Game Arts Rotation 2: Roughs and Refinements

In Monday’s Game Arts class, we had to pick one of the silhouettes from the previous step and design 6 poses for the design; then, we’d have to pick one and refine it, attempting slightly different versions of the same design with the pose.

After choosing one of the silhouettes, I started designing various poses for it, trying to convey the message of Gluttony from what I’d researched: large mouth open wide, arms lunging out to grab something to eat, all while being a gross slob of a creature. In the end, I tried drawing a rough in the same pose as the top left, but slightly more tilted so as to be able to see the whole design better: that ended up being the center image, which I ended up choosing.

After that, I started working on the refinements: we need to have 4 by next Monday, and I’ve done 3 so far.

The first is the basic design I’ve been using for most of the project: I think it really works as a monstrous depiction of Gluttony. For the second design, I tried making it even more monstrous, giving it black eyes, more abstract teeth, and a pig nose, as it’s an animal known for its ability to eat almost anything. However, I think that overall, it carries the message of Gluttony less effectively than the other designs.

Finally, the third design is meant to resemble more a human (while still being clearly non-human), as I noticed most other depictions of Gluttony I’ve seen so far are much more humanoid than my first design. It’s a lot simpler than the other designs too, but I believe it works quite well; I’ll try to create a fourth refinement, and then pick which one I’ll want to color and finalize.

Visualization Project: Topsy Turvy

On November 2nd, we had an online workshop with Joe Childs where he presented a new project for us to complete: a full 40-second animatic, utilizing at least 16 drawn frames, with original audio and created using a full creative process. The theme we’re supposed to follow is simply the words “Topsy-Turvy”; what we take and make out of this is completely up to us. It is due to be completed in early January, and we have received (and will keep receiving) new videos every Wednesday since then, explaining the steps of the process needed for us to create it.

So far, we should have a solid idea of the story, a short synopsis to show it, a moodboard to capture the short’s main elements, character designs and plans for the setting.

I’m still working on some of these, as I’m taking some time to choose which elements would work best for the story, but I’ve been doing a lot of brainstorming and concept art for characters, location, etc.

On the left: quick brainstorming sketches of what I thought could work as a ‘topsy-turvy’ story.
On the right: a more detailed brainstorming mindmap, and some plot ideas for 3 main concepts (tornado, space, and break-dancing).

In the end, I decided to base my story on an astronaut in space; I’m planning on making him traverse through zero gravity, connecting the story to the ‘topsy-turvy’ concept we were given.

Some character and setting concept designs.
I considered the main emotions that the short could deal with, as well as considering some color theory through the setting as we learnt about in one of the video briefs.

What I wish to do is having the astronaut protagonist go outside his ship and traverse through some asteroids to meet up with other people; whether that’s other astronauts or benevolent aliens, I still have to decide. Overall, I’m going for a fun, optimistic and somewhat silly vibe for the project as a whole.

As a logline for the short, I think I’ll use: “A lonely astronaut faces the depths of space to reach some company”. It’s short, to-the-point, and makes the reader empathize with the protagonist, as loneliness and seeking company are two things most of us can relate to, especially in these times.

As for the moodboard, I’ve collected a variety of images I believe fit the aesthetic and tone I’m going for; I just have to collage them into a single document.

A screenshot from my PC desktop, showing the images I collected.
Some more developed and detailed concept drawings for the main character and spaceship layout.

By next time, I’ll try to have fully decided on the secondary characters’ nature, and have a full character sheet for the protagonist as well as a decent layout map for the space ship.

This has been challenging so far, as we’ve had to build a concept up from nearly nothing, but the challenge made it fun in its own way; plus, I really enjoy creating characters and worlds for them to inhabit, and having actual guidelines is making this much more detailed than my personal work. I genuinely feel like I’m learning something from the course, which is really exciting.

Life Drawing Sessions: 4 & 11 November

I’ve been taking part in the Life Drawing sessions on Wednesdays. There have only been 2 sessions so far, but it’s already proven to be worth continuing; I’ve never done any life drawing of any kind before, if we’re not counting all the times I took references of my body to draw character poses. Most of the art knowledge I had before starting university was self-taught, so my style and form are still far from perfect. One of the things I notice I’m lacking in is anatomically correct designs, and I strongly believe that life drawing is helping me get a better understanding of the human body.

The two sessions have had two different people posing, the first covered and the second nude, and each session had us experiment with different ways of drawing and time to draw in. From 10 minutes to 30 seconds, from a regular drawing to using our non-dominant hand, using both hands at the same time, without looking at the paper and more. It’s all new territory for me, and it took some getting used to, but the challenge is welcome and useful: it’s helping me branch out and try new things, which I’m very grateful for.

Granted, the experience isn’t perfect: due to lockdown measures, we have to do it all online, which removes a big part of the life drawing feeling, as a lot of the depth of the model is lost on a 2d screen. But it’s still been quite fun, especially with up to 90 people participating at once. We got to share our works if we felt like it, and occasionally chatted with other participants, which is fun and desperately needed in these times.

