Christmas Holidays - Illustrations!

In my spare time I was able to get down a few ideas I had for some of my own work. 
One of the ideas I put to work was a "Skinned Animal" piece, which I want to make into a series of work that would include a vast amount of different animals.

Here, I have created the drawing of a skinned cow atop of the models head, the eyes are missing, and originally I wanted the model to have the eyes of the animal, (I wanted to do the same with a deer and a wolf) and also took a lot of inspiration from Native American cultures. 

I also went onto using parts of the animal anatomy to create another piece.

The piece I named Octodreads, is aptly named because of the morphing tentacles going into the girls head.

I also went and created a piece that focused more on actually painting my images rather than creating more "airbrushed" looking pieces.

Straight away I found it a lot more challenging, but also more entertaining when it came to coloring. And i also feel as though this would be a step forward in my illustration skills.

Northumberland National Park Competition/ Evaluation.

Northumberland National Park. 

Whilst getting on with my animated short, I was also brought the opportunity to work on a character which would be used in signs and adverts for the Northumberland National Park. This competition was soon ending so I chose to take a few days off the animated short and concentrate on creating this piece ready for the deadline. 

The rules of this competition were that the character has to be a young child, possibly between the ages 5 - 10. I went for around the age of about 7 or 8, as the character would most likely be more independent at that age. 

The character also had to look confident and trust-worthy, as well as outdoors-y and rather adventurous. And I took these rules and put them into characteristics of the drawing. One example of this is her stance, she doesn't have too much of a stereotypically feminine posture, other than her feet turning inwards slightly.

Evaluation.

Creating this piece was a small challenge for me, as well as being something I really enjoyed doing! I took into account my last piece and how airbrushed I thought it was, and decided to go against that completely in this piece. I played around with brushes until I found a thick and contrasting brush setting which allowed me to blend and mould colours together rather than blurring them and taking away any texture. I also really enjoyed the fact I was drawing a little girl rather than a grown woman for a change, as this lead me onto research how a child’s bone structure is on their face, as a lot of children’s faces simply LOOK round and actually aren’t. I also feel as though I chose a rather contrasting colour scheme this time, as opposed to my last piece of personal work, and I think, especially on her face, those colours work really well. I'm rather pleased with how this character turned out, as I don't really focus on drawing children and had to take into account almost everything when I was drawing her. Everything from eye shape, to face shape, to teeth, hair ... everything! But I'm pleased she doesn't look too feminine, and hasn't really been assigned a strong gender role, as this makes her approachable by all ages and genders, and won't appeal to one side more than the other. 

When evaluating this piece, I found a few strengths and weaknesses in my work that I should bring to attention: One of my main strengths in this piece was most definitely my colour and shading, as I felt those aspects were a lot stronger this time around, and they worked well together as both an all-round image and in their individual pieces.  One weakness I found with this image is that although it was to be submitted with just a simple white background, I feel as though I could have done more to this version to make her fit in slightly better with the background, either by just adding a shadow around her feet or back just to make her feel a part of the piece. In the future I think I’ll take this point into consideration when thinking that my image is finished when it may well not be! Even if just adding a shadow, or a source of light could make a big difference to the whole outcome. 

Project 3: Creating my characters and assets for Scene 1.

Creating assets for Scene 1.

I started off this part of the project by creating the most prominent part of the scene: The forest. I knew that I wanted a black background to give off the full potential of the colour scheme that i have applied to this animation, so the trees I have chosen to do are all rather vibrant against a black background. I've also taken into account the fact that these trees themselves need to show depth of the scene and so I have made them slightly darker, the further back they go. 

From my initial plans you can see I have still kept as much detail in the trees as I can, this is to ensure that the animation looks the highest quality I can make it, and gives off a rather professional look to it. 

I have also added spiky looking flicks at the end of these trees, and the reason for this is because I'm aware that these trees wouldn't look at good if they we

I also made some little bits and pieces to go in my forest, as I felt it would just be a bit boring and repetitive if there were JUST trees. 

LoopDeLoop Competition Entry/ Evaluation.

During the week we had a small surprise live brief;
We were asked to take part in a competition, based in Australia, named LoopDeLoop! Which consists of entries from all over the world which are all examples of looped animations. 
We were given the week-long task of designing, creating and animating a small animation Loop to go with a subject, and a sample of chosen music.
There were a set of rules we had to follow in order for our loops to be considered for the competition, and these rules were;

• The animation loop must be 24 frames per second.
• It must be designed and animated to the beats of one of four samples of music chosen by you.
• It must be made and rendered on a green screen-like background (#00FF00.)
• No shadows and the character must have a crisp and clean silhouette.
• All loops must be submitted under the appropriate formats.
• Can be as long as you like, as long at it loops!

The track I chose was very up-beat and quirky, and was my favourite out of all of the songs, and it made the think of a very cute and lovable atmosphere.
 The character that I created to go with this song was a little cat with rather large headphones on. I made the cat look rather techno-like, to match the song choice I made, as well as keeping the colours rather light and "cute" in order to keep up this cheerful appearance.
I made this animation using Adobe AfterEffects, where the character was drawn in a digital program (Paint Tool Sai) and I then put all of the separate drawn pieces into AfterEffects and animated the cat manually through grabbing and moving parts of her body.
Before I did any of this, I had put the track into After Effects first, and then worked out the beats and timings on After Effects' timeline and was able to map out specific parts that my animation would need to move.

Here is my finished, small animation loop;

Evaluation.
I was pleased to have a small break from the big project we were undergoing and doing something small and fresh was a big break for us. I found this project both fun and rather challenging at the same time, as it was my first time using After Effects. I chose something cute and small because I have a lot of experience with that kind of subject, and I chose a very simple design which for me is rather unusual, but I did feel it would help with making the movements of my character a lot smoother and work better all round. If I had to have done anything differently, I would have taken a bit more time ensure that puppet pins and pieces of her body were more intact and running smoothly than on what she looks like. But overall I'm quite pleased with how my animation turned out, I think had I known more about After Effects and also taking to account that the project was only a week long, I could have done slightly more to enhance my animation and make the character do a little bit more with regards to movement.