Practical ideas

I have been thinking on what I want to do for the practical side of my Context of Practice module. For my extended writing piece I have decided to write about the representation of women in animation. As such, it seemed natural that for my practical piece I should make a short animation featuring a good example of a female character.

The two main hurdles I have come across when thinking of this practical is what the story should be and how one creates a strong character (not literally). For a while I wanted to write my own story for the animation but initially struggled to come up with any good ideas for it. Instead I have decided to adapt another story, as I believe that would provide more synthesis with my extended writing piece. Disney often adapted stories for use in their animated features so I will do the same. Unfortunately this has produced the new issue of deciding which story to use. I could use a story that everyone is familiar with such as Little Red Riding Hood or Snow White but I would prefer to do something more obscure . The story also has to be quite short, as the time constraints of the module means I can only make a 2 minute animation at most.

I need to understand what makes a good female character. I believe that making a good character can be applied to anyone regardless of gender so I should look at examples of good male and female characters in animation. I know that I should definitely avoid stereotypes such as the classic Disney princess and the 'emotionless badass'. Too often I feel that people try to make strong female characters by making them physically strong however I feel this is a cheap way of making strong female characters. It's also important to not make the character too perfect, a strong character has flaws and makes mistakes sometimes as it makes them more relatable, an invincible character is a boring one. These flaws also need to be visually apparent for the animation as I will not have much time to showcase them. I would also like to experiment with different body shapes for the female character. Disney princesses are essentially all the same shape and all have sex appeal. Ideally I would like to make a character with little sex appeal (but not ugly) so that the audience can focus more on her character.

I would like to deviate from my style of drawing for this practical element as I believe it is too simple for what I want to achieve. I would like to draw and animate with more realistic proportions and definitions while maintaining the simple, solid shapes that Adobe Flash does well. This will require me to go out of my comfort zone and improve my art skills drastically. It may be worth my time to attend some life drawing classes and start using more traditional drawing skills.

Game Dev Tycoon

Recently a game has released by the name of 'Game Dev Tycoon'. It is a game in which you must manage a game company, making new engines, new games all while mirroring the history of video games.

What is very interesting about this game is the way it has gotten so much attention. Greenheart Games, the developers that made the game, intentionally released a cracked version of the game to be downloaded for free. Many people downloaded the pirated version thinking it was legitimate, however, halfway through the game, your game company starts losing all it's. money to piracy.

This stunt has has garnered a lot of information by the gaming press, garnering more and more legitimate purchases for the game.

This isn't the first time Indie game companies have used piracy to help get there game out there. The creator of Hotline Miami provided help on fixing the pirated version of his game as he wanted more people to play is his game. This also got him a lot of attention for his game.

Piracy is a big problem in the games industry, especially to indie companies, who really need those game sales the most. So it is interesting to see how these companies take risks with piracy to help advertise there game. It will be intriguing to see how this kind of 'guerrilla marketing' works out for future game companies  and how long it will keep working out for them positively.

Don't stop doodling

In February 2012 I signed up for Tumblr, a popular blogging site. Hearing the horror stories of Tumblr being a massive time sink (they were right) I decided to make a bit of a project of it. I made a decision to post a doodle everyday, all while tracking my process.

It has now been over a year I have managed to post over 450 doodles on the site. I started this project so that it would force me to do some drawing every day. There have been some bumps in the road, I stayed around the day 100 mark for almost 250 days as I lost the drive to continue. However at the start of 2012 I made a new years resolution to 'catch up' on my doodles before I hit day 365 and I manged to fully catch up on day 364.

While it's certainly not the most professional use of a social media site I am still proud of what I have achieved. As someone who tend to drop personal projects due to distractions or work I find it amazing that I have continued to do this for so long. I intend to keep going, I have no idea when I am going to stop. Presumably when I get bored of doodling. Considering I've been doodling my whole life, I sincerely doubt that will be anytime soon! c:

NATA 2013

The Newgrounds Annual Tournament of Animators began again on April the 1st this year. I was very tempted to enter again, I was even more tempted to make it my live brief for the Responsive module but I refrain this year. I believe that I need to focus on my college work this year and entering an intensive animation tournament would affect my work.

The tournament is still in the Novice round and already there are some great pieces of work up. I highly recommend you check it out. NATA was great fun last year , hopefully I will be able to sign up for it next year and hopefully it won't almost kill me like it did last year!

