Further Character Development

Over christmas break I further refined and added details to my vampire character. Because he's a young vampire, I experimented with giving him some teenage boy-ish hair and some modern clothing that a teenager would wear, like slouchy hoodies and jeans. I then put him in some more classic vampire clothing, giving him a cape and a waistcoat. Even though I liked the idea of him trying to fit into modern times and make friends with human teenagers by wearing the same clothes as them, I eventually decided that I actually liked the classic vampire cloak more.

I did some other drawings of Victor in action, doing what he likes to do such as reading, brooding and drinking cranberry juice because he doesn't drink blood.

Life Drawing in Animation

After being given the Form, Flow, Force brief, I decided to do some research into why life drawing is so important for animation. In many of the classic Disney animation such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and One Hundred and One Dalmatians, live models were used to draw from in real time, so the animators could get a feel for realistic movement and that of how clothing would move as well as body parts.

Disney still offer free life drawing classes for the artists within their studios to help animators better understand the fundamentals of the human form, how clothing and gesture inform character and intent, and how to infuse spirit into their figures.

Environmetal Drawing: Interior

For my interior space I decided to draw the Leeds Kirkgate markets. I thought this would be a nice place to draw because it is so colourful and quaint, the opposite to my exterior, the Dark Arches, so it would allow me to experiment using more colourful media. I really enjoyed drawing here as well, usually the owner of the stall I was drawing or passersby would come and look at my drawings and it was a good atmosphere to draw in, however standing holding a sketchbook for hours upon end did get quite tiring. I used media such as watercolour, felt tip and water, pencil, and chalk pastels because I think they compliment the light hearted, busy and interesting vibe the market has. I found the ceiling of the market quite hard to get right as well because it is so intricate. Below are some examples of my observations from the market. I really like the details of the sweet shop, I did the outlines of these and the other watercolour pieces at the market and then coloured them later at home.

Environmental Drawing

For my exterior environment I decided to draw the Dark Arches. I thought this was a nice place to draw because I liked the contrast between light and dark in this space. I really tried to capture this in the drawings by using materials like biro, charcoal, pastels and dark graphite pencil. I think these mediums really emphasised the features I wanted to be seen, like the arches themselves. I found it hard to get the perspective in many of the drawings I did here right but I think I achieved it in the end. It was also extremely cold so my drawings might be a bit off because my hands were frozen. My favourite drawing I did is the one I did with a dark graphite pencil, although I also think using black ink also worked really well here. I really enjoyed drawing this space because it is so dramatic looking and you can go as dark and heavy as you like on lines and use a range of different media.

Character design

This week we were introduced to Character design in Visual Language. We used different basic shapes to experiment with making a character that would fit into one of the places we had drawn for the "Environmental storytelling" brief. Because I had drawn the Dark Arches I thought of a few different characters, like a frog, a homeless person and a vampire. I liked the idea of a vampire best because I thought the setting would suit it really well. I played with a simple bean shape for the vampires body, changing the posture, height and the placement of the head until I came up with a few designs that I liked. The first one I really liked was the tall vampire with a hunched back and long arms and fingers. This was my idea for a scary vampire that would enjoy scary people and is really old. The next design I really liked was the young small vampire, which I used a simple triangle shape as a body to create, a small circle as a head and then short legs. I thought the idea of a cute little vampire that is quite lonely and just wants to make friends would be interesting. I have never tried character design before and had never really thought I would enjoy it or be good at it, but I was actually surprised that I enjoyed coming up with this character and playing around with shapes so much. I have inserted my initial ideas below;

Evaluation

Student Evaluation

BA(hons) Animation

Module Code: OUAN403 – Animation Skills

Name:Nicole Meehan

Student ID: nm263854

Please identify where the evidence for each of the learning outcomes is within your submission and how well you feel you have met the learning outcomes. Finally grade yourself in relation to the learning outcomes. (Note- This is so that the team have an understanding of how well you feel you have done. It is not an indication of the actual grade you may receive)

Learning Outcome	Identify where (Blog, Research, Animation, development work etc.).  Also how well you feel you have met this learning outcome. (poor, satisfactory, good, very good, excellent) (No more than 75 words)	Your grade (%)
4A4	Blog Posts, Briefs	55%
4B3	Blog Posts and Briefs and Study tasks	50%
4C3	Briefs (Animate it!, Pose to pose) Blogs	60%
4C4	Blog Posts, Briefs	48%
4D3	Blog Posts, Evaluation and Group Critiques.	60%

Evaluation (See guidance below for more information)

You are required to write a 500 word evaluation of this module.

At the beginning of the module, I knew very little about animation processes and techniques, and wouldn’t have known how to begin an animation if I tried. Now I feel a lot more confident in my ability and have learned many new skills which I feel I can apply to future projects. In particular, at the beginning of the course I had a little knowledge about the 12 principles of animation and the idea of storyboarding. Through using this knowledge to approach the set briefs like animate it! and Telling stories, I have learned how essential these skills are for an animation process to be successful. I think my Animate it! animation went quite well, I wasn’t expecting it to be very good as it is one of the first animations I have ever done but I’m actually really happy with the result. I think my idea generation concerning the story for this brief went well because I think my idea for “fear” was quite original. I also like the style I chose for this brief, and in particular the movement of the butterfly I animated. Initially the movement was too smooth, almost like a bird, so I took out every second frame of the animation I had drawn and then tried it. This looked much more realistic and fluttery, and captured a big part of the reason I dislike them so much. I think I definitely could have improved my time management for this module, in particular for the Animate it! brief, which I kept putting off because I was afraid of doing it wrong, in particular trying to make my character look good and move realistically. I overcame this by planning more, and actually filming myself performing the actions I needed to animate. This helped a lot. I also used what I had learned about key frames to keep the size and shape of the character consistent. I also would say I struggled a bit with constructing story boards for the “Telling Stories” brief as I had never done one before, but after researching things like shot framing I think I improved this skill for the “Animate it!” brief. For future modules I will definitely use the knowledge I have gained during this module, such as which media suits me, which I think is going to be 2D hand drawn. This is strange because the thought of hand drawing every frame had scared me in the past, but now I have come to really like it. I will also know now to keep up more with weekly blog posts and to document more of my research, which I think is something I didn’t realise the importance of until late in this module.