2D Background Inspiration

For one of my projects this year, the 2D Background project, I have to research and take inspiration from two artists: one for environment design and one for character design. These artists should help me with my final look for a 2D background.

For the characters, I've decided to go with an artist whose style is  the opposite of how I design characters: Retrograde-Entropy (there was no indication of their real name).

I purposefully wanted to find an artist whose character designs were different to mine so I can learn to adapt to other art styles. As much as the dream is to make my own product with my own drawings, if I want to get a job in animation, I have to adapt to a show or studio's style of drawing!

The three coloured drawings above are Retrograde-Entropy's artworks, whilst the pencil drawings in the sketchbook are my interpretations of their style. If you look at my character designs, they are very angular and sketchy. The eyes are very big on the head compared to the other facial features, and the eyebrows go over the hair to immediately indicate a character's emotion. The hair itself is very scruffy and looks very thin. The alien design of Geoffrey is designed a lot like Mothman! I prefer to design aliens as giant bugs since an insect or invertebrate design is the furthest away from a relatable human design. The link below will take you to a great video about alien design that goes into more depth than I do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srul5Xd2kT4

Retrograde's characters are more round with very few angles or sharp edges. The eyes fit inside the head and the nose seems to be larger than usual. The hair is very fluffy and naturally pleases the eye when it flows with the wind. The lips are also larger and have a slight upper cleft to some of their characters. The alien design is also more humanistic, most likely to allow the audience to relate to the alien more. Retrograde's work is soft, subtle and pleasing to the eye, especially when they use pastel colours in their other artworks.

You can look at their DeviantArt page here: http://retrograde-entropy.deviantart.com


For the environment, I've always been fond of illustrations that capture the simple side of nature, yet still manage to make it look beautiful and detailed. I immediately decided to go with one of my favourite artists: Indre Bankauskaite (freeminds on DevinatArt).

Indre Bankauskaite creates backgrounds, characters and environments that are so simple in style but pop out due to the small colour palette they use in each drawing. Concepts like the blue and orange tree are very surreal, but the drawing of a cave entrance is more naturalistic due to it's softer colours and shades. It's the naturalistic drawings of Indre's that I want to use inspiration for the environment of my background project. 

The watercolour paintings in the sketchbook are my interpretations of Indre's artwork above, and I'm debating whether I should stop painting all together. I am happy with how I made the blue and orange tree look 3D and the blending of some of the colours in either of them, but it comes to no surprise that painting isn't my strongest point, neither is sticking to a colour palette. I feel like I can replicate the artwork better in a digital painting since that's most likely how the artist made them in the first place.

You can look at their DeviantArt page here: http://freeminds.deviantart.com

Drawings, Drawings, Drawings!

   

Part 1 - LIFE DRAWINGS! 

Hooray! It's been a while since I've done them so don't look surprised if they all look sloppy. In this particular lesson though, I learnt how to do a very useful thing, measure the anatomy! How many heads tall or wide is the model, and such. Using a needle to help measure the height and width of some areas of the body allows you to create a more accurate and, dare I say lifelike, drawing of your model. Perspective and measurements have always been a weak spot in my art, so a simple knitting needle is the best thing I can use for life drawings!

Part 2 - Armature Structure

For motion studies, I have chosen to study stop motion since it's my favourite animation medium. One thing we have to make is a stop motion puppet of a dog for an upcoming animation. I chose to base my dog off a giant schnauzer (because schnauzers are the best dogs) and have created a side view plan of the armature (not to scale). My problem is how am I going to make it? I know HOW to but to actually do it is still a challenge! Also what materials shall I use? Aluminium? Wood? Latex? Plasticine? Help!

 

 

Part 3 - Tonal Observations

I'm sorry two of these are sideways. Just turn your head to the side to look at them.

