[Drawing] Gesture lines

An advantage of the Vampire Pixel art style is that the gesture lines are very clear in poses. This puts a lot more strength and expression into the body language and ultimately makes them easier to read through the use of basic shapes and curves.

[Vampire Pixel] Animation started

Vampire Pixel has now begun animation. I had a script writing session with Jack today, who was writing for his own project too. I now have an idea of how long the video will be, roughly 6-8 minutes, so I needed to get a start on the animation as soon as I could. I decided to use the first scene as I know for certain I'll be using it. I designed the characters for the city core and decided to go with the "Laurel and Hardy" short and tall pairing.

[Vampire Pixel] Script outline complete

After some changes, I finally have a script down for Vampire Pixel. The protagonist has now changed to the younger sister character, Veetoo and I've written the story to give her multiple emotions and situations to deal with to avoid a cardboard stereotype. She now experiences happiness, sadness, determination and generally grows as a character throughout the short video. The focus of the animation is to try and write a character driven story, so I've thought about how each character interacts and affects each other and pushes the story forwards, rather than just telling it.

1000 subscribers

I finally passed the 1000 subscribers mark on YouTube! This was largely to do with my community project, Crusaders, but I've also seen the new viewers suggest people watch the rest of my work, which made my day. Hopefully I can now introduce this expanded audience to Oddball and my other works and expand my viewer count even more.
I mentioned to people that for 1000 subscribers, I'd make a video about how I thought up the idea of Oddball, that will come soon but I have a lot of work to finish first.

[Drawing] Digital painting test

I decided to have another try at painting in Photoshop. The picture above is a work in progress after three hours of work. I learned a few things about blending colour and also realized I hate drawing/colouring lips, they just seem out of place to me, and they're the part of this picture I dislike the most. The drawing is of Vaas Montenegro from the game Fary Cry 3, reference below, starting at 0:50:

[Animation] Safety Dance

Sticky notes are awesome.

[Personal] Crusaders casting ad

I recently resumed work on a pet project of mine, Crusaders. Seeing as I didn't have much input on the organisation and producing side of things in the Royal Armouries project, I decided to try out a huge community project of my own. The goal is simple, creating a music video including members of the My Little Pony fan community. I'll be looking for characters, animators and puppet makers. The ad can be seen below:

So far the project has gathered a lot of interest, receiving over 250 entries in the first 5 days. Entries close on March 4th, when I'll be shortlisting and then randomly picking out a certain number of characters. You can read more about the animation on my separate blog here.
Personally, I had a bit of a panic when the ad was first published and I was receiving a tidal wave of emails, but I've now overcome the anxiety and have the project well under control! Also, I'd like to mention that I've been working with my good friend Jack Gray on the backgrounds again! You can see his entry about them here.



EDIT:
Nervous, not until this happened!

[Drawing] Back to life... drawing

After a break, we've now resumed life drawing classes. This time we had a brand new model, Martin. The focus of this week's session was to be able to accurately draw the proportions of our model. To do this we drew a triangle across the page that would act as our scale, from here we drew the model in quick poses, starting large and gradually getting smaller as we went along. The class were all fairly rusty after a few weeks without life drawing, so our first pictured were out of scale. After what we called a practice picture, we then drew 7 consecutive poses, starting at 15 minutes and ending up at 5 minutes.
Around the 4th picture from the right, I was drawing too slowly and decided to try being looser with my technique. This helped speed up and I actually prefer the outcome more.
Once we were done, we all discussed our work. Most people said that (not counting the first)the final picture was their worst, but I thought that was my best of the bunch. I'd probably say that the fourth was my worst as I still need to work on foreshortening, and I also didn't finish it in time.
As a model, Martin was great to draw, he had a good body shape to work with. I find Steve difficult to draw at times as he's very thin, so lines don't flow very well. Overall from this session I learned that I can loosen up my drawing style, while keeping accurate results. I feel as if I'm getting a lot better at time management too. When I was life drawing in my first year I would often have a mad rush at the end of the pose to get everything down, often ruining the entire picture. I would put a lot of focus on the clean line art rather than accurately creating shape and form on paper.

[Drawing] Light, textures and form

Our first task in this drawing session was to go outside with some paper and graphite and rub textures off various surfaces. Once we had these it was imagination time. Looking at the textures we had, we were then told to make out a shape from them. I used the pattern of a metal grid from the floor which I then turned into a turtle like shape. Our next job was to use projection lines like in the previous lesson to draw our shape from the sides. Finally, we used these to construct a 3D drawing of our newly imagined shape. The super flying stoner turtle was born, and ready for the final step. We then imagined a light source and shaded in our imaginary object to give it form.

