Author: snowden-c1

Post production

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Post-Production

 

In post-production all the scenes are put together. I used After Effects by Adobe for this. In After effects I set the frame rate to 24 Fps which is the industry standard. I imported each of the animation Passes into After Effects. The animations passes include, line art pass, colour, colour pass, hair pass for Simon’s hair and a shadow pass.

If the local colour of  the characters didn’t feel right for any of the scenes they were in (Integration pass) I selected the local colour layer, duplicated it and then added a hue and saturation effect. I Selected colorise, which tinted everything with the same hue and searched for a hue that was close to the scene that the characters were in, and turned down the opacity.

For Simon’s hair I created a new solid layer. I then selected the rectangle tool and created a mask. I dragged it across the screen right at the point where the hair gradient will start, then I went to the mask settings and edited the feathering to create a soft edge.

I duplicated the hair layer by clicking ctrl + D and selected a matte to the hair colour.

Below is an example of one of the animation scenes before and after editing.

I tried to do a camera zooming in effect in After Effects. (see above)

For the scene above, I didn’t add shadows when I was animating in Harmony because I wasn’t sure of the lighting for this scene. Once I knew the direction of the lighting I was able to use a mask and animated the shadows on the character in After Effects.

Above shows added lighting to the animation in After Effects.

I added rim lighting to the characters in after effect by using the inner shadow.

 

Water Reflection

 

The videos and images below show how I achieved water reflecitons.

Stylistic Reflections

To add stylistic reflections I added a fractal noise effect to a solid layer. I then increased the contrast and went to the transform drop down box and set the uniform scaling to off. I set the scale width to 2400 and height to around 40, the complexity to 3.5 and animated the evolution  (time * 100 expression) Then I pre- composed the layer and turned it off.

The next step was to create an adjustment layer. I  repositioned the adjustment layer and added the displacement map effect on top and set it to the fractal noise effect.  I then adjusted the displace values and also added a camera lens blur effect and cross blur.  I set the blur radius to 3 and the radius x to 75.

At first nothing happened. Once I had to set the set source to effect mask then reflection effect worked.

Water Effect

To create the effect of ripples on the water, I made a new solid layer and added the fractal noise effect. Then I changed the fractal type to strings and the noise type to linear and edited the brightness and contrast until I was happy with how it looked. Next I animated the evolution of the texture. To do this I inverted the alpha of the texture, I disabled the uniform scaling and scaled up the width and the height. After that, I added the fast box blur and increased the blur effect.  Then I added a vector blur, and increased the amount of the blur radius. I then added the level effect and edited its values. I put this layer in a per -composition. After this, I  created a new solid, and put the the new layer below the per-comp layer.  Then I turned the per-comp layer blend mode to add, duplicated the comp layer and edited the effects so all the layers look slightly different.  This is how you achieve the ripple effect of water.

 

Lighting Composition

Below show scenes in how I composed the lighting.

I added a noise effect on top every scene.

Above you can see the shadow under the cat.  To achieve this, I created a new solid on top of the background then used the ellipse mask and opened the setting to change the points, turned the layer blend mood to multiply.

I can add nightlights by using layer styles.

To make the rim light, I made a pre- composition with all the animation passes in, went to the layer sales and added an inner shadow and edited the setting until I was happy with it. I then changed the blending mode to linear dodge.

The above images see Elizabeth under water. To achieve the underwater effects, I created new solid layer and added a 4- colour gradient and picked 4 different blues for the blue scenes and 4 different reds for the red scenes. I added the cc snow effect and edited until I was happy with how it looked. For the light rays I created a new solid and set the colour to white then add fractal noise and then edited the effect until I was happy.

Next, I animated the evolution and edited the revolutions to match the length of the animation. I pre composed this layer and added the corner pin and dragged the position marker for each corner pins. Then I changed the blend mode to soft light and lowered the opacity. After that, I added a mask using the elliptical mask.  I created the mask over the pre comp. Once I had the mask I went to the mask values and set the feather to about 150 and played around with the expansion values to soften off the edges. Lastly I added a new solid layer and added the fractal noise effect, changed blend mode to colour dodge and lowered the brightness and contrast values on the fractal noise down and turned down the opacity on the layer. Finally I animated the evolution .

I put all the layers (backgrounds included ) in a pre-composition and added a shift channels effect. Then I made three copies of the pre-comp. In the first comp I leave the red channel on and turned off the green and blue.  In the second pre-comp I left the green channel on and turned of the red and blue channel.  Then on the last pre-comp I left the blue channel on and turned off the red and green. Lastly,  I set the first two comp blend modes to add and moved the positions in opposite directions to create a chromatic aberration.

Below, I added the spots to the ray by using a mask

 

Conclusion

As always, I find myself reflecting on the finished animation.  There are many parts to making an animation short, from storyboarding to character design, choosing an animation style and thinking about colour and symbolism.  For the most part I am happy with the final animation production.  I am always a little self critical.

The sections that I am most happy with are the underwater scenes. Especially the first underwater scene. I think it looks the best and showcases my abilities the best. I think the aspect that I enjoyed the  most was post-production.  I like putting the finished passes together and using After Effects.  I have learnt a lot of skills which I want to develop further.

