Raccoon and power up animations

snowden-c1Leave a comment

 

I did the rough animations on proceate with my iPad as I’m not very confident in using harmony for rough animation just yet.

Before I started doing the finish version the Raccoon’s character animations, I did a couple of tests on ToonBoom harmony.

At some point in the process we had the idea to give the character hard hats, however later down the line we decided not to go with this idea. When I was happy with my rough animations, I then imported them into ToonBoom Harmony to begin the line art.

 

I did the Line art of the animation for the raccoon. I am decided not to colour at this point in time until I see how Abby’s animation looks so it will be easier to edit. Abby and I both decided to use the 2 pencil on harmony so our animation had the same line thickness.

I did some touch ups to clean up the animation, then I coloured in the frames and added some final details.

After feedback I realised I’d forgotten to add the vein on the angry animation.  It was then suggested to add in ice on to frozen animation to make it look more cold.

I was asked to do the animation for the bomb power up. I found this difficult at first and couldn’t figure out how I would go about doing this animation but after I watched a couple of YouTube videos I was able to figure out how  to do a bomb animation.

Post Production

When all of the animation was edited and complete and feedback received,  I exported all the animations images and put them in folders named for each animation.  I then uploaded them onto my google drive so I could send the link to gamers so they could put the animations in EU5 for the game.

Raccoon design update

snowden-c1Leave a comment

After some feedback I changed the saturation of the colours on the Racoon, as it was pointed out to me that the colour/saturation on the Raccoon was much brighter than the colours/saturation on Abby’s Bunny character. To fix this error I made adjustments to the saturation scale so the colours better matched the colours/saturation of the Bunny character.

 

 

I also redrew my character sheet by using my cat as reference point. My last character sheet had errors in the shape consistency. So I made a My little pony: Friendship is magic mood board that way I had references to look more closely at when drawing and recreating the Raccoon character sheet. This was to help me ensure I had more of a consistent graphic art style.

When re-drawing the Raccoons, I made sure to draw the raccoon less fluffy looking making the design more simple and this way it is easier to animate and also to make  the Raccoon character better match in with Abby’s Bunny character in art style.

The image below is what the Raccoon animations will resemble in the animation art style.

 

Block Designs

snowden-c1Leave a comment

 

This game is a stacker based game where you build the biggest tower to win. so logically this game needs some blocks! The block shape we will be using for our game are the standard default blocks you find in most stacker themed games like Tetris.

We all agreed to each design two different block designs for two shapes that meant each of us were designing 4 blocks in total.  2 for the Raccoon assets and 2 for the bunny. I went with the I-block and the J-block.

The image below shows which member will be designing which block.

Malcolm= L-block and  Z-block

Cate= S- block and because we need an extra on we added a C-block

Abby=O-block and  T-block

The Images below are my 4 design for the blocks I had picked.

The blocks for the Raccoon were based on trash and half eaten fruit and the Bunny’s blocks were based on hay and fresh vegetables.

We had difficulty trying to get an art style for the blocks. Each of our blocks looked too different from each other. So, we ended up coming to the conclusion that one of us should draw/re-draw. the block designs. The next person then was to do the line art for the blocks and then pass them on to the next person to then do the flat colour. The last person would then add in shading onto the blocks.

Everyone picked which part of the process they wanted to do. I suggested the idea so I let everyone else pick first.

I ended up on design/re-designs.  The images below are the sketches of all the block designs.

 

 

I used a drawing guide that’s build into procreate to get the correct sizes for each square of the blocks. Each square is 25X25cm.

 

We all liked the look of how Malcolm did the line art in his block design so we all collectively decided that Malcolm should be the one to do the line art for the blocks, so once I was done I sent my sketches to him. When Malcolm had completed the line art, he sent Cate the line art with a transparent background so she could then do the flat colours. After Cate was done with the flat colours she sent the blocks files to Abby to be shaded.

The image below is what the blocks ended up looking like for the game.

 

Academic Papers Reflection

snowden-c1Leave a comment

The article my group decided to review was:

Animating for Interactivity: The Walk Cycles of Prince of Persia (1989) and Ninja Gaiden (1988)

My group consisted of Kori, Anna, Luke and myself.

For this assignment we were analysing the trade-off between realism of movement and responsiveness to user input in video games, and how this affects their interactivity – through the walk cycles of Prince of Persia (1989) and Ninja Gaiden (1988).

Notes from the main article and other sources.

 

One of the earliest animation devices to demonstrate movement in a continuous motion is a Victorian toy which was mainly marketed towards children called the Phenakistoscope. The walk cycle loop was first popularised with the phenaakiscope and the proto-cinematic toys.  These contained the earliest examples of walk cycles, whether they were of a realistic humanoid, a cartoonish clown, or the transposition of Muybridge’s famous running horse. 

