WEEK 8 SUMMARY

This week was the final week of unit BA1a. Finished Character Design and Character Research.

CHARACTER DESIGN
For character design, this final week was simultaneously easy to get through, and very difficult to get through. I did manage to get everything done, and the easy part about that is that I already had the bulk of the work done, this week was just finishing it. The difficult part of it was the overwhelming sense of “what if it’s wrong” that I had a couple of times. I realise in past blog entries I mention the development of not being afraid of failure, but this seemed too big to not be intimidated of at times. But I did manage to get there in the end, thank goodness. The walk cycle had arms added, and the head was fixed too. Turnaround finished up with some slight adjustments to keep consistency, and then that was it. I’m glad I kept on top of it the way I did, making sure to keep an appropriate balance between work and personal time. Definitely going to apply that to my next projects. Nothing really to improve on this week, since I’m at the end of everything and trying to apply what I’d previously said I’d improve on. 

CHARACTER RESEARCH
And the essay is done! I sent off my first draft to our lecturer for feedback, got some back, and managed to fix it up relatively quickly! This helped me in a HUGE way; since I was told that once the changes were made I needn’t send it back, I knew that I could rest easy (relatively speaking) after the recommended changes were amended. I’m ultimately glad that I did the essay in the end; those types of research skills will (probably) come in handy in the future. It also helped me with getting to know characters in a deeper way. Learning every little thing matters is something I really respect, and want to be able to put into my own projects and characters in future. I think the only thing I’d change about the process of making this is go QUICKER. 8 weeks was a good amount of time, but for a few of those weeks, the essay felt more like an afterthought or something that wasn’t AS important, thus taking longer. I want to be able to have essays up front next time, alongside my actual animation tasks. 

FINAL THOUGHTS / SUMMARY OF BA1a
Overall, I feel this unit went VERY well! I feel proud of everything I've made, and all the knowledge I've gained is all vital and important not just for future projects, but for my animation career in general. Learning all the principles, different exercises and character fundamentals in terms of both visual design and as functional characters was all so interesting and honestly enjoyable! I can't wait for the next project!

DYNAMICS - MASTERPOST

ALL SESSIONS

PENDULUM SWINGS

BOUNCING BALL

SECONDARY ACTION

WALK CYCLE

ITERATION

ANTICIPATION AND FOLLOW THROUGH (JUMPS)

DYNAMIC EXERCISE INTRODUCTION

DYNAMIC EXERCISE TESTING & TIMING

FINISHED DYNAMIC EXERCISE

CHARACTER DESIGN - MASTERPOST

ALL SESSIONS

INTRODUCTION

CAST ANALYSIS

CAST DESIGN

OUR CAST

PHOTOSHOP FILES

TVPAINT FILES

CHARACTER INFLUENCES AND BIOS

CHARACTER ESSAY - FULL BIBLIOGRAPHY

Publishing all my sources, used or not, from my essay. Just in case.

Box Office Mojo (2018) Lego Movies at the Box Office – Box Office Mojo, available at https://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=lego.htm (accessed at November 6, 2018)

Farshtey, G (2013), LEGO Minifigure: Year By Year A Visual History. London: Dorling Kindersley Limited

Kdlmd243 (2010) LEGO: The Adventures of Clutch Powers Trailer, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBROpeHvel0 (accessed: October 21, 2018)

LEGO: The Adventures of Clutch Powers (2010) directed by H. Baker [Film] Universal City, Calif.: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

The LEGO Batman Movie (2017) directed by C. McKay [Blu-Ray], Los Angeles, Calif.: Warner Bros. Inc.

LEGOClubTV (2012) The LEGO® Story, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdDU_BBJW9Y (accessed at November 6, 2018)

The LEGO Group (2018) Hard Hat Emmet – LEGO Minifigures – Characters and Minifigures – LEGO.com US, available at https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/minifigures/characters/hard-hat-emmet-28dfc1f274b048938f908ae73fdc1ab6 (accessed at October 13, 2018)

The LEGO Group (2016) The LEGO Brand – Martin Vang Sandgaard Jensen, The LEGO Group, 2018, available at https://www.lego.com/en-gb/aboutus/lego-group/the_lego_brand (accessed at November 12, 2018)

The LEGO Movie (2014) directed by C. Miller and P. Lord [Blu-Ray], Los Angeles, Calif.: Warner Bros. Inc.

