The children like it.

 

 

On a skype conversation with my 4 year old brother and my 9 year old sister, I got some feedback on my animation.

 

They enjoyed it!

 

They found it funny, entertaining and appealing.

I know they are my family, but as kids they are honest and I value their feedback, especially as they are the age range I am most interested in targeting with my work.

Final Animation - Unicorns are real!

Unicorns are real!

I have finally finished my animation. It is short but sweet and I am glad to have made it, even if the last few weeks leading up to deadline have been stressful and testing of my patience! 

Please enjoy and I would be glad to receive any feedback from any fellow illustrators and animators out there! 

Please click on the link above in purple to open my animation up on vimeo.

Text

I have decided to use my own hand writing for the text as I think it has more an appeal to it, and keeps in theme with the hand rendered digital combination. I had previously just written the sequence in black, but I found the starkness of the white background was too much contrast in comparison to the rest of the animation. I have therefore created a layer of collage underneath an opacity white of 85% and cut out the letters so they show through.

The writing was created using flash, and altered in photoshop.

Character Transformations

This is very tedious work and is taking a lot longer than I anticipated it would take. I won't lie, I cannot wait for this project to be over, it is draining the life out of me and I have found it very difficult and testing of my patience. Overall, it is probably my least favourite project I have done so far. Maybe animation is something I can do again in the future when I have unlimited time to create something, but it won't be soon.

Transformation Trials /3

I have added some flashes to make the transformation more magical and fictional.

First Rhino scene complete!

I have added all the background elements for my first rhino scene!

Transformation Trials /2

I am trying to create a flashy but smooth transition from rhino to unicorn. This is my first attempt, using photoshop and different layers to create the flashy and analogue effect.

End Sequence

Unicorns and Rhinos

Final character scenes..

These are some final scenes of my rhino characters for my animation. I now just need to add some background stuff.

I'M GETTING THERE!

Here comes a rhino...

Another rhino animated and collaged.

One clip for the final.

I have completed one clip which can be contributed towards my final animation! Yay! It is only a 16 frame clip but runs for about 3-5 seconds. My next task is to zoom in on his face and eye, to create a more shifty and suspenseful moment before he suddenly transforms into a unicorn.

Progress.

I am making progress. Which is good. And I must stay positive, because I will get this animation finished. I will.

Here is some progress work that I have been working on over the last few days.

Hair falls out from stress.

With 9 days left till hand in, I am beginning to show signs of stress as my hair seems to be detaching itself from my head. More than usual. Animation is tedious work.
I've been a bit slow over the past week, losing the motivation to work and struggling with the concept of animating at least 1 minute of work. I am not sure that animating is for me. Perhaps when I have huge amounts of spare time, or over a much longer period in my life, I will attempt it again, but not in the near future, or as a career. I had a small tutorial this morning, which was more of a motivational bump, and has helped me to lighten the load I seem to have placed on my shoulders. I made some very shit but useful sticky notes with sequence idea and rough time allocation. Using sticky notes is VERY USEFUL! Because I can now move scenes around and get a clearer idea of my whole animation in just a few pictures. Here it is:

 I now have a clearer and simpler vision of my animation and what exactly I need to do. Some of these scenes for example, are just backgrounds which can be zoomed in and out of easily, as well as static images like trees. I have already done a few animations of rhinos as well so it does not seem like such a daunting task as how I saw it last week. I just need to keep going and stay motivated. Just like my sticky notes I put up around my computer today:

 

Character Design Workshop

On Wednesday 30th April, children's book author and illustrator Elissa Elwick came in to do a character design workshop with us. It was a really useful workshop and I have gained some really good advice on character development. The area I chose to explore within the morning session was how shapes can hep to define a character, for example a circular shape is seen as soft and safe, whereas a triangle might be more dangerous and sharp. Using only geometric shapes, I created a rhino and a unicorn. Using this technique has also helped me to better grasp the basic shape of my characters and to retain the memory with ease so I can draw each animal in the future starting with geometric shapes.

Using this technique has also inspired a different style of colouring as I had limited materials on me during the workshop. I really like the different shaded shapes within the rhino after I outlined the rhino and unicorn. Using collage and mixed media would work effectively in these shapes to put my own twist on the rotoscoping, to make it more my own and add lots of colour in the animation.

Pick Me Up, London 2014.

We took a university course trip to Pick Me Up in London on Tuesday 29th April. It is a really great illustration and graphic art festival full of wonderful prints and huge amounts of colour!

I really enjoy going to this event (this is my second year visiting it) because there is tons of work by illustrators and collectives, most of them having graduated only a few years or so ago. If I had enough money, there were so many prints that I would have bought, but unfortunately I am a poor poor student and don't have the luxury yet. I did however get loads of inspiration and found a few artists whose work I really liked, (and took their names down on my phone to research later.)

It was a great day trip and a good excuse to get off the computer and take a day out from animating.

(English Artist, Billy, lives and works in Berlin & UK. Digital, gyclee and screen prints. Observations made from living in unfamiliar places and travelling to exotic and not-so-exotic destinations, mixed up in a whirl of imagination.)

I also got to use a very small screen printer which printed this unicorn onto some coloured paper with circles, and keep the print as a token of my visit this year in the Handsome Frank section of Pick Me Up.

Animated cars

 

I have used two types of animation to make the car appear to move.

 

The first one is completely rendered through Photoshop. I drew two different versions of the car and four different versions of the wheels, with the lines of the wheel moving around each time to create the illusion of movement. I really like the jittery effect.

