#oracle cat

[hopefulbagelboi]

Reflection

On the Tv series project and what I have so far with my animation for games project.

Oracle Cat: I started off determined, full of ideas and had a game plan, and I believe things would have gone much better if not for mental health issues. However, once I picked myself back up again I was able to continue where I had left off despite not having looked at the material for months.

My animation for this project is not my best and I know it can be better, however I am beyond shelling out passion for this project and I had no intention of improving the animation further. I do think that for this animation I had some of the best linework and backgrounds I had ever done due to the research, tutorials watched and books studied ('Figure Drawing For All It's Worth' has incredibly detailed sections on framing, vanishing points, perspective and much more. 'Setting Up Your Shots' was also a nice visual guide about perspective, framing and camera movements). This time I used much more reference images during my sketching stage, as usually I either forget or am too stubborn to. I think this aided with improving the believability of my backgrounds.

My revised character sheets show great improvement in my skill and understanding of basic artistic concepts such as lighting, shading and line weight. Previously I would never have attempted such 'complex' techniques as I had very low confidence in my drawings.

What could be improved?

Time management for sure, as always it has been my greatest weakness. I did have a work plan, calendar, and all the likes but I have a bad habit of never sticking to, well, habits.

Since I am still puzzling together which work and study methods work best for me I can't make promises about having no time management issues at all next time, though I do believe that by being given second chances (multiple) to complete this project I have inched closer to the answer as to how I can tame my wayward focus (I can now sit and work for 3 hours at a time rather than my previous 20 minutes! Yes it was a struggle!).

Communication with my tutors. Put simply I am terrible at it due to my own stubbornness and reluctance to ask for help. I would disappear for weeks at a time, only skulking back online to submit the current deadline before becoming a whisper on the wind once more. This past week I have gotten my rear back into gear and have been communicating with my tutors almost daily, attending classes and 1-1's and working on feedback. This has helped me overcome roadblocks with me work and has been a considerable benefit to me, all thanks to the patience and kindness of my tutors, I am back on track and will continue to communicate in the future.

Animal Boy:

Another project that I was raring to sink my teeth into but that turned into a dumpster fire due to mental health reasons.

The sharp learning curve for 3D animation didn't scare me off, in fact I was glad I now had no way to avoid learning it, and the first few days of it went well as I gained quite a knack for it.

My tutor, an expert on 3D animation, was very helpful when it came to teaching me shortcuts, skills, tips and tricks for navigating the 3D world and for making my 3D experience as painless as possible. He showed me how to apply textures and gave me a general rundown of what stages I should go through as I work on my animation.

All I can really say is that I believe I would've done much better on this project if it hadn't been for personal mental health issues standing in my way. At the very least I do think I am doing a little better on that front. If I can't take a degree away with me from university I can at the very least take improved mental health back home with me!

What could be improved?

Character sheets are one of my most hated parts of a project (action poses are fun, turnarounds are NOT) and I would draw several versions of a character over and over only to use none of them, all of them ending up in the bin. I was stuck on how to remedy this issue until I was able to use my traditionally drawn sketches as a base for my digitally drawn character sheets. This improved my enjoyment of the dreaded turnaround greatly as it was easier to remove mistakes and sort of 'posh' up a drawing by simply giving it steady looking lines thanks to the magic of many brush strokes and a very fine eraser.

I still take far too long to create any kind of drawing but that is only something that will improve over time the more I draw and the more the movements are committed to muscle memory.

[hopefulbagelboi]

TV Series Project.

Attempts at character design pt2.

It's worth noting that the cats for this idea I all wanted to be references to the cats within my life, that way I could get unlimited pictures of them, they'd be my own pictures AND because I thought it would be a nice nod to them.

Also because it wouldn't fit in the other post this is the original post I found online years ago that inspired the cats in my story to be the four horsemen. At first there was only going to be one cat and he was going to be an oracle, but then I remembered this post:

(^ From https://www.deviantart.com/chatenoire/art/Cats-of-the-Apocalypse-99865195 )

Cats of the Apocalypse by ChateNoire on DeviantArt

Here is Pestilence, the main bad guy in the first series:

It even has colour, now isn't that fancy. I thought a cool thing for Pestilence, instead of flies, there would be crows that bothered and swarmed him, pecking away at him to steal bits of flesh. He swats them away but they persist.

Pete suggested that they are his familiars and that they can help him, which I may implement alongside them being a nuisance for Pestilence.

I based him off of a Siamese cat because the original cat I want to base him off (a ragdoll breed) has fur pattern design that is too alike to Famine (black and white). I do know someone with a Siamese though so the theme of it all being cats in my life still holds up. I thought Siamese would be a good match because they are often associated with trouble.

Reference images found on Google:

(^ They all seem to prefer to sit like this, which gives Pestilence a unique and recognisable posture. Also, some siamese are rather disproportional when it comes to body parts, which makes for good creepy factor).

A small attempt at drawing a cat skull as I considered if Pestilence's entire head should just be a skull and it is mounted onto a fleshy body. I likely won't do this design as it is a little difficult to draw.