The LEGO Ninjago Movie (2017) directed by C. Bean, P. Fisher and B. Logan [Film], Los Angeles, Calif.: Warner Bros. Inc.

Martell, N (2011), Standing Small: A Celebration of 30 Years of the LEGO Minifigure. London: Dorling Kindersley Limited

Miller-Zarneke, T (2017) The LEGO® Batman Movie: the Making of the Movie. London: Dorling Kindersley Limited

Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitsu (2011 – present) directed by M. Hegner AND J. Murphy [TV Series] Billund, Denmark: The LEGO Group

Warner Bros. Pictures (2016) The LEGO Batman Movie – Comic-Con Trailer [HD], available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMdQXYQ_MD8 (accessed: October 21, 2018)

Warner Bros. Pictures (2013) The LEGO® Movie – Official Teaser Trailer [HD], available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPnY2NjSjrg (accessed: October 21, 2018)

Warner Bros. Pictures (2015) The LEGO Movie – “Creating the Bricks” [HD], available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po0dmHhgsxU (accessed at November 6, 2018)

Warner Bros. Pictures (2018) The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part – Official Teaser Trailer [HD], available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZSYYiATFTI (accessed: October 13, 2018)

Warner Bros. Pictures (2017) The LEGO NINJAGO Movie – Trailer 1 [HD], available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZSYYiATFTI (accessed: October 21, 2018)

Vox (2017) How fan films shaped The Lego Movie, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVe5XPU10Zc (accessed: November 6, 2018)

All alphabetised and checked.

WEEK 7 SUMMARY

WEEK START - 5th of November

WEEK END - 12th of November

This week was mainly focused around TVPaint animations for our characters, and finetuning details of the essay.

MONDAY

Monday was when we started the animated turnaround of our chosen character. There were a few ways to go about it, including using the previously drawn turnaround. I decided to go from scratch for the turnaround itself, but using my sketchbook and digitally converted cast model as my references.

For more on this session, see this post.

WEDNESDAY

There was a group session held to catch up with our lecturer on our essays, seeing how we're getting on and as an opportunity to ask questions. This was quite helpful for me; while I had my plan and ideas in place, saying them out loud to the person most knowledgeable about what we're meant to be doing helped to validate everything. I was a lot more confident in what I was doing from that point onwards, and knew I was on the right track.

I'm going to email her my draft as soon as it's 100% complete, and hopefully get some feedback to improve it and call it "finished".

THURSDAY
Thursday was when people moved onto the walk cycle for their character, also done in TVPaint. I went straight ahead with trial and error methodologies, trying out a couple of ways to achieve the feel I wanted. The walk had to show the weight of the character, and it was quite tricky to do so. Eventually, after some guidance from lecturers and tutors, I managed to get a walk cycle I was happy with!

For more on this session, see this post.



SUMMARY
In short, this week was a lot more difficult than the others I've had so far. The TVPaint turnaround and walkcycles were more fidgety and tricky to work with than I originally thought they'd be. I put some of that onto TVPaint, but mostly inexperience with it was my downfall here. I've been so used to Adobe Animate and it's more forgiving nature, but TVPaint is more for the people who make more art-heavy animations, as opposed to my preferred cartoony, fun styles. I'm probably just going to have to learn to get used to it over time. Either that or I can try and work in Animate in future? We'll see.

The essay is starting to reach the end, and this week put my confidence and drive for it up by a significant amount. I have my sources gathered up and put into a separate bibliography (unalphabetised and unlinked to the essay at this point; will append when essay is 100% ready to go). I might try and find a few more sources though, just to make sure everything I'm trying to say is right and can't be contradicted by anything. I'm using the basic skeleton of my plan from this post, but maybe with a few more sources thrown in? All I know is, this time next week the essay will be done.

DYNAMIC EXERCISE - FINAL ANIMATION

The Dynamic Exercise is done!

