Shawntia Jameson - Animation BA1b

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Character Design

This is another image I did for my character design classes where we used a reference to create a new character. I like this piece because compared to where my art skills were at in the beginning of the year it is very clear to see that I have improved so much.

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Animation Research

for the background of my flour sack animation I searched for images of warehouses and trash as I wanted the background to be in a place that has been long abandoned and forgotten. You can also see in the image above 2 drawings of boxes using the 3 colours that I used in my background, I drew these first before drawing the actual background because I wanted to see how I could affectively use 3 colours to create a detailed scene. At first creating a background and only using 3 colours seems like a very daunting task but I found that I really enjoyed it and it has helped me figure out how I want to draw background in the future.

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Maya

This is a close up rendered image of my sword I have modelling in my maya scene. I made the scene particularly darker and with a slight green tint to create an almost evil vibe because I wanted it to seem like the treasure could be cursed. Although I initially had trouble with maya at first I think this is the one maya task that I liked the look of after I had finished my work

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Animation

To add something more to my flour sack animation I put in a background. I did research before this which I will post later but I took small details from every image and found a way to include them all in one clustered background. I also added another frame as the flour sack jumps up in the beginning to make it move smoother and slow it down slightly. While creating the background I realised the flour sacks almost look like they are floating just above the trash bellow them, to fix this I added a foreground that crosses over the flour sacks.

This background looks very messy and cluttered but I wanted it to look like an abandoned warehouse that had collected piles of trash over time. I really enjoy the messy feel to the background and i feel like it makes the flour sacks in the front stand out just that little bit more but also allows the audience to imagine what might be happening in this warehouse.

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Guest Lectures.

Throughout this month we had a series of different guest lecturers who visited us and gave us advice on employment later in life and what skills were necessary in progressing in this industry.

All of our guest lectures helped me understand the importance of every role in the industry. They also helped me figure out important skills and the importance of adaptability and team work within the industry and how everyone relies on each other to produce a successful.

They also gave us some very important advice, for example, Amy Blackwell gave the advice of "be collaborative and confident" but also "only include your best work in your showreel" which helped me plan my showreel as before i was just adding every piece of work i had done to it

But i especially enjoyed Charli Vince's lecture as she is a freelance illustrator and gave us a lot of advice about being a freelancer but i mostly enjoyed the key points of trying to work strong in and out of a team and build your own style of how you work.

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Animation

This is my final flour sack animation. I am happy with how this came out because it is much smoother that other animations I have done up until his point. This is probably because I was able to learn from all my last mistakes on my animations and create something much better.

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Animation

This is my second sketch for my flour sack, in the first draft there was too much happening and I wasnt going to be able to complete it within the time I had left, so I picked out everything I wanted to keep from my old draft and created a new flour sack animation with elements from the old that I wanted to keep but made it more simple.

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Character Design

Today I learned the different types of folds within art and how to affectively use them. I found this listen really useful because before I didn't know how to draw fabric on characters or how fabric would interact with characters. This class has taught me more about how to draw certain types of fabrics on to characters which is something I will use to help me in the future for the development of my own art work and skills.

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Character design

Using the colour class that I had before, I went back and improved art for my wild west character. The lesson in colour really helped me colour in my character quickly and without any trouble like before. I used everything I had learnt in my character development classes before now to re-create my character and it is very exciting to see how much my art skills have improved.

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Animation

This is the first draft from my flour animation. I am excited to see how I will develop this into a full animation although I am aware that this draft is very ambitious and may need to be updated and parts of it may need to be changed.

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Maya

For this class I learned how to texture in maya. for this I used my chair that i had modelled before. As usual I found maya very confusing and cutting out the shapes for my chair proved to more difficult than it sounded but after I just placed random colours on it and it came out looking pretty funky.

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Maya

For this class we had to complete a telephone in maya.

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Animation

This is the final coloured version of my walk cycle. Although the loop isnt completely accurate I am proud of myself for being able to line and colour this despite all of its difficulties. I went back and fixed the hair so it didnt jump so much and it now moves smoother when my character walks which is a great improvement.

This task was very challenging for me because I kept running into problems that affected the animation or finding myself confused with how the different parts of adobe animate worked but in the end I created this and it doesnt look that bad! I now know more about adobe animate and also how to fix my mistakes for the future when I have more time.

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Animation

This is the final lined piece of my animation. Although it still needs a bit of clean up and I have to fix the boots I am happy that I finally got the lines for this animation to be smoother than before and not look like they jump around the page. Although to fix this I could go back and change how the hair moves so that it fits in time with when my character walks.

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Today I attended a drawing club from the uni where Dan Kelby was teaching about silhouettes and negative space within characters. This makes the characters more readable for viewers and so I am going to remember everything I have learned in this drawing club going forward to try and make sure my characters are always readable to the viewers. 

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This is my last sketch of my character walk cycle, I added the tumbleweed to show what my character is tripping over in the cycle but also because it fits with the wild west theme. I noticed that tumbleweed would require wind to push it along so I reinforced the idea of wind existing and affecting my character by having her jacket sway in the same direction. I also animated and fixed the arms so that the exaggerated swinging of them isn't so wobbly and added more of a turn to the head as it follows the tumbleweed move. Between these frames I have used my knowledge of in-betweens and smears to exaggerate the movements and make them move smoother. I am happy with this final sketch and will now be moving on to the line work. 

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Fixing Animation.

In my spare time I went back and re-did my bunny jumping from one square to another. I fixed the bunny making them move slightly slower but also making them bigger. I fixed the last jump at the end so it was smoother to watch and got rid of a few in-betweens. I also added more fur around the bunny’s neck and a threat that the bunny could be running away from.