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. 

Game of Thrones - Gallery Piece.

Last week I got asked if I wanted to put a piece of my work in a local gallery, I was both happy and anxious about this, as I'd never really put on of my pieces up in front of a lot of other people before, that and I had about half a week to do this. 
I decided to go with something that I was really enjoying at the moment and went for something Game of Thrones related.
Daenerys is my favourite character from it so, naturally, I went on to do this piece of her. Although I've seen a lot of artwork simply depicting her naked, I wanted to do something actually relevant to her story so I drew her as her title, "The Mother of Dragons."
The Piece stayed up for about 3 weeks and I had someone contact me asking if they could have it, and although I had already promised this piece to someone else. I was able to print off another and give out that one instead!




 UPDATE: 10th April 2014                               







I went back to this piece last week and made some small changes to the text and her shading, as I felt that towards the end of this piece, I rushed it in order to meet a deadline . This final piece puts my mind to rest and I'm now fully happy with the outcome!

Project 3: Week 4 Plan - 25/11/13

Project 3: Digital Skills Application.

For this project I have been given the task of showcasing my digital skills by making an animated short, along with any other digital work that I feel shows my skills to their full potential. 

Monday, 25th of November:

This week I will be going back to my main project and to the beginning stages of creating the artwork for my animation. I will begin by doing this scene by scene, creating the characters, walk cycles and scenery that's needed. 

Days:	Monday 25th	Tuesday  26th	Wednesday 27th	Thursday 28th	Friday  29th	Saturday 30th	Sunday 1st
Work to Complete	Start sketches of characters in new walk cycles, and frames. SCENE 1	Continue with drawing up characters and put them into digital format. SCENE 1	Finish off digital images and walk cycles of characters SCENE 1	Start drawing up scenery in sketches  SCENE 1	CAD session  - keep blog up to date.	Documentation.   + Hand in to LoopDeLoop	Reflection

Siaman Chow - Art.

Art.























This GIF, or loop cycle animation has been created by Saiman Chow. I was drawn to this piece in particular because of the style it was done in, It differs from the rest of the animations I have researched because of the fact it looks thoroughly sketchy and hand drawn.This image only lasts for a few seconds, but it is very clear to make out what happens during those few seconds. The face of a man, presumed to be Siaman himself? slowly starts to deteriorate and eventually turns into a skull, and for some reason I get a glimpse of the diamond skull associated with Damien Hirst.
 It also focuses on the aspect of deterioration, an aspect which is highly relevant to my project at the moment. There is constant movement in the loop, so t is easy to pass off any irregularities as part of the animation, which is a simple but effective aspect to use. I love how the film is rather gritty, but still moves in a flowing motion and doesn't have any particular jump or skips in the sequence. Chow also manages to cross realism with fantasy, as he is able to make parts of the face vanish, instead of dropping off or crumbling away, this applies mostly to the glasses on his and ears, which i think works rather well. However, if I were to criticize the animation in anyway, the only change i would make, personally, would be to make the image have more gore like features as the face slowly vanishes into the skull, particularly from the nose and eyes.

Gaining Recognition!

Through the summer and autumn I found a number of opportunities and chances to get my Artwork seen more around the area, as well as promote the more untraditional element found in my Art; 

June 20th 2013;
I was approached, online, by a local journalist Mel Miller, who was creating a piece of online written work, concerning the local Artist work in Berwick and the surrounding area, "Berwick and District Art Space," or BADAS as it has come to be known.
I felt rather shocked that someone was interested in my work, as I consider myself to be on the lower end of the scale when it comes to talent in my local area. However when I spoke to Mel she was very interested in how I create my work and the processes and tool that I use to complete them. As digital art isn't something that I consider to be widely known about or appreciated in a fairly isolated town in the Borders. She described the work that goes into digital art really well, and made it very clear for readers who may not have a single clue about  what digital art is. 
The link to the online article is Here, where she has featured two wonderful local artists who use a more traditional, but altogether unique means of practice, who I was honoured to have shared a space with on her article.
Two of my pieces that were featured in the article were ;

"Nebula Elf."                                                                               "Arwen Undomiel."

Although I consider these pieces to be old, and I have improved on my actual digital painting skills since then, at the time I was most proud of these two, and relieved very kind words from a collection of people.

Project 3: Week 3 Reflections.

Week 3 Reflections. 

Days:	Monday 18th	Tuesday  19th	Wednesday 20th	Thursday 21st	Friday  22nd	Saturday 23rd	Sunday 24th
Work to Complete	Listen to the music provided by LoopDe Loop.	Begin drawing up a character in college and digitally at home.	Finish digital drawing of character.	Begin animating character  on After Effects.  Look into puppet pins!	CAD session  - keep blog up to date.	Documentation.   + Hand in to LoopDeLoop	Reflection

This week I took part in a smaller project, separate to my main project, and created a small looped animation for a competition. 

Monday 18th November: I listened to and chose which piece of music I wanted to use for my animation. 

Tuesday 19th November: Drew up a character straight away which was a little cat with headphones on. A pretty simple character which will be easy enough to animate.

Wednesday 20th November: Finished up a digital drawing of my character with separate body parts that I could track to the body and move with the music.

Thursday 21st November: Began animating my character in separate pieces, with the body first, and was also able to make the character blink and smile at certain points.

Friday 22nd November: CAD session and filled in blog!

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.