Last time (see this post), I had finished timing the exercise and started working on my inbetweens to make the animation run completely smoothly without any need for held frames or awkward timings.

The inbetweens were definitely the most labour-heavy section of this task. I had more inbetweens to do than keyframes (to be expected), but they took a lot longer than originally anticipated. At times I had to check my sheets of references and timings to make sure I wasn't doing too much, only to find out I had only just hit the halfway mark between to keyframes.

But once the inbetweens were done, I immediately went to linetest. And it came out really well! I tinkered a little bit with some held frames, but it just didn't work. With each frame being hand drawn over and over, it created a, for lack of a better term, sizzle. The lines were a little jaggedy, and it gave off a style I really liked. But when frames were held, it stuck out because the sizzle wasn't there. Because I wanted the animation to look good visually and stay consistent, I opted out of holding frames.

As mentioned in my previous post, I was thinking of changing the framerate from 24fps to 12fps. I did eventually go with that, since 24fps made everything so quick that it was difficult to read what was happening onscreen. But when I changed to 12fps, the animation ran incredibly smooth, and made it more obvious what was going on!

So here's the final animation!

I would change a couple of things for sure, if given the right amount of time. I would clean it up a lot more, going over with an ink pen to bolden the lines. The net also has a little bit of a fluctuation to it, where the right side goes in and out a little bit. It's only really noticeable if you're only focusing on the net, but if my animation was successful, then the net shouldn't be the focus point. But overall, very happy with this animation! It achieved the look and feel I was looking for. It blends my cartoony, more self taught art style with professional taught techniques, and I think they work very well together!

CHARACTER RESEARCH - ESSAY PLAN

Just a quick post to show my initial plan for my essay's question, structure and points, with sources to pair with them where I can add them.

QUESTION
DOES EMMET FROM THE LEGO MOVIE REPRESENT THE LEGO BRAND AND PRODUCT FAITHFULLY?

I feel quite confident in my chosen question, in that I feel familiar enough with the source material, and what it's based on, very well. This will involve looking at the history of the LEGO Group, their beliefs, and also looking at Emmet and how he acts throughout the film. Do the two meet in some kind of middle ground? Is there overlap? Does Emmet take some matters differently? All things worthy to think about.

INTRO
Introducing the movie, character and question. Just to give a bit of context to the film, so that the reader and I are on the same page as soon as the essay starts.

PARAGRAPH 1 - METAPHORICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE BRAND'S BELIEFS
This is mainly going to be driven by the characters personalities and actions in the film. Mostly going to discuss how Emmet goes from a regular construction worker who follows the instructions, doesn't disobey commands, etc., to becoming the prophesised hero. The person he becomes is representative of LEGO's belief of not having just one way to go with what you make or imagine, being able to build whatever you want.

Sources to use - "The LEGO Story", an official abridged telling of the LEGO Group and product's history. 

PARAGRAPH 2 - ACCURATE PORTRAYAL OF THE PRODUCT
Talking about how Emmet's movement don't exceed any of the actual limitations of the actual LEGO Minifigure; arms can only swivel around at the shoulder but can't go out, no bending knees, no tilting head, etc. 

Sources to use - "Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitsu", an animated LEGO TV show which features LEGO Minifigure characters flexing and moving in ways actual minifigures can't.

PARAGRAPH 3 - CHARACTER DESIGN
Talking about how Emmet actually looks. He's a construction worker dressed in orange and blue, with a yellow face and brown hair. His looks is almost like a blueprint for other construction workers with very little variation, so it could be worth talking about how his visual design fits into the storytelling. The fact that he looks like everyone else is a big part of his journey.

Sources to use - the film itself

PARAGRAPH 4 - REALISM VS REALISTIC
Talking about something looking "real enough" vs "photo-realistic". Almost like the two main points bordering the uncanny valley. The LEGO Movie is photorealistic, going as far as to scan in real LEGO elements and create new software for adding smudges and scratches.

Sources to use - "The LEGO Movie - Creating the Bricks", and online featurette published by Warner Bros., showcasing interviews with the directors and other crew members as to how the film was made and animated.

