Horniman Museum: Cats & Dogs 1

On Tuesday the 12th, we were briefed on two possible animations we could work on: a project from the NHS, to raise awareness of breast cancer among black women and minorities; and another project, from the Horniman Museum, to inform children over cats and/or dogs. Both briefs were explained well and would’ve made for interesting projects to work on, so it took a few days for me to fully decide what to work on. In the end, I decided to opt for the Horniman project, as it sounded like something more along the lines of what I’d be interested in doing, and because it sounded like a good challenge. Learning how to draw and animate dogs will certainly bring some struggle, but making something kids will watch and enjoy with their families is something I really care about and want to do right.

The project consists in making a 40-50 second long animation on a specific aspect of dogs and/or cats as pets: the main suggestions were their morphology (size, shape, skills etc.), ethology (their behavior) and sociology (their relationships with humans). The animation should be capable of being understood by children under 5 years old, which requires minimal dialogue, while still being entertaining to older children and even adults.

I eventually formed a team consisting of myself, Jahiem Walker and Calix Borrero Diaz, and we collectively decided to base our project on the sociology of dogs and the impact they have had on humans throughout the years. First, we brainstormed some ways in which they have been known in human culture, from having jobs to their impact on animation and children’s entertainment.

https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lqxbXfA=/

Chosen that, we then selected a few dogs to focus on: we ended up with 7 choices, which seems like a good amount to focus on in 40-50 seconds. We also all agreed on a general plot idea: a grandmother reading a book on dogs’ jobs throughout history to her grandson, who has a passion for dogs.

With that in mind, we started researching the dogs we chose, and learning how to draw them and simplifying their designs to make them easier to animate. None of our artstyles are particularly realistic, so we agreed on using a fairly cartoony artstyle for the project, which the children will probably appreciate.

We chose 7 dogs to work on; these were the three I offered to sketch up.

Right now, we are working on the pitch presentation we’ll present next Tuesday. We have various art showcasing the dogs, as well as some moodboards and the synopsis and logline. All we need is a bit more concept art and some rehearsing, and we’ll be ready.

https://www.canva.com/design/DAEtolEMYqI/IbZUhbSP9jNKhrFWeHDZDQ/view?utm_content=DAEtolEMYqI&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=sharebutton

This has been a fun project so far. My teammates have been great to work with, and the task is fun and will definitely pose a challenge.

Toonboom Harmony Basics 1

We finally had a class teaching us how to use the basics of Toonboom Harmony. I’ve always felt more comfortable with traditional drawing than digital, so it took a while to get used to it, but by the end I was already feeling more confident. We were tasked to create and color a character, so I decided to go for Jet, the mechanic I made as homework for Principles of AA.

Jet (and a Sonic The Hedgehog I drew as a warm-up).

I didn’t quite get to finish the coloring in class, as there seemed to be an issue that wouldn’t let me fill in the face, but I think I’ll be okay with using this program moving forward. I can only hope the animation aspect of the program is understandable.

Informed Practice: First Lessons

In the first couple of Informed Practice lessons, we were introduced to our assignments, particularly the essay we’ll have to write. During the guest visit from Katerina Athanasopoulou, I decided to create a new art bank account like last year, for me and my coursemates to have constant access to links and resources mentioned in class:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tD_OwFH2A5aig73TtqIorqeStOyr5O2Ztuu_FioBpLE/edit

After that, we started discussing ideas for essays. My first idea was writing something on long-running franchises, as it fascinates me how certain characters can exist for decades without ever falling out of the public eye. I made a quick mindmap to brainstorm how series can last for such long amounts of time, and discussed it with the class:

I included some ideas of how certain series have stopped from going stale: from having disconnected stories under the same name or world (e.g. James Bond movies, Power Rangers shows), to testing out different mediums for storytelling or rebooting the franchise to adhere to younger demographics and try something new.

For homework, we were then tasked to think of some questions on our topic, find some resources to show our research, and pictures showing examples of our ideas.

https://padlet.com/nplowman/dak7nyuvljps7655

I found some interesting books and resources in the UAL online library that touched upon points I was interested in writing about, and included them. Other than that, I simply expanded on what I mentioned in my mindmap.

