[Vampire Pixel] Car Screenshot

[Drawing] Funny faces

[Drawing] Panning background

[Drawing] New squad car

I decided to change the car Vampire Pixel will drive in the animation, I wanted their vehicle to stand out from the standard car shape I gave them before, to reflect their specialist nature. After some walking around town looking at various cars, I first settled on a 2011 Range Rover, it has a strong, boxy shape while still remaining streamlined.

On the walk back home, my eyes were met by another vehicle. We met on a busy road, and it saw me there, whimsically scoffing my pork pie. After we shared a moment in a coffee shop, I finally got her name...

Nissan Juke.

Cutting out all the sexy bits of the story, here's some pics I grabbed from the internet:

The next stage is to modify the vehicle and stylise it for my animation, removing the wheels, adding neons, etc.

[Vampire Pixel] Sneak loop

I spent far too long on this...

[Drawing] Baldrac

Yesterday was the one year mark since the unfortunate passing of animator Edd Gould. On March 25th 2012 he passed away after a battle with cancer. In memory of Edd, fans and friends wore green hoodies (his iconic outfit in the show), and some even shaved their heads for cancer awareness. A friend of mine, Carlos Moreno, took the opportunity to turn shaving his head into a charity fundraiser with a Livestream feed of the event.
Viewers of the stream were linked to a donations page, and as the donations went on, more of Carlos' hair was shaved off. The fundraiser was a huge success, raising over $1000, 10 times the original goal of $100.
As for my part in this, Carlos asked me to create some artwork for the event that would be showed while he spoke a few words about Edd. I made an image of Edd and Carlos' character, Solrac together, as well as the image below that was shown at the very end of the stream. I was more than happy to be a part of this project as my own tribute to Edd (aside from shaving my head and wearing a hoodie) and was amazed to see the support made in his memory.

[Vampire Pixel] Behind the characters

As a natural sister to character animation, I have a strong interest in character design, and have learned to identify certain characteristics and conventions in characters, not only in the aesthetics, but in the personalities . In this entry I'll be explaining the drive behind the team in Vampire Pixel, starting with the leader, Viare. This entry will focus mainly on names and visuals, I'll be making a later entry on personalities and archetypes.

VIARE

Age:                       22
Gender:               Female

Viare's name is a simple pun of the abbreviation V.R. (Virtual Reality) giving a strong tie in with the digital/high tech world they live in. I prefer to make up or alter names for my characters as they're more memorable than your average "Joe Hero" and "Jack Protagonist". They often give me a chance to theme the names, this is evidenced in the team's names, which all begin with the letter v.

Viare is far from being a girly girl, and as such, I have her blue as her theme colour, which typically denotes boys, giving it a clear separation from the typical girly stereotype. This is also ideal for a theme with Veetoo, her younger sister, who has pink as a theme colour (typically synonymous with young girls). This immediately makes a link between the two of them.

As far as anatomy goes, Viare has a lot of emphasis on legs and arms. This will come in handy when I need to exaggerate movements, such as a run, as the focus is already on these body parts, complete with glowing lights that can leave motion trails in the most extreme movements.

I chose to put Viare's hair in a short style for a number of reasons. The first admittedly being for ease of animation. The art style I'm aiming for focuses heavily on strength, achieved through the use of noticeable, basic shapes. If I added too much secondary movement to Viare by having long hair trailing behind, I'd have lost some of the impact in the more action orientated scenes. Also, I don't have long to make this video, so y'know... Yeah.

               

VEETOO

Age:                       11
Gender:               Female

Veetoo is Viare's younger sister, therefore I wanted to have several links between them. These come in the form of body shapes, theme colours, and also names. Veetoo is literally pronounced as "V-two", implying there's a v-one, Viare. She also has two v's (or a w, if you're going to be like that...) implemented into her hair design, whereas Viare has one. On the opposite end of the stereotype spectrum, Veetoo is intended to be perceived as a lot more "girly", having pink theme colours incorporated into her hair and dress, and wearing glowing pink accessories. I also followed the formula for "cute" characters after watching this video.

Her head is bigger on her body, which is part of the typical child design, and she has large, expressive eyes, in comparison to Viare's beady eyes, (as Viare is intended to be more gesture driven, instead of facial expressions).