PARAGRAPH 5 - ON THE OTHER HAND (COMPARISON / ANTITHESIS)
Making sure I can display both sides of the argument. Comparing it to a somewhat similar film, LEGO: The Adventures of Clutch Powers. Both are LEGO feature length films, starring a minifigure living in a large LEGO City, who at some point showcase skills in building pseudo-professionally. Both use different animation styles, and even handle the source material differently.

Sources to use - "LEGO: The Adventures of Clutch Powers", LEGO's first attempt at a film starring minifigure characters, and the theme of building & imagination.

PARAGRAPH 6 - WHO CHARACTERS REPRESENT
Emmet embodies the ideals of the kid imagining the entire plot of The LEGO Movie, Finn. Meanwhile the antagonist, Lord Business, represents Finn's dad who demands rule following and perfection. Emmet, and by extension Finn, demonstrate core beliefs of imagination overcoming everything else when it comes to LEGO, instead of just sitting on a table not doing anything.

Sources to use - The LEGO Group's official list of values, specifically relating to imagination.

CONCLUSION
The end point, where I wrap it all up. Don't introduce new arguments or points, just summarise what I thought about the case presented, and then give my final thought.


Initial plan right now, things can change though. Paragraph subjects, sources, ordering is all game for editing.

CHARACTER DESIGN - TVPAINT FILES

This was the main session focusing on our actual animations for our chosen characters. The animations we had to make were the remaining two bullet points from this post, those being:

• ANIMATED WALK CYCLE
• ANIMATED TURNAROUND

We used TVPaint for these animations; we had done a tutorial in the program a week prior, but I still wasn't too used to it. My forte when it comes to digital animation is Adobe Animate, so TVPaint had a steep learning curve. The two work very differently, from small things like shortcuts & hotkeys, to how line smoothing works and TVPaint's pixelated format vs Animate's vector based format.

(TVPaint's new file interface - credit: TVPaint Development website)

I decided to tackle the turnaround first, since it seemed like a pretty good stepping on point after learning the basics. Going from the basics straight to a walk cycle seemed daunting, so taking smaller steps and getting to know the program more was important to me and how I work.

I used both my original A3 sketches and my Photoshop files to get my reference for C2, my chosen character, and how they'd look from different angles. The main difference between the animated turnaround and the model sheet, apart from that one moves, is that the model sheet only requires four drawings. In total, C2's animated turnaround took 8; one front, one back, two sides, and four angled. I did 2 or 3 rough sketches for the turnaround, each with a varying amount of detail before moving onto the most "clean" lineart layer. They were all coloured using the paint bucket tool, making sure to set it on a layer below the lineart, and having the source for colouring being the layer above.

Once I finished my turnaround, I showed it Jon (our lecturer) for feedback and criticism. While it was good, I had some adjustments to make to make sure everything stayed in scale correctly. The fingers and jaw moved a little bit throughout the turnaround, looking like they'd bob up and down when nothing else was. Apart from that, I apparently achieved a good sense of space and shape. With the feedback I recieved, I fixed up C2's turnaround to something I'm really happy with!

To top it all off, I added a little bit of lighting. Nothing extravagant, just some block shading using the same colour as C2's cast model shading.

The next task was the walk cycle. I've found walk cycles quite difficult in the past, but I kept my confidence up when approaching this instead of keeping potential failure in mind. 

I approached the walk cycle with a different plan in mind than what I originally drew on A3; instead of larger strides, I wanted smaller but more powerful steps, to show the weight of the character. To do this, it meant my guide had to have the exaggeration toned down, and having the movements seem closer together. The legs staying the same shape was a little tricky at times, especially with the top of the foot shifting positions sometimes. When I had completed the full 2 steps, something looked... off. I couldn't put my finger on what it was, so I asked for some help from Millie, a guest lecturer. She pointed out that the weight distribution was uneven, where it looked like C2 was limping. Also, the head bobbing didn't quite look right when going through the low stage of the cycle.

This feedback helped me to clean up the walk cycle to a point that I was happy with it. It took a lot of trial and error to get the limp and head bobbing to resolve themselves, but eventually I got there.

