Tag: animation

Animation- Stop Motion and Krita

Stop Motion-

I worked with the stop motion app to create these two animations. I played around with timing and adding more than one element to the animations. I decided to work with lollipops as they were colourful and easy to align between each shot. I was able to have the lollipops moving at different speeds depending on how close my destination markers were to each other. This was a tedious process as you have to move each item very slightly between each shot and that small movement is what creates the animation. However I do think the final outcomes look cool due to the difference in speed and how one of the lollipops is moving in a more uneven manner.

 

Krita Animation- Bouncing Ball

Working with Krita had its challenges as it was an application that I have never used before however after creating the first couple of movements along the timeline it became something that I thought was a lot easier than I originally thought. I didn’t want to have the ball moving in a straight line so I decided to experiment with having it bouncing up and down at different speeds. I had the ball bounce more as it got closer to the end as it would if it were real. I think that this animation turned out quite well.

Animation Character Design

Sketching Exercises-

Before drawing my character I drew out some different shapes and allowed myself to get used to drawing digitally. I drew out some basic lines and shapes to get used to both anatomy and drawing different types of lines accurately. I just used a basic pen tool to get the shapes and lines drawn out as I knew this is what id use when creating my character.

 

Flour Sack-

I wanted to make the flour sack have as much personality and possible, I wanted to do as many different attitudes and poses as I could think of in order to show the sack in as many lights as I could. I really love how he turned out I think he’s really cute. My favorite poses I did for the flour sack are defiantly the “sexy pose” and the “buns pose” I think they look very flirtatious and show off his personality well. I even included the death of the flour sacks cousin when he got made into a piece of bread.

Design Task-

I made some digital drawings of the three pictures that we were given. I fully intended in drawing all three as silhouette style portraits as you see with the first two, however I couldn’t get the image of a bear out of my head when looking at the third image. Therefore I decided to make him into a cute bear with a beard and scarf. I really love how the first two came out I think that by breaking up the stark black and white with some grey tones I was able to capture the likeness of both people much better. I think that I captured the likeness of all three, the first two obviously being a much more realistic approach and the third being a cute illustrative version of the man. I used a photoshop style application to draw out all three and I think I made the right decision with my software as it turned out how I would have liked it to.

 

Character Design Sheet-

Before deciding if my character’s face was done I tried out a few different options and that allowed me to come up with the final design. I played around with some different emotions too as I didn’t know which expression would suit her the best, although after playing around a little I decided on pretty neutral expressions as I thought that they worked the best.

 

My Character (Final designs)-

When I was designing my character I knew that I wanted to have a Japanese animated style, however I still wanted to create a character that would be individual and stand out from the conventional animation. I began to think what kind of character she would be and I came up with a back story equally as original as the character design. She is a space alien who took an interest with Earth, however she realised she has a strong hatred for men and wants to make Earth a woman only planet. In order to bled in with the humans she took on her human like form, although she did get confused with the male and female anatomy and she ended up with a male torso and female legs. I gave her a huge (but adorable) blade in order to take down all her foe.

The colour palette was super easy to decide on, I chose blue and pink as she is half man half woman in appearance and I thought that these gender stereotyped colours would help to convey that. They also give her another worldly feel as they are massively contrasting. I went for a space armor type shirt for her not only to relate back to the fact that she is an alien but also to show off her manly toned chest. I also gave her spacy type boots but made them feel super feminine with the heel. The bikini bottoms and thigh highs not only show off her feminine beauty but also act as a mean to allure men so they are distracted by her for long enough to strike them down. The headphones were an afterthought as I thought her head looked a little empty but I tried to make them look as intergalactic as possible.

The character design was an easy process after deciding on the backstory and I was able to outline her in one go without many decision changes. The only thing I changed were the tone of pink for the space suit top as I thought that the bright pink needed to be more spaced out so the baby pink helped a lot with that. I used a photoshop style application to draw her in as it for me was the easiest software to use and also the one I was most comfortable with.

After making the character I thought that it would be cool if she had some sort of power or finishing move to relate to her being from another world. I decided that she should eat her prey but I thought that in order to eat a human quickly a larger mouth would be needed. So I gave her the ability to open her stomach to reveal a huge monstrous mouth that can quickly eat up her prey. I wanted the mouth to combat her sweet appearance so I used a wolves mouth for reference when I was drawing it out. I love this addition to the drawing as I think it makes her character even more unique and special. With the addition of the mouth her name came easily to me “Monstrous Venus”. Venus is the planet associated with femininity therefore I think it relates well to the character and monstrous due to her huge mouth concealed under her manly toned abs.

Animation research

Masayoshi Tanaka

Tanaka has designed many characters for Japanese animation projects yet his style is most commonly mecha or mechanical styles of animation. He enjoy mixing the ideas of human and machinery and incorporating futuristic space type costume and appearance. He has claimed that his favorite works are that of “Darling in the Franxx” where he was able to have a mixture of all three elements mentioned. His work is very fascinating to me as I enjoy the unique combination of ideas and his ability to make metal and machinery look wearable and somewhat normal. I knew what kind of character I wanted to create when deciding which artists would inspire me further and he felt like the perfect pick. I really loved his colour palette and character designs and he gave me a lot of insight as to how I could mix the human anatomy with that of futuristic space suits and make it look natural in some way.

Butch Hartman

Harmen had a long and successful career on nickelodeon creating shows such as Danny Phantom and Fairly Odd Parents. I have always been drawn to his designs for both their diversity and insight into the early 2000s fashion trends. All of his characters have a unique appearance and a nostalgic feel for me. I would love to use elements of his designs such as the simplistic hair for my character design. I also love his dark colour palettes seen in a lot of his characters, another thing that I would love to recreate. I think my combining the styles of American and Japanese animation I would be able to achieve something that looks unique in its own right and has its own character and design that isn’t a replica of another style. I think that this combination would be able to help me a lot when designing my own character.

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