VIKING

Age:                       33
Gender:               Male

The design for Viking has changed over  time as I developed his characteristics. He was originally based as an oval with legs, sharing almost the same build as Timekeeper Guards, but as time went on and I thought about his back story, I changed him to being more built than fatty. His name is a no brainer, as he's the combat orientated member of the team. Being a rehabilitated super-villain, I was able to make a "good-guy" with more of a readable "bad-guy" appearance. This is shown in areas such as the head, using accessories such as goggles and adding a scar. His head shape is typical of the "strong man" character, which can be seen in so many characters that the trope was parodied by the creation of "The Crimson Chin"

As far as colours go, Viking follows a yellow and black colour scheme, this sticks to the basic theme colours and also adds a sense of danger to him. Yellow and black are often used together as a sign of hazards, or danger, more than fitting for a muscle man.

VEXTOR

Age:                       5
Gender:               Male

The final member of the team, Vextor's name comes from the words Vex, Vector, and Dexter. Vector is a link to the sharp art style I'm creating within the show, and has links to technology in the form of digital images. Dexter is a link to an influence behind the show, Dexter's Lab (also the name of my cousin's cat) and the final part of his name, Vex, represents his moody personality.

Vextor's collar was originally intended to be blue to show ownership by Viare, but I later changed this to green to make a complete set of red, blue, green and yellow.

Vextor himself is a parody of the "mascot character" that's often shoehorned into shows, a good example of this from a parody point of view can be seen in South Park. The show has an episode featuring the band Korn, using a Scooby Doo styled method of storytelling. The episode in itself is one big parody of cartoons, but the part I'm focusing on is Korn's brand new mascot, "Nibblet" who loves potato chips. This sort of mascot character can often be seen as a method of producing merchandise from the show. The character GIR in the show Invader Zim is a classic example of this, and judging by Jhonen Vasquez's writing was intended to stick to this formula in an ironic way. Due to the inclusion of this sidekick/mascot character, Hot Topic and other stores are often home to a huge variety of GIR covered merchandise, from shirts and bags, all the way down to lip gloss, which if I remember correctly, Jhonen made fun of. I'm PIKACHU getting PIKACHU side PIKACHU tracked PIKACHU with PIKACHU all PIKACHU this PIKACHU mascot PIKACHU business PIKACHU. I'm PIKACHU sure PIKACHU I PIKACHU can PIKACHU think PIKACHU of PIKACHU more.

VAMPIRE PIXEL

Not only do the team have their own traits, but I've tried to add certain aspects to the design that link them together, and set them aside from the rest of the characters. I've briefly mentioned the link between their names (all beginning with V) and their primary theme colours, but there are more links between them too. For example, the team is neatly divided into two male and two female, to make the show more universal to the mock primary audience. The show contains action, and also plays around with more "girly" aspects too, this is another method of broadening the mock target audience if this were to be shown on television. The characters are themed to be relatable for kids/early teens too, with the sibling relationship/rivalry themes, a big tough guy to look up to, two completely different types of girls, one tomboyish, and one childish and a grumpy mascot as the comic relief. Another small example is the theming in the character's ages, these being 11,22, and 33. Vextor breaks this formula, but this could be argued as part of his misfit personality.

To add a last bit of emphasis to the team's colours, I made their outfits more contrasting, often incorporating near-black colours to make the neons pop out more.

To summarise, I've taken a lot of things into consideration to give characteristics to the team and make them more readable. Aspects such as colour, body shape and accessories have all been taken into consideration to not only create four individual characters, but link them together through common ideas.

[Drawing] A whole load about lines.

Through my time as an animator, this is by far the most frequent question I'm asked:

"How do you get your lines so neat?"

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight, as I write this entry on a train, I'm going to answer this question once and for all.

So let's go to the basics first, I'm assuming most people who ask this question know I use Flash, as I'm usually asked when people watch me work, either via Livestream or the classic "over the shoulder peek". I'm also assuming people know how to change their properties in Flash, the only issue is knowing which of these properties to use.

Here are my drawing setting PREFERENCES for Flash:

Tool - Brush
Smoothness - 50
Brush size - 2 (second to smallest)
Zoom ~140 (fit to stage with CTRL+2, then zoom in one stage with CTRL++)

These are purely preference, I've seen people work with thicker lines at 100%, and a friend of mine even draws with the pencil tool, which is both sick and wrong. My reasoning? You lose the hand drawn feel, to me the lines look TOO neat, which is strange to write in a blog about how I get my lines "neat". Flash has a slight auto correct for the brush tool, but I still feel the lines have more of a personal touch when done with it. Plus there's a technique I use that you can't achieve with lines, where I taper the edges of some lines to a point.

