[Influences] Inspiration, it's super effective!

As a Pokemon fan, I recently watched the latest movie, Victini and Reshiram. When I was watching this I noticed some new techniques that have been introduced in the newer episodes and I was impressed by how they worked. The show now seamlessly blends 2D and 3D elements together to create an interesting style. The 3D effects are usually limited to the backgrounds and can really make a scene visually impressive compared to standard cel backgrounds.

Below are some screenshot examples from the movie:

Despite what I said about backgrounds, I managed to actually find some characters that were animated in 3D too. Unfortunately due to lack of footage on the internet I can't show the actual movement. The gears in the background are actually spinning 3D models that fly around the screen, which is an interesting contrast to the rest of the environment and the 2D man standing in front of them, while still fitting in with the established art style.

The music machine in this shot is also a 3D model, the top unfolds and the horns squash and stretch. I find the effect interesting that more digital techniques can be applied to cel animation and go hand in hand to enhance the look of the cartoon. I've seen this tried in cartoons before, for example Invader Zim, but I often dislike it thinking it looks tacky when used in a full cartoon environment. This is the first time I've actually liked the look.

Aside from just 3D, I noticed a lot more digital enhancement in the movie. In this shot, Ash is playing around in the water. The thing I found interesting is that the water ripples as he moved around and interacts with it and there is a seamless transition between 2D and 3D when he splashes. As the water leaves the pond, it goes 2D as seen in this screenshot, any water that splashes back into it is then transferred back to digital for the resulting ripple effect.

I think the main reason this movie manages to pull off the 2D/3D transitions is because the backgrounds are made to look more realistic rather than being flat, cartoony colours. My own work has already started to get more realistic backgrounds and if the opportunity comes, I would really like to try enhancing my 2D work with some other programs such as After Effects to see the results!

[Uni project] Keeping the mean streets safe! **IN PROGRESS**

As part of my course I was entered into a film making competition run by Knowledge. The contest is open to students in Leeds and is focused around crime and urban myths surrounding students. The animation was to be less than 5 minutes long and in any form.

For my project I decided to make use of my knowledge of Flash and create a minute long short.

Below is the original animatic:

I also drew up some preliminary character drawings, which are below. I wanted the student character to be representative of your average 20-so year old girl.

[Uni project] The Amazing Thin Man

In this project I learned more about the pre-production side of animation, which until this project, I hadn't focused on much in the past. We were given a script for "The Amazing Thin Man" by Leeds Metropolitan University student Ina Fischlin and the first tasks were to create a proposal, treatment and storyboards for the animation.

For this film I decided to stick to my Flash knowledge as we only had to make an animatic, so there was no point in trying out new mediums. I wanted the focus to be on a strong visual style rather than the animation, as it was more about the world and characters than the story in my mind.
The simple black and white style was used to represent the boring world he lives in where everything is subject to the norm. The colours on the background are a lighter grey colour to make the characters and important assets stand out.
Below is the animatic I produced, unfortunately I didn't have time to recreate the full thing in Flash.

[Personal project] Oddball Christmas 2011

As my final animation of 2011, I created a short Christmas animation for my Oddball series in Flash. The animation was well received on the internet, receiving nearly 14 thousand views, a daily award and a review crew award on Newgrounds.com.

Below is a video showing some of the work on my animation:

For this cartoon I really wanted to make use of the skills I'd learned at University so far, I tried to do more frame by frame animation, put more attention into the backgrounds and also improve my script writing skills too. As far as short Christmas stories go there isn't a lot of variety as Christmas already has a few set ideologies and morals behind it. I chose to take the "gift of giving" approach by having Redi break into a toy shop to steal something for herself, but then after all of the trouble, give the toy to a less fortunate poor child on the street. Of course I added the usual Oddball twist by then including the shopkeeper accusing him of being the thief instead.

One thing I would have liked to change in the animation is the music. With the recent outcry over SOPA and of course the issue that the music is owned I would have really liked to use royalty free music, but I feel that iconic Christmas music is an essential part of the Christmassy "feel" to the video.

After making this video I began on the newest character reference sheet for Antique, and I am in the process of creating one for Redi as well.

[Uni project] Traditional animation - Anticat

For my first traditional hand drawn animation piece I had a drawing of my own character and a drawing made by a classmate. My task was to inbetween these over 60 frames (5 seconds at 12FPS). This was my first time using a light box and the result is below:

I found that doing hand drawn animation puts a lot more focus into the frame by frame movement as it's impossible to keep the previous drawing like it is in Flash. I was also thinking a lot more carefully about the fluidity and timing of the transformation. I started by drawing the key poses, first of all the cat with the clock face, the head being weighed down, then finally the inflation parts. Once this was done it was a simple matter of doing the inbetweening. I was also testing out smearing on some of the frames. When there was a fast movement I distorted parts of the frame. This most apparent in the centre of the clock face, in some frames, rather than a circle it is an elongated oval, this makes it flow a lot better. I also utilised squash and stretch towards the end of the animation to add a bounce as Antique lands on the ground. All in all I am very pleased with this final result as it made me appreciate the work that goes into frame by frame animation. I hope that this reflects in my personal projects in Flash too as I improve in traditional techniques.

[Drawing] Life Drawing

With my life drawing work complete I feel it's time to reflect on my findings throughout it. When I started my course I wasn't entirely comfortable with drawing advanced poses for my characters. With the help of life drawing I was able to see for myself how the human body moves and learn more about anatomy along the way. Another very useful part of it was that the drawings were timed, ranging between one and fifteen minutes. This got me into the habit of quickly making marks and rather than thinking about how to do my drawing a lot, I was made to put my marks down and then see the results, which was an interesting change of pace for me as I'm normally fairly slow and steady when it comes to drawings. Overall I am now much more confident with drawing human bodies and hopefully this will reflect in my future animations.

The video below shows a recent drawing done in Flash using some new techniques I learned from life drawing:

I still find female bodies easier to draw than male ones because of the natural curves and emphasis, even though our life drawing was a male I still feel as if I need to practice drawing male bodies more.

The results from life drawing classes can be found in a later post.