The Phenakistoscope gives the illusion of motion by using the persistence of vision principle. The Phenakistoscope works in a similar way to film.

The first person to create what we would now call a Phenakistoscope was a Belgian physicist called Joseph Plateau back in 1832. He began to experiment with optical illusions when he was a university student in the late 1820s, and a few years later he created the Phenakistoscope.

Joseph Plateau had a background in art and design. His father had wanted him to follow in his footsteps. He was a painter and illustrator.  Joseph Plateau was enrolled in the Academy of Design in Brussel, but took a different path and became a scientist instead. Joseph Plateau artistic skills were useful as he actually hand-painted the original design on the first Phenakistoscope. 

  • Gertie’s gait in Gertie the Dinosaur (McCay, 1914). Is a well-known example of a pre-cel walk cycle.  

The video of Gertie the Dinosaur

https://youtu.be/32pzHWUTcPc?si=UH-8x8F1i4cviDgl 

Gertie is the best-preserved film of pioneering animation Winsor McCay. It was named #6 of the 50 greatest cartoons of all time in a 1994 survey of animators.

Gertie was the first animated character to have her own personality

McCay created a 7-minute hand drawn cartoon of a sauropod dinosaur, based on the Brontosaurus skeleton that had been displayed in the American Museum of Natural History in New York since 1905.

  • Early animations tend to lean towards “boiling line” this is because without a means to layer drawings, each frame must be completely redrawn or traced from a previous frame. By layering transparent cels over transparent cels over background images, cel animation systematised and standardised the separation of foreground from the background, which allowed animators to reuse animations – such as the walk cycle – as a loop. 
  • Like early cartoons, video games also had a brief period when games had no background image, such as in Pong (1972) and Asteroids (1979), and little – to –no variation in a level layout, such as in Pac-Man (1980) and Donkey Kong (1981).   
  • Disney’s high-budget films are exemplary of full animation, while the studios UPA and Hanna-Barbera pioneered limited animation for cinema and television, respectively.  
  • these two approaches to animation aesthetics are certainly useful for understanding PoP and Gaiden’s walk cycles. Full and limited animations’ differences can be explained technically and stylistically.  
  • Full animation uses new images between 24 fps or 12 fps 0n ones or twos.  
  • Limited animation is anything less.  
  • Japanese animation scholar, Lamarre (2002), states that limited animation of anime tends to move drawings instead of drawing movements. 
  • Full and limited animation are not pure categories but, tendencies that link up with production demands and stylistics choices. 
  • These tendencies exist in video games. They then become articulated in ways unique to the demands of the interactivity and the video games medium. 
  • Prince of Persia experiments with full animation in a video game, while Ninja Gaiden deliberately takes a mini market approach associated with limited animation techniques. 
  • These games both draw on the history of the animation that precedes them. 
  • Animators might work overtime to finish a budget-constrained cartoon. 
  • Video game designers are bound by the processing and memory constraints of computer hardware. 
  • Actions of characters in cartoons are only ever bound by their creators’ imaginations. 
  • Video game characters are interactive, therefore constrained to a few useful, repeatable actions. 
  • Game designers draw on the tradition of both full and limited animation to make necessary compromises. 

This article compares the different techniques of walk cycle between two games, Prince of Persia and Ninja Gaiden and why the different techniques are used in each game. The article also talks about the history of animations and walk cycles.After reading this article and other resources I’ve learned about the ‘boiling line’ animation method. I also found the history of the Phenakistoscope interesting. The author of this article did have a lot of references through out the article however, I found while reading the article the author wasn’t the best at explaining animation techniques and that I have to go a research them myself to fully under stand what the author was writing about. Both of this techniques have a place in video games. Which technique the animator goes with depends on the style of game.

Conclusion

I found this article really interesting as it explained about the origins and a bit of the history behind animated  walk cycles. If I were to do this again I would make sure I had a bit more work done and speak more when presenting. I would also write out a script to read from as I felt I explained my slides poorly and out of order and I don’t think I made sense to anyone listening.  This is something to take away from and work on. I am dyslexic and also struggle when nervous with speaking publicly so a script to read from is a must in the future.

 

My slides

(Anna wrote the first 3 bullet points I wrote the last)

 References and resources 

 

Fong, B (2023) , ‘Animating for Interactivity: The Walk Cycles of Prince of Persia (1989 and Ninja Garden (1988)’  25 July.  Available at: https://journals-sagepub-com.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/doi/full/10.1177/17468477231182910 (Accessed: 7/2/2023).

