Project 3: Final Animations/ Evaluation.

Here, are my two final and finished scenes from my animation. 

The aim of this project was to showcase my skills in a digital format, showing how well I could manage, produce, and eventually display my work in the from of an animation. 

I began this project a little unsure of what I wanted to produce from it, I knew I wanted something rather cute and different, but I wanted it to stick in people's minds, and this is why I added such a bizarre ending. I started off with the intention of creating everything in Cinema 4D, but soon after discovering After Effects I think I knew which one I preferred. I really enjoyed making assets and in particularly, the little walk cycles and loops of my characters, as I really saw them come to life and it gave them a lot more personality, which is what I wanted to show in my animation. 

I did encounter a few problems whilst animating my work, and one of those was finding my way round Cinema 4D: Although I have a basic knowledge of the program, and enjoy using it, I found it extremely difficult and problematic to speed up my workflow and get my way around the system without constantly needing to ask for help. 

I think if I were to do anything differently, I would have done all of my animation scenes on After Effects, as I feel I got on much better on that program and would have got slightly more work done. But I have really enjoyed this project and would like to finish off this animation later on in the year. 

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. 

Making My Character Board.

When I began making my Character Board, I took into consideration what kinds of images I would want to use. I ended up choosing a few of the more detailed and, therefore, effective images that I had created during the research and development part of my work. I chose a sitting pose to be the main part of my character board, because I would be able to make this image bigger due to her sitting down, and then in turn would allow viewers to see more of her body and face.

I began to recreate this image digitally, using Adobe Illustrator, through the means of a master class introducing the technique of using the pen/line tool. I think this was a very effective way of lining this piece of artwork, because I had complete control in what the lines were doing and in what direction they were doing it, which also made the image look more professional. 

I continued using this process until I had a 
completely lined image, to which I could add
 colour, using the program Paint Too Sai. I have most confidence lining and colouring my artwork using that particular program, but I gave Illustrator a shot as I'd heard many good things about it. I added colour using the simple paint tool, then highlighted shiny areas and created shadows in more dull ones, this made the character look a lot more 3 dimensional and gave her a bit more personality such as mischievousness and loyalty. I also noticed that adding a singular line underneath her, made her look as though she was sitting on an actual object which looked very effective on the finished character board.


I then did the same technique to the other images that I put onto the character images as well. I was able to edit them into digital pieces of art in order to put them onto the character board. I chose images that I had drawn from scratch which

 looked best for the character board.




One of these images was the character "emotions," image. This image fits it's purpose well because it shows ultimate emotions from my character, showing happiness, guiltiness and sadness. I think one downside of this image was that the eyes are not exactly the same shade of blue as my main character, as they are a lot darker, however I still think the image serves it's purpose well.

I also wanted to include images that show the size, structure and sides of my character. I managed to make this model scale which showed all sides and aspects of my character which looked really effective in my opinion. One thing that I would have changed is the colour of the last figure which, for some reason, has become a lot lighter than the rest of the figures. I also noticed that the middle figures' face is a lot bigger than the rest of the figures which makes them look slightly distorted.
However, over all I'm very pleased with how my images turned out and think that the colours and designs were successful and work with the number of backgrounds that i tried them out with. There are some aspects that I feel bring it down and if I had the time I would change them, but overall I am very pleased with how they've turned out.