However, looking back on things. there are somethings I would have done some things differently. For example, I should have given someone else the job of drawing the animated background for scene 4 from the beginning instead of giving it to myself and causing myself a lot of stress about having a lot to do with not enough time. If I had done this, then I would have had time to make the dream sequence using the puppet pins which I had to drop in the end.

Drawing characters and animating them is not easy.   I think I did a reasonable job at keeping the character on model throughout the animation, but it can always be better.  However, maybe any inconsistencies that I noticed are because I have been staring at these animations for so long that I notice any mistakes easier than other people only watching the animation once.

Working with other people also has its pros and cons.  It is great to have someone to share the load, bounce ideas off and to help contribute to the whole process.  But working with others does have challenges.  However, in the challenges, skills are learnt such as learning effective communication, conflict resolution and good team work.

Overall, this year has taught me a lot and I look forward to developing my animation skills further.

Creative Futures

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EOYS

Art Book Development

In preparation for this year’s major project, I visited last year’s exhibition to gather ideas and understand what was expected in the final year.  This was useful as it gave me an insight into what to expect and what I needed to achieve.

I took some business cards home and also took some photos of the exhibitions.

I really liked the dark backgrounds in the two photos above, and decided that I would use a dark background too.  Particularly in the artbook, poster and business cards as the images would stand out against the background.

Content

I thought about the content of the book. (See above) I wanted the content to flow through the characters, their development and on to the environments and the artwork.  As I am dyslexic, I wanted the images to speak for themselves, with minimal written content. I shared these ideas with Abbi to see if she was happy with the flow of the book.

With the content decided, I used Adobe InDesign to set up the book. We started with the cover of the book.  I was to design the front cover, and Abbi was doing the back cover.

Front Cover (above)

Back Cover (above)

Content Page

Next, we did the content page.  That way, I could check back and make sure we had covered all the aspects of the book that I wanted to include.

Early Concepts

The first few pages of the book were to show early concept sketches for the main characters.   We decided to make these pages white because this displayed the concepts the best, as they were hand-sketched in a darker colour.

We placed several examples of each illustration on each page and balanced the negative space around each element, aiming to achieve a clear and informative display of each process.

Early Concepts Continued

We also included a few coloured early concept pages to show how the characters had developed throughout the process.

The illustrations were arranged in colour on a dark background.  We also arranged them in different sizes, orientations and made sure some images bled off the page to add interest to the book.

Final Images

Final Drawing of Elizabeth

Final Drawing of Simon

Final drawing of Kitty Cat Edwards

Storyboards

Next in our book, we showed how the story evolved by including images of our storyboards.  These images show the development of our narrative structure.

Animation

After the storyboards, we wanted to show how the animation process is edited.  We took screen grabs of some of the animation scenes, which you can see below.

Above you can see the development of Kitty Cat Edwards.

Here you can see the process of animating Elizabeth.  Starting with the sketch layer, moving on to the line art layer.  Finally, progressing to fills, shadows and highlights.

Backgrounds

 

As we were running out of time, we decided to outsource the backgrounds.

Assets

The assets for the short animation were drawn by Abbi.  Abbi drew furniture and decor that would be in keeping with the Georgian era.

Scene Set up

There are two main scene environments in the animation short.  The first is the bedroom, and the second is underwater.  I took screen grabs from some of the animation and also used some of my illustration ideas for postcards and the poster, and arranged the images either 2 or 3 to a page.  A main scene to fill the entire page with two or three smaller images inserted on top of them to add a little interest and to show different scenes without taking up a lot of pages.

Synopsis

We finished the end of the art book with a short synopsis of the storyline.

 

Poster

I always had a clear idea of how I wanted the poster to look.  As I’ve already mentioned, I wanted a dark background and wanted all the printed material to reflect a similar theme.  I wanted it to be attractive, to have the branding from my project and to communicate my skills as an animator and illustrator.

I drew the main character, Elizabeth, in Procreate for the poster.  I knew the dimensions of the poster were to be 100cm X 150cm, so I was able to set up a canvas in Procreate with the right DPI that could be scaled up to be printed out.  The final image was imported into Adobe InDesign and set up with bleed so that it could be sent to the printers to print out.

I wanted the poster to be simple yet dramatic, without too much clutter.  I included simple background that was dark but dappled to reflect being underwater.  This background was also used for my Art Book.  Elizabeth was positioned in a prominent place at the front of the poster.

We did play around with a few fonts before we decided on the final one for the poster. We also looked at a few colours.

I quite liked this version. I liked the simplicity of the font with the mix of upper and lower-case letters.  I thought this design while simple, elegant and professional.

This was another version that was designed. We looked at some Gothic fonts as the storyline lent itself to the Gothic genre.  We also changed this font to pink to match the colours in Elizabeth’s hair.  However, we didn’t like this version.

 

Our third iteration of the poster was a different Gothic type font for the words Bitter Sweet, keeping the font all white. Again, we just didn’t like the overall aesthetic.

The above iteration is our final version of the poster that we were both happy with.   The font we decided upon was called Lumenharrma.

Business Cards

Like the poster, I always had a clear idea of how I wanted my business cards to look.  I always had intended to use the image on the front of the artbook for my business card.