Two examples of resources I found.
My topic and questions, alongside some examples from my mindmap I chose to expand on.

The project seems like a daunting task at the moment, but I’ve always been fairly good at writing essays, so I’m not quite worried.

Principles of Animation Arts: Production Blueprint

After an in-site lesson introducing us to the course and the possible briefs for us to choose, we received two pre-recorded video lectures to teach us about production blueprints.

The first video was short and briefly introduced the concept, whereas the second one went much more in-depth, showing examples of various blueprints and what to include in one. I found this all extremely interesting, as I hope to one day pitch my ideas to a studio to get them turned into a show of their own: understanding how to create pitch bibles is therefore a crucial step that I must learn how to do perfectly.

A page from the pitch bible of Adventure Time, a constant inspiration.

As homework, we were given the task to create a character design via a turnaround, alongside a character description, logline of the plot they’d be a part of, concept art and a quick animation test.

For this, I created an adventuring mechanic named Jet, in a post-apocalyptic world where ancient robot remains are scattered across the land. The animation test involved him trying to study the robotic remains, only to be attacked by mysterious cyborg animals and be forced to run away. As an added exercise, I made a second character in the form of a robot friend for Jet, and made a character description for him too.

Character exploration for Jet and his robot friend, including various hairstyles, notes, and transformations for the robot.
A character sheet for Jet, without his goggles and cloak, to better show off his design without gadgets in the way.
Quick color tests for Jet and the robot. In hindsight, I should probably make the robot a shade of green or blue, to contrast with Jet’s pink hair.
Thumbnails for the animation test, showcasing the shot angles and plot (via simple notes on top of each thumbnail).
Character descriptions for both Jet and Ruby (the robot), as well as a logline.

While challenging, I found this to be very fun: I love coming up with character concepts and worlds for them to live in (especially when they involve robots), so this was a great creative exercise for me to practice my skills.

Lip Sync Elective: Week 2

Once we finally got our TVPaint licenses working, we started bringing everything into the program. First off, we had to recreate our thumbnail panels into TVP, this time with a bit more detail.

(IMAGE HERE; FULL SHOT OF ALL THE THUMBNAILS, AND THE COMPARISON OF PANEL3)

We then had to time it out according to the audio, which we cut down and inserted in the program. Each shot had to be the right length, so we decided on the specific duration for each shot. This gave us a very rough, but functioning animatic. The next step after this would be to time out the specific movements and sounds for the lip sync.

We slowed down a bit this week due to scheduling problems, but we luckily got an extra week to work on it, so things should work out fine.

CTS: Beginning to Interim

In the Contextual and Theoretical Studies classes held each Friday, we learnt of various stories and methods used in horror media, from the earliest examples and fathers of the genre (stories like Frankenstein, Dr Jeckyll & Mr Hyde and Dracula) to more modern and advanced examples like Tetsua the Iron Man and Akira.

One of the tasks we were asked to do was to create a horror story in 6 panels. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of horror, so this was certainly a challenge to me: my typical drawing style isn’t very scary, so I opted to try and write something scary, and then add drawings on top of the text to give it form. I wrote a short story on ghosts, and later separated it into 6 pieces and drew on top of it:

I tried using light and shadow as main set-pieces to build up fear. I was surprisingly happy with how it came out in the end: while not exactly scary, it still set a good mood, and I’m genuinely happy with the story that came out of it.

Because of this, I decided to make my Interim project an upgraded version of the comic: I turned it into a 30-second animatic, and recorded myself narrating the text to keep the story intact.

While I liked the texture the pencil gave to the traditional drawings, the digital version makes the juxtaposition between light and dark much clearer, so I’m happy with how it came out overall. The only thing I changed between the two versions is the ending, and I’m very proud of how it came out in the animatic.

While I don’t exactly have a passion for horror, the CTS lessons have still been very interesting and informative. I hope to keep learning from them in the coming weeks.