When studying background design, you want to look at the darkest and lightest areas of the background, which will show you where the light is coming from. Observing the shades of tone of another background will help you get used to showing where the light source is in your own backgrounds. These tonal observations are done in charcoal and pastels, and three of them are studies from Your Name, Wolf Children and Lilo and Stitch. Lilo and Stitch is definitely an interesting one since the film goes back to traditional Disney watercolours instead of digitally painting them. It makes the scenery of Hawaii look very beautiful. Wolf Children's backgrounds are beautiful too, but not too glamorous since the true driving force of the film is the relationships with the family and their simple yet complicated lives. That's what comes first. Your Name on the other hand has the most beautiful backgrounds that I've ever seen from an animated film. I've always loved space and astronomical-inspired art, so it comes to no surprise that Your Name blew me away from it's stunning visuals of comets, meteors and constellations.

Part 4 - Personal Poses

The sketches above are mainly of my original characters (not fandom-inspired, actual original characters), but two of them in the left photo are Invader Zim and Chihiro from Spirited Away (although Chihiro looks more like Invader Zim now). I spent some time testing out different poses and emotions with my characters, mainly to see how exaggerated I can go with them. Exaggeration is also a weak spot of mine, even if it's a major part of character animation. Other sketches are to expand my skill on shading, since that used to be a weak spot, but I'm getting better at it. Cute little drawings that I do in my spare time are more than that, they are small steps into making my art look a lot better than before.

[Existential] Thoughts on Myself as an Artist

So I went to a lecture thinking it was going to be about title sequences, but the lecturer decided otherwise.

Now, our guest lecturer has made a lot of title sequences in his life and he is very talented at it. But boy, his talk about how to make good title sequences turned into a realisation that our existence as artists will become extinct in the future if we don't become the best at what we do.

Just a heads up to say I'm exaggerating a lot in this blog post but these were the things I thought of about myself after the lecture.

He hosted two lectures for us, one about making good title sequences, and another which I thought was going to be about title sequences again, but instead it was about the future of creativity and an artist's working environment. How will humans interact with one another? Are we able to get work when robots will soon take over from us? How can I show that my work is better than a robot's and that you should hire me? All this and more was discussed and I had no idea what to think.

Whilst this guy is a nice and interesting creator who has lots of positive thoughts about the future, I looked at this possible future and thought it was scary. Because whilst I practice a lot in order to get better at what I do, I still don't call myself an artist because I don't believe I'm astounding at what I do, let alone the best! And now I can't earn a living if I don't force myself to be the best?

Knowing I'm not the best gives me little confidence when I try to sell myself. The guest lecturer kind of gave advice on how to sell yourself: get talented and have an ego. These two things are good traits to have but I know lots of people who have a hard time becoming either of those things, so just to say 'get talented and have an ego' isn't good advice for introverts who aren't sure if they're talented and don't like having an ego! Sorry sir, you're a great title sequence maker, but stay away from counselling.

This lecture wasn't the only thing that made me think about myself as an 'artist'. A new project set for us this semester, called the experimental project, is a task where we make an experimental animation to show who we are. Again, listening to the subject matter of this project caught me off guard. How do I show myself in an animation?

The problem is, I don't think I want to show who I am in a film and allow anyone to watch it. I have grown in confidence over the years but I don't like being an open book for anyone to put their grubby sticky hands on (that metaphor though). It's ironic since I have a YouTube channel and I'm on lots of social media sites, but on those sites I talk about movies, games, TV Shows, celebrities, media that has made me feel happy whenever I think about it and now I want to share my love for it with the world. If I ever talk to someone about my feelings and traits and beliefs, it shows that I trust the person who is listening. I don't want the entire general public to know! And yeah, it's also ironic since this very blog post is about me telling you my feelings about this topic, but I have a feeling that the people who are reading this will understand me in some way.

I have no idea what to put in this experimental project other than memes, Undertale references and the fact that I spend most of my time slouched in my chair still trying to learn how to shade. I don't believe I'll ever be considered the best at what I do or if I get my dream job. But what I do know is that I'm at least trying to be good at what I do and that if I keep practicing, there's a small chance I could still get to the top.

There was a lot of things I disagreed with the guest lecturer about, but he mentioned an amazing photographer who only started doing photography at age 65! I agree with him that you're never too old to start creating and perfecting things. And because I'm still young (even though I feel really old), I have plenty of time to perfect my craft, and not to force myself to do otherwise.

I'm Back Baby!

Good day everyone! I hope you've had a wonderful Christmas, because I definitely have! But now I'm back for more work, which means more blogging!