Again, as I said in writing about the poster, I wanted it to be attractive, to have the branding from my project and to communicate skills as an animator and illustrator and obviously, my contact details.

The front and back designs were carefully thought out to serve complementary functions – one for branding and artistic impression, the other for direct contact and accessibility

The icons for my contact details – ArtStation, YouTube and Instagram had to be redrawn using Illustrator by tracing over a downloaded JPEG of each logo.

Then Adobe InDesign was used to compile all the elements together in software that is suitable for Digital Printing. I sourced a template that stated the dimensions should be 85mm x 55mm with 3mm bleed all round. The bleed allows the cards to be cut to the exact size without any white showing around the edges.

The front side of the card (above) serves a more functional role. It has a clean layout with clearly labelled contact icons: email, Instagram, ArtStation, and YouTube.

Each icon is visually distinct and aligned with its corresponding information, ensuring quick recognition.

The use of the dark background maintains consistency with the rest of the project and also enhances legibility.

I chose a bold, modern typography to emphasise my name “CHLOE SNOWDEN,”

The words “Animator & Illustrator” were spaced out in a minimalist, sans-serif font. I think that communicates professionalism and is also clear.

I added a QR code in the top-right corner.  This allows viewers to instantly access my online portfolio and links without needing to manually type addresses.

The placement, which is in line with my name and title, ensures it doesn’t clutter the layout while remaining easily scannable.

The back side of the card, (above) has my illustration of Elizabeth.  Overall, I wanted the card to strike a balance between artistic flair and professional presentation.

CV

For my CV, I wanted to build upon last year’s CV, which is above.  I had decided to finish my degree this year instead of doing a placement year.  Therefore, there wasn’t too much to add to the CV.

I decided to read over the one from last year and make some amendments.

For my new CV, I changed some of my contact details.  I set up a new email address as I will no longer have a UU email account after the summer.  I wanted a separate email from my personal email for potential work opportunities, so I used Gmail to make a new email address.

I also added details to contact me on ArtStation and YouTube as well as Instagram.

I then decided to add a little more detail to the ‘Education’ sections of the CV.

I also realised that I had entered the dates I was in school incorrectly, so I needed to fix those to the correct year, which was 2014, not 2012.

At this stage, I hadn’t completed my show reel, so I took the link out of it with the intention of putting it back into the CV when the show reel was completed.

I wanted the CV to be reflective of the colours and style of my major project, so I decided to remove the pink strip and replace it with the same background that I used in my poster.  It is also the background that I used in my art book.

Once my show reel was complete and uploaded to YouTube, I inserted the link into the CV.

Prints

Showreel

I used AdobePremiere Pro and After Effects to make the showreel. I re-edited the start of my showreel from last year and changed the dates.  I then imported all the images into Adobe Premiere Pro. I wanted to include some of my sketches, so I scanned in some hand drawn sketches and included them. I also included some of my digital drawings. I usually screen record my sketches.  This allowed me to visually show the process.  As these were in portrait and not landscape, I used 2 layers in Premiere. The first layer I enlarged the image and added a 20% Gaussian Blur. The I positioned the 100% scale video on the top layer. This way, the entire screen was filled and there was no black lines along either side of the images. I used Epidemic Sound for the music and downloaded a theme that I liked.

Portfolio

Artstation

Cara.app

 

Character art for the cartoon network theme

 

 

Portfolio

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Concept character design

 

Art style test

Final character design

Animation tests

(didn’t animate the jellyfish)

 

Storyboards

Animatic

3D models

 

Keyframes

Animations

 

 

Concept art

 

Poster ideas/concepts

Poster art

art book cover art

Cartoon Network EOYS art

Final animation

I did the composition in After Effects (Abbi did the backgrounds, the cat animations and the jellyfish animations, got the backgrounds for scene 4 out scoured by Amy)

 

Major project progress

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Backgrounds

Abbi and I decided to model the room in 3D to make drawing the background for the animation easier.

The colours being used here in the images of the model are not going to be the colours used in the full major project. I just added some colours so that the model would allow me to have a better idea of what the room would look like. I found that the screenshots of the room with colours made it easier to see what I was drawing.  In the animatic of the project, it was more difficult to draw as everything was grey.

I did the models for the base of the room itself (the walls and what’s on the walls) the bed and everything on the bed, the chairs, the different flowers and the flower vase. the carpet, picture frame, the ring bands and the mirror. Abbi did the models for the drawer and the wardrobe.

We don’t need to do a model of the underwater dream world as this can be done in After eEffects in post production once the animations are all completed.

 

Animation progress

The animations were drawn in Toon Boom Harmony with the ratio of 1920 x 1080 which is a common industry standard in 24fps,  using the brush tool.

Initially, when animating for this major project, I started of with doing a very rough animation to get the correct timing and movements.

Once I got the rough animation drawn and was happy with it, I started on cleaning it up. Firstly, I started with the face.  I tried my best to keep the character on model and once I got the face completed, I then went through the rest of the character and did the animations in different sections e.g. dress and hair, until the entire character was cleaned up.   I wanted the movement of the dress to be a different timing from her hair and the ribbon around Elizabeth’s neck. The dress and hair move very 4 frames and the ribbon moves every 3.

