𝕃𝕒𝕦𝕣𝕖𝕟_𝕄𝕒𝕩𝕨𝕖𝕝𝕝 𝔹𝕝𝕠𝕘

No colour

With colour

Research 

Before going straight into the animation, I had to think, plan and create my animation based on what studios it would be targeted for my placement and put into my showreel and what art style I would go for before sending it off. When I searching through studios that Alec had recommended for us, along with students who had finished their placements and came in to show off their work and answer our questions which involved their roles, how they got help with unfamiliar software they never used before, how long they worked for, how they were able to adapt to different art styles and finally what they had learned after they left. 

Looking back at the animation studios with the knowledge I received from each student who had experienced each one including the game companies and what they got out of it with communication and good teamwork. From the most certain to the last backup my choices are JAM, Flickerpix, Alt Animation and Paper Owls which are my top companies I would be applying too. For studios being targeted towards children with kid friendly animation I had the most interest for each being 2D and having other animation styles like 3D and stop motion with a wide variety of animation. For art style I was fascinated with the characters with dot like eyes and plushie faces I knew that I would choose that style to put into my showreel.   

For character creation I had went through a various of different art styles with dot like eyes and seen quite a few that had sparked my interest. Then I had an idea to make the characters human looking but have a toys appearance like talking dolls of sorts like Pixar’s Toy Story but with a 2D look. 

Here are references for the Toy girl’s appearance called Dolly. As well as some ideas for the sock puppet hand with the Man toy known as Benny.

Afterword’s I drew concept art and the final design of the characters (with colour) to see if they would make it into my 11 second animation short. I coloured them in in hopes of finishing the rough animation and fill in the in-betweens of each frame. 

Animation Reference 

For collecting references for my 2D animation, I thought I would follow other peoples animation ideas while looking for a way to animate my 11 second scene I decided not to use someone else’s instead make my own. Since many animators collect references for animated movies and tv shows which I would often see on YouTube, by recording their self or other team members in a single room to capture their characters’ expressions, speech and body movement. I did the same with my characters so I would capture their personality and what they are meant to do for those 11 seconds while editing the clips together and follow the timing of the sequence of the audio to match up with the clips which wasn’t hard for my first time around. 

I chose my eleven second clip from the movie Coraline, the scene which she is talking with her father before exploring the house but only those 11 seconds with the snipped audio added here. 

Here are my references collaborated together and storyboard. 

For body movement e.g. lifting the cup or the puppet moving from the hand. I scrolled through the net and found a couple of live action, 3D and 2D clips for my secondary character to break down that simple action here of drinking tea. 

After moving on to the lip sync I went to over sites and blackboard to find out how to shape the mouths when one letter comes out of the mouth thanks to the internet I found solutions to the lip syncs. The puppet was easy enough since like a puppet it doesn’t make much mouth shapes. 

Rough Animation

Problem Solving and Feedback 

I had shown Alec my progress with the rough animation I had just done last weekend, if it needed any improvements it would be a good time for lecturers to view it from Mondays class. Near the last seconds of the rough sequence he suggested on making Dolly (the blue character) fix her stepping with taking a step forward or to the side and his 2nd suggestion was with her only moving her legs but not the feet so she’s still in the one spot and not gliding off by the feet with the knees coming down with in between poses for the last seconds of the sequence for more movement. So that was something I worked on from the last couple of days before submission while I was looking ways to fill in the in-betweens and fix the legs for Dolly, so the animation becomes more smooth and everything would have been cleaned up.

Reflection

Throughout this module, I very much enjoyed this semester doing practical animation again whether it being 3D or 2D animation, while the assignment itself there were ups and downs during the process. The pros were selecting our own type of animation and art style we would have to follow for our future placements which would be part of our showreels. But the downs were having to do it while completing our essay’s and group project models assignments which wouldn’t’ be finished until May.

As well as the animation project introduced to us at week 5, but didn’t have any animation classes till the last three weeks that was all 3D animation exercises but none being 2D involved. They were still handy exercises to follow for my 2D project for notes and references to add into my 11 second animation with the lip sync and timing to help me out. If I had to say what I would’ve done better this semester is wishing we had more time to do the second assignment animation that way the animation short can appear much smoother and cleaner itself and done more animation other than university work while on my free time but trying to balance between assignments and exercises was difficult. Overall I was really satisfied this second year in animation with everyone else.

Week 10 for the morning session was animation practice where we had to fill in the blanks for our azui character from Alec’s reference (which had problems uploading onto maya) but was able to fill in the missing frames. It was fun for the morning session. 

Meanwhile I was looking at lip syncs for my animation to follow along the lines of speech with both characters and went back onto blackboard to understand the expressions and acting of the characters using my references and going into the rough animation. I even went back to my boss rig for fixing as Jasmin gave us her new modelled character that she made improvements to so that we can export our animations to the new rigs. 