The final step was to add arms. I mainly focused on the one arm facing the "camera", and then worried about the other one when I finished the main one; after all, I could just use the front one as a reference of sorts. It was difficult matching the arm to be in the same believable position every frame, since I initially drew it as if the body was static. However, it was using the transform tool that helped me get a better look. Once the arm was how I liked it, I finished up the walk cycle by mirroring the arm to create the second, lesser seen back arm.

The main theme throughout these tasks was "overcoming difficulties". I'd never had someone to guide me with animations before really, and this was the first time someone helped me go in depth with what could be fixed up and improved with my animations. It proved to be VERY helpful, and honestly not as scary as my mind had made it up to be. Definitely going to be asking for professional feedback from lecturers as much as possible in future!

WEEK 6 SUMMARY

WEEK START - 29th of October

WEEK END - 4th of November

This week was focused on our casts that we designed, and translating them from pencil & paper to the digital space. We also had a lecture on Harvard Referencing (didn't get a post of it's own, but I'll sum it up here.)

MONDAY

On Monday, we made a sheet consisting of four panels relating to our cast:

• CAST LINEUP
• CHARACTER MODEL SHEET
• CHARACTER DESIGN SHEET
• CHARACTER WALK CYCLE

For more on this session, see this post.

TUESDAY

In place of a regular lecture, we were looking at how to correctly utilise Harvard Referencing for our character essay. In this session, we learnt how to properly cite and reference the following formats:

• Books
• E-Books
• Films
• Commentaries
• Reissued Films
• Webpages
• YouTube Videos
• Newspaper Articles

Aside from those, we also learnt the proper rules and regulations when it comes to quoting & paraphrasing. There was a talk on plagiarism, and how to avoid doing it, by accident or not. Punctuation, common knowledge and different source types (primary & secondary) were also brought up.

THURSDAY

This session was the start of our Photoshop conversion of the physical sketches. For Photoshop, we had to remake:

• CAST MODEL SHEET
• CHARACTER MODEL SHEET
• CHARACTER DESIGN SHEET

For the full writeup of this session, see this post.

SUMMARY

In general, I feel this week went very well! I was glad to be entering the digital art scene for my work, since that's the medium I generally feel most confident drawing in. Nothing really acted up or went wrong, but I definitely areas where I changed things as I went along, both for necessity's sake and because my mind changed on certain design choices. I would only change things that I could do with a little more time, and only if I wanted to, not because I had to. Adding shading to the design sheet, and colour to the entire turnaround would've been preferential, but ultimately it didn't need to be there. Still, I would've liked it.

The lecture on Harvard referencing was very helpful, since most of my sources for The LEGO Movie I could find weren't in books, the only source type we'd been over before. Learning how to properly cite and reference movies, YouTube videos, websites, etc, will all essential to correctly documenting my sources for my essay. The essay is really getting there, I think I have a plan set out at this point. I just need to find relevant and usable sources / evidence to back up each point and I'll be set.

MY CHARACTERS - BIOS AND INFLUENCES

This post is cataloging my research for each of my characters in my cast, including

• Real world influence
• Inspiration from other characters
• "Original Ideas"

C2

NAME: C2 (short for Cuprite-2)
AGE: 5,000 (as a crystal), 2 (since consciousness)
SPECIES: Unknown
PROFESSION: none

C2 is a genderless (yet male-coded) humanoid crystal, based on the cuprite gemstone, a "dark red of brownish black mineral" comprised mostly of copper oxide.

(Real cuprite - credit: newsandpr.com)

The dark red colour the gemstone can take on is the main inspiration for Cuprite's colour scheme. 

The texture of cuprite is commonly a lot of clean cuts and edges; I brought some of this into the design of the character, when it came to appendages and digits. They have sharper edges, and had the character been created in a 3-dimensional space, the fingers would be less of a coned point, and more of a 4-sided pyramids / obelisks.

C2 wears a black and orange tank top; since the backstory has them be a scientific subject, they needed some kind of uniform from the lab. Since I couldn't find very many striking uniforms that were also appropriate from the science field, I looked further. I eventually settled on something kind of related: a prison jumpsuit. In real life and in fiction, prison jumpsuits are usually bright orange. Given the laboratory that takes C2 is a cruel, near abandoned place, I thought it appropriate that the uniform it gives it's test subjects be similar to prison jumpsuits.

