NUA Animation

●First Year Animation Student●

[miacatneko]

My final tips and guidance from Lynsey to try and bring this essay to a rounded finish with a solid conclusion, due to quite a few changes with topics and themes i need to make sure that my paragraphs link into one another.

[miacatneko]

Final Character Design Sheet

[miacatneko]

[miacatneko]

I’m someone who is very visually stimulated aswell as wanting when watching an animation/animated series to have a deep and meaningful message powering through the whole way.  I'm now noticing that i'm more analytical when watching animations and TV Shows, i'm starting to understand the extreme importance of character development and character design. How all 3 elements, dynamic movement, character design and story join together to form an intense and powerful piece. I've come to respect animators who accomplish all three of these to a high standard and the amount of planning, pre-production and research they have to do so that they can fully understand what it is exactly they are wanting to produce and show their audience.

[miacatneko]

I’m starting to combine my drawings onto a design sheet, after recreating my animation for my character walk cycle multiple times my dynamic poses are no longer what my pass through and contact poses look like. So when recreating this and finalising my character animation i’ll be able to use the new poses as reference.

[miacatneko]

Practising using layers and colour on Photoshop, we were able to recreate Totoro by creating a simply black outline, and using layers to add colour to each separate part of his body.

[miacatneko]

Character Profile

Name: Jack-O-Lynn ( Real name unknown) Age: 16 Gender: Female Hair colour/style: Long to medium straight greeny tinged dark brown/black hair Dress Style: Unique, basic but out of the ordinairy, simplistic yet characterful. Distinguising visual characteristics: Large pumpkin shaped hat/headwear, all in one fitted purple 'onesie', big cartoonish boots and a manic smile. Style of movement: Confident, flirty, bold and realistic. Unusual abilities: has an elemental power which is fire. if the character was an animal, what animal: A cat, potentially a snake however snakes seem to have more negative conotations, and my character isn't necessarily bad, but is definately on the cusp. A cat is independant, selfish and cunning, an animal which does and acts however they want and has a strong  instinct. Their moods can switch quickly from being playful to 'attack mode'. Culture: Western culture/European civilisation, i will suggest this but my character will be based in a fantasy world with these elements included. Religion: No religion. Hometown/Upbringing: We are unsure of JOL's upbringing, my idea is to suggest to the audience using her character from different times in her life (Life cycle drawings) to illustrate the thought and idea that she has a strong connection to her headgear and its been very much prominent in her life, but this is displayed as a negative and suggests something dark has happened in her childhood to create the character we have in present day. Family: When i was drawing my character as a young child, due to her fearful and sad nature and the dominating headgear, i'm potentially implying that there is no longer any family to help or protect her. Friends: I will want other characters to try and engage with her, i am undecided whether to take her into a hyper personality which she presents to everyone and has the capability of switching into this manic and uncontrollable personality. I do want her to create friendships and have otehr characters explore her personality further aswell as having shapeshifting characters to test the boundaries of her sanity. Other close relationships: Could be interesting to later on bring a character into the plot who is from her past. Strongest positive personality trait: JOL has a huge desire to protect and to fight, potentially going overboard at times, but shows she has the ability to form strong connections with other characters. Strongest negative personality trait: Has a darker side, possibly one she is unable to control and cease's to bother controlling allowing a manic mentally unstable and fearful character to emerge. Sense of humor: As she is childlike at times and displays a hyper manic personality she does have a huge sense of humor perhaps at things that really aren't funny, such as death or gore depending on which eccentric personality is present. Temper: JOL doesn't have a temper she seems to stay in a manic calm state mainly, which can be hyper and doesn't really relate well to other peoples emotions. Biggest Fear: the death of loved ones. Greatest ambition: To be the most powerful being. How other people see her:  depending on the character, i'd say people that share in a slight madness will see past her false presentation of herself however many characters will be frightened and fearful of her mood swings and will potentially want her out of the picture. Opinion of herself: she lacks the want to have an opinion on herself, it is something she refuses to delve into, perhaps it would push her over the edge to truly try and understand herself. Traits to be brought out in the story: JOL is constantly on the cusp of madness, there is a strong connection with the pumpkin headgear it plays a truly dark role among our protagonist and the dark past she has (which will be semi revealed throughout the plot) She will be able to pull herself out of her dark side (which is due to the headgear she wears) However she will end up sacrificing her sanity or something to keep her in control in order to save others therefore being consumed by.... but will maintain her sanity but can no longer be who she once was. (hence the last character i drew on her life cycle). Bittersweet ending.