Coules, V (2019) ‘Introducing..”Gertie the Dinosaur”,24 July. Available at: https://palaeomedia.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2019/07/24/meet-gertie-the-dinosaurus/ (Accessed: 7/2/2023).

Tiernan, J. (2022) ‘What is a phenakistoscope?’, 30 March. Available at: https://www.linearity.io/blog/phenakistoscope/(Accessed: 7/2/2023).

Torre, D (2015) ‘Boiling Lines and Lightning Sketches: Process and the Animated Drawing’ 14 July. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1746847715589060?journalCode=anma (Accessed: 7/2/2023).

 

 

Character and asset designs

snowden-c1Leave a comment

This is the concept/original design for the Raccoon. For these drawings, I was trying to get used to drawing raccoons and figure out where to put the markings for the fur. For the colours I ended up colour picking for the Raccoon images I was using as a reference. I wanted the colours of the Raccoon to stand out against most drawings of cartoon Raccoon by using the browns instead of greys.

Base colours for the Raccoon.

Once we had a better idea of how we wanted the art style to look like I began to draw the raccoon character.

I wanted it to look like the Raccoon had a mask around its face.

These are my character sheets for the Raccoon character.

The art style is different from other Saturday Morning art style as it has coloured line art which is often seen in cartoon shows for younger kids mainly shows for little girls but, it is drawn in a style that can appeal to an older target audience. It has thinner line art then the mlp art style but thicker than looney Tunes. The eyes are one solid colour without any line art and no pupils.

Notes comparing the game Art style with other art styles.

These are very rough concept of the blocks for the game. I almost forgot to do design the block so I had to quickly come up with som place holder ideas/concepts and I will have to later on develop these concepts into the final designs for the game.

The power ups for the game will most likely been drawn in the same way as the blocks.

These are two shape blocks for the game. I made an L shape and a Line shape. The block outline needs to be thicker in the future.

I have written some small notes on the black designs as a rough guide.

First concepts of powers ups. These will most likely be redesigned and are not what will be in the final product.

Research on Art style

snowden-c1Leave a comment

For this assignment we are task tp create an art style for the game we are work on with the games design course.

 

I am in a group with:

Cate Campbell

Abbi Dalzell

Malcom Nwobu

The above are all from the Animation course

Jamie Braniff

James McDowell

Robbie Logan

The above are from the Games Design course

 

Brief information  about the game.

The game is a stacker based multiplayer game. You build a tower from different blocks to try and get the highest tower to win. You can  use power ups to make things harder for your opponent.

The game’s target audience is ages 15-28.

We were given a list of Art styles to choose from for this project.

List of style options:
  • “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.

Two of us were to design the character and the other two were to design the backgrounds for those characters.

Abbie and I are doing the character designs. Abbi is doing the Bunny character while I am doing the Raccoon design.

Cate and Malcom are doing the backgrounds. Malcom is doing the Bunny’s background and Cate is doing the Raccoon’s background.

We each are going to design at least two blocks for the game.

I have suggested that we each design the power ups and we collectively decided the designs we liked best and finalised them but it unfortunately looks like we will have to worry about the power ups at a later date. I have done my own quick concepts of the 3 power ups we have decided on so far but I can’t see them being the final designs in the game.

 

References I used for the art style was for the Raccoon, blocks and power ups.

  • My Little Pony
  • Wacky Races
  • Winx Club
  • Bee and Puppycat
  • TMNT 1987
  • Ever After High
  • Loony Toons
  • Tessa Nelissen (@Jessali-tn)
  • raccoon
  • Tetris
  • Old coke cans
  • Eaten apples
  • Hay barrels
  • Monsters inc
  • Sonic power ups
  • Rocket Raccoon

We wanted the art style to have coloured line art as seen in shows like Winx Club, Ever After High, Bee and Puppycat and My Little pony. However these shows, excluding Bee and puppycat, are shows make for younger girls.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.

I tried my best to combined these art styles 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. 

When doing research on art styles I came across and artist called Tessa Nelissen on Instagram. I really like how she draws animals and how she drew furon the animals fur. I ended up using Tessa Nelissen as reference for drawing fur on my Raccoon character. 

 

Art style analysis exercise

snowden-c1Leave a comment

The 3 cartoon Shows we decided to look at is Attack on Titan, Arcane and looney Tunes. We wanted to look at styles that are very different from one another.

Cate, Abby and I teach took on of these a did the exercise. Once we were finish we they discussed our findings.

