Author: Nicolle Watters
Hotel Transylvania Character: Retopology.
I I was rather nervous about the Retopology process because I wasn’t too sure on what it entailed. I followed along with class demonstrations but when applied to my own character I found it difficult. I had a lot of parts to my model that I wasn’t too sure where to begin but I wanted to keep some parts separate so the reto stage wouldn’t be too hard to do. I also made sure to watch videos relating to retopology to see what the best way to assign the meshes would be.
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Full body Sculpt of chosen design.
CyI aI’m Tand usI
ThBLOCKING OUT CTHULHU.
primitives to define the basic shape of the character. Roughing out shapes of your character. Will post and briefly discuss screenshots.
This stage was what I was most nervous about. Even though I’ve practised basic sculpting having to begin the official model sounded nerve wrecking, however a start needed to be made. To ease my worries I looked at a few tutorials on basic modelling before diving into my sculpt. Viewing the videos below gave me good insight into the best foundation is for human proportions/structure. I’m not intending to go realistic with my proportions, however it’s good to take in knowledge on the basics before bending the rules.
Working in the style of: Hotel Transilvania/GenndyTartakovsky
For our next assignment we are to work in the style of Genndy Tartakovsky, animator and storyboard artist of well known stylized character story’s such as Hotel Transylvania, Samurai Jack, Dexter’s Laboratory, Power Puff Girls and other well known titles. The approach to this project is working on a character design in the style of said artist that would be part of the Hotel Transylvania universe, mostly a non-human form that would be a customer of the hotel.
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Self Reflection [ASSIGNMENT 1 -ANIMATION STUDIO]
Below is my self reflection on assignment 1, animation studio. I took the prompts to help me cover the main basis.
What worked well? And why?
Looking back I’m really happy with my environmental thumbnails. I really like illustration, however I mostly ever touched character design and would leave out background work because I found no enjoyment from it. The tone and value, perspective and colour exercises really made me realize planning a environment base on our creative processes, to my shock, was really fun and something I enjoyed doing.
What did not work well? And why?
When doing the time and spacing exercises I think I really struggled getting a grasp on the physics in which something is suspended/falls. I often thought “yeah this looks great” and then playing it over the movement always seemed really awkward. It’s ok when it’s only one pace, however I struggled with anything else.
Planning the script and determining the length of the content to animation was also really difficult because the content I provided didn’t meet the timeframe. I hope to improve on these struggles in the future.
What did I learn about creative team work?
In all honesty I’ve never been good in big crowds. I found that when it came to my own work I always felt too embarrassed/shy, however with working in a creative team I found myself being inspired by everyone’s creations and the things I wanted to contribute to our animation that I put that anxiety aside and began showing my artwork more to my group in class. When looking at everyone’s work it inspired me to try out different techniques and styles that I wouldn’t typically think of doing, and as an artist I think that working in a creative team is a valuable experience to have.
I found that working in a group was a lot better than working solo as there were always different approaches and ideas that poured in that elevated out overall worldbuilding, narrative and designs. Sometimes I would feel overwhelmed by the changes being made and had to give up a lot of my own ideas, however I see this as a positive because if I never got any second opinions on what I was producing I would never see things from an outside point of view and be stuck in my own ways. I also really liked my group and meeting new people whenever things would switch up, and although nerve wrecking it allowed for me to meet people in the class I wouldn’t otherwise meet because of the classes sheer size.
If I were to start the module again what would I do differently and why?
I would be a lot more involved in group chats. I would show my stuff in class but when it came to discuss I always had to force myself to post because I wanted to help my group. I want to get to a stage where I could confidently post my work without feeling a sense of embarrassment.
The biggest thing I would do differently is to work better on my time management and posting regularly on the blog. My blog got deleted due to not updating the link and lost motivation. I feel as well that I could have had a lot more to show if I had kept better taps on my time management and workflow for tasks set.
What do I need to do more/less of to improve my animation practise?
To improve my animation practise I would like to go over aspects of the 12 principles of animation, most importantly spacing and timing my animations. I would also like to experiment further with different software as the majority of the time I was using procreate, which tools are very limiting in terms of animation, for example I would like to look further into Adobe after effects as I feel there’s a lot of potential to be had.
Overall I really enjoyed the time spent in Animation Studio, the work I produced and the time spent with the people in my group. I’m hoping for more opportunities for collaboration as it’s a good opportunity to grow and learn from others.
1 Intro to Sculpt: Week 7 Workshop and Head Sculpt.
We were introduced to our new assignment and aimed to familiarise ourselves with blender’s sculpting tools and features. As I love character design and modelling forms I was excited to get into the basics of freely altering a shape without many restrictions, however the task appeared daunting when looking through the tools and putting them into practise.
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AnimationJam! Build a World Master Post- Group Disney.
This blogpost is documenting the time spent on my animation jam project. I thought to include everything here instead of individual posts, and post the homework tasks individually to my blog. This way all my information that I’ve gathered is kept in the same place!
Introduction:
For our animation jam I was part of group Disney, which I stuck with from the beginning. In truth I wish I volunteered to move around more to learn what the over groups were coming up with or even provide my insight, however I wasn’t used to such a big class and the thought of switching groups seemed very intimidating. There was only so many ideas I could contribute when it came to the same subject, and since it was Disney I began to become bored of the ideas I was formulating. It wasn’t until new people came into the group and offered their ideas that I began to become excited again as it was like a breath of fresh air each time. There were times where things were stagnate and we all had our own obligations to carry on with and I wish I was able to provide more for my group as I felt, looking back, there was a LOT more I could’ve done to help our design processes and inspiration along.
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Week 10: Secondary Action.
This weeks exercise we were to practise an secondary action, which means adding an action that supports the main act. This typically adds customization to a primary animation to fit a emotion, posture, character etc. I watched the video shown below that demonstrates a multitude of secondary actions and the importantance on why they’re included.
Week 9: Animatic Process.
Our objective this week is to form a “moving storyboard”, known as “animatic”, to form the timing of our animation, shots and ensure it meets the time requirements in the brief. During my time spent in Moving Image I always struggled with pacing of my shots but overcame the struggle through feedback. From my own knowledge the same principles still apply through a 2D animated shot, however I’m relatively nervous at the thought of drawing these shots to fit the time limit alongside having effectively convey the emotions I want to show. Being a perfectionist alongside this, I intend to not fuss about details and focus on timing my frames.
Before going into the animatic process I watched the lectures on blackboard and familiarized myself with the animation terms of follow through, overlapping action and dragging movement. Weight and mass of objects when animating should be considered as well as secondary actions.
Week 8: Storyboarding and Animation w/ forms.
Week 8 was an introduction to storyboarding, alongside a brief introduction to animatics, that can assist with planning shots and cinematography.
Class Activities:
I created a flour sack witch and wanted to mess around with a silly story. I will admit the planning and framing isn’t ideal here for shots but I had fun coming up with a silly little narrative to fit the description text.
The second exercise was to animate a flour sack jumping. I wanted to try a difficult movement to see if what I intended to animate translates well. I used procreate as practise for getting the idea of doing a rough animation.
Sack animation rough:
Sack animation: in-between frames added. This made the animation sequence a lot smoother. It was easier than I expected to lay down the ground work for an action then draw the missing sections. I also added a floor so my sack jumped and landed in the right areas.