Context of Practise 3: New Character Development

 Context of Practise 3
New Character Development

• This week:
• I developed and created three characters I will animate for my performance tests.
• What went well:
• As I wanted to change the designs from last week and work with characters I am more comfortable animating, I decided to focus on creating animal character designs. This meant that the focus could be more on the performance/acting, rather than considering anatomy as much.
• I started by exploring a German Shepherd character design, who would fit the traits of a character who is arrogant and short-tempered, however I felt that this design was not working how I intended it to. I also found that I wanted to try some further design ideas, before making up my mind.

• In the end, I developed a bird character, a cat character and a dog. This also played into creating interesting personalities for each of them, as the cat character, who I have simply named Sally, is shy, lacking in confidence, but pretends to be confident in themselves (similarly to Dr Delbert Doppler). The bird, a Lovebird, is round and bubbly and finally the Chihuahua character is very angular-looking, arrogant and hot-headed. I tried not to let stereotypes of the animal impact the personalities as much, but allow the overall shape to aid with that (for example, you would associate Chihuahuas with energy and playfulness, rather than laziness and arrogance).
• Here are my developed designs:

• Using my knowledge developed from reading "The Illusion of Life" section on appeal and developing a better understand of fluid poses, from "Drawn to Life", I found it easier to pose and develop more appealing characters.
• What could be improved:
• These characters need final, quick turnarounds developing and some test animations. I need to understand how they would move an act better, by possibly exploring facial expressions and producing some rough tests.
• Character design is only a small part of this development, but it is something I would like to improve upon for future projects, such as creating more complex designs and a variety of shapes to fully explore every single design potential.
• Next week:
• I will be finishing these designs, by illustrating a quick turnaround sheet (front and side-view) and then testing them in animation.

Context of Practise 3: Character Performance Analysis

 Context of Practise 3
Character Performance Analysis

• This week:
• I chose three characters to analyse and made some quick notes on their body languages and personalities.
• What went well:
• As I already had a lot of information on the Tiger from The Tiger Who Came to Tea, I decided to continue with analysing this character for my essay. I watched the Channel 4 animation again, specifically looking at the scene of the Tiger initially entering the house and when he is sitting at the table. I found an interesting book, by BA, BEd Communication Studies Specialist, Gordon Wainwright, on Understanding Body Language. I used this book aid in analysing the body language of the Tiger.
• I was able to apply this information to also Dr Delbert Doppler (Treasure Planet) and Mabel Pines (Gravity Falls), to further understand how their body language shows the characters' traits and personalities. 
• I was able to triangulate sources of information on each of these characters, as Sergio Pablos provides an analysis of how he animated Dr Doppler and I watched some shots from Treasure Planet, which back-up what Sergio describes.
• Here are my notes:

• What could be improved:
• For my final character analysis, I chose Mabel Pines, because of her bubbly, but gullible personality in the series, Gravity Falls. I was struggling to analyse her body language, as compared to Tiger and Doppler, there are limitations with animation of a TV Series and I haven't been able to find as much information of her.
• I need to re-watch the series in order to provide a better analysis of her character and body language.
• Next week:
• I will writing out a plan for my essay and finishing any analysis which needs to be completed.

Context of Practise 3: Starting Some Character Concepts

 Context of Practise 3
Starting Some Character Concepts

• This week:
• I started exploring some initial character ideas and received feedback on these also.
• What went well:
• I had started by using previous characters I had made and attempting to further expand on these, however I found that this approach wasn't working the best. I needed to come up with new ideas. I liked the line-of-action and pose of the mouse character on the second page, so I decided to take this idea and explore it further.

• Using shapes and what I had learnt of character designing, I created 6 initial mice designs and produced some rough renders of two which I favoured:

• Overall, the top middle design did have a better pose and line-of-action to the other poses, however I did like the design in the top left, because of the large eyes and rounder body.

• What could be improved:
• I need to work on making my poses less stiff. This will be done through practise and attempting to push the poses more when I further develop characters.
• I asked Mike for some feedback! He did feel that his favourite design was the more angular one on the top middle row. In addition to this, he felt that I needed to produce more ideas and exploration, especially for the other characters I will be animating. Therefore, I think I will be scrapping the mice designs as I don't feel these work best for the characters. I need to research some animated performances of animal characters to assist in my creation of creature characters.
• Next week:
• I will be analysing animated performances and designing more characters.

Extended Practise: 11 Second Challenge October

Extended Practise
11 Second Challenge Colour and Submission 

• This week:
• I finished the colour for Shot 2 and submitted the final 11 Second Challenge clip to the competition!
• What went well:
• I have improved on my speed for colouring, as I was able to colour my designated scene in under a day, when we had several days for colouring. I have seemed to have understood the colouring process in Toon Boom Harmony, so I should be better with this in the future.
• Here is my coloured scene:

• Furthermore, Joseph edited and put together the final animation, with lighting and colour adjustments and sound. Overall, I think we did an amazing job in such a small amount of time, the characters' movement is smooth and well timed and the spiders' movements work. Here is the final edit:

• Here is evidence of posting to the 11 Second Competition:

• What could be improved:
• I think we really underestimated how quickly we would be able to work on this, so we could have spent more time developing characters and story ideas. As the deadline was the 31st October, we didn't think there was enough time to spend exploring more technical movements and animation, as we kept the overall acting quite simple. 
• Furthermore, the Spiders' movement could have been improved as it doesn't really fit the final audio track very well. In the storyboards, it was illustrated as a gradual mouth open, with saliva coming out and we ended up scrapping this for time. Therefore, timing needs to be considered more in future projects.
• Next week:
• I will be looking at possible D&AD Competitions and beginning to think about my final film.

