#18 Take'n a look at the artwork in short films

No doubt about it, this is the longest post I've made. So getting right down to it...

 There's a Man in the Woods by Jacob Streilein

This animation is about a teacher is driven to insanity after a kid starts a rumor in his classroom.

      This is one of my favorite short films because of the way the story is told and how the art is used to complement the story. There's a lot of cool colors used throughout the beginning of the film, but as it progresses and the man is driven to insanity, we get to see more hot colors. Normally, people just use blues and greens to show a sad emotion. Technically, the man is sad all throughout the film, but Streilein decided to bring reds and oranges near the end to highlight his anger. I thought that was a really smart choice, something that I don't think anyone could come up with.

     These colors are also very saturated, probably because they're flashbacks, memories of the man when he was a teacher. The saturated colors go away when the man is shown in the present, but they come back when the warm colors come into his troubled life. I think that's because those scenes don't represent the real world anymore, but more of the fantasy stuff going on in his brain.

     The picture above represents the type of colors that were used when the man was in the present. It feels more monochromatic and boring. Also, lines are used pretty normally to outline objects. I think this type of art style was perfect for the story, because I feel like it'd look too weird if it looked any more realistic. Blurring around the edges was commonly used, along with manipulations in value to focus right on the man.

   I think it's important to note that the kid above this text is the only kid in the school with black colors. The other kids all have a blue/purple-ish design. I think Streilein did this to fade the kids into the cool-colored background, which would've essentially driven the kid with the yellow shirt and black hair into the foreground, putting all the attention on him.

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 Jamón by Iria Lopez

This is about a baby pig who feels different in a human family, so he sets off on a journey to find out who he is.

      What I liked most about this film is how most shots used are close ups. Only under really suspenseful times did the shot turn into a wide, establishing shot. That's what I'm focusing on, since that's where the art really stands out.

     The art is really confusing sometimes, because it doesn't follow a set of clear rules. Outlines around objects appear every once in a while and then they don't. Colors are used in geometric shapes here and there, and they're usually very washed out. They also usually don't fill in the lines. It's like a person lazily colored everything, but that's not a bad thing. It's what makes the film look like a children's Saturday morning cartoon, which it ends up quickly derailing itself from by a particularly bloody third act.

     I like how the perspective becomes really skewed at times. It only adds to the feel of a children's show. I like this film, because it doesn't have great artwork. The drawings remain simple, but the story, sound design, and music lures you into the world of the pig. And you end up buying into the story.

 

     The picture above is when the story takes a dramatic turn for the more realistic. Before, you thought the pig was only there as a metaphor to show how someone feels different from others in life. But then, the creator decided to say no, this pig is actually living in our world, and his family is trying to protect him from getting eaten. That's a funny idea to me.
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My versions for...

-There's a man in the woods:

     I wish I would've been able to add more texture to materials, because I feel like that's what it's missing. I also put too much blurry shading. It makes everything look sloppy. My bad...

     I like the colors though. That much, I feel like I got right. At least a little bit.  I wish I had focused more on the design of the characters and setting when I was studying the art, not on color and composition.

-Jamón:

   I laughed to myself when I finished this, because it actually looks a little like it's part of the film. That childlike aspect of it is easy to copy, I guess. It's easier to just put geometric shapes and color in a canvas very loosely than having to set a very complex tone with very specific artwork, like in There's a man in the woods. 

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As I said in the beginning of the post, this is the most I've written than any other week. There's not much art that was made on my part, but I really think I'm learning about people's art style. More than the time I was focusing on people's animation style.

#17 Season 4 of learning PS: New Year Yayyy

Well guys, it's been a while. It might have been apparent, but I didn't end up working on the 11 second animation. Due to having to keep on schedule, I won't be making any posts about it until I finish it on my own time. And don't expect that to be happening anytime soon. Sorry...

Over the coming weeks, I will go back to what I was doing during the second season of this blog (I think we're currently on the fourth season. I'm making this up as I go...) That is: finding new styles. It won't have to do with animation though. This time, it'll have to do with art directly. I wish I could've studied art styles first and then gone into animation, but I wasn't smart enough to think about that. The goal of this is to find an art style for me that looks good/original and is quick to animate.

Like last time, I'll put some short animated films here. Instead of three, I'll put five, because I'm not going to have to study animation. Mostly, I'll be looking at the backgrounds of the short films. I'm looking for simplicity, since I'm only one person here and I want to be able to tell stories in a fast and effective way.

Here they are:

Jamón by Iria Lopez

There's a Man in the Woods by Jacob Streilein

Derailed by Yon Hui

Hoof It by Seth Boyden

Swelter by Jacob Streilein



I also had time to make a gif this week...

12fps

I tried to make it all watercolor-looking by putting very washed out colors.

#16 Mid-Term Animation

For my mid-term, I had to choose an animation that had already been made to copy. The one I chose was this one. It's from The Emperor's New Groove.

My rendition of the animation.

I had two hours to do it, but I couldn't finish it on time. When I came back to school this year, I ended up adding a few more inbetweens in another hour. It came out better than I expected. I think it's easier to copy someone's animation than someone's painting. Animation basically only uses moving lines while paintings use color, texture, and really fine detail, so I guess that's why.

#15 Too many characters

Everything's moving sort of fast now. I realized that I only have a week to complete this, and I haven't even finished designing the characters. I might have to do it outside of school. Nevertheless, I'm changing the type of hair the girl has to number three (refer to the last post if you don't understand). That way, not a lot of focus can be put on animating the follow through in the hair.

The proportion/reference lines I will come back to while animating.