I went over these again and did another clean sketch just to tidy the animation up and bit more before I continued.

Once I was happy with the clean sketch animation I then did the line art.

When colouring I duplicated the line art layer and used the bucket tool and coloured each frame.

I added the colours in sections starting with the skin and finishing with the ribbon.

I drew the pupils in on a different layer.

For the shadows and highlights I drew out the outline on each frame for where I wanted the shadows to be. Then I filled them in with the bucket tool.

In the image above you can see how I sorted out my layers while animating. I locked different layer as I worked so I wouldn’t accidentally draw something on the wrong layer.

I finished animating the first part of the underwater scene so I could see what the final project might look like and to get a better feel of how I’m going to do the post production. However I will most likely redo this when I have finished the animation and do the post production all together.

The videos above are examples of rough animations and the clean sketch.

 

I did rough animations of the ending scenes so that I could send them to Abbi so that she can start doing animations of the cat.

Animation test

I had an idea for animating the Elizabeth’s memories in the dream so, I did this animation test.

I drew two pictures then used puppet pins to give the illusion of movement between the two poses.

Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to complete this so it is not in the finished animation.

I experienced some issues due to lack of processing memory on my computer.  This meant for a few days, I wasn’t unable to do anything as I had no memory.  In clearing caches, some of my animation frames were accidentally deleted from my computer.  Thankfully, I was able to redownload the frames and replace the footage. The memory issues were also resolved and I was able to free up processing memory on my computer and was able to recommence working.

Throughout the editing for the animation I noticed that my characters were either floating or not interacting correctly with the bed.  I didn’t understand why this was happening. I tried my best to correct this with editing,  but the only character I could fix this way was for part of the ending scene. The first scene I tried to fix with editing but the characters were either still floating slightly or you could see the top of the mattress. Once I got to scene 3 I realised I couldn’t fix it with editing. It was at this point I realise that the background ratio was different from the animation ratio. Once I realised this, I was able to get the radio difference fixed which solved the floating problem completely.

For scene 4 there is a camera turn where I had to draw around 11 backgrounds however, I still  had 2 animations to finish as well and the memories to draw so I was starting to get worried that I wasn’t going to be able to get them finish so in the end I ended up get this backgrounds out sourced.

Pre-Production

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Art style

The art style of an animation basically means the visual aesthetics and techniques that are used to create the animation.

The original art style for the original animation short was an anime art style.  I wanted to explore a different style for the remake of the animation short.

After doing some research into different art styles for this major project, I decided to do some art style tests to help me to decide on which style I wanted to go with for the animation short.  In the end, I chose a style that was inspired by the art style used in Bee and the PuppyCat animation short that I watched.

 

Character designs

Elizabeth – originals

 

 

 

Simon – originals

Originally I  planned to just redraw the character designs in the new art style.  However, I  later change my mind as I thought this would be too lazy. I also realised that the clothing and hairstyle weren’t in the correct time period of the 1840’s so I made sure to do the proper research and redrew the character designs to reflect the time period and costumes.

Final character designs

 

Elizabeth – Final design

 

 

 

Simon – Final design

 

 

Above are the final character designs which are based on the 1840s.

I kept the ribbon from the old character design that was inspired by Maria Merryweather.  She is the main heroine in the film,  ‘The Secret of Moonacre.

Original storyboards

When coming up with the new story for this animation I did a very quick, rough storyboard sketch to get my ideas down on paper before they went out of my head.

 

Final storyboards

Above are the final storyboards.

Once the story was finalised, Abbi and I worked on our storyboards for the animation short.

Unfortunately, after some feedback in for the animatic,  we didn’t end up using the storyboards Abbi created.

I didn’t make new story boards for the ending of the short. Instead I edited the ending when creating the animatic.

Key Frames

I made these keyframes before I did the animatic to help me out with framing out some main scenes. They also helped me to get a rough idea of what colour I wanted to end up using.

First animatic

Below is my first animatic.

After getting some feedback I made any corrections that were needed and produced my final animatic.

Final animatic

This is the final animatic for the major project.   With this down I can start working on the main animation.

 

Colour scripts

 

Before I start on working on the main animations I created some colour script for the major project.  I chose reds to represent the drama and tension in the dream sequence.  Blues for under the underwater scene and then muted golden colours to represent dawn and Elizabeth waking up.

Test animations

In addition to working on the colour scripts, I also did a couple of animation tests. This allowed me to get an idea on how the animation process will be from start to finish.

Major project Research

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Original animation short

A few years ago, I went to the Northern Regional College to study Animation and Visual effects instead of staying on at school and completing A Levels.  This gave me a really good foundation and skills for the course I am now doing.

As, I had a body of work, I decided I was going to redo and improve one of the two animation shorts I made at tech. I did one in first year and one in second year. After watching the both, I decided against reworking the one I made in first year.  The only reason I decided against it was I preferred the one in I completed in second year. I felt I had learnt more skills in that one. so I chose that animation short and decided I would rework it.

The video below is the animation I did in first year.

 

Above is the animation I made in second year and the one I chose to rework. It was named Bittersweet Nightmare.

