Tyra Iton - NUA Animation 1st Year

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November 12th - 16th - Weekly Summary

I feel as though this week highlighted the fact that I need to better pace myself in my working. It’s not as though I wasn’t doing anything at all, I just feel as though the weight of all the projects came down all at once. 

I found that I kept overthinking and constantly retouching my essay. I really struggled to get it within the word limit. I also found it somewhat difficult to clearly define the question of my essay and ended up changing it a few times before completing my essay.

I mainly focused on character design this week and finished up my walk cycle, dynamic pose design sheet and character design sheet. I’m not overly happy with my final character design but I suppose I am happy that It’s over and done with. I’ve found that I’ve been super critical of the lack of distinct value indication in my work and the somewhat plain designs of my characters. I feel as though I began to over analyze them in an attempt to make them work. I’m still not completely sure about the colour palette I selected for my cast and main character but I do feel that it does capture my intended tone of Autumn well.

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This was my finished Dynamics Animation. I feel as though the strongest feature of this animation is the clean line work and consistent form. I do feel however that I didn’t pace this as well as I would have liked too. I feel as though the weight of the bunny is pretty clearly communicated but the effort of the caretaker is now. I also feel like I may have accidentally also included impact in this final product. I feel as though the animation also lacks in anticipation and all of the motions feel very rushed. Sadly, I kept pushing this task off and I feel like the quality has cleary suffered because of it.

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Children’s show cast silhouette comparisons - 

I examined these shows side by side as they all had memorable characters but the silhouettes in each show had various degrees of effectiveness.

I feel as though the silhouettes present in the show Chowder were the strongest out of the three shows because they very distinct, memorable and revealed a lot about the characters.

I felt like Flapjack was a good comparison to Chowder because they were airing around the same time and had to compete with each other from a design standpoint. I feel as though the silhouettes in Flapjack say a lot less about the characters than the ones in Chowder do but they are very memorable especially partnered with the show’s unique animation style.

From a retrospective angle, I feel that the silhouettes found in Foster’s home for Imaginary’s Friends were pretty ineffective in terms of communicating traits of the characters as well as in terms of memorability. I feel like they’re somewhat easily forgettable.

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Character design - Dynamic posing 

Once again, I used a combination of Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint to complete this illustration. I really wanted to highlight the sort of bratty qualities present in my character despite her overall cheery disposition. I feel as though I captured her personality very well although in retrospect I now feel that her posing could have been a bit more dynamic in this piece. I feel as though that’s my second weak spot artistically. 

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November 5th - 9th - Weekly review

This week was again mainly focused on ironing out loose details in the majority of my animations. I tried one more time to redo a pendulum swing on f12 paper but it really did not work so I decided to stick with my first attempt which I feel wasn’t very effective. I also further worked on dynamic exercise.

While writing my character research essay, I found that my biggest struggle was not going over the word limit. I really struggled to condense all the extra reading that I had doing into one essay and feel as though at times I lost sight of the question of my essay. I did end up having to reword my question a few times. I also encountered an issue with my citations in that I hadn’t been writing down the page number for some of the sources and this meant that I had to go back through them very tediously to find the points I was referring to. 

This week I also worked on completing my character model sheet which showed the front, 3/4, side and back view of my character. I once again used a combination of clip studio paint and Photoshop to complete this. I encountered the same issue that I had when I previously did my cast design sheet in that the text stopped working in Photoshop after I worked on the document in clip studio paint but I resolved it in the same fashion that I did the first time by turning the drawing into a png. 

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I attempted to challenge myself by attempting a forward facing walk cycle. I found it really hard to place the passing frames in this animation and was initially going to do the animation at 24fps but I found that the animation worked better at 12fps. 

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Dynamic Excercise - Weight and effort rough draft 

I feel as though I was able to show the range of motion that I wanted to well in this animation.

I found it much easier to keep the features of my animations consistent while working in tv paint even while roughing out my animation. I also found it easier to maintain the scale of the animation. I feel like the main reason for this is the lighbox feature of the program. I would like to attempt animating on f12 paper with a lighbox to see if this is the case.

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October 29th - November 2nd -  Weekly Review

This week was largely focused on character design. We began working int tvpaint in order to complete our character turnaround and also began to think about how exactly we wanted to carry out our character’s walk cycle. I almost went with a side view walk cycle but wanted to challenge myself and attempt a forward facing one. I also more clearly began to think about the design choices behind my character design such as their colour palette in relation to the possible world that would be around them. I decided a setting based in autumn with a colour scheme to reflect that would be ideal. 