Added clothes and color (even though I'm not going to use color for the final animation). She's very tomboy-ish looking. Just for fun and testing some color theory, I put color. I made her clothes very unsaturated so her skin colors could pop out. It looks alright.

It's the end of the week. I think I'm going to finish this outside of school, but I won't make a post about it. That'll have to wait until next year. Now that I think about it, I probably won't post next week. If that's the case, have some fun holidays people.

#14 Character Design & Story

The sound clip came out on the 11 second club website! You can go to it here, or you can read the transcript here:

Voice One: "I don't need to settle down. Tell him! Saul, tell him."
Voice Two: "Carrie... you're not yourself."
Voice One: "Of course I am!"

So by the sound of this, Carrie is Voice One. There's a Saul and a "him" in the scene, and one of those two is behind Voice Two. So three characters will be in the setting, but I'll only have to really animate two of them.  Also, I didn't post anything last week, because I forgot there there was a break for Thanksgiving. I say that to excuse myself for not having the character designs made yet. I'll need to that now...
  

Side note:I was being stupid and saving on jpg. 

I'm now using png.

Without focusing on the story going on in the sound clip, I made the designs for the faces of the characters (this is going to be Carrie). I started out with number one, and I kept refining the construction/proportion lines to find a good model for some 30-year old looking people. Number 6 is when I stopped, deciding it was good enough.

Because I'm stupid, I spent an insane amount of time planning how her hair would look. Going from left to right and top to bottom, I chose number six. Carrie sounds like one of those last century girls that feels she needs to look pretty to get a good husband. Thus, attractive, flowing hair would fit her perfectly.
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OK, I feel like I need to get a rough story people can follow before I go any further. The story is the driving force behind everything, including character designs, so I need to get that on lock-down. I got so caught up making Carrie's Design, I forgot why I was even doing it.

Really quickly, I've come up with the idea that Saul is Carrie's significant other. He has been diagnosed with some sort of disease that turned him into a really depressed dude (how I'm picturing him is sitting on a wheelchair, not talking, not moving, looking down at the floor. Expressionless throughout the whole scene). And this third guy, "him", is Saul's friend. They are all at the hospital where Saul has just been released from. Carrie and Saul's friend have just been told by the doctor that Saul won't get better. This is how they're handling it.

That's it. I ran outta time. I've got to get faster with this planning stuff. 

Until next week!

#13 Title Not Found

I didn't have time to do much this week. With no idea of what I'll do for my long video, I just decided to make another gif...

It's not that great, but it gave me time to think about what I'll do.

I noticed that I suck at animating faces. If you look at the gif above, you'll notice that the face goes all over the place. I want to get better at that. And also, what I suck at the most is at making someone talk (You haven't seen my attempts. They're bad).

Now, a website that I frequent gives animators a small audio clip to animate. It's a monthly challenge where the winner gets the chance to have his/her animation critiqued by a person currently working in the animation industry. I'm probably not going to win since there's people way better than me that enter the competition, but I'm still going to try. It'll give me a chance to see how sounds work in PS and (more importantly) how to animate faces without making them jump around.

As for how I'll go about it, I decided to wait until this month's competition ends so I can start at the beginning of the next one. Next week, I'll create two character models in anticipation of the next voice clip. I'll make a funny and a serious looking character whose genders could easily be reversed for conveniences' sake. If I have extra time, I'll learn how to import sound and make it work in PS. I have yet to look at how that works.

That's it for this week. As a goodbye, here's the sketch I started out with to figure out what my gif would be about.

:D

#12 Are we humans... or are we flamingos?

Tadaa!

I learned this, from my last study:

I'm posting this first so that it'll appear as the thumbnail for people following me. Nobody's following me, but it's good to plan ahead. I like looking professional, haha. 

Anyway, first comes the planning talk...

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My Model Sheet.

 

I figured out the guy's anatomy under the cape. And to see how expressive his figure is, I tried to simplify him,  his name being Elodie, to the point where he's just two shapes. I think it looks pretty good.  I forgot that I wasn't going to use color, so there's no need to worry about this guy looking like Harry Potter. Now, I have to make the Ostrich's Model Sheet. The design of these two need to look connected somehow.

This was really quickly made, so it's not worthy of looking all professional. His glasses were originally supposed to fall off when he transformed, but this is better. His cane is the only thing that falls, which I think to be rather fitting for him.
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So that's all I wrote for the last step of planning. The next part is the animation talk.

This is going to sound crazy, but listen... I like it! My plan for just focusing on what I wanted to learn worked!

 I decided to make it super simple, so I could focus on just the transformation. The things I didn't like was how 2d it ended up looking (because it was just a boring side view), the choppiness of the flamingo, and the rough lines. The rough lines was a dumb mistake. I left the brush as a pencil tool thinking I was going to fill in the animation with color later, even though I said I wouldn't be doing that. The paint brush would have left a smoother line. But gladly, the rest was just extra stuff I didn't really want to pay attention on.

I'm just glad the transformation looks awesome! I would've liked to add more frames so everything could look smoother. But I think I did a good enough job to pat myself on the back. I understand now that, when morphing things, you just have to know where everything begins and where it's going to end up. If you know that, the inbetweening will be a piece of cake!
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*Cue: Human by The Killers*

And that, ladies and gentlemen, marks the end of the second season of this blog! Sadly,  this is the last study I will make for a while.

Anyway, next week I'm going to start planning for my first short film, which will be made exclusively in Photoshop (and probably edited together in Premiere, which I already have some knowledge on... So it's all good there...). It will be from thirty to sixty seconds long, and it will be amazing. I have no idea what it's going to be about, but just know that it will rock your socks off.

This post has gone on for far too long. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. I will stop... now.