Art style analysis exercise

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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

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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

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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

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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.

 

Running jump

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The animation above was done in class. It’s hard to tell at first, but because of the frame rate,  I think the character’s jump is too slow but the other movements look fine.

This was my original jump. Later on the jump got changed to a running jump so I had to change this. If I had more time I would like to have tide up this animation as I feel like I could have had a better result if I put more effort into it.

For practice I decided to follow this YouTube tutorial for a running jump animation.

After I did the tutorial I tried to do my own version. I originally wanted to do this jump in 3D but I could get the animation to look right especially the roll out of the jump so I decided to do my running jump in 2D.

The sketch animation was doing in procreate and cleaned up in Harmony.

This is my old version of the running jump but I didn’t like how it looked so I redid the line art.

I test did a 3D animation for a running jump but couldn’t get it to look right so I decided to do redo the running jump with a 2D animation which I think turned out much nicer.

For the running jump I decided to do a leap jump. After some feedback I added in a frame to help make her arm movement make more sense .

For this running jump animation I wanedt the jump to have character to it and not be a basic jump. I wanted to do a dance jump.

I ended up doing two dances jumps, a Calypso back leg bend and a centre leap.

I used this video from dancedeja on YouTube as reference for both of my 2D animations.

Weight lift

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The animation above is one done in class. I think this looked good for a rough practice animation.

For this weight lift animation I decided to do an animation of someone picking up a cat. I liked how in the reference video the girl goes but down slightly to readjust her back arm to scoop up the cat, which I tried to get in my animation. After some feedback, I tried to make it more obvious that she’s is not struggling to pick up the cat.  I did this by adjust her shoulder movement rather than just changing her hand placement.

I did the sketch of the animation in procreate and imported the animation and did line art and colouring in Harmony.

After feedback, I made sure her dress movement and hair movement stop at different times at the end of the animation. Doing this really adds depth to an animation and makes it look more dynamic and more interesting  overall.

Body mechanics studies

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These are two animation studies I did before I started this assessment.

These studies are taken from Marvels ‘The Ultimate Spider-man’ cartoons and ‘Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’ cartoon.

I used sync sketch to break down this animation so I could try and reanimate them for practice.

I was only able to do animation studies of jumps as I didn’t have the time to do a weight lift like I had hoped.

Reflection

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Reflective Summary.

For this assignment we were to create a character or creature and then we were to model this character in either Blender or Zbrush. 

Our assignment was to create a story with how the character was designed.  How it was posed, the environment and where the character was placed.  The environment was to be done in Unreal Engine.

I decided to use Blender to create my character because I was unable to access ZBrush.  However, I was happy to use Blender as I am more familiar with the programme having used it for previous work.

When researching for the project I decided to  look up a few types of deers. I decide to  base my character design on a European Fallow Deer. I chose the Fallow Deer because of their fur marks.  

Originally, I had wanted to have her wear a mask based on a Chinese Water Deer, but decided against this idea when I came to modelling.  I felt sticking to the Fallow deer was the way to go.

I also looked at Fauns.  I liked the idea of a mythical creature. Deltarune’s Noelle and CS Lewis’ Mr Tummnus were my main inspirations for creating this character. I also got a lot of inspiration from the game Sky: Children of the Light.

Wax Deer character profile

The profile for my character is a humanoid deer made from wax that lives in a forest. The wax deer is a friendly creature who helps the lost navigate through the forest. The Wax Deer is only seen at night and when she appears the night sky has a pinkish hue to it.

Methodology

Below is how I went about creating the character.

I was careful about making sure the retopology had loops. This would help when it came to posing the character. I was determined to have the retopology look clean and easy to read. I was able to do this by going into sculpt mode and using the smooth brush set to surface I was able to clean the retolopgy thought out my model.

I found character creation, model and sculpting much easier this time around.  I was able to draw from last year’s work and experience which really helped with this assignment.  I think over all, my retopology skills and understanding is much better than last year.  I was able to model the hair and eyelashes which would have been beyond my scope last year.

I was extra careful when it came to weight painting my character for this assignment.  The last time I had to model a character, I hadn’t done much weight painting.  I didn’t know what it was or understood how it worked but  I spent some time over the summer months practicing modelling, retopology, UV, substance texturing, rigging and weight painting  for a couple of characters. This greatly helped my understanding of how the pipeline works and helped me gain better skills for this assignment.

I found the retopology class exercises very helpful when it came to doing my retopology for my character. This was particularly beneficial when it comes to posing the character as it really helped me to understand how to pose better.

In UE I tried to give the sky a purple/pink hue to better match with my character’s profile  as well as adding in some pink flowers.

If I were to do this assignment again there are a few changes I would make.

I would try experimenting in unreal Engine more and try to better convey a story with my final render. I would also try to add more textures to the ground to give the scene more depth and try to have decals in my UE scene as I didn’t find a way to have them in my final scene.  If I had been able to do that,  it would have made the story richer. If doing this again,  I would also try to give the whole scene a pinkish hue which could be done by editing the Lights or editing the final render in photoshop.

I would also make sure my UV for Texturing were all correct  before proceeding and make sure the seems didn’t disappear on me. I would also plan out the clothing design and creation better in blender.  I think the cape could have been done better especially as I found in difficult to model and I had to redo it.  I still wasn’t overly happy with the end result of the cape.

I would also take time to properly understand UDIMS so I could get the benefit of higher detail in my final render.

Overall,  I did best on the retopology for this assignment and I think I had a pretty good understanding of how to rig and weight paint my character.

Reseach

 

 

 

UE & post-production

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I wanted my scene to be set at night but I couldn’t change the light setting, I had to deleted the sky light and add a new one and then I was able to chance the scene form day time to night time.

 

I downloaded some trees and also manually added in some trees close to where I wanted my character to be.  I used a brush to paint in the background trees.

I also added in a moon and textured it with a moon texture I found online.  I set the material to emissive colour and not a base colour to give it a bit of a glow.

 

I had a bit of difficulty when trying to add in my character into the scene. I soon realised it was because I forgot to apply the armature.  Once I added the armature, it went into the scene without a problem. The inside of the dress and cape were invisible at first, but this was easily fixed by added a solidify modifier.  After that,  all I needed to do was to add in the textures.

Unreal started to crash and I couldn’t launch the software I ended up fixing this by opening the project in my finder.

I didn’t like the textures I used for the ground so I replaced them with ones I download on Unreal’s marketplace. I think these look much better.

I also went back and added in some flowers, grass and logs to give more character to the scene.

When I was editing some of the images I realised they had a preview water mark on them.   This was because of the light settings. I just needed to make sure the lights were set to moveable instead of static or stationary and the issue was solved.

 

These are the final renders of my character.  The top row are ones just done int UE and the bottom row are ones I edited in photoshop.

 

All the assets I downloaded from the Unreal Engine marketplace.