[miacatneko]

For this Dynamics brief i created 3 ideas for a short 50-75 frame animation, we were given the task of emphasising a dynamic movement using a pair of words in which we would design an idea around. For the first i chose weight and effort, second idea is stretch and squash and the last idea is based on speed and acceleration.

[miacatneko]

Having these profiles for my character made the animation process easier when creating my final animation. I was able to reuse these throughout  which helped me make sure that the proportions stayed the same. I am still having issues with the quality of my animation. I know it is down to sizing and resolution, this will mean i will have to redraw my frames on a higher resolution and hope when flash exports it that it will be of a high quality. 

[miacatneko]

Showing the amount of frames for my first animation sequence and using guidelines as references.

[miacatneko]

I thought with this animation that redoing the arms would improve my character walk cycle however i still have this jerky problem with the upper body, i think i'm focusing on keeping the proportions that i'm losing the movement and i'm yet to find the balance of proportion and realistic movement. I changed the arms, i still wanted them to be different somehow, i tried to have her swinging them back and forth infront of her chest, in a childish way, sort of pointing or flicking, potentially causing a spark (Fire power) and even though i think this can be achievable, i don't think i'm at a point where i have enough time to study the full anatomy of this cycle to get it looking perfect.

[miacatneko]

As you can see i have already created and posted the rough sketch of this animation onto my blog. This is my first attempt at a character walk cycle and I'm really not happy with it. The upper part of the body visually looks as though it is being stretched instead of being pushed upwards by the legs, therefore giving a disconnected look about it and not very convincing. I do feel i have an interesting and characterful walk cycle, the legs move well and the arms are original and fun to watch but they don't seem to match all too well with the pace of the legs. The quality of the animation is low and I'm still playing with settings to see if i can fix this problem.

[miacatneko]

I chose  my first idea from my three storyboard ideas, after discussing with Helen and Robin which one would fit the criteria best we came to the conclusion that this animated sequence emphasised dynamic movement the best. I started by rough sketching my animation in flash before screenshotting and depositing the files into Paint Tool Sai where i was able to outline, colour and position my character on screen. The movement i feel is effective and shows my chosen dynamic couple of 'weight and effort' in a fun visual way, however the movement i feel is slightly jerky and could be improved by possibly adding more frames to fit the slow speed of the animation.

[miacatneko]

After attempting my character cycle 3 times i finally settled on an idea and characterisation, when recreating this walk cycle i realised that i was struggling to make the upper body and lower body sync together which made the animation look like it was only partly moving and was disconnected. I then redrew and recoloured all my frames working from a new rough sketched animation where i feel I've made the walk cycle more realistic and added in an interesting touch with the flame. I have also added in smaller character details such as the hair moving and the eye blinking to make it more visually stimulating and to give my character more life. I have noticed that this animation is still not perfect and not where i hoped it would be, i needed to of spent  more time working the hair to exaggerate the movement with the body and work on the arm nearest to the camera as it has some frame issues and comes across abit jumpy. Overall having worked hard on this animation, i am fairly happy with the final result and the unique ideas I've managed to display to give my character more depth.

[miacatneko]

Here i experimented with my character as her younger self (from her life cycle) and her current form in a more painterly and realistic digital art style. I used a similar colour palette to the original character designs but i did tweak certain hues and saturation's where i saw fit.

[miacatneko]

[RE DONE] I decided due to the changes in design my character has had that i should re-sketch and colour my poses and facial expressions, when re-doing these i focused on having my characters proportions kept the same so that i can use these on my final Design Sheet.

[miacatneko]

Here i have shown my continuation from my turn arounds in developing two dynamic poses, the contact pose and the passing through. I can use this file as reference when creating my finished Character walk cycle.