Oops...

I just noticed I have not been working on the character design for the male! That's pretty terrible...but I can only justify this by considering the female as a more lead role in the story :) If there is more screen time for the woman then I think she deserves more effort in her design! :P

Also, as I mentioned before, I find it a lot easier to draw women and therefore I'll pick up my drawing skills a lot faster. Not to mention that I'm feeling quite uninspired as of late so I can't bring myself to draw a man since it's so much more challenging for me...but maybe that's what I need to be doing...challenging myself...hmmmmm...

Character designs Part 2

Here's some more progressed character designs - I wasn't too satisfied with the designs I did for the hand-in and I have reservations with regards to the visual style. Here, I've experimented a little bit with visual styles but essentially I've gone for some quite detailed designs. They didn't take very long and are very easy to replicate but look more complete than the other designs.

I rather like the drawing on the bottom middle so I developed that design a little further. I also really like the simple drawing above it because the design is so clean but the variation of the brush lines' thickness gives it more substance.

The character is getting there I think - I like the ease of drawing a simple bob haircut. It's a simple enough shape that I can draw it quickly but the loose hair also means I can be more interesting with the animation by making it move with actions or in the wind.

Here, I'm trying out the use of more thick brush strokes and forgoing the use of a thin line pen. I think the style is also looking much more refined and I think it'll look very good animated :). The more expressive brush strokes add a lot of movement to the images even though they are static right now - it should help the animation along I hope!

And here, I wondered about going a different direction with the character's design but pretty much completely altering her appearance. I really really like the design but I had such a hard time drawing all those curls in her hair I think it's best to stick to the previous design!

Playing Catch-up

For a while I was still very unsure of what I wanted to do with the story so I thought it'd be good to take a break and work on some concept work or at least practice drawing since it seems like an age since I drew things properly. It's terrible!

To start with I looked through an old hairstyle magazine to look for pictures of people - these magazines are very useful reference!From some chosen photos I made some line drawings in a stylised manner hoping to create a cool visual style for my final film and at the same time, learn to draw women's faces since my film is so character-driven.

First, I simply used a pencil or pen to do rough sketchy drawings - I'm rather pleased :)

Then, I decided to be a bit more WILD and got out my paintbrush and black ink - I intended to use a heavy brush stroke style after all! Here, the shape of the hair and the direction of the locks were all done very quickly with brush and ink then the facial details were added with pen. I like this style but I'm not sure I can emulate it as effectively digitally.

Then, I decided to be a bit more WILD and got out my paintbrush and black ink - I intended to use a heavy brush stroke style after all! Here, the shape of the hair and the direction of the locks were all done very quickly with brush and ink then the facial details were added with pen. I like this style but I'm not sure I can emulate it as effectively digitally

Stay tuned for character designs!

Time Warp!

Woooh it's been a little while hasn't it? Well, I got my grade back for the first module and I'm very very pleased. I'm disappointed in myself for not producing concept artwork to hand in but good news is that I HAVE been working on some. It is rather difficult to create a suitable and established style that I can easily reproduce and yet won't take too much time (so faster for animating too!)

I created a new storyboard AGAIN and then made a half-animatic...AGAIN! But then scrapped it...AGAIN! It's horrible being in such a cyclical pattern...thinking I'm out of it then realising I'm still in it! Well...then for the hand-in I made ANOTHER storyboard which I find is better than the others but the story needs some cutting down...but there'll be some changes AGAIN.

I took a long walk today in the beautiful sunshine and refreshing breeze to think through things and have been re-inspired by a few things I have watched/read/listened to in the not so distant past.

more updates to come soon! :)

Rough Character Designs

For the hand in of my preproduction module I submitted some very very very basic character designs. As a result of my running around in circles trying to refine the story (or more like recreate a better story) I didn't get very far and I personally find the designs very weak :(

Here's some rough initial design ideas for the two characters - yes I know, some of them are rather bizarre-looking! At least it shows I'm open to try something really new and different.