The story has two characters – Elizabeth and Simon.  They were husband and wife.  Simon has passed away. One night, Elizabeth dreams of Simon.  In her dream the are back together again however, it isn’t long until he fades from view and disappears.  Poor Elizabeth is plunged into a dystopian world where Simon is no more.  She awakes to find that her dream was a nightmare and he is actually gone.  It was sweet to dream of her true love, but as he has passed away it really was more of a nightmare.

In tech, we had to do a mind map to get all our ideas down for the story and animation. Above is my old map mind for my second year animation short project for tech.

As I now decided what my major project would be, I set about revamping the original animation short.

In tech we worked on the projects by ourselves. This time however I had a partner to share the workload with. Abbi Dalzell agreed to work on the major project with me.  We set about dividing up the the jobs that need to be done. Abbi was to  work on the backgrounds and an animal character.   The original had no additional animal characters. They were newly added to the story so that Abbi could animate them. After some discussion, we decided that the additional animation character that Abbi would animate would be a cat, called Kitty Cat Edwards.

I created a Mira mind map board for Abbi and I to work on.  We both put our ideas and work progress on the board.

 

See below to see our Miro board and ideas

Ideation

I am also using whimsical to put all my own ideas and work project onto.

Art style

Below are a few mood boards I put together on my Whimsical to get ideas of art styles for this major project. I looked at quite and extensive list.

I looked at lots of different artist, such as Hannah Magee, Karo the Kreator, Loish, Ethan Becker and Jackie Drujko.  I decided to pick Loish, Ethan Becker and Jackie Droujko to look further into.

Loish is a digital artist originally from the Netherlands.  She has a degree and masters in animation.  Loish does character design work for clients all over the world  and has worked for some major companies including Amazon, EA, Coca- Cola  and Guerrilla Games.  She has released a few art books – The Art of Loish, The Sketchbook of Loish and also the style of Loish.  She also gives workshops and lectures and posts tutorials and behind the scene materials showcasing her art. She spends her free time making digital paintings and sketches and is currently based in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Ethan Becker is also digital artist based in America.  He is also an animation story director. Ethan has worked on Voltron: Legendary defender and DOTA series for Netflix, as well as having collaborated with Dreamworks and Warner Bros. He also is teaches animation pro classes at ProjectCity.TV as well as sharing his knowledge on the animation industry through YouTube videos.

Jackie Droujko graduated from  Sheridan Animation.  He is a professional character designer and filmmaker based in Vancouver currently working Disney TVA. Jackie  is the creator of the short film Bang! Bang! and Mismatch.  His passion lies in creating simple and appealing designs that communicate compelling stories.  He also has worked for major networks such as Netflix (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), Dreamworks (Cleopatra in Space) and Nickelodeon’s Monster High.

Ethan becker

I watched a lot of video tutorials from Ethan Becker on YouTube.  I found his videos to be extremely helpful in informing my overall design for the major project.

 

Title cards

Above you can see some of my research on Title Cards. I explored ideas for title cards from different shows.  I mainly looked at the title cards from adventure time.

 

Character sheets

Above is a mood board exploring Character Sheets.  I looked into a lot of different shows to see they were done.

The main character sheets I looked into were The legend of Korra and Dungeon Meshi.

Floriography

I wanted to have some symbolism in my animation short so I looked into floriography.  Floriography is the language of flowers.  It is using flowers and floral arrangements to express emotions and sentiments.  Different flowers and colours of flowers  represent different feelings. I researched the flowers that would match the emotions that I wanted to convey in my animation short.  I decided to use White Lilies  as they are often used as funeral flowers and also represent purity, innocence and sympathy.  You often see a lily on a sympathy card.  They also represent a rejuvenation of the soul and are linked to the natural balance of life and death.  Chrysanthemums are similar.  They are used particularly in mourning in Asia, China, Korea and Japan where white chrysanthemums symbolise grief.  Finally I chose gladioli.  They are flowers that represent mourning for someone who displayed strength dn character in life.  All of these flowers fit in with the story line of loss and grief within the animation short.

Storyboard

A storyboard is a visual representation, a plan, that shows the sequence of a narrative or scene by breaking it down into panels.  The panels outline the shots, the action and the dialogue.  It is a useful tool to get the flow and help visualise the final animation.  Above are some examples of storyboards that I researched.

 

Animatic

 

An animatic is an animated storyboard.  It takes your original story board and takes develops it further.  It is a series of images or sketches that are put together usually with a sound track.  This gives a sense of what the finished product will be like.

Below is the research I did into animatics.

I watched Ethan Becker video tutorial on animatics before I started mine.

I did watch a lot of different animatic by different artist to see how each of them compose their animatics to better help me when it came to doing mine.

These animatics are almost animated at time and are very advanced. I could do a simple animatic for my major project but I am a very visual person.  I want to do an animatic more like the ones in this videos above. That way I can get a better idea of how the final animation will look and how to better animate character movements and have better timing for each movement too.