Now that preferences are out of the way, it's time to look at the contributing factors so something as simple as neat lines. First up, here's a fun fact. The brand of tablet isn't a huge factor in this. For years I'd been using cheap tablets that I bet you'd never seen in your life. I've only just now got a Wacom Bamboo after 6 or 7 years. (For those not in the know, these are the tablet that are often recommended, prices vary on model between £50-£100+) With time, you can get used to tablets, so the more expensive one isn't necessarily going to produce better lines from the get go.

So what is this technique? Well it's pretty simple, draw fast. Don't worry too much about accuracy, as the brush tool, being a vector tool, has the amazing feature allowing you to fine tune your line and bend it into shape. The pencil tool has a similar effect, but not with as much customisation. I'm assuming the fast line drawing means the tablet picks up less  of the shaky movement that's a by-product of drawing slowly. It also adds some nice gestures to the lines. Next up, draw it in bits. Every time there's a change in line direction, I draw a new line. I also draw curves in several parts, depending on the size. I know this stuff all sounds pretty basic and probably not informative, but I'm really just trying to go into as much detail as possible, seeing as this question pops up a lot.

However, there's one thing I've not exactly been able to pinpoint, as it varies so much. Yes, I've actually done research into fecking lines. That mystery variable? You.
A classmate of mine asked about my line settings, and after having the ramble above, I sat him on my laptop, using the same pen as me, the same tablet as me, and drawing into the exact program as me. Of course, his lines were still broken up, even when trying to emulate the fast drawing I do. My explanation? Drawing, like writing, has its own fingerprint left by the artist, whether it be pressure, how they hold the pen, or just how they think about what they're putting on paper (or tablet in this case). So in the end, a lot of this is fairly useless, but more intended as a pointer and explanation. At the end of the day, you just have to teach yourself how to naturally make the line art work. Hopefully this entry has been helpful and give some pointers. It's longer than my dissertation proposal, so it damn well better be helpful!

P.S. Bonus points if you read this entry in a Discovery Channel documentary voice.

[Animation] Characterising movements

Characterised animations are just like Coke ice cream. Allow me to explain.

In earlier posts, I've mentioned that I want to start adding character to movements in my animation, rather than having them all use almost canned animation for every movement.

I was first made aware of this when a friend of mine who works in animation made a post saying something along the lines of:
"I'm sure I've animated this shot before"

After some conversation about it, what he meant is that he had not only a similar layout in a shot in the past, but also animated the character doing essentially the same movement. This made me think back to the Animators Survival Kit, where it extensively covers walk cycles in a variety of styles, each showing a lot of information about the character using simple NVC (non-verbal communication) This same trick can be applied heavily to almost any form of animation. For the sake of emphasis and proving my point, I'm going to use possibly the simplest thing ever to animate; a blink.

A "standard" blink may be something as simple as the eyes closing for two frames, and then opening. This is what I'll be referring to in this entry as "vanilla". It's plain, uncharacterised and not very noticeable. In many cases, this is favourable, some movements don't need to be emphasised. Let's say though, that the blinking character is sleepy, the movement would have a lot more easing in and out, to create a dull, droopy feel to it. This could be characterised even further if desired by making one eye blink after the other, making it look as if they're being lulled to sleep. Or what about the shot in Tom and Jerry where Tom, desperately trying to stay awake, supports his eye lids with matchsticks that then break by the sense of weight this new, tailored blink has brought to his eyes.
On the opposite end, what if your character was jittery after consuming a truck full of coffee. They may blink faster and more frequently than the vanilla sample. Their eyes may jump from one side of their eye to the other, and the size of their pupils may be dilated, or shrunk to simple dots. These two cases are fairly extreme for something so potentially simple as a blink, but this entry should illustrate that there's a lot more you can do with animation to communicate things to the viewer and avoid repetition. A famous goal by the creator of Ren and Stimpy was to never use the same face twice, this leads to extremely memorable (and hilarious) new faces that can act in themselves as a joke. Why should this same effect not be applied to every other form of expression too?