(Harley Quinn in her Arkham Asylum jumpsuit, from "Suicide Squad" - credit: Warner Bros.)

In regards to shape theory, C2 is made up of triangles and squares. The triangles are supposed to be subversive, and also go with the story. The lab wants to weaponise C2, making their unique abilities into tools of war. However, C2 isn't a fan of that idea. So the triangles represent that C2 can be dangerous, but doesn't want to use that power. The squares, commonly used to show stability and safety, is more so used to show level-headedness and a need to keep those who it respects safe.

C2 is also amorphous. This essentially means it is without a definite form, and can shapeshift at will. However, this can only be done with a finite volume of crystal; for example, C2 could extend it's legs, but in return, it's arms would shrink down to accomodate for that. The most extreme forms C2 can take is as a near completely flat surface (like a puddle), or as one towering sharp point (like a sewing needle). This is somewhat based on some common alien / extraterrestrial tropes, seen in fictional aliens like the Venom symbiote (Spider-Man comics), Goop (Ben 10: Alien Force) and Bill Cipher (Gravity Falls). But with those creatures, they're able to create more material. The ability to use up only a finite amount of material is based on real science, where changing the shape of something with spaced out particles also requires the volume to remain the same.

While unintentional, I feel like parallels could be drawn to the Ben 10 character Diamondhead, but only in the sense of they're both humanoid crystal characters. I only realised the similarities when drawing sketches of potential weapons for C2 to generate, and one sketch made me remember the character. Coincidental, but I feel different enough.

(Diamondhead in Ben 10 (2006) - credit: Cartoon Network)

Dr. Ci Ents

NAME: Dr. Ci Evelyn Ents, "PhD"

AGE: 25

SPECIES: Human

PROFESSION: Scientist

Dr Ci. Ents is a female scientist, working on the "C2 Project".

The most unique part about Dr. Ents is her right arm. In her backstory, she lost her original arm as an intern for the laboratory. Wanting to avoid a lawsuit, they immediately gave her an experimental prosthetic arm, and gave her a "PhD" (It was fake. They're a fraud lab). The arm is based more on science-fiction technology as opposed to real life prosthetics. Ents' arm is made using parts that don't physically touch, but instead float. While there's a little bit of Mag-Lev technology inspiration, it's mostly taking influence from fictional technologies like the Iron Man tech or Peridot's limb enhancers from Steven Universe.

(Peridot with her limb enhancers; both her and Dr. Ents have robotic forearms with floating fingers. However, Peridot's don't extend the whole way up her arm, and only involves floating elements with the fingers. - credit: Cartoon Network)

The shape theory I tried to apply to Dr. Ents is squares; the head, the boots, body shape... it's all meant to represent safety. Dr. Ents isn't like the other scientists in her lab. Where they are all cruel and without empathy, she has a sense of humanity. She wants to protect the innocent people in the lab, so no-one ends up like her.

The colours are meant to represent a more positive, less malicious scientist in her lab's wave of dull, "evil" scientists. The lime green shirt and blue jeans stand out more than what her other coworkers would wear. There's also some light blue elements on her as well, but it's exclusively in her technological elements; her arm. This, again, takes inspiration from Iron Man's fictional ARC technology.

(Iron Man's Mark 50 armour (Avengers: Infinity War), with blue, light up elements - credit: Marvel Studios)

E.I. #112

NAME: Experimental Item "E.I." #112
AGE: 200 (as crystal chipping), 5 (since consciousness)
SPECIES: Unknown
PROFESSION: none

E.I. #112 (referring to as #112 from here) is meant to be a conscious chip from the twin crystal that fell to Earth with C2's crystal, which came to life but perished after around 1800 years. However, a chip found of the original crystal was found by the lab holding C2 (albeit 3 years earlier), and grew into a tiny version of the original Cuprite.

#112 is meant to be a Jiminy Cricket-esque character, bouncing off of C2. Despite his smaller stature and more immature personality, #112 is older than C2, and acts as their guide to the real world. #112 is street smart, and helps point C2 in the right direction. Bringing back the Jiminy Cricket comparison, he's like a conscious.