[Vampire Pixel] Week 2 summary

This week with the project I've focused on three things; casting, writing the script, and getting back in to the art style.

Casting
As per usual when casting, I published audition lines and character information in a Flash file on my Deviant Art page. This was the first appearance of the new story line to the public and was met with praise and anticipation. I also included a few slides explaining background information about the city, information on the generator, and a summary of Vampire Pixel (the team).

Script writing
One of the main things I need to achieve in my script is a certain "feel" to it. After watching some Cartoon Network shows and pilots as research, I really got a feel for the "cheery funny" vibe I wanted to accomplish. I need to make sure the story is told with high energy at all times to keep the mock demographic's attention.

Below is an example of the script writing, I've started to read things as a viewer after writing them to see how clearly things are told. This section of script is replacing what used to be a monologue over shots of the city, which had a very down tone feel to it in comparison;

SCENE 0 

Scene: City power core
Two men in lab coats are operating controls for the power core and engaging in idle conversation. 

Coat 1:
Ah ghost energy, nothing like it eh, Dear partner?
Coat 2:
I hear you there brother! Really puts you in good spirits working here!
Coat 1:
Wellp, look at the time, I think we can lock it for the night and get some... rest in peace! 

Coat 2 laughs heartily and slaps Coat 1 on the back rather forcefully in a comedic way. Coat 1 collapses over the controls and his arm turns a dial, he stands up without noticing. Coat 2 puts his arm around him and they walk away. A warning light glows on the console and a small yellow blob of light pops out of the power core and sprouts eyes. Cut to opening sequence.
Show title card after opening sequence.

This short, pre-opening sequence gives the viewer enough of an idea about how the story works, while being fast paced to keep a tight production time. One of my primary concerns is not getting this animation done in time, but thankfully a lot of shows I've researched have fast pacing.

ART STYLE
As I'm reviving an art style I made earlier in the year, I need to make tweaks to incorporate what I've learned since then. To do this I've worked on a series of background characters that vary in body structure. I  did this in the form of cameos for my classmates, results below:

 A problem with my work before this project is that a lot of my characters have the same body build, thus making them hard to personalize when it comes to animation. I decided to take some tips from when I studied caricature in college and draw people I knew, playing on their unique features while keeping them tied to the art style. Example being Will (Vallhemn) on the left. He is the tallest in the class, so I gave him a stretched, slender appearance to play on this. One of his interests is parkour, so I also made his body thin so I can exaggerate movement while keeping a strong silhouette.

[Vampire Pixel] Week 1 summary

Now that I finally have an idea I'm happy with for my narrative animation, I'm hopefully going to make weekly update summaries on the project.

WEEK 1: Tuning the idea.
After my initial pitch of the idea, I had a very on and off relationship with it. The theme was there, a homage to Cartoon Network style shows, and I had strong vision of how I wanted the idea to work. The only problem was originality. I was too close to the influences, and the art, characters and premise were clearly similar to that of "The Powerpuff Girls".
In a later session, my tutor mentioned something that turned my idea around and gave it just the spark it needed. Something I now call the "What if?" rule. I put the fault in my video down to the three protagonists, and knew this needed to change, a simple "what if I had a different team" question was all I needed to get the creative ball rolling. I know it sounds like the most simple idea in the world, but sometimes you can get that involved in a project that you forget to take a step back and look at the very core fundamentals.

With this new idea in mind, I started a new team while giving them the same goal and surroundings. I also decided to try varying the members rather than having three human girls with the same body type. I gave the new team body shapes that reflect their character. After all, what's character animation without character?

Due to the nature of the video and the target audience (early teens "Cartoon Network" inspired) I needed the characters to be easily readable too. One of my character design books, "Creative Character Design" by Bryan Tillman shows some guidelines about the level of detail characters should have for particular age groups. I've listed two below;

"Ages 9-13 Characters are pulling away from the simplistic. They resemble more believable proportions. The colours are more realistic and have a lot more details.

Ages 14-18+ Characters resemble the real world. They are properly proportioned. The colours are more complicated, and they have the most amount of detail."

(Page 104)

For my team my characters have a moderate amount of detail, while keeping a strong colour contrast to fit the theme and art direction of the world. I've also assigned them to primary colours, red, blue and yellow. In a later version I've also changed the cat to have a green theme.
With the new character designs, I also thought up how the team would fit into the story. I kept the environments of the previous idea but changed the approach. Rather than a team of superheros, I've made them into a high tech, SWAT like team. Their job is to contain ghosts that escape from the city generator.

In an one to one session with my tutor, I was asked what I want to get out of this animation. After some thought this feels like a character study, as the story is centered around the relationship between two sisters, and I'm also practicing character animation that reflects.... character!