Lip Sync Elective: Week 1

After a few weeks of break, we started the new elective, this time focusing on lip-syncing. It started by splitting us up into pairs and having us talk for two minutes about random topics given to us on the moment. Afterwards, we were put in other pairs, and were told to pick some audios and to think of an animation we could base around them, to then pick a single one to focus on.

I was lucky, as the person I did the original audio with was also the person I ended up working with, Lucy Harris. We started working on some ideas on Miro (link below).

https://miro.com/welcomeonboard/7regkWUzDGCViD37tJRwUbKOdWFJANUOGmWrjeNG5fTRiGBsMl9X4Vf1lAzgVuYv

At first, we narrowed our choice down to 5 audios, each with a different idea on what to do them on.

After discussing our choices with Joe, we started working on some loglines to see which ones had stories that were easy to follow, connected to the audio, and that we could work into a satirical piece. In the end, we landed on our idea based on Audio 7, which revolved on the topic of more and more men of our generation getting into knitting and sewing.

With our audio chosen, we started brainstorming some character designs and ideas for the location. After some rough ideas, we ended with two designs for the main characters we were happy with, and named them Alice and Beth to distinguish them from one another.

Afterwards, we started getting down more ideas for the location (a knitting club room, with various chairs and beanbag chairs to work on) and other characters to have in the scene, using a lot of reference images found online to help us in the process.

Finally, having enough material to work with, we completed some quick thumbnails for our animation, which should be just about 1 minute long. We detailed all the camera angles and the general expressions for each shot, and I’m happy with what we came up with.

So far, working with my partner has been great, and the project seems to be going smoothly. I’m happy with the work we’ve done so far, and I’ll try to keep it that way moving forward.

3D Elective: Final

After about 3 days of waiting, I finally got all 400 frames of my project rendered and ready. However, I ran into a very silly problem: I’d accidentally done it so the renders saved in a name format that wouldn’t work on Blender (name-format-number instead of name-number-format), so because of my small mistake I had to rename all 400 of my rendered images, which was as tragic as it was hilarious. It took a good hour or so, but I eventually did it.

Me in the process of fixing my hubris-led mistake

Finally, I managed to bring everything into Blender and create a video out of it. However, my first try went way too slow and clocked in at 17 seconds, which was too long. So, I changed the framerate from 24pfs to 50fps, cutting the time in half and giving it a much better speed.

It’s finally done! It didn’t quite come out as I originally envisioned it, but I’m happy with what I managed to create, and I definitely feel like I’ve improved since the rotation.

3D Elective: Week 5

I’ve been spending the past few weeks finishing up my project. I finally managed to import all the main textures from Substance Painter into Maya. Along with the HDRI image, it makes for a very clean-looking model that I’m fairly proud of.

The animating took a lot of focus and effort, since the main pieces to animate (the metal comb and wheel) had very specific movements that had to match perfectly to look realistic. I had a few problems along the road: some I fixed, others I simply went around, finding a slightly different solution to them. Nevertheless, I managed to animate everything well enough to make it look pretty good, in my opinion.

All I really need to do now is render everything and get it into a video. If I have time left, I’ll even try adding music to it through something like iMovie, to really sell the authenticity.

I’m happy with how everything’s been coming along.

3D Elective: Week 4

This week we looked more into texturing and mapping, as well as getting into lighting our scenes.

First, I experimented with some of the material attribute features on Maya, to get a feel for it. I tried using a variety of materials big enough to differentiate the pieces, but not so many that it became a mess to look at and handle.

My first try at giving everything materials and colors.

Then, I imported it into Substance Painter and started looking at textures on there too. I looked into the actual materials used to create music boxes, and used them on my project; steel and brass were the most commonly used metals for them.

I made the wood texture have horizontal lines in it, to mask some imperfections in my object’s mapping and structure. If I’d used vertical lines, they would’ve been a lot more visible, as shown below.

Finally, I imported a 2k hdri image of a fancy ballroom into Maya and used some extra lighting to make my music box look like it’s in a real environment.

I’m not sure how to get the Substance Painter texturing into Maya, but I’ll figure it out.

Honestly, my model is a bit simpler than I wish it was, but I’m not unhappy with how it’s coming along. I hope I’ll improve on it even more in the next week.