Cate did Attack on Titan

Abby did Looney tunes

and I did Arcane

 

Attack on Titan

“1- Heavy questionable moral content and follows the character of a young boy growing up, lots of war content contribute to target audience of older teenagers (specifically men) 2- art style influenced and pulled from the manga featuring Hajime Isayama art, he was inspired by Project ARMS manga (brutal storyline with grotesque imagery), His hometown Oyama in japans surrounding large mountains for imagery of the colossal walls, For titans designs and visuals used magazines and strangers in interenet cafes and found the most unpleasant expressions he could find, Japanese horror influence such as Godzilla, Gamera and mothra, Jurassic park theme of human made monsters let loose on to terrorise, lots of german influence character wise and architecture wise inspires war theme, human anatomy books 3- Military, strict, heavy themes of life and death, flippancy of human life in a war 4- use of uniforms and brown and green camo colours throughout for the war theme and fleshy monsters to assist the heavy theme of life and death, flippancy of human life and genocide, stark reds used for blood in contrast of the camo based colours 5- Consistant theme, almost medieval and war based colours and designs seen in the uniform designs, walls and towns however something i feel could have been done better is character design as a lot of characters are extremely similar in looks and almost repeated throughout background characters with very little unique silhouettes for a show with so many important main characters. character silhouettes almost copy and pasted with changed colours 6- -muted brown, greens, greys and fleshy colours

  • Basic character designs, uniforms and plain hair no specific unique features, besides nose shape
    • when drawing titants dead, 100 yard stare eyes as uncomfortable an expression to look at as possible”

Arcane

  1. Target audience: Older teens and upwards.  Arcane appeals to any gender particularly fans of League of Legends.
  1. Influences: League of legends, Classic Anime, Hellsing, Berserk, Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, and Gungrave.
  1. Mood: Dark and chaotic
  1. Art style: 3D Models painted to look like 2D. The lighting in the show is very dark and moody.  The colour palate is also dark which also conveys the moodiness of the show.

The dark and chaotic mood of the art work of Arcane highlights both the dark and miserable setting of the undercity and the false beauty of the other place.

  1. Arcane has similar styles to Spider-verse and TMNT mutant mayhem. Arcane does the more gritty fights scenes better – the drawing is better and the mood is set in a more detailed way.  The animators are very good at setting dark tones and heavy emotions in different scenes.
  1. 3 rules
  •  Comic book based art style
  •  Painted look on 3D models to give the a 2D look
  •  cel shading


Influences: Mostly Disney cartoons, with the likes of Bugs Bunny being inspired by a character from "The Tortoise and the Hare".Looney Tunes took up
demand for more comedy that was initially lacking in Disney films. A big inspiration to the series was Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies.

Mood Through Art Style: Looney Tunes governs a very saturday morning like art style, the main goal for the series is for maximum comedy and the saturday
morning art style coupled with the exaggerated movements of the characters and impossible situations the characters get into manages to capture this goal.

How style amplifies the storytelling: The looney Tunes style has stood the test of time and pretty much all of these characters are instantly recognisable
and seen as being very iconic due to the style lending itself to the very expressive character designs themselves. For example, Bugs Bunny who is arguably
the most iconic design of the looney Tunes characters, is drawn in a very thin and lanky way which lends itself to emphasising that he is a nimble
character, whereas the hunter from Bugs Bunny (Elmer Fudd) is quite a stocky built character, he has a very round design that makes him honestly look like
a baby which makes sense in this case as Elmer struggles in every episode to kill the pesky rabbit as he wants to and he appears very bumbly and unskilled
during the episodes.

What this does better than others: As mentioned before, Looney Tunes has managed to stand the test of time due to being such an iconic comedy series,
practically dominating the category of animated comedy with its vast array of engaging characters. In comparison to other pieces such as “Betty Boop” by
Universal, “Winnie the Poo” by Disney and even other series produced by Warner Bros such as “Scooby Doo”, “The Flintstones” etc would be considered similar
pieces to Looney Tunes however out of all of them Looney Tunes was able to convey slapstick humour far better than any of the rest. “Betty Boop” was often
critiqued for being too sexualised while “Winnie the Poo” didn’t seem to take any chance at exploring slapstick humour if at all. Even “Scooby Doo” paled in
comparison to Looney Tunes as most of the jokes they had in it were tame and less ambitious.

Rules to replicate the Style:

– Heavy shape language with often exaggerated features

– Exaggerated movement and poses, lending itself to more expressiveness

– limited colour palletes

 

 

Reflection and Research

snowden-c1Leave a comment

Research notes

Lip Sync

A basic open mouth can make a lot of vowel sounds. Mainly “aw, ah, eh”… the shape of the mouth can be change depending on the emotion of the character. The “oh,ah,ooh” sounds cannot be a smile shape however. Even if the character is happy. For the “la, el ,th” sounds the tongue touches your teeth of the roof of your mouth. “Duh and Juh” sounds the mouth is open with only the teeth showings. Similarly the “ch” is teeth but more puckered and going forward and stretching out. For “F and V” sounds the top teeth will touch the lower lip. Lastly, a simple closed mouth is used for “P,B,M” sounds.

