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Thursday, October 30, 2008

characters


So today's post is all about characters I'm working on. The first 2 drawings are 2 of the 3 characters I'll be using in what I hope to attempt at least a leica reel of an animation short.

This first one is scarfers. who is the little pet of the guy below. He is a furried dragon, which only makes sense in my mind. Essentially the story is in the future, but the characters are supposed to have a medieval touch to them. I know the painting is bad, I did it really quickly, and the drawing/character design of scarfers will probably change by tomorrow, considering how much I changed it today. (why so much purple Kevin???) But at least he's cute. Oh and he's shoulder perching size for your interest.



The second drawings are keyframes I did of Djonar head looking upward. I had wanted to use toonboom for tweening thinking it could do something awesome. I was greatly let down, which is why I doubt I can fully finish my short for the end of this year.

Lastly my character pose sheet. I'm probably gonna story board out that short as my next step, if anything cool comes out of it, I'll drop it up.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Mutant Squirrel

So I finished character posing, but couldn't log into the computers at school, so I won't grab that file til monday, because I'm going home today :D. I'm thinking of starting 1 good short storyboard/segments of animation for fun sometime soon. Probably in flash or toonboom. originally I had an idea using mutant animals, like squirrels (below) and Rhinos, etc.
Wikipedia led me on a wicked tangent, and I think south american animals have become my favorite set. So I might do something with that theme. Anyways enjoy this now useless design.

Monday, October 20, 2008

12 hour power?

This is quite possibly the coolest blog post I will ever do. Why's that you ask? Well this morning I made the stupendous decision of going to school, into the animation room for over 12 hours. Of course I took the occasional break, but I'm pretty sure I pulled at least 12 hours of solid work today. (Something I hope to not have to do again)
Now what are the results of this. Well I am very physically drained, but my spirits have never been higher. 2 animation projects completed to the level of satisfaction I wished for them.
The first one is a real pageturner, probably because it's a page... turning, but then unturning. Ok it's not that cool.



The second vid is the real star. A seaweed, complex, yet sophisticated, with a little surprise at the end that makes the seasoning just right. Oh, and if your one of the people going to be watching this in the class screenings, I expect a thunderous applause by you, and everyone around whom you can inspire. It takes a lot to do these things.


 

The character posing will be posted up whenever I finish all of them, but I decided not to muddle up this post. I'll post up these vids on my youtube account when I get the chance.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Character: What I learned from friends and writing

So instead of accomplishing any work today, I just watched a bunch of movies, and tried to do more posing for Kailo. Although I copied several interesting poses, these attempts didn't really accomplish me anything. Eventually I got some very experienced advice from a friend.

Essentially Kailo is a character with a complete story backing him. And the whole time, I've worked that story to chronologically make sense. So plot twists and other things work out smoothly all the way through. I never really focused all too hard on Kailo as a character though, because he was more of a prop I just moved from scene to scene. I knew about things that happened to him in his life, but I never really focused on his attitude as a self-standing character. This same idea hit me earlier this week in class, when the teacher gave a lesson on good story structure, and explained that all characters need to have a clear objective to motivate them through the story. Which I found almost impossible to nail down with Kailo.

Essentially to complete this posing assignment I needed to be decisive on what my character does. Is he a pirate, a warrior, a baker? When my friend would ask me something like, does he do this or that. I would inevitably end up saying. Yes, he can, but only if the situation called for it. But that really isn't much of a character, if he lets others instigate his actions.
My friend was able to make me realize that I got caught up too much in the character as a plot oriented machine, rather than a living thing.
The best way he described it was. If you were trying to pose Tarzan would you say "oh yes, tarzan, he's a man trying to find out where he really belongs. No of course not, that doesn't explain anything about how he moves or acts."
I went through my entire story again this evening, and looked for every instance Kailo was given a choice, and asked myself, is this consistent to the type of character I want portrayed. Because of the advice I received, I was able to make a few minor changes to the plot, which as a whole make the whole story a lot better, and now I've nailed down Kailo's personality.

Earlier this week, I really wanted him to be upbeat, a pacifist, things like that, which on paper sound like a good person. I realized it was more important for him to progress the story, and be true to himself. I decided on him being a fighter. It doesn't make him bad, as long as he's clonking the right heads. And it's the quirks to how he does this that make him interesting. The form of martial arts he uses, and his wild tendencies from exploring the forests, means his posing can be really unique.
This decision took a while to realize, because in the story, he gives up fighting several times because of other characters persuading him in that direction. I realized it was really his true nature, because if it's something you keep going back to, it's what you really are.

Hopefully this turns out really well. This post was mostly written to help remind me when I revisit this project later this week, but I thought I'd put it online, so I can refer to it in the future if I ever get stuck again. Possibly it can help others in my situation, who have character designs they can't let go of, but don't know what to do with them.

Kailo






This week has been all about extra work for me. starting on the weekend, I've been trying to go to extra life every other day, and I'm working on my extra piece of animation now that my seaweed is finished. This being apparent by the odd fact that I, usually asleep by 10, am somehow still up at 3. But regardless today's post is something much more awesome. So if you scroll back in time through this blog to the beginning of summer, or much earlier if you know me from highschool, I've been working on one character for a long time, revisiting him as I learn more, cause I was never able to make him look like how I felt he should be portrayed. So we got a posing assignment not due for 3 weeks or so, but I'm so driven to do this one cause I'm now using that character. So I'm working out silhouettes, and dynamic anatomy and design. Honestly I want this to be amazing. There is really so much you can learn from silhouetting your character. The third picture really speaks to that, where I did a pose, and then readjusted it to look stronger using the silhouette. I'm really hoping it reads well.
And I should add, that character portrayal has been so hard for me to do. But I've decided I'm going to do all my poses as part of an action sequence, because it's really more of the reaction of a character that shows you their personality. Especially for someone like Kailo, whom I have a whole crazy long story backing his character development.

Oh and I want to start learning to paint with gouache. GL to me on that one, lol.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Animations

These are the animations I should of uploaded last weekend. I have a youtube account that will probably get these kind of updates more frequently ( http://ca.youtube.com/user/Allumen ).  The seaweed for instance now has all 3 strands finished, so I'll upload that and be working on the extra piece soon.

Ball Animations:

Pendulum: World's biggest potato clock