All Animated

On the last day of Summer I attended an All Animated meeting for the Leeds area.

All Animated is a membership and networking organisation for all involved in animation in Yorkshire, the North West and the North East. There were a variety of animation companies and freelancers there such as Tigerprint and Table Top Animation and Fort 4.

It was a great networking experience seeing all of these people's work and commenting on how to get into the industry and what is needed in a showreel etc. I will no doubt attend again to see what else is on offer.

Collaboration

For my Responsive brief i collaborated With Lija Jursins to make backgrounds for my animation. While she was doing all the work it was certainly not a one way street. I put in a lot of work into making sure that I could get what I wanted from these backgrounds very clearly. I made rough version of each background and place them all into a document, providing comments on what style and what needed to be present for each image. I also maintained contact with Lija via Facebook so I was always on hand to clear up anything that was vague or check up on how work was doing.

I also collaborated with  Maxfield Peabody, the person who helped my produce music for my responsive brief. Again, I needed to make sure I showcased what I wanted very clearly, to avoid confusion and make things as smooth and easy a possible. I produce an animatic with example music to show what tone I wanted for the animation. I also made a document breaking down the animation into segments and describing what kind of music should be playing at each point. I regularly kept contact with him, requesting that he send me what he had done so far every couple of days. This ensured that timings would be correct and the tone was fine for the animation.

More and more I am realizing the importance of collaboration in these projects. While I enjoy working on my so nthat I have full control of the project, spiting work between multiple people allows me focus on the most important parts of the work, while also diversifying my work and making look more interesting. I will be most definitely collaborating with people in the third year.

Social Media Citation Guide

While browsing the internet, I came across this table for citing social media sources.

With the internet becoming more and more prevalent over time, I feel that something like this is incredibly useful for me and other students, especially with COP3 coming up soon. It's good to know that quoting  content such as tweets and Youtube videos is a viable way of getting information, as I often frequent these sites. As someone who has essentially phased out TV watching out of there spare time, i'm glad that I can cite these new medias with just as much professionalism as citing a film, book or television show.

Eagletime

The Eagle-Time forums is a community comprised of informal artists, musicians and writers, who migrated from the MSPAFA forums after some changes were made which compromised the community of that previous forum.

As a network is is exceptionally informal, it is used a s a place for friends to chat with each other, play games, make comics and generally have fun. It's a great community that I have been a part of for a long time. While it might not be professional I did find the person who composed the music for my responsive brief here, after I posted for help in the forums.

I originally saw this as a last ditch effort to find a musician and didn't expect anyone would be willing to help. Instead, many people came up to offer help, feedback and encouragement for my work. I just goes to show that you don't have to be completely formal to network and acquire assistance over the internet. I highly recommend making friends over the internet* You never know which ones might be willing to help you out of a bind!

* Though, of course, there are a lot of awful and weird people on the internet too so...look out for that.

Power to the Pixels Exhibition

Before breaking up for Christmas, we as a class arranged a showcase of our Game Art & Machinima work to the public. Prior to the event we advertised it through facebook and created posters that were placed all around the college. We pooled together a collection of money to purchase food and drink for the event and created a showreel showcasing all of the films we had created.

The location for the venue was in a pretty obscure place away from the centre of Leeds. I believe that this was the main problem of the event. A lot of people didn't know how to get to the location, we should of made it more clear on how to get there or held the venue closer to the centre of Leeds. It was also a very cold night, which I believe discouraged some people from showing up for the show.

To be honest, I didn't enjoy the venue at first but I believe that I was biased against it. We had just finished the module which was very stressful and I wanted to relax for a while. Instead we had to network and showcase our work. However as more people turned up and the night went on I felt like the venue got better. It was really nice to see the work we had done shown on walls and projectors, it made me feel a lot more professional.

Harry Partridge tutorials

Over on Huha's secondary channel, Harry Partridge, a talented web animator that I really look up to is creating a tutorial series on how to animate. This is an excellent opportunity to reevaluate my own skills and learn some news ones from someone who is a lot more talented than me!

He has been releasing videos weekly on the channel, getting progressively more detailed and complicated for each tutorial. While the videos focus on Flash, the skills being taught are easily transferable to other means of animation. I would highly recommend watching this series as it is easy to follow, has great advice and is quite amusing.