So to summarise, put more thought into personalising animation, think why it's happening and how you can communicate it. Is that guy over there waving in joy? Or is it sorrow that he'll never see his favourite pet again? Is that woman picking her nose sneakily and self-consciously in public, or rooting for a total winner, while giving no fucks? The possibilities for characterisation are everywhere, so bring them out!

Also, mint choc chip kick's vanilla's ass any day. Go make some mint choc chip animation. Actually, sod that, make your own flavour! Coke ice cream for all! Take the classic formula and play with it.

Characterised animations are just like Coke ice cream.

[University] Ged Haney lessons

While working on our narrative projects, we had the pleasure of working with character animator Ged Haney. As an aspiring character animator, this was a great opportunity to improve and ask some questions.
Before I rush into this, let me show some examples of Ged's work. In the first session we had a brief overview of Ged's career, his interest in animation sparked after being asked to help write the music for an animated short. After this, he moved on to create his first animation, "The Kings of Siam" (1992).

You can clearly see a lot of characterization in this video from the get go, emotions are portrayed clearly and tailored actions, such as the three legged walk cycle really make characters feel like individuals and truly gives them a sense of personality. A weakness of mine I'm working around is that I tend to make things very "samey". For example a walk cycle, I'd go ahead and make a standard walk with nothing more to it. No thinking about how the character is feeling, how fast they're walking, or any physical properties. To force my way out of this, I've varied the four team members in my narrative project. I have Viking, with a top heavy body and lots of weight to work with, Viare, who has long legs in her stylized anatomy, Veetoo, a small girl, who will move in a light, spring heeled way, and Vextor, a cat who will shift between bipedal and quadrapedal movement, depending on the situation.

We were showed a variety of other animations Ged worked on, including TOM, a children's show created digitally.

It always interests me to see the difference in digital and traditional work from our guests. Traditionalists often have mixed feelings about digital animation, and in Ged's work, a shift in artistic style is evident. The animation is now a lot more bouncy, and it's shifted from frame by frame hand drawn to a more symbol based style, which makes the most of the sharp feel Flash and other digital programs can offer. This work is also beneficial to look at as I'm taking a change of drawing style with my project, looking at the basic shapes that build up characters and playing around with them. An example of these basic shapes can be seen better in his animation "Milk Milk, Lemonade" which is an incredibly "marmite" video, showing a man using the loo for 15 minutes.

This talk of art style and digital animation leads me nicely to a chat I had with Ged about web animation. There's always this interesting divide between students in my class and the experienced people we have in.This divide is the internet. A lot of influences in mine and my friend's work comes from web animation, and I was happy to show Ged some examples of work similar to his own style. First up was the works of Jonti Picking, (Weebl). Jonti is a British animator who makes short, catchy songs and animates looping music videos to them. In fact, these videos are the reason I got into web animation, but that's another story for another time. 

Moving on from the animation side of things, another reason Ged was in was to look over our scripts. Allow me to put this next part as simply and bluntly as possible:

I suck at writing.

Bold, italics and unerline aside, this has always been a huge weakness of mine. I can think up ideas, and expand the hell out of them in my head, but when it comes to putting them on paper, things fall apart. It's a given that the first draft of my script wasn't going to be perfect, after all, Ged was here to help us with just that. After a read through, I received some incredibly helpful feedback and tips from him that have improved the script tenfold in my eyes. The first problem is that my writing is very "flabby", as he put it. I've always known I have problems when it comes to dialogue, mainly that I cram too much in, and don't tell enough story with actions. (I'm looking at YOU, Antique) This problem was overcome with one simple lesson.

 "If it's not important, cut it. If it's important, make it snappy"

With this in mind, I've tried to cut as much speaking as possible, to get the essentials down, and tell the rest of the story through character animation (OH GEE, A CHARACTER ANIMATOR DOING CHARACTER ANIMATION, HURR HURR) 

The next part of my scripting lesson was to look for illogical actions. This sounds simple enough, but when I get too absorbed in ideas, common sense can sometimes slip. Ged pointed out two or three gigantic plot holes, that I felt embarrassed about later. With these patched up, this version of the script should hopefully be nice and shiny, and ready to send out to voice actors and such.

Overall, working with Ged was an extremely helpful experience, and I was able to have some good talks with him on a level ground, sharing influences and tips. Now armed with this knowledge, it's time to put it to use and animate some characters!