19th century Fashion

 

 

  • The time period this animation short is set in is the 19th century in the 1840s.
  • The 1840s marked the ending years of the Romantic Era
  • Gothic Revival emerged where demure understated style was in fashion
  • Great emphasis on modesty
  • Silhouette=long bodice and tight narrow sleeves
  • Skirt full skimming the floor and was dome shaped
  • Featured a V-shape effect emphasised the long small was it and narrow sloped shoulders

The main inspiration for the clothing and time period is the Secret of Moonacre (Loosely based on the 1946 novel The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge.

  • The little whit horse is set in 1842
  • Recently orphaned teenage girl who is sent to the manor of her cousin and guardian in the West Country of England

Environment

I looked a little into backgrounds by researching National trust places  – their stately homes.  However, Abbi was assigned environments so for further information please look at Abbi’s research.

 

Bee and PuppyCat

 

 

The main art style visual inspiration for this animation project is Bee and PuppyCat.  This was created & written by Natasha Allegri (original series produced by Frederator studios).

Bee is an unemployed women in her early 20s. She encounters a mysterious creature named PuppyCat and together they go on a series of temporary jobs. These bizarre jobs take the duo across a strange world in outer space.

Colour scripts

I did some research on how to use colour for my major project.  Colours and how they work together also adds to the overall theme, mood and message of the animation.  I wanted to use colours that would reflect the sombreness of the story and the emotions of loss.

I did some research on how to make keyframes and how to make colour script so a can effectively use colour for this major project.

I collected screenshots of different shows  and movies to make a colour script moodboard.

There was 3 main settings I wanted to look at. Blues for underwater, reds for the ending part of the underwater scene and and sun set scene.

 

Memory ideas

I looked into various shows and movies to see how they illustrated dreams and memories.  I drew inspiration from Demon Slyer, My Little Pony and Coraline.

 

Animation ideas

I plan to do this easy animation for the memories. This animation is done with puppet pins.

Animations shorts

These are a couple of my favourite animation shorts. I plan on studying them to better help me in how I want to got about animation my major project and how I want the project to look in the end.

Animation Tutorials

These are a couple of different tutorials I will watch though out the process of making this project.  Tutorials are really useful for teaching and inspiring and learning new techniques.

 

Post production

I found this animation tutorial on post production which I found very useful and informative.  I plan to use what I learned in this video to complete the major project animation short .

Research mind map

Professional Practice & Industry Facing Materials

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Creating a CV

For this latest assignment, we were tasked with composing a CV and cover letter for potential jobs. We were also asked to create a showreel highlighting our skills and also a portfolio which I have on ArtStation.

A CV is your first chance to make an impression.  It showcases who you are as a person. It should be well-organised and easy to read using clear headings and bullet points.  I looked at a few websites to help with the writing.  (See below)

https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/careers-advice/cv-sections

A CV can reflect the industry that you are applying for.  There are many templates out there and it is difficult at times to know which to choose, or whether to design your own.  The Government website indicated that it is best to use a professional font and stick to a clean and simple layout.  Yet, you do want a little personality to come through in your design.

With each job application, the CV should be tailored to the specific job that is being applied for emphasising the skills and experience most relevant to the job. It should also be no more than 2 pages long, preferably one page. All jobs will have many applicants and therefore employers will have a number of CVs to trawl through so you want your CV to stand out.

The CV should include a summary or objective statement with a brief overview of your experience, in reverse chronological order, and what you bring to the table as an animator.  The skills that you possess in relation to animation should be highlighted such as 2D/3D animation, character design, storyboarding, rigging etc.  You should also include the software proficiency you have and include any additional skills like teamwork, time management and problem-solving, as well as highlighting your carer goals.

Contact information needs to be included along with your professional title and a brief mention of your educational qualifications including animation-related coursework or any specialised training programmes that have been completed.

A link needs to be provided for your online portfolio and showreel.

Proofreading is essential before submitting the CV to make sure there are no typos or grammatical errors.  A CV is the first opportunity to make a positive impression on a potential employer.

Before composing my CV I had a look at some CV and cover letter templates to see which ones I liked.

Below are some of the options I looked at and considered replicating.

They all show different ways of formatting a CV and what is included.  I felt that the first three all looked quite ‘business like’ and didn’t really like the over all layouts.  I personally am not keen on putting a photograph on my CV so, again, that did not appeal to me.  I did like the fourth one.  I felt that it was simple yet elegant with an artistic flair to it so I decided I would amend this.

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Below is the amended template for my CV.

The above is my first iteration of my CV.  I took out the headings that I didn’t reflect my own skills and experiences and moved things around a little.  I liked that this didn’t have a profile picture but used my initials in a creative script font.  I initially thought about changing the colour from pink but in the end I decided to stick with it as the other colours I tried didn’t work or create the effect that I was looking for.

The above is my final iteration. I decided to make some alterations to the design.  I extended the pink colour block on the left hand side of the page which I preferred and also changed the colour of the CS, my initials, to contrast with both the white and the pink.

 

Creating a Showreel

Showreel research

A showreel is exactly what it says!  It is a short video that shows your snippets of your best animations to date.  I prefer working in 2D animation so my showreel is mainly made up of 2D animations.  This is the area that I really want to be applying for so it is appropriate that my showreel reflects this.  I really enjoy character design and feel that this is a strength of mine.