For my animation for the most part I have finished the second version of the animatic and did a rough start up with lip-syncs added. 

No audio added for the first one

For week 9, just before the easter beak we had moved onto Facial animation and lip syncing for this class. Our lecturer Alex had gotten covid so we were covered by Henry for the morning session. Alec left us videos and files on blackboard to follow to try and lip sync the Azui rig with audio.

For the group project with models sculpted and textures sent into the OneDrive. We had a group meeting involving animations that would be out within the game and who would do what before the Monday we come back after the Easter break. I got the one where the others pick one which involved their own models. Since I was busy with other work for the other two assignments I got the one which involved the boss standing up from his chair which I was ok with. For Jasmine had sculpted the characters and Alex with rigged them I was able to animate the boss character this Easter. 

For references I found a couple on YouTube to help me with the boss character standing up and how I would first start and finish it. Instead of being the legs and bottom moving, it would be the strength of the arms pushing him up and the feet moving slightly back. With the head looking down then up to show how we actually stand up. I knew what I needed to do and got Jasmine’s character and stated animating. The textures would be added onto 

For my assignment 2 from pervious weeks and during the easter week, I had started drawing concept art, picking my 11 second audio and plan out the storyboard for my 11 second animation assignment for April. It was difficult to choose one audio from Alec’s recommend website as I didn’t get the feel from them but instead went to other things that interested me from movies and music videos I enjoyed and choose an audio I like and imagine the scene to go along with. 

I was able to draw concept art for my two characters whom would be talking within the scene and what is happening with body movement, facial expressions and timing. During this time I was collecting references for the body movements and facial expressions so I may have some support for my 2D animation. 

Here is my storyboard and concept art of characters which then were brought into krita for colour scheme selection.

Art style Inspiration – dot/bead eyes

When I was creating my characters I was thinking about art style and how they would look. For the eyes I thought of putting a childlike appearance seeing it’s a common trope within cartoons and comics/drawings to have dot eyes or quite known as beady eyes like what dollies have. As well as their appearance to be child friendly like toys you would see at child store along with toy cars or on any cartoon you would see for children 3+.

So then I decided to make the characters appear doll like but human as close as possible to match the movement of animation from the references. 

Animatic version 1 

Balancing both I’m still in the process of my 11 second animation which I hope to finish before submission.

For our morning session we had our last class of rigging which involved the blend shapes and expressions which Michael our lecturer had went over with this class session and shown his tutorials on blackboard which were a big help for our lesson when adding the blend shapes to a simple smoothed sphere.  With the two functions squash and stetch for the ball to obey these functions. It was a fun class and I gave myself a go at the rigging exercise.

It wasn’t hard but quite fun in some sense. Even for me who is not rigging, it is good to get a recap of things like this from last semester. 

Since the game designers were off due to strike in Monday we were having our support tutorial and were finishing off some work in the meantime. I had fixed all my components in maya, including UV’s and sent them all off into the OneDrive link shared amongst the others as well as textures from substance painter. Making me up to date with the animation/modelling checklist. Some had sent me issues they were having with the textures like with the pencil but I managed to fix it and test it on unreal so that was covered. Our team is going well apart for some showing up to the 2 meetings in the week.

Meanwhile I was focusing on the other assignments including the animation too choose a 11 second voice and style I’m going for that specific company (which would also be my placement for next year). My two choices are Flickerpix and Alt Animation since they are a bit similar in some ways like a range of animation used with 3D, 2D, stop motion and rigging. I also collected some sound within the past week and started storyboarding with concept art for some characters before I choose my final decision.

For our week 7 class we had continued on with part 2 of our rigging class and were introduced to IK and FK with driven keys on Maya. Michael had given us an arm rig to add in the nurb circles and create separate arm rigs for the model for it to move between arm rigs as if we were animating it to move along the top and bottom using IK FK in the attribute editor. Now following Michaels videos on blackboard helped me very much when it came to many controls in the outliner as I would’ve lost my way on the rigging and see how complicated it can be. For not being a rig except I still gave a go at the rig model which was ok at the least.

With my new models done and combined and as well as fixing my old models with edges, UV and combining the models instead of grouping them so my team won’t have any worries with the props for the game included for this Monday I will get a new task assigned to me whether it is prop modelling more assets or helping out with the others if they can’t do some of the models and texture them with substance painter. 

With my assignment 2 I have took a quick look through Alec’s suggested companies for me to pick a specific art style and as well as help me in finding a placement this year. I also took a juke at the 11 second club. So I started looking at the different voice lines and animations which I know I will be doing 2D animation and make a list of the companies I will do an art style for. It’s a start since I’m using my free time wisely.

11 Second Club – The Monthly Character Animation Competition