This semester, I aim to write more about how I'm developing new skills and tricks in animation, and will hopefully get round to posting my own personal artwork that I do outside of university (I'll be sure to make it original art and not fanart, unless I'm unbelievably proud of it).

The art above is my own work and the result of a day experimenting in Photoshop! I love the concept of space and galaxies, but drawing nebulas are hard, along with not making the planets look so flat. but I still love what I made! Experimenting with Photoshop (or whatever arty software you use) for a day can be a great way for you to learn about different tools in the software and learn which ones are the most suitable for your art.

Looking forward to posting more on this blog! See you soon!

3D Practice: Tail Ball

This was my favourite out of all the Maya exercises, not just because the little tail ball is cute, but it allowed me to practice my squash and stretch, tail movement and animal characteristics all in one! It was a lot of fun making a small obstacle course too!

The tail ball was really hard to animate at first, especially when trying to get my head around how the tail should move. I didn't do this, but I would watch how different animals tails move before animating them, to know if you want them to replicate that look or make it look completely different.

I was proud of myself for getting the squash and stretch right along with the timing of the tail ball, making him anticipate before jumping and moving his tail swiftly to make him look really happy! I also loved how I made him slide on the obstacle course (it looked really cute!).

One thing I would change however is during his brief pause on the obstacle course, he's completely frozen. I would have to make him move slightly in order to show he's still alive!

3D Practice: Mery Poses

 

Mery is a rig that you can use in Maya to practice on character poses and facial expressions. Here I didn't need to animate anything, but instead learn how to manipulate Mery into different positions, in which you can immediately tell how the character feels in one picture.

The five expressions I show here are (above to below):

Laughter

Anger

Fear

Sadness

Content

I believe I've captured the emotions of Mery clearly through her poses and facial expressions, making some areas exaggerated and cartoony and others more subdued to reflect a serious moment.

Stop Motion Practice: Character Walk

The difference between this and the basic walk from the last stop motion post, is how this walk reflects personality.

Live-action actors have the pleasure of showing personality through little movement. Animated characters show their personality through all of their gestures. This character walk exercise enables me to practice this.

The walk I chose showed a snooty personality, with the puppet looking down its nose and swaying from side to side without a care in the world.

I'm proud of this walk but I'm really proud of the first few seconds! Mainly because I remembered to bend the toes on the first step and it starts to look like a proper walk! I forgot to add the toes bends on the rest of the steps but either way, the walk appeared genuine and expressed the personality of the puppet.

My other problem is regarding the hands. Due to the hands of this particular puppet being unable to bend properly, the hands look stiff, and don't sway as smoothly as the rest of the body.

Stop Motion Practice: Basic Walk

Note: The camera moves slightly due to somebody knocking over the webcam, twice.

I had to once again follow the traditional rule of the walk cycle, and this time in a stop motion environment. I added small touches to the walk, included turning the puppet's head side to side to make her look like's she looking around.

The basics of the walk are there, but the extra things that make a realistic walk (toes bending, hands relaxing etc.) are not. The walk ended up looking like a creeper's walk, needless to say.

Stop Motion Practice: Throwing a Ball

Truth be told, this exercise looks stilted due to a technical issue I had on Dragonframe. Instead of taking 12fps, I instead put the settings onto 12fps which I was specifically told NOT to do! I can obviously see why now.

Regardless of the jolted movements of the puppet, he manages to show that he is throwing an imaginary ball across some sort of park...just very slowly.

The angle he's meant to be facing is also in the right position, a long with his arms, legs and where his head is pointing to.

3D Practice: Constraints and Parents

Constraints and parents in Maya are hard to get your mind around, but is worth the trick once you learn how to animate two objects. Constraints and parents in Maya is essentially having two objects connect to one another, or having one object control the other.

In this exercise, the human rig is the parent and the box does what the rig says.

Overall, I am proud of this exercise as I've never animated a full human rig before, and it looks decent! The character herself moves smoothly, and shows some personality in the little tilts I've added to the head and pigtails. The lifting of the box looks good too, even though it was hard making sure the fingers grabbed and moved the box at the right time.

My only complaint is that the movement of the body goes to farther forward as she begins to lift the box. If that happened in real life, she'd be falling over.