Huha - Designing Things For Ladies

Around the end of March I chose to take another job for Huha - another sketch for the animated sketch show 'Wobble Box'. I knew there were bigger jobs available but I didn't want to overwhelm myself with this job and college work at the same time.

While I had a tighter deadline for this animation, I also had more free reign to do what I want for it. I was simply given a sound file with no other direction. While the sketch was short I began work as soon as possible. This animation had a lot more detail than my previous one so I knew it would take me a lot longer to produce.

I animated this sketch over the course of a week, I manged to finish it just before the deadline. I didn't get paid for quite a while as I forgot to send an Invoice with my animation. It is important to produce invoices when working freelance, as they act as proof that you have done the work.

My sketch was also shown seperatly as part of Huha's 'Short Shorts' series, which is really nice!

Huha - Mr. Bubble Head

Over Christmas I worked on a part for an animated sketch show called 'Wobble Box'. A number of sketches were put up onto the Facebook group and animators were free to pick which one they would like to do. Since I had some free time over the Christmas Holidays, I decided to do one of these sketches: Mr. Bubble head.

First I created a basic animatic from the script, also using the music provided by Jonti Picking (Weebl). I showed it to the writer of the script and she said it was not the angle she was going for. Since the script was quite basic and I had no storyboard to work on, it is understandable that I interpreted it wrong.

With some more clarification on the script I went back and created a new animatic. This time making it more simple and floating upward instead. When I showed it to the writer she thought this one was a bigger improvement and I got the go ahead to start making it proper.

I had to change some of the bouncing from the animatic to make the character seem more lighter, but overall the animation fit with the animatic. When I sent the animation proper to the writer I also sent an invoice with it to ensure that I could be legally paid.

The sketch in the final composition was edited slightly by Weebl but it largely remained unchanged. About a month later I received my payment for my work, which came to around £150. It's not much but it is really exciting to see that I can monetise my skills like this!

Huha

In November 2012 I saw a tweet By Weebl asking for animators for a project he was doing. At first I thought he was looking for people with professional portfolios so I was hesitant to answer. However after some motivation I decided to email him with some links to my work.

To my surprise he actual replied offering me a job! With pay ranging around £300 per minute of animation. I accepted and soon found myself joined to a facebook group with many other animators. I initially expected a constant stream of projects to be assigned to me. Instead Projects would come up in the facebook group and people would offer to complete these jobs.

All this animation work was for the new Youtube channel HuHa, which is part of Youtube's push to compete with mainstream television. I am really excited to be a part of this and to be gaining money for what I want to do in the future.

USP

When entering the industry, I will be competing with everyone else in 2-D animation. As such it is important that I identify what I am good at and what are my Unique Selling Points.

I intend to go freelance in 2-D web animation when I graduate. As such I will be in competition with thousands of animators across the interent, some of which are only doing it for a hobby. One advantage   have is the connections I have already made. I have done paid work for 'Weebl' who is a very prevalent figure in the online animation industry, through this connection I can also get contact with other famous animators online.

Another USP I potentially have over others is the speed of which  can turn over a project. during my time in the NATA competition I had to create 2-3 minute films in 25 days. This speed will be a good selling point to potential employers.

Bradford Animation Festival 2012

The Prince of Egypt

The Prince of Egypt has been a big influence on my animation, especially in the backgrounds. I really wanted a painterly look for them and to lok all full of sand and dust. I also like the deliberately unrealistic style this film is drawn in, it makes it more memorable and interesting looking

Mocott

I've been looking at Mocott's artwork and I love the simplistic designs of all their characters. As soomeone who is, honestly  speaking, not that good at illustration I have a lot more appreciation to simple designs that look really nice. The combination of photographs and art looks really nice and is something that I would like to experiment with in the future.

the Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec

While looking for inspiration for my main character I came across a french film which features a female adventurer looking for Egyptian treasure, much like mine. This is great as it is perfect reference for my own character, one of the main reasons I chose to make the main character female is too often the role of a main action hero goes to men and not women, which is just a bit boring in my opinion. I am sure to take a lot if inspiration from Adèle Blanc-Sec

Night Light

Night Light from Qing Han on Vimeo.

I watched Qing Han's Night light quite a while a go and loved it, however recently I discovered they have produced a tutorial based on this short film. They explain the step-by step process of creating an animated short from initial design to the final animation. It's always interesting to see how other practitioners work and how it compares to my own work ethic.