With the character designs and world finally down, I moved on to the script.

[Research] Pilot episodes - Part 1 (to complete)

In today's session, I presented the new idea for my animation. This included a new team of characters and a different approach to the same "electronic ghost hunting" idea I had with the previous version. While presenting my idea, we began to discuss character roles and applying them to my team. The role of protagonist was intended to be Viare, the older sister character, but after some discussion, it was brought up that Vee, the younger sister may be a better idea, as she's more relatable for the theoretical target audience.

This however, caused a problem with my idea. Vee was intended to be an "extra" character for the one episode (if this animation was to be thought of as a series) so I came up with the idea of making this episode have a pilot structure. This is beneficial not just for the character, but the story. A problem I've been facing with the scripting side is that there's a lot of concepts to introduce to the viewer before they can understand the situation of the video. If I use Vee, a newcomer to the city as the protagonist, I can introduce story elements by using her as a sort of "window to the world" for the audience, and make them share her experiences.

Before writing, I'm currently studying pilot episodes for shows to pick up tips and conventions for introducing the concept of the world.  Cartoons I'm taking inspiration from on TV all have animated introduction sequences that can be used to ease newcomers into the show by introducing the bare essentials of the universe. The first show I'll be looking at is Dexter's Laboratory, a show I watched on Cartoon Network a lot when I was younger, the show had an interesting idea, strong characters and a strong art style.
As with most cartoons, the show opens straight with the introduction animation, although a lot of cartoons can also have a small opening shot or joke prior.

The opening is very straight forward and easy to digest. It introduces us to the two main characters, Dexter, the protagonist, and his sister Dee Dee, the antagonist, who is actually introduced first. This introduction sequence is music only, so the story is told through character action, music and mise-en-scene.

Updates soon

Wow, I've been pretty caught up with working on various projects and not really had time to blog!
There'll be more stuff soon about my Uni project, character design, doodles, and a writeup of Wreck it Ralph.
In the mean time, have a pic I drew after seeing said movie:

[Uni] Script setback

This was bound to happen sooner or later, in this case I'm lucky it's happened earlier on...
After some looking over my idea for my narrative project, I've fallen out with the idea. The main reason being it's highly unoriginal (even though it was a parody). The characters resembled the Powepuff Girls too much for my liking and the story had no real meaning to it. At the moment I'm thinking of a new idea. I want to keep the same art style I developed using the crisp, neon graphics, but I want to focus on something different story wise. The writing will hopefully keep the "over the top" style of humour that I had planned, the problem I have at the moment is thinking up a story that uses that theme but still has some meaning to it too.

[Drawing] Sketchbook dump 7/2/13 (To write)

[Drawing] Morning background

For Barrels, I need the first scene to be in the morning, an important part of translating this is through the sky.
The image below was used as reference for the backgrounds:

[Research] Parodies

SPACE STALLIONS

This animation is a parody of 80's Saturday morning cartoons and plays on a lot of interesting codes and conventions. The first and most prominent being theming, with the visual motifs associated with horses, from the horseshoe shaped station to the more subtle and finely tuned details, such as the horse head pattern on the sword. This helps to create a cheesy and comedic atmosphere. The second thing worth noting is the colours. A lot of shows used space, it's a simple background to mass produce and more importantly in this video, it allows a lot of high contrast to the key focal points. This style fits in with the neon coloured city I have in my work. An example of this done in 2D can be found in a show I loved as a child, Bucky O'Hare:

Also keytar swords, need I say more?

[RESEARCH] Animation tropes

Now that I've gone through with my brief for my next project, a parody of 90s/00s cartoons, I have to do some research for my script. The problem I'm currently learning to overcome with this project is that I need to balance things very carefully. The writing needs to be bad, but in good taste to work as a parody. As a starter I'm currently getting myself into the mindset of that era, watching old cartoons, listening to 90s mixes and wearing my hat backwards (true story)
For tonight I'm going to research tropes of animation to give me some ideas what to make fun of.
I say tonight, as TVtropes will likely suck me in...

This list below is more for later reference, but feel free to check links!

4x3 ratio

Title card

Action-hogging opening

Alertness blink

Behind a stick

Clip art animation

Everything dances

Faceless masses

Fight unscene

Hit flash

Knife outline

Infectious enthusiasm

Medium shift

Ocular gushers

Scooby Stack

Toon

Walk through the camera

Simpleton voice

Special effects failure

Shadow of impending doom

Toon physics

Crush parade

[Animation] Shader test: Dramatic red

Simple overlay effect applied to cel shading.

[ANIMATION] Laugh WIP