The showreel doesn’t have to include fully completed animations these can be rough animations and show the direction in which you are going. Ideally, a showreel should be about 1 minute in length.  The edits should flow smoothly and quickly into the next one in quick succession.

Below are some examples of showreels I though were good.

I wanted text animation so I watched this after effects tutorial

This is the original version and because of the title card and end car it went over 1 minute by 11 seconds

 

Creating a Cover Email and finding Job listings.

To accompany the CV a cover letter or email is also required.  Again, I looked at a few online websites for advice on how to do this.  I also wanted the style of the Cover Letter to match my CV.

A cover letter or email is something that accompanies your CV.  According to the national careers advice service that the government provide there are tips for writing a cover letter.

  • A new cover letter should be written for every job you apply for. It should be specifically suited to the company and specific job role.
  • You should use the same font and size as you do for your CV, so it looks consistent.
  • You need to make sure the company name and recruiter’s details are correct.
  • You need to use the right language and tone and it is useful to match the keywords used by the employer in their job advertisement.
  • show you’ve done your research into the job and the company. Show that you are aware of their ethos and goals and have a vested interest.
  • highlight your most relevant skills and experience to stand out from other applicants
  • back up any statements you make with facts and use the STAR method which stands for situation – the situation you had to deal with. T= task, the task you were given to do, A=Action – the action you took and finally R = result, what happened as a result of your action and what you learned from the experience.
  • Always double-check spelling and grammar before you send it
  • keep a copy of your cover letter as they may ask you about it in an interview

As I have a diagnosis of Autism, DLD and Dyslexia I also looked up advice on whether or not that should be included on a website.  As someone with a disability, it is always difficult to know when the right time is to inform someone.  I don’t want to be defined by my disability or potentially face discrimination either.  I looked at the information on https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/resources/telling-people-you’re-disabled-clear-and-easy-guide-students

Many people do disclose their disability in a cover letter.  However, with the nature of my disability, I decided I would prefer to discuss this in a 1:1 situation if I were given the opportunity of an interview.

As a cover letter should be tailored to the job description and I went about looking at potential jobs for animation.  This is the field I really want to work in.  There are several ways to go about finding a job but online sites are a good place to start.  With the world now being smaller and opportunities for remote working plentiful post covid, the world is now more ‘local’ than ever before. I visited anmiatonuk.org to see what they had.  They have a list of companies with direct links to potential jobs.  Even if there are no current jobs available they often indicate that they would be happy for you to get in contact.

I looked at A&C studios as they had opportunities for Freelance work and were offering remote work.  Often there are direct links to apply on the site and opportunities to directly upload your CV and cover letter.  Below is what they are looking for and also a direct link to apply online.

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I tailored my cover letter to match 2D aspect of the freelance work that was being offered.  Below is a copy of my cover letter.

 

Portfolio

I want to look into doing character design so I watched this video by Jackie Droujko

I also looked into her website.

https://www.jackiedroujko.com/

 

my Artstation https://www.artstation.com/chloesnowden1

 

 

Reflection Blog

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For this assignment we were put into groups with the Games Design course to create a game. The game theme were were given to base the project on was ‘Unstable’.  My group consisted of 4 animations members and 3 game design members. The Animation team was made up of Abby, Cate, Malcom and myself and the games team was made up of James, Jamie and Robbie.

When starting this assessment we had to come up with a couple of ideas for a game.  We settled on a two player verses stacker game. 

The idea behind the game is to build towers.  Two sides complete to build a tower from different blocks  and whoever gets the highest tower first is the winner.  There are power-ups that can be used to make things harder for your opponent.   The game’s target audience is ages 15-28.

Once the game idea was decided we split up what we are going to do. Abby and I ended up on character designs and Malcom and Cate ended up on backgrounds.

Our first assessment for this project was to create an art style and art guide.  We were giving a list of style options to choose from when creating an art style for this game.

  • “saturday morning” friendly cartoony – Examples: Spyro the dragon, Skylanders, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario.
  • “Wacky” animated: Cupheads, Mouse.
  • AAA realistic – Call of Duty, Battlefield, Splinter cell etc.
  • AAA exagerated realism – Doom, Gears of War, Fallout.
  • “graphic novel” inspired – Borderlands, XIII, MadWorld, Hades etc.
  • Soft fantasy – Breath of the wild, Fenix Rising, Avatar the last aribender.
  • Dark fantasy – Elden Ring, Lords of the fallen, bloodbourne, Hollow knight.
  • Epic fantasy – Lord of the rings, Skyrim, Baldurs gate.
  • Comic book inspired fantasy – Darksiders, World of warcraft, League of Legends.
  • Clean Sci-fi – Mass effect, Starfield, Destiny.

We decided to go with Saturday Morning as an art style for this game.

These shows typically have coloured line art on their characters and little to no line art on the backgrounds.  This makes the characters stand out a lot from the backgrounds.  The characters are made with bold shapes and simple structures, for example, the eyes, which is typical of this stype.  One of the best examples of this, in our opinion, is the Generation Four My little pony character: Friendship is magic.