Overall, going to life drawing has been great so far, and I’ll certainly keep attending.

Game Arts Rotation 1: Silhouettes

For Game Arts, we are tasked to design a wholly original depiction of one of the Seven Deadly Sins, through a series of steps: from silhouetting to rough drafts, refining them, line-art and coloring, to then have a final design.

Before all that, however, we were tasked to research the topic to choose which sin we’d focus on. In my research, I found out a lot of the general definitions of the cardinal sins, along with what Christianity deems sinful in comparison to other religions. In short, most sins (such as greed, pride and anger) are repeated as sins in other cultures and religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism; the only two of the seven sins that seem to be exclusive to Christianity are Gluttony and Sloth.

In the end, I decided to focus on Gluttony, as I believed I could extract more design ideas from it; gluttony is an action, whereas sloth is more of a lack of action, and therefore possibly harder to visualize.

Thus, I started looking at pre-existing depictions of gluttony in media: books, illustrations, animation etc. Some general traits were clearly recurring: it was often portrayed by a bald, fat, disgusting entity, usually in the shape of a man, with a large mouth (or even multiple mouths) and arms reaching out to take more. Basing myself off of this, I started creating silhouettes, basing myself on these for some, as well as purposefully trying to ignore and avoid them for others, to come up with more unique designs.

In general, I focused on entities that would eat their way through anything; for some designs, I based myself on pre-existing beings that eat a lot, like caterpillars or babies. For others, I went more abstract, and pictured monsters that would have eating their only goal, specifically trying to make them non-human and terrifying.

This was a really interesting exercise to me, as I love creating characters; this forced me to think of the immediate design, and to make something that’s instantly recognizable and genuine. A few coursemates walked in front of my computer and recognized these to be depictions of Gluttony, so I believe I mostly succeeded in my task.

Principles of Animation: Headturn

Here we were tasked to doing a head-turn and creating an animation chart for it ourselves, while also giving character some loose elements in their design that would follow through in the animation (in this specific case, the nose and ears).

I decided to draw a very simple character, with a design made up of circles, to help me grasp the concept in its basic form. It took me 2 tries to get the animation timing right, as I made it way too fast the first time around, but I’m pretty satisfied with the end result. The ending feels a little stiff, admittedly, so I’ll keep it in mind next time I work on traditional animation like this.

First Walk Cycle

Here, we were tasked to do 12 frames of a walk and then trace over them (with a few changes) to make a full looping walk cycle.

While I did do a walk cycle once before, it was only drawing the legs, whereas this cycle included drawing the arms too; this made it a new experience, that was definitely challenging. Some things could be better, like the arms slightly changing proportions midway through, but overall it looks clean enough, and I’ll learn from this experience for future walk cycles I’ll do.

November 13th Friday Workshop

docs.google.com/presentation/d/1pM3I8Fbbf2qSLWa0V8ze_8qpEuBU-O3OC_4m2dHvRNQ/edit?usp=sharing

Me and my team of 4 completed and presented our presentation on Chris Ofili’s “No Woman No Cry” painting to the rest of Group 2. Everyone else’s presentations were also interesting, and they all talked about artists I wasn’t familiar with, so it made for a useful learning experience.

Afterwards, we discussed about museum exhibits around the world; I chose to post about a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit I got to visit in Venice, as it really stuck with me and I actually saw it in person.

https://artslondon.padlet.org/srwilkinson4/hhg916l3se2fbl37

Bouncing Ball

Here, we were supposed to plan out the trajectory of a bouncing ball- its bounces, frames, and timing. Afterwards, we were tasked with giving it a ‘character’, making it alive somehow. For this, I drew a simple face on the ball, which interacts to the bouncing.

While the bouncing came out well enough, in my opinion, the face isn’t very clear most of the time, probably due to how similar I made the eyes and mouth. I shot this in 2s, but I’m considering adding more drawings and shooting it in 1s, to make it more fluid and maybe clear up the face.

Still, it was a good exercise that proved the importance of planning things ahead of time.

Ease-out & ease-in

The exercise was to get 3 main poses, and to then connect them with in-betweens and breakdowns. The catch this time, however, was that there’d be more drawings closer to the extremes, making the movements more realistic.

I believe this was a good exercise for me; it helped me understand the importance of really small details. Plus, I tried experimenting with some perspective on the arms and hands, which was very challenging but fun and informative. I really believe I’ve learnt some valuable skills from this exercise.

Pose-to-Pose animation 1


We were told to draw 3 facial expressions, and later add in-betweens to them, to make a constant transition between them, as pose-to-pose animation. Once that was done, we had to draw something in to justify the character’s expressions using straight ahead animation.

I think I did quite well in the pose-to-pose: the character was detailed enough to be distinguished, while still being simple enough that drawing him every frame wasn’t too much of a hassle.

However, I didn’t quite know what something could happen in a background to make him emote in such a way, so I simply drew something on the same plane: it’s small and choppy, which doesn’t mesh well with the pose-to-pose. I’ll have to remember this next time I do something like this.