I can figure out the details within the next week.

[md-drawz]

week 3 - rough animations

I didn't make it to class because I'm still recovering from the flu unfortunately, but I was able to finish the backgrounds on time for the rest of my team to be able to use them for rough shots.

Joe has also asked me to cover the butterfly's animation for shots 7-8 - where she walks away from the pharmacist, opens her wings, and flies away. It's a complicated one to animate considering the walk cycle and the wings, but I managed to knock out a rough animation since Joe already put in the key frames for me. I split up the body, the arms, and the wings onto separate animation layers to make my life a bit easier.

I was also able to add in betweens for the body layer this weekend. It was a pretty tedious process because my first rough pass needed a lot of adjusting; I have a tendency to mess up the proportions/size of characters as i add frames, so I had to go back and forth tweaking things a lot, and I also adjusted the timing of movements and tried to fix the anatomy a bit. I'm missing a second pass of the wings and arms for now, but I think that process should go much quicker than the body.

Here's that video (hopefully)

[md-drawz]

week 2 - pre-production

Joe's pitch got picked! Very exciting, and kind of a relief that I did not end up with the responsibility of leading the project. His pitch is really cute, so I'm glad we get to bring it to life.

As we were all getting caught up on his vision and deciding how to divide the pre-production work, I realized pretty quickly that I would struggle with the characters - I'm not great with animals, nor am I particularly good with the simple cartoony style that Joe uses. I think I'll be able to make it work once we start animating, but for revising character designs I had a strong feeling I would not be particularly helpful there. So I volunteered to take care of the background concept art - since our client really liked Ruby's character design, we'd talked about incorporating some of Ruby's nature-themed elements into Joe's pharmacy backgrounds.

I collected some pharmacy and pond images as references, and decided to use some backgrounds from a bug's life as inspiration as well. My first draft leaned into the nature theme a lot, mostly because I wasn't really sure how far we wanted to go. Just a fun little concept.

After checking in with Joe, I reigned it in a lot more and focused more on the pharmacy aspect, with only a few plants dotted around here and there.

Since that was a much bigger hit, I then moved on to cleaner concept sketches, putting a bit more focus into my brush and colour choices. Since Joe had his own style moodboard in his pitch, I referred to that and decided on a simple, slightly textured ink brush for the line art. I played around with line weight as well, using very thin and disconnected lines in the background, and thicker solid lines for the mid and foreground. I didn't have any watercolour brushes on photoshop, so I used a simple round brush to make approximate splotches of colour and then blended them out with a textured blender brush, and that worked pretty well to create the illusion of actual watercolours. I also kept the colours pretty simple - off-whites as a base, and a couple of different colours for all of the medication packaging. I strayed from going too saturated in these aside from the pharmacy sign, which will be in rainbow colours for the side view, but I might give the plants a bit more of a pop once I get to the final backgrounds.

Making the actual final backgrounds was more time-consuming than I would've liked. In hindsight I might've made things a bit more complicated for myself than I needed to? I split the backgrounds up into several sections so that we could easily animate the pharmacist behind the desk, but in front of the back shelves. I'm kinda wondering if I should've just had the desk and side shelves as separate assets and left the floor as part of the actual background, but I guess it doesn't make that much of a difference here. I also extended the side view background to the left as requested, so that the camera can follow our main character as she walks away, and created an alternate version of the first background without the shelf on the right, also as requested.

background 1

background 2

background 3

Overall the process was a bit tedious since I had to consider which layers various elements needed to be on, and I was trying to be conscious about perspective and clean line art. But I feel like these came out nicely, and I have the team's approval so that's always a good sign.

[md-drawz]

week 1 - 3 gifs project intro

This project seems rather interesting to me! Mostly in a "I have vague ideas that seem cool but nothing concrete yet" way, unfortunately, so it'll definitely require a lot more brainstorming to actually settle on a concept.

My initial thought was to approach the ugly duckling through a gender dysphoric lens, since that's something that speaks to me. It would be a twist from the original tale - rather than the rest of the ducklings excluding the ugly duckling for looking different, he feels like an imposter amongst them. The majority of my personal art is warm and wholesome, as described by many of my friends, so I think it would be a fun challenge to explore body horror or just general horror-inclined visuals to show how the main character feels othered. But it's still all really vague in my head, and I've also considered working with the wizard of oz as the base fairytale. Lots more thinking to do....

I then had to miss the second part of class, but I was informed that the exercise was drawing a still life from multiple different angles and using different media/techniques so that we can create a gif from those drawings, so I did my best to recreate that at home.

I will of course get proper scans of these, but here are some photos in the meantime. It was pretty fun to play around with different styles - I haven't used pastels in a while, and I finally started using my posca paint markers - so there was a lot of just drawing and discovering how each still life would come out depending on the medium I was working with.

[md-drawz]

week 1 - live brief pitch

This week, we got our brief for the live project, aka creating an animation for Pridally. To be honest, I think it was a lot of information to be receiving in one go, so I was a bit overwhelmed at first just trying to make sense of everything. I ended up watching a bunch of the more commercial-based animations from the list of animation studios we were given in addition to the examples Rachel showed us in class to get some ideas, since I've never done this kind of thing before.

The standout one for me stylistically and tonally was Fred&Eric's commercial for the app MindPilot. Since the topic my group is working on (queer/trans-affirmative healthcare) feels a bit heavy, I want to take a lighthearted yet inclusive approach that appeals to as many people as possible - ie: not too flashy, not something that might alienate any age group. My goal is to create a pitch that is simple and straightforward, and approaches the service with care and empathy. I've made a list of the things I really like about the MindPilot animation (the limited colour palette, the motion graphics used for transitions, the hand-drawn style, the straightforward yet calm tone in the narration, etc), so now I just have to figure out how to implement those elements into something for Pridally.

I started by putting together a small moodboard - half of it is dedicated to the MindPilot commercial, and the other half is a couple of examples of the kind of hand-drawn visual style I'd like to aim for, inspired by illustrated children's books.

From there, I sketched out an initial character design and storyboard. The goal was to keep things simple and straightforward, both visually and narratively - the character gets overwhelmed by the amount of different transitioning resources available, LiLo introduces them to the Pridally app, and this allows them to get started on a less stressful transition. I got a bit stuck on the middle frames of the storyboard, because I wasn't sure how I wanted the transitions to look or how to convey the idea of the character being able to go to a queer-affirmative pharmacy without being too literal about it, but I talked through my thoughts with a friend and eventually decided to have LiLo (and LiLa) appear and function as a way of guiding the character and the viewer's eyes. The shots are pretty simple, but my plan would be to incorporate motion graphics for some smooth and visually appealing transitions between colours and backgrounds.

I still wasn't satisfied with my sketches, especially the character design, so I did a second pass in which I played around with the character's proportions, focusing on shape language to create a character who seems soft and approachable. I also paid a bit more attention to their clothes, trying to keep the design simple while still showing their growth in confidence.

I then tackled the concept art, using frame 2 of my storyboard. Honestly, I don't think it really looks the way I want it to, mostly because I couldn't figure out the ideal way to illustrate the bubbles popping, since I envisioned them popping one by one as LiLo passes through them. Also I was really tired at this point, so the more I redrew it, the more frustrated I got. I'm hoping the idea still comes across, though. I think it would become more of a motion graphics element? The vision is in my head and I just didn't really have the time to plan how it would be executed if my pitch gets chosen, but presumably that would be part of the group work anyway.