William Gibbons

I recently discovered an illustrator and animator William Gibbons who does great work that I really enjoy. He uses colours really well and I love the simplistic designs of his characters. I would love to emulate this style of drawing but i fear tat I am not talented enough. Perhaps one dayI would be able to produce this kind of art for the characters in my own animation.

This Actually Happens a Lot

This Actually Happens A Lot from Tom Law on Vimeo.

This Cal Arts animation by Tom Law is really great and relatable. I particularly like the use of the sketchy and uneven lines. The animation makes use of boiling lines which is what I am using in my own animation, though to a smaller scale. I have chosen to make my animation with no dialogue but it is interesting to see an animation with a lot of dialogue and still work really well.

Oreos

Oreo Wonderfilled Anthem :90 from Martin Allais on Vimeo.

I just watched this truly inspired spot for Oreo's. It's a brilliant advert which genuinely makes me want to re watch it again and again. The music fits very well with the animation, which is something I want to emulate in my own animation I also really enjoy the simple illustrations used.

Nihonbashi Koukashita R Keikaku

Nihonbashi Koukashita R Keikaku from Takuya Hosogane on Vimeo.

I have recently seen this short music video produced by Takuya Hosogane and love it! The animation is gorgous and fits so well with the music. I am a ibg fan of mixing seemingly mundane talks with extraordinary things, which this music video does a lot. Despite an often low frame rate in the scenes it still feels like there is a lot of movement going on, As someone who is working on two's for my animation it would be useful to look into have I can give the illusion of faster movement in a lower frame rate.

Final Crit

The final Crit has been shown and I am very behind on work. To compensate I have been working on two's, keeping colours as simple as possible and leaving out sound effects.  Jess gave some very useful comments that will help.

Ryan - Awesome music, very fitting to the animation. It still seems like there is quite a lot to be done though. Going on the first little bit of animation it looks like the finished result will be very fluid. Although the rest of it was an animatic its nice to see how its coming along and its clear to see what is going on in the story despite it not being properly animated yet. Not sure if its just going to be the music that is already in the animatic or not but maybe it could be an idea to look into using cartoon sound effects for running / mummies groaning ect (The old Scooby Doo sound effects for example) I'm not sure what your transmedia work will be in this project but maybe think about designing a retro movie poster for your animation? Study the old Indiana Jones film posters / Star Wars ect.
So far it looks lovely, I really like the style of the animation (nice simplicity) and the story has a nice twist and is well thought through. Just try to get more of it animated fully if possible!

Music

Originally I had hoped that my Brother would help me produce the music for my animated short. Unfortunately he had to back out of the project due to being too busy. This caused me to panic a little as I didn't have a solid backup plan for music. I had been producing a mix of royalty free music in the event of having no original music for the shot, however this was not ideal.

Luckily while talking with friends over the internet, one of them offered to produce the music for me for free. This is extraordinarily lucky on my part as the deadlines are drawing much closer and I thought my chances of finding anyone willing to produce 150 seconds of music for free in such a short time span was slim. I will be in in constant contact with my new music producer to ensure the music will fit with the shot.

Animatic

Using the storyboard as a guide I have produced an animatic. This took a lot longer than I expected as the animatic had to fulfill three roles. Not only did it need to provide a guide for myself, it also needed to demonstrate the backgrounds needed for Lija, as such I had to redraw all of the shots to make the backgrounds more clearer. I also put up some example music over the animatic so that when I hand it over to the music guy, he has a good idea of what tone I want for each shot.

Storyboards

I have produced a simple storyboard that will help me estimate the timings and camera movements of each shot. I originally started working in the animatic first, however I quickly realised that it would be a lot easier if I created the storyboard first, then produced the animatic. It is important to follow the order than professional practitioners follow as it will prepare me for work outside of college.

Background art

I have decided to collaborate with Lija Jursins to help produce background art for my animation. Background have always been a weakness of mine and I wanted to have decent looking backgrounds for my responsive piece. Often old cartoons would have nice painted looking backgrounds while the characters were animated on cels, that is something that I would like to emulate.

I have offered to help IN lija's filming project in return for the background she is producing for me.

Initial designs

iI ave produced some initial designs for my animation, right now theres are pretty rough but they are a good indicator of what  want for my animation. Hopefully I can expand my drawing style for the final animation, though I may not be able to due to time contraints.