[Vampire Pixel] Kidz with a Z

[Vampire Pixel] Voice Auditions

The first wave of voice auditions for Vampire Pixel in the Neon City is now closed, my job in the next couple of days is to sort through this video (I'll literally have it on loop on my other screen) and choose out the voice actors. I'll also be preparing the next wave, including Viking and some civilians.

[Vampire Pixel] Office layout and mise-en-scene

The second scene of Vampire Pixel is set in the team's office. This is a key location in the story and has a lot of opportunity to tell more about the characters through mise-en-scene. I started by looking at influences rooted in a cuber punk setting, I like the idea of the "office" being a mish mash of cluttered paperwork and busy screens, as shown in the image below:

I then proceeded to draw the floor plans, I wanted to stick to a basic block shape and work from there, so I divided the office into two rooms, the general work space, and the security room which contains all the weapons and surveillance monitors behind a secure door. The basic layout looked like this:

With this basic layout in place, I then asked other people what they could imagine being in the office and started to build it up from there. As for my own side of things, I looked at things a standard room would have, such as radiators, first aid, etc. For the rest of the room I wanted it to have an apartment sort of feel, to reflect the amount of time the team spend in it, so I took inspiration from my own flat, as well as our room in the university building, which we rearranged into a working space for several people. To make the team look busy, I added a coffee machine and various fast food boxes around the place to show they don't have the time (or facilities in this particular space) to make food, or even clean up often.

I decided to make Viare spend most of her time in the office area, so to show this, I added a bedsheet and pillow to the sofa, from there she can watch television in the "living area". For Vextor, I added a cat bed in front of the radiator. From personal experience, my cat sleeps at the top of the stairs, above the boiler, so i put Vextor somewhere warm too.

Fan art

I don't normally share fan art on this blog, but I'm overly impressed by this one in particular, it was done by the talented Piranha2021, who has recently discovered my work through Barrels. I always appreciate it when I receive fan art, it always gives me a huge boost of motivation and sometimes that rush of encouragement I need to get back to work!

[Animation] Zoe has something to say

I animated this small segment for a collaberative video with someone, I'll update with more information when the video is posted.

This particular clip emulates the style of Littlest Pet Shop. I enjoyed creating the model from a reference picture and then breaking the style with the demonic face, while still sticking to the drawing style.

**UPDATE**
The video has now been released, I've once again worked with Carlos Moreno (Solrac) on a video, I animated the section at 24 seconds in:

[Drawing] Storyboarding stories story story

In this drawing lesson, I partnered up with my classmate Arron to create a storyboard. The goal of the lesson was to create a series of drawings that told a story. The catch was that we weren't allowed to use living or anthropomorphic characters to communicate the story. There were a few ways to work around this problem and in the end we chose to tell the story through the passage of time. We made a common theme throughout our story, showing the progression of human advancement versus nature.

For the human side of the screen, we showed the development of a city through the ages, starting at cavemen times and ending in a nuclear war in a futuristic city, causing devastation to the land. On the nature side of the story, we showed a tree standing strong throughout the ages while an apple grows. The tree stays strong until the nuclear blast, which causes it to lose it's leaves and finally drop the apple. The storyboards are below, as well as a page of our initial scribblings while we thought up the idea.

[Vampire Pixel] Monitors WIP

To start my animation, I'm working on the most complicated background first. This background if for scene 2 showing the city security. For the monitors, I wanted to do a few composition tests to make the screens look interesting and varied.

[Drawing] Cameos

I've drawn up a few of my course mates and friends to go in the backgrounds of Vampire Pixel. This was a good chance to practice characteristics in the designs as they're based on real people. The first is of my friend Carlos, I'll post more comparisons as I get permission to upload the photo references.

[Vampire Pixel] Vehicle designs

For the vehicles in the Neon City, I decided to take advantage of the futuristic setting and create hover cars.In order to fit in with the art style, I looked at particularly boxy cars, including Chrystlers and Hummers.
I also looked at fictional vehicles that I could gain inspiration from:

Here are some of the vehicles I drew:

[Vampire Pixel] Super Rough animatics - UPDATED

In order to see how the timing works for my animation, I'm making a rough version of the animatic. There isn't much detail in this version, but once I'm happy with a final version, I'll be tidying things up. To help people understand, I've colour coded each character.

[Research] Primary photos

Seeing as the city is a large part of this animation, I decided to get some primary research by taking photos of lights around Leeds. These photos also brought up a few possible features that I didn't think of before, such as fog and light pollution.