The above are the notes I got from Kuzillon on YouTube.

Body mechanics

If you don’t use Holds & Settings in animation this will lead to all the movements feeling really clunky and harsh. There should be a natural fall off to every move and also natural pauses in the action.

Strong spacing is basic, but, beginner animators will mess it up by not using the spacing. Spacing is how you create good weight, snap and fluidity in animation.

In animation you should always make sure when a character moves it feels like their entire body is connected. An arm will pull the torso. The body will move and everything else drags behind it. No body part will feel completely isolated.

As humans, we naturally move in arcs. This means we have a natural flow of an arc shape to the way we move our bodies.

When looking at animations you will never see each separate action or major key pose even if there is a hold. It never feels like it’s holding for too long or that the character has stopped completely. Each action flows into the next. Just as one pose holds settles for a moment the movement takes off somewhere else.

These are the notse I got from Rusty Animator on YouTube.

Conclusion

 

For this assignment I initially wanted to try more 3D animations but ended up deciding to stick with 2D animations for my final animations as I understand  how to do 2D better. I also find it easier to do and I feel I can get a better end result. I still find that my 3D animations are stiff and choppy. I struggle with the getting the animations to look smooth and I struggle to understand  how edit animations correctly in the graph editor. I always end up making the animation look worse. In the future I want to do more 3D animation and have a better understanding of how they work, so I intend to practice in my spare time. If I were to do this again, I would like to try to do more 3D animations.

I would also try to make the movement of the character flow more smoothly, I would do more research and spend more time practicing animations. I intend to use this as a learning experience. I will look back on my older animations to see how I can improve upon them and make sure I add more body mechanics to give life to my animation so they don’t look stiff and flow better with natural movements.

I found it easiest to do the basic movements in proceate and the secondary actions like hair clothes and even doing the mouth movements in Harmony. I am still trying to get to grasps with Harmony. I do find it much easier to use this time than in the past, so that is positive, and I was able to create one animation in my own art style that didn’t look adventure time inspired.

I am starting to like animating in Harmony much more over animating in procreate. This is mainly because  I can add in audio for lip sync or even just to make my animations more interesting and I find it easier to animate secondary actions on a separate layer. I like using a different brush for getting the rough animation which procreate allows you to do has it has a lot of different brushes to choose from. In the future I would like to try and see if I can import new brushes into Harmony to see if that will make doing the rough animation more enjoyable. I still need more practice using Harmony, especially when it comes to colouring my animations. I colour my animations by copy and pasting the line art layer onto a layer below, but If I find an animation error or what to change something in the animation I fine that the line art is easy enough to fix but the colour layer not so much as things get a little messy.

References

Head movements

snowden-c1Leave a comment

For this animation I animated the characters facial expression going from one expression to another. I also added a bit of a squash and stretch in the character head as she reacts. I would like to go back I do some further editing to this animation in my spare time and add some movement into the hair and also fix any errors I made.

This is a head turn animation practice. It’s not the best movement as was it is a bit stiff and doesn’t have as much character to it as I would like. She is also is not very expressive in her facial animation. In future animations,  I will make sure to work on facial expressions and movement. I do like the hair movement of the animation but the choppy face animation and lack of expression really bring this animation down over all, but as a test, it works.

This animation was done in proceate.

Lip sync

snowden-c1Leave a comment

This is the lip sync animation we did in class. I think this turned out okay. Especially since I have only tried lip sync animation once ore twice beforehand on my own.

I did the body movement animations in procreate and then added the secondary actions and mouth movements in Harmony. Once I was happy, I did the line art and colours. I did each part of the animation one at a time so I didn’t confuse myself.

After feedback I made the first girl look back at the green girl to show she is talking to her.

If I was to redo this animation I would have the first two clips have slower movement as I think they move rather fast and then get much slower for the rest of the animation.

 

Audio clip from Rooster Teeth’s RWBY volume 3 chapter 2

Reference for lip sync

I had tried to do lip sync in the past, but I was doing it blind as procreate doesn’t have the option to import audio.

I think I now have a better understanding of how to do lip sync animations. Looking back on this old animation, I would now add more expressions to her face and also try to make her movement more smooth and less choppy, but I think it is good for my very first attempt as doing lip sync.