I think these designs are more suited for a different animation style (clean, thin lines and cel-style colouring?) so here's some more simplified designs with smooth, flowing lines better suited for animating with brush lines:
I love how the hair moves in the drawing on the far right - I can imagine it looking very expressive when fully rendered out as a mock still. However, I'm still not entirely convinced with the designs so next I tried merging the more complex sketchy designs with the simply smooth designs to create this:
Accidentally, I drew something which I'm somewhat happy about...I think it was the heavier hand on the pencil giving a stronger and more expressive line to the drawings. I took the bottom, middle design and drew them out again, this time being more passionate with my pencil:
I think the stronger and more expressive line really helps to bring the character to life - I may invest in some brush pens to try more sketch designs with a closer aesthetic to what I'm aiming for in the final film. After all, I'm not looking to do a pencil animation! I'm settling for this design for the woman character for now...onto the male character design!
I enjoy drawing females a lot more than males so I noticed I put more effort in designing the woman...which isn't very good since I always had the idea that the male character is the starring role...I think I might change that around since I find it more fun and easy to draw females! I prefer the design for the male character on the right and obviously it has a more suitable style for my animation but I think he needs a little extra spice!

La Maison En Petits Cubes

A friend of mine linked me this film and it's a PERFECT source of inspiration - everything I'm trying to do but done well: flashbacks, montage, loss of loved ones etc etc etc and there's even the bit where the old man pours two glasses of wine! Actually, thinking more about things this is what I've been aiming for (but obviously this film is a much longer format than what I'm doing) so hopefully now that I've watched this I can fix my entire animatic. Here's to being hopeful!

Film by Kunio Kato

Thank you Oliver Sin :)

Animatic 2

I should've done this LOOOONG ago - I can see a lot of the areas where the images aren't communicating very well now that I have looked more carefully at the storyboard and timed out the images. I have fixed the beginning quite a lot from its initial storyboard sketch (which you can see has been re-drawn) and the later two thirds of the animatic haven't been amended yet you expect to see more improvements (hopefully!) There's barely any sound but try to imagine a nice bit of piano music :)

The story is still lacking a bit...I guess I'm being rather literal with my narrative and there's not much hidden symbolism but for some reason my brain just isn't thinking that way right now. Maybe once I sort out the animatic I can start adding layers of meanings to my film.

In-betweened

I couldn't get the right feel for the action in the previous post so I added a few in-betweens to smooth out the action and feel a bit happier about this animation test. There's obviously still room for improvement...and to be fair there's isn't that much difference between this revised test and the one on my previous post!

Here I slowed the action down a bit and added a slight pause when the woman realises he's putting a coat on her. I think I prefer the longer pause from the last test. At least I'm learning! :)

Another ROUGH test

I don't really know why this took me as long as it did :S and I know I have a LOT of timing issues to sort out with this. I'll add a few more in-betweens then re-linetest it again - hopefully I'll be able to adjust the timing a bit better!

I've imagined this scene a couple of times in my head to put into the last section of my story (which hadn't been storyboarded!) and it seemed a suitable action to try out for another animation test involving the touch of a loved one. What is shown here is the ghost character reminiscing about the time when he was alive - just another one of those moments when the couple were happy.

The storyboard is almost complete - Once I sort out a rough idea for the ending I'll go back through the whole thing and adjust the scenes then time them out in an animatic. Need to get a move ON! This whole animation test thing is starting to work, [although I don't want my film to revolve around the theme of romance/love too much] I feel like I can use the moments when the ghost tries to touch his fiancée to enhance his own absence and the loneliness of the woman.

A VERY quick animation test

During my tutorial yesterday I was set the task of making an animation test of the tender touch of a loved one (something along those lines). In my film I want to include bits where the ghost tries to touch his fiancée but instead creates a gentle gust of wind. For the animation test I chose to animate one such situation where the ghost goes to touch the woman's hair (maybe flashback to show it's a habit that he had when he was alive) but a breeze comes and blows the hair back.

As you can see, my skills are barely coming out of hibernation - it's meant to be very rough so the movements aren't quite there yet but I tried to show how the ghost's hand slows down upon "touching" the woman's face and I made the movements of the fingers very subtle. It's not too successful but I don't think I made a good choice of action to animate for this task.

The purpose of this test to get myself in the right frame of mind to explore the emotions and sensitivity between two people who have loved and lost. It was supposed to help inspire my film but I don't really feel any different. I'll continue making such tests in the meantime to get back into the flow of animation. I am rather rusty but it's fun to pick it up again and realise how much I still enjoy it :)

At the moment I'm most happy with my most recent storyboard - if I just storyboard the last section then time the images out in an animatic then maybe I'll be able to find a way of communicating what I want more clearly.