Extended Practise: 11 Second Challenge - Betweening

 Extended Practise
11 Second Challenge Inbetweening

• This week:
• I worked on the in-betweens for the 11 Second Competition, which Emily had done the keyframes and breakdowns for.
• What went well:
• I was able to apply a lot of my knowledge using arcs and easing for this particular animation, which I had learnt more techniques about in The Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams and a new book I was looking at for COP, called Drawn to Life, by Walk Stanchfield. In addition to this, it tested my ability to stay on-model with a character design that wasn't my own style.
• Here are the key-frames:

• One of the biggest problems I ran into with this, was having to use Photoshop for animating, as that was what Emily had access to. I extremely struggle to inbetween in Photoshop, as the software isn't properly built for high amounts of frames and so much data in one file. Therefore, I found a tutorial on Toon Boom Harmony's website, which allows you to import Photoshop folders as layers into the software. 

• I was then able to properly inbetween the keys, without worrying about over-loading the software and crashing. Here are the betweens I did for Shot 3:

• One thing that I was happy with was the spider movements feeling more "jumpy". I wanted to create more of a feeling that the movement was sporadic, so I exposed frames on twos with just a one exposure between, to create that jumpy-like creep forwards.
• This also creates contrast with the fly, whose movement was a lot smoother:

• As a lot of the acting had already been decided by Emily, through her keyframes and breakdowns, so I focused more on follow-through and overlapping actions, which would be seen in the flies long nose. I found that adding drag and smears made the thrashing movement more believable. 

• What could be improved:
• I think that despite the spider movement feeling sporadic, the head could have been much smoother or had more movement to it. Unfortunately with limited betweens, I couldn't create much movement, without making adjustments to the keyframes. I'll keep that in mind next time when storyboarding or giving feedback to people in the group to consider this.
• I found that the fly isn't completely centered in the frame, so this is something we will have to fix in post-production, by either cropping the video or moving the layer to centre on the background, depending on how the backgrounds have been illustrated.
• Next week:
• I will be colouring Shot 2!

Context of Practise 3: Research Post 3

Context of Practise
Research Post 3 - Character Animation Crash Course, Reg Isaac and The Illusion of Life 

• This week:
• I made notes on the books, "Character Animation Crash Course" by Eric Goldberg and "The Illusion of Life" by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson. I also received an email response from Reg Isaac.
• What went well:
• I think that I found a lot of relevant research from both "Character Animation Crash Course" and "The Illusion of Life" and they both look at personality animation from a different perspective to books I have previously analysed. "The Illusion of Life" especially expresses the importance of character appeal and also further goes on to provide information of character body language, from films such as The Rescuers and The Jungle Book. Characters from these films could be a great idea to analyse going forward, as I would have the research from "The Illusion of Life" to cross-reference information. Here are the notes I made:

• Furthermore, I received a response from Reg Isaac, who provided a test animation for Klaus, worked on the animation for the Netflix Green Eggs and Ham adaptation, and also worked on The Tiger Who Came To Tea for Channel 4, with LupusFilms. They provided a lot of information regarding character personality and acting, which can be seen here:

• What could be improved:
• Now that I have looked a many resources of books and primary research, I would like to start analysing some case studies. One of these can be the Tiger from The Tiger Who Came To Tea, as I already have some of Reg Isaacs' input. Furthermore, I need to look at some examples of use of body language and where it works and where it might not.
• Next week:
• I will be creating an essay structure, analysing case studies and starting with practical work.

Context of Practise 3: Research Post 2

 Context of Practise 3
Research Post 2 - Drawn to Life and Animated Performance

• This week:
• I made notes on the books "Drawn to Life" Volumes 1 and 2, by Walt Stanchfield and also "Animated Performance" by Nancy Beiman.
• What Went Well:
• From Drawn to Life Volume One, Walt Stanchfield talks a lot about the importance of Gesture Drawing. He explains that this is where we "acquaint ourselves with [body language] symbols." He further goes on to mention that, "we learn how to manipulate the figure to evoke certain emotional or psychological responses." I understand this to mean that the line of action and initial silhouette/pose of the character should be enough to convey personality and mood, without needing the character to speak or move. This details the importance of gesture drawing to fully understand the body language we convey, to give insight into our thought processes.
• Therefore, I decided to start with gesture drawing, as practise of this. I used the website LineofAction.com, which provides online figures to draw from.
• Here are the studies I made:

• "Animated Performance" by Nancy Beiman explains personality and acting in animation from a more technical stand-point, rather than psychological. She is in agreement with Walt, as she explains that, "Line of action creates personality," however she also goes onto explain, "personality and attitude expressed through the key poses create acting." One book that further explains the technical aspect of drawing acting and personality for animation is "Character Animation Crash Course" by Eric Goldberg, which I shall be looking at later this week.
• Here are the notes from "Drawn to Life" Volumes 1 and 2, and "Animated Performance":

• What Could Be Improved:
• I need to consider making my gesture drawings more fluid, but also ways in-which they flow into character designing and appeal. I need to start designing some characters next week and possible explore the "malleability" of a character to express body language.
• Next week:
• I will be creating an essay structure and starting some practical work.