-----

I haven't drawn Death, the Oracle cat himself, yet but I plan to base him on my final cat Sooty, who is a pure black cat with a very passive and relaxed demeanor.

I would like to change the fur pattern on half of her face when doing the design though to perhaps look like a human or cat skull if someone looks hard enough.

Sooty:

It will be difficult to draw any detail on Death when I do try as we can see here that black cats absorb so much light. Perhaps I could play into this by making Death very shadowy.

Either way, here we can see Sooty radiating a very chill and calm personality and that is what I want for Death. Mastering a cat's expression when you can barely see them in the light will be difficult, but I have plenty of reference to go off.

[hopefulbagelboi]

TV Series Project Time Again!

Speaking of redesigns...

Damien went through far too many! For the life of me I couldn't settle on a design I liked. Here are a few:

Bad designs I know but it was at least clear that I wanted a sort of 'thug-cop' kind of vibe (think Nanu from Pokemon, or maybe even Guzma) and spiky fluffy hair because it was the only type I knew how to draw! Though Damien's final design came to me all of a sudden after I hadn't picked up a pencil in months:

It's nothing special but it was a big deal to me after trying to fix his design for months, finally I had settled on this. He kept the long jacket because I like that best about his design, and trainers to show that he doesn't follow dress code or rules too rigorously, that and his stern expression to show you that he is a rather unhappy, serious kind of guy.

The cats...

Didn't get a redesign, I was happy with how they looked from the start, I simple compiled their various drawings and coloured them finally:

All three of these character sheets were actually made on my tablet, I was trying it out for the first time since I got a stylus for it. I found that photographing my sketches, importing them into Sketchbook and drawing over them digitally worked wonders for me. It was even somewhat enjoyable until the carpal tunnel kicked in. Either way I think it was an improvement on how I usually draw my character sheets.

A test...

Taking one of my favourite sketches for this project I decided I would finally try to compose a full scene with it (rather than just draw a character outline and leave it at that), this would mean colour, a background, lighting and shading - all things that I am notoriously bad at. The result:

Not so bad. It's a bit empty and a bit overexposed, but it was first try at something like this and considering how long I agonised over it I like to think it turned out decent enough.

What did I learn from this? I can draw lighting! I can do shading! And backgrounds are a possibility!

[hopefulbagelboi]

TV Series Project Mega Post.

After my extended hiatus from the project (read: gave up) I recently came back in order to finish it off. Here is what has changed during that time:

Pete's feedback: My TV title sequence was 'more like an animatic' and I agree with that sentiment, it was rushed and slapped together hastily in a few days during a low point of mine. My tutor suggested these changes:

*Greyscale any drawings of buildings as the screen was too busy as it was,

(^Old vs new city plan drawing)

* Extend the first shot which is a close up of shoes, * Shade the overpass background using greys and blues, * Add some beams of light in the overpass background, * Have the character close ups include more movement, * Silhouette the characters.

(^Old vs new overpass shot)

A lot of the work I did was simply line clean up and making my sketches appear more 'confident'. I redrew over every frame and spent hours at a time agonising over line cleanliness and smoothing.

(^ As you can see the original drawing was messy and lacking confidence, the second had been neatened considerably with the facial features receiving extra time and care to make the image more readable. The third and final drawing is perfect save for the fact that I had accidentally inverted Death's fur colours on their face! And missed out their eyes...alas I only realised this when it was too late.)

(V More line work improvements)

(^ I had been trying to draw his face repeatedly but grew frustrated with it and eventually left it out entirely in the first image. However, after yet another character redesign I simplified his face so that it would be easier to draw).

[hopefulbagelboi]

TV Series Project.

Attempts at character design.

These are my sketches of three of the four cats in my idea, they took way longer to do than they should've.

Famine is based on my cat Minnie, because she used to be an abused stray and has anxiety from it and it's very difficult to get her to eat. (She's been to the vets multiple times to check if she is ok and has been given a thumbs up every time, so her unwillingness to eat is not caused by any other condition).

The lines I used to draw her were sharp and angular to portray bones against skin. I had to be careful not to make her too bony as Pestilence is also quite bony.

Here are the reference images I used:

Next is War and I based him off of my other cat, Socks, since he can be particularly grumpy when he wants to be. However, since Minnie and Socks have similar fur patterns I changed Socks' fur pattern and colour to something else. I also made War fatter, since most wars are to do with greed from one party or another.

I also made the lines I used to draw him to be curving and fluid to the best of my ability, to help portray fatness.

Reference Images:

In this one I improvised a bit and changed his head to one of a hissing cat by using an image found on Google. The fur pattern was also found online by looking at stock images of orange cats. I made use of the different types of cats found in 'Minecraft' since their designs are all different to make the cats more interesting.

This is a stray cat near my home called Eric, and his fur pattern is close to what I'm going for with War.

Below is a list I found online:

For War's fur I would prefer the marbled ir clouded tabby look.

[kiassen]

A doodle inspired by this cat on Reddit.

I love his blind, golden eyes-- he looks like he can see into the future!

—

• Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. •