I had originally attempted to do my Dynamic - weight and effort animation on f12 paper but I was really dissatisfied with the way that was going and so I decided to switch to using tvpaint. 

In our character research lecture, we thoroughly discussed proper Harvard referencing and how to properly identify appropriate sources of information.  We also briefly discussed the Library’s ebook service as well as google scholar and I made use of these when I got home. I also watched princess Mononoke while writing commentary notes during my viewing and used this as the basis along which I would gather information from my sources. I identified key moments in the film that embodied themes I wanted to examine and found the appropriate evidence to support them.

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Character Turnaround

here’s a turnaround of my character Maria. I decided to change the colour of her undershirt because that red colour got lost in her dress. I also didn’t shade this turnaround. 

I feel as though my issue with showing a sense of value in my work is very clear in character designs however I feel as though it’s somewhat okay because of the younger demographic my work is tailored too? I feel as though overall I still really need to work on my use of highlights and low lights though.  

I’m honestly not super fond of my character designs and work but sort of feel like it’s too late to turn back now and I have to roll with it?

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First Attempt at character cast 

This was my first attempt at designing my cast for the my character design project. I did most of the rough work in the media lab on Photoshop but then used clip studio paint at home to refine the line-work and colour in the characters. 

I did encounter a minor issue in that mixing the two programs really messed with the text when I reopened them in Photoshop so I just ended up exporting the characters as a png and then placing them on a new blank cast sheet so I could edit the text properly.

The overall tone of this cast is supposed to be one of adventure. I got the idea that Maria (farthest to the left) would have been a sort of ‘city brat’ kind of character who goes to visit her grandmother, Agatha (middle) and gets pulled into an adventure. Maria would server the protagonist role, Agatha would serve the mentor’s role,

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Essay Research

These are various notes that I took while watching the film Princess Mononoke as well as during my research and reading. 

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Some notes I took analyzing the cast of Coraline.

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Character Design - Workshop #3 

We reviewed the expected illustrations and animations that we would need to provide for our character design project and did rough drafts for our cast sheet, dynamic posing sheet, turnaround and a rough outline of a possible walk cycle. 

One of the concerns I had with my chosen protagonist was that her hair puffs had too many lumps and that would be a pain to keep consistent in my animations. So going forward, I decided to limit her puff ball lumps to 6.

Halfway through fleshing this character out more, I realized that her personality and design greatly reminded me of my little sister. I guess I might be a little bit subconsciously homesick. 

I then attempted to play around with some variations of the character to ensure that I didn’t get locked down into one design.

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October 22nd - 26th - Weekly Review

This week, we began our character design lessons and went straight into the creative process of generating characters. We began by discussing the idea of shape and colour theory in regards to character design and how a good way to identify a good character design is a strong silhouette. I really enjoyed the group activity we did where we all took turns at drawing each other’s characters. I really enjoyed getting to see other people’s interpretations of my character. I feel as though this is a great way to gauge if people understand the intention behind your character design and how you feel they’d behave. I would love to do more of this.

We also had to fill up half a sketchbook with observational drawings in two days for our character design lessons and while I did enjoy this is was also a bit frustrating. I feel like it really highlighted my current lack of attention to detail and lack of observational drawing. It should have been easy to fill half of such a small sketchbook but for some reason I found myself really stumped for ideas on what to draw. 

Our character research lecture this week dug deeply into the idea of the uncanny valley and discussed the origin of the term as well as what exactly defines it. We also discussed how to avoid or provoke capturing the feeling of the uncanny valley in our work. One major factor in doing so, was the fact that uncanny things draw attention to unconscious human actions that we might otherwise not notice in natural motion, for example the rise and fall on someone’s chest when they breathe in contrast with an AI who would not do so. 

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TV Paint introduction

We familiarized ourselves with the basic functions of tvpaint today and illustrated a walk cycle from a sequence we were given as reference. 

I really liked using tvpaint and found it a lot easier to use and a lot more likeable than photoshop. I feel like it’s a lot easier to maintaint consitency and fluidity while animating digitally as well.

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Some of the observations sketches I did in my pocket sketchbook.