 

Other show we looked at were

  •  Little miss pet shop
  •  Ever after high
  •  Hilda (pilot)
  •  Winx club
  •  Bee and Puppycat
  •  Monster High
  • SVTFOE

We wanted our animations to have an art style that would appeal to all ages and target audience demographics.  To do this, I looked at other Saturday Morning art style for shows. Such as TMNT 1987, Looney Tunes and Wacky Races which are aimed at a different audiences and age demographics.

Abbi initially had an idea for a character when we started the game. She was able to use this character and did a little bit of re-design on it to make it more useable for the game.   Once it became a two player verses game we needed to come up with another character. I decided to create a Racoon character to go up  against Abby’s Bunny character.

When designing the Raccoon character I used the raccoon from MLP as a reference as well as an artist I had found on instagram called Tessa Nelissen (@Jessali-tn). I really like how she draws animals and particulalry how she drew the animal’s fur. I did, however,  have to simplify the fur for a more consistent art style in keeping with Abbi’s bunny character. I tried my best to combined the more ‘kiddy simplistic’ art style along with Looney Tunes and Tessa Neliseenn when creating the Raccoon character. I also tried to match the Bunny character to the fit together in the game. When drawing the final design I wanted to make it more expressive and mischievous in its body language.

For the colours I ended up colour picking from a Raccoon images I was using as a reference. I wanted the Raccoon to stand out against most cartoon raccoons so I designed to use  browns instead of greys.

Malcolm did the background for the bunny and work on the UI along side James. While Cate did the background for the Raccoon as well as other assets, for example,  the crane.

One of the most important assets for us to design for the game was the blocks. We use the standard default block shape you often find in most stacker games, especially Tetris. We each chose two different blocks to design.  Each of use are going to design 4 blocks in total. Two versions of each block for each area of the game, for example, a version the L-block for the Raccoon area and a version of the L-block for the Bunny area.

We had a bit of trouble coming up with a constant art style for the blocks so in the end we decided to each do one part of the block process. It was decided that I would re-design all the blocks for the entire game.  Then Malcom took my sketches and did the line art for them. Malcom then sent the line art to Cate and she did the flat colours.  Finally, Abbi got the blocks and added the shading.   Doing it this way ensured that all the blocks looked the same.  It also ensured that we all took part and no one person ended up doing up more work than another person..

Each square of the blocks are 25X25cm.

 

Abby and I designed the characters so we were in-charge of doing the character animations. We were givin a list of emotions/reactions for us to animated. This included  happy, sad, mad, dizzy, frozen, a defeat animation and a winning animation.

When doing the animations for the characters Abbi and I made sure to have our character drawn in the same line thickness so we agreed to use the pencil 2.

The game is a 1 v 1 game so we wanted power ups. The powers up are a bomb, wind and a freeze.

I was asked to do the bomb animation for the bomb power up. Initially I found animating the explosion rather difficult but after watching a couple of YouTube videos I was able to animate the explosion.

I ended up finishing my animations first so I offered to do the character icons for the UI as for the longest time we used a concept piece of the Raccoon character as the two characters in the UI.  As I did the UI icons, I could ensure that the characters were drawn in the same way.  Jamie also suggested to me, that, if I had time, I could also draw  borders for the character icons.  I thought this was a good idea.  I ended up doing an eaten apple for the Raccoon which matched the Raccoon’s dizzy animation and carrots for the bunny with match the bunny’s dizzy animation.

Conclusion 

If I were to do this again I think I would do further research into how different characters react in different games.  This would enable me to improve my character animations in the future.   Communication is key!  I think communication could have been better.  There were times when I was totally confused about what was happening, particularly on the gaming side. Often people didn’t respond and this was frustrating and stressful.   I also need to keep up-to-date with writing the blog so that it is fresh in my memory or at the very least, write down bullet points as I work so that when I go back to write the blog I can remember what I did.    Looking back over the project from the start of the assessment to the end, I have realised the Raccoon design is constantly changing even when I wasn’t intentionally wanting to make changes.   Particulalry when feedback was given.    If I were to do this again I would be more careful when designing the character in the first place so the design is strong from the start. I would also be more careful that I’m not drawing the character differently each time, make sure to have a strong character sheet which I stick too,  and make sure I have a good, strong art style which also doesn’t change thought the process of the game development.

Character Icons

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The UI was Designed with two spots for character icons.  At the moment we have two place holder images which are both concept art of the Raccoon.  I was finished with all my animations so I volunteered to draw the character icons. I was also given the suggestion by Jamie to draw borders to go around the character if I had the time.

The images below are the drawings for the character icons.

As these icons were for the UI I thought it would be a good idea to have the character drawn and coloured differently from how they looked in the game. I thought this would be good because the stand-in images for the character icons were images from the Raccoon concept art which was more detailed than our final design and animation. I thought having more detail in the colouring would look and fit better in the UI.

Borders for the Icons.

Jamie suggested that if I had the time, to do borders for the character icons. He suggested to look at the borders for Nintendo switch online profile icons. This helped me picture how I was going to go about to the different borders for the Raccoon and Bunny.

The images below are the design of the border for the icon.

I decided to do half a eaten apple for the border of the Raccoon and carrots for the bunny character which match the dizzy animation of both character.

 

The images below are the final character icons.