 

The second animation was drawn in Photoshop and animated using After Effects. I have used a more simplified angle of the car to make it easier to animate. Using After Effects allowed me to easily move the car physically off the screen and to rotate the two tyres indvidually as it moved along to highlight the movement. This style works really well as I want the car to physically move off the page.

 

However I still want it to have the jittery effect of the top one, and I am unsure how to combine both effects as of yet.

Moving Car

I have created what I hope looks like a moving car. My next aim is to move it from right to left, from small to large and off the screen. This is a basic animation, but it most likely become part of my animation, with hand rendered textures imported into it for a more interesting appearance.

Shifty eyes.

The quality is absolutely rubbish, but this is just an example of a zoom in on the rhino looking rather shifty just before he turns into a unicorn. There are 25 picture frames in this sequence, 50 over all. I find it quite fast with not very much time to appreciate the movement of the eyes.

On this example, I have increased the length go frames per image for every other change, so there are a total of 75 frames in this sequence. I think it works a lot better as you have more time to see the rhinos eyes. I am thinking of contenting the zoom in with some more eye movement to make the sequence longer, and maybe adding some more frames in-between to lengthen the build up before the rhino turns into a unicorn.

Storyboarding

These are some of my story boarding illustrations. The top one was referenced with photographs for the rhino and unicorn, which I then created more in-between frames for on the computer as a gif (see previous posts). Now that I have gotten around to scanning my drawings in, I can use these as referencing for my digital drawings. The lilac colouring was a random choice, but I have come to like it and will be using it for both animals as the merging link.

The bottom images show the idea of the sun setting, to mark the beginning of the secret world. The colours are bold and bright, to grab the attention of the viewer in the beginning.

Colour Concepts

I've been playing around with my letraset graphic pens, which I had kind of forgotten about these last two years, to create some colour concept work for my animation. It's great using them because I have a nice variety of colours, many of which are bright and bold, which is what I want my animation to be! Something that catches the eye and retains it for the short amount of time.

I like the idea of blending yellows and lilacs together for the rhino, as I can then turn this into lilac, pinks and oranges, or whatever other combo for the unicorns.

My next aim is to play around with acrylic paints for smoother and more intense blending, like Gerhard Richter.

Drawing studies.

Some studies to help me visualise and get a clearer idea of the movement of these animals. (The idea of animating still baffles me. I am finding it a bit hard and quite daunting still. I fear it won't be a very long animation due to my lack of patience.)

I am have been quite rubbish and lazy with scanning my own work into the computer so there will now be a string of posts with various drawings and illustrations regarding my work process so far with my project. Enjoy-

General Inspo

I am fascinated with the work of Sara Fanelli. I would love for my sketch book to look like her book "Sometimes I think, sometimes I am". But that's probably why I am so fascinated with her work, because it's not something I do, or how I work. I am a big fan of the quotes and illustration combination though, and have started to experiment and cut out bits and pieces for my personal use/diary/journal type book. In regards to my current project, her use of bright and contrasting colours and and compositions attract me, which I can hopefully achieve in my own work. I also hope to achieve a similar effect with layer and collage to keep a analogue feel to my animation, even though I will be creating the line and base work digitally.

Viewers Perception

After one of the tutorials I have had with my tutors, one of things I noticed on my tutorial sheet is from what perspective will the animation be viewed. I hadn't thought much about this, only seeing it as a third person perspective, similar to that of Toy Story. It also highlights my idea of a secret world, as the toys only come to life when there is no human presence, similar to the morphing of rhinos into unicorns. However I want to keep an element of realism in my animation as well. This bought me back to the idea of viewing it almost as a documentary. In the BBC's Africa, they use camera traps to capture the rhinos behaviour at night, and I feel this could work for mine too. It creates the illusion of spying on something, and discovering something new - like a secret world.

Children's Books as Inspiration

I've always been a big fan of fully illustrated pages, bursting with colour. For my last project I wrote and illustrated my own children's book. It had all double page spreads which were completely covered in art. I find it attractive, eye catching and immersing, particularly for the younger audience. So I am going to keep this animation along the same lines, full of colour that the viewer can immerse themselves in when watching it. This bodes particularly well with themes of fantasy, as I can really explore colour combinations and create something that pushes the boundaries.

This is the work of Mathew Robertson. He combines hand rendered, collaged and digital work to create these wonderfully appealing illustrations for children’s books. I hope to use a similar style, combining digital line and base drawings with hand rendered textures and washes, which can be scanned in and used in the background and for the characters.

This illustration is from the children’s book Mr Clockman, illustrated by Eberhard Binder. This particular double page spread is full of life and colour, engaging with the audience and bringing them into the narrative. Books that are “created with integrity, both artistically and in relation to the needs of the child, can lead to picture books that will continue to enchant through the generations.”^[1]

^[1] Salisbury, M. (2004). Illustrating Children’s Books, creating pictures for publication. London. Quarto Publishing.

Think Bright!

I'm having some ideas about my colour scheme for my animation, and I'm thinking bold bright colours! It is only a short animation and so I want it to pop, stand out and draw my audience into watching it. The idea of fantasy, with there being unicorns, means I can play around with textures and create something that balances reality with fiction.

I have always been a fan of Gerhard Richter's work. He uses collage to blend colours, which in turn create patterns and textures to create abstract pieces of art. I plan to experiment with this style to use as backgrounds and skins for my characters.