1st choice – Animation
There are many elements to animation that I enjoy, specifically 2D hand drawn animation. Animation has the ability to produce any kind of moving image/piece of art that can tell a great number of stories of any form or style. A good artist has an eye for certain techniques that animators or directors employ in their work. One of the elements of animation that I find most appealing is the exaggeration…the exaggeration that can be seen in animation is something that can be difficult to adapt in something like live action film, whether it be through movement, direction, character designs and other elements. The example of exaggeration through animating and directing action that I am observing can be seen in the opening intro to the animated series, Aeon Flux, directed by Peter Chung and Howard E Baker.
This scene shows the main character about to get attacked by an enemy, but she ends up punching him instead. This scene displays the impact of the character’s punch through it’s use of exaggeration and direction. Peter Chung is known for his lean, Egon Schiele-inspired character designs and his bizarre use of perspective, so he uses these to showcase a unique way of animating action with the characters’ limbs stretching out and performing odd poses to show the impact of the blows. Other ways he shows this is through the frame of the fist, which has lines coming out of it to show how fast she is punching, which is referred to as a smear frame. Another example of this is that is shown in the frame of her punching the guy in the stomach, appears to show lighting coming out of her fist, which is called an impact frame. This is to show how hard or painful the punch she landed on him is, through an abstract method. Other animators and directors such as Yoshinori Kanada, Takeshi Koike and Hiroyuki Imaishi have also used these techniques.
I would like to create animation that exaggerate these various techniques as to have my own style of animating.
2nd choice – Illustration and Graphic Design
One of my favourite things about illustration is mark making and rendering. I like using different types of mark making and rendering styles for my pieces depending on the feel, context or subject of the work, for example, when I want to show someone doing something fast such as running, I would draw in some parts of the character as a multitude of small lines to indicate how quick the person is going. Most of the work I’ve done are in black and white so I like to experiment with things like using different techniques for my linework as well as with my rendering style. One example of how I try to use different techniques for rendering is how I work with shading. Sometimes I like to use value and blending to render shadows and I also like to use solid black to draw shadows to create a high contrast image ( inspired by the way Frank Miller uses it in his comic series, Sin City ). Cross hatching is another technique I use to create a sense of depth in the image. A good majority of my own illustrations are making my own character designs. I take influence from artists of various types of mediums like animated series, films, comics, caricatures, other art pieces etc. My favourite artists include comic artists like Kentaro Miura, Ken Ishikawa and Frank Miller, animators like Danny Antonucci, Gennedy Tartakovsky and Yoshiaki Kawajiri, and also painters like Zdzislaw Bekinski. I find myself inspired by these artists through multiple ways like, their design sensibilities, their style of mark making or the tone they convey through their work.