The shapes used on #112 are meant to be somewhat simplified versions of C2's; rounded edges, abstracted elements, and so on. The head spikes C2 has are rounded bumps for #112, the arms & legs are more like sticks & stumps respectively, and only having one eye as opposed to C2's pair.

The colours are meant to be somewhat similar to C2, but also noticeably different. They're both red, but with different secondary colours mixed in there too. C2 has more black / purple mixed into it's red, but #112 has a hint of magenta instead. This is to help establish their relationship somewhat. They're both of the same species, even considered relatives; but they're absolutely NOT the same crystal.

Antibody

NAME: Antibody (translated from ancient language)
AGE: Seconds younger than time itself
SPECIES: unknown
PROFESSION: Silent assassin, hunter

Antibody is a genderless (uncoded) creature, who acts as the antagonist and as a foil to C2.

Antibody is the self proclaimed "second oldest being", a true statement pertaining to being older than everything except existence. It claims to it's victims to be sent by the universe to bring them to a peaceful place, in an attempt to get it's prey easily. It's lie about the universe is a cover up for it's sporting habit: hunting down everything that isn't meant to be there, and eradicating it. It does it for both sport and for personal reasons; purity. Antibody has the world view that everything is designed one way, and that way only; your own species only belongs with your own species. Anything unusual or out of place is removed... by force.

Antibody is based on the real biological antibody protein. Antibodies are designed to immobilise unwanted pathogens, trapping them into submission and eventually destroying them. Through this process, the body then learns how to quickly and efficiently remove similar pathogens. This can be tied to Antibody's goal of irradicating the "unwanted" from the larger body of the universe.

(Representation of an antibody - credit: bio-rad-antibodies.com)

Antibody is also a literal name; just like C2, Antibody is amorphous. So by that, it has no definitive form, or body. This time though, Antibody can create new material for it's body. It's texture is meant to be somewhat slimey, acting like the symbiote from Spider-Man comics. Antibody also goes through two different stages, when trying to persuade it's victims; stage 1 is the standard form, as seen above. Stage 2 sees a more coiled, snake like body shape, as well as sharpened fingers and the head stripped back to reveal a set of razor sharp teeth. Stage 3, nicknamed "Nightmare Antibody", is a 50ft tall mass of whatever Antibody's made of; a hulking chest, muscled arms, and tentacles & growths coming out of it's back and shoulders. The head stays small, but fluctuates between stage 1 and 2 heads. The final touch is a set of teeth in the chest, acting as the final resort.

The colour theory is a washed out navy and white; I chose these colours because they reminded me of space, the origin of Antibody. Black and white was considered at one point, but then I opted against it, since it made shading look strange. Plus, black and white wasn't visually interesting as opposed to the navy blue and white.

There are some light inspirations from a range of sources, but only some more generic elements; an inky / slimy body texture akin to Venom from 2018's Venom, and a final form like the Shadow Blot from the game Epic Mickey. 

CHARACTER DESIGN - PHOTOSHOP FILES

We were in the Media Lab today, in our first session in making our final character design files. The files we have to make are:

• CAST LINEUP
• CHARACTER MODEL SHEET
• CHARACTER DESIGN SHEET
• ANIMATED WALK CYCLE
• ANIMATED TURNAROUND

(for more info on these, see this post)

This first session was focused on the still image formats; the first 3 bullet points.

The cast lineup was simple enough. I used my sketchbook more than my original line up for reference, since I had been able to fine tune the characters more there, and were a more accurate representation of them. I added some shading in the way I'd usually do it; making a multiply layer between the lineart and colour layers, and then doing block shading. I feel the block shading fits my art style much better than more realistic, blurred shading.

The model sheet was where I brought the A3 sheet back. Where the sketchbook had better front views of my characters, they didn't really have fleshed out side and back views. But with C2 (my chosen character), it was mostly a matter of changing the size of the forearms and some other small tweaks.

Finally, the design sheet. This was a little more tricky than the pencil sketched one, since we were given prompts; this time, we were on our own. While I struggled for a while trying to figure out what I could do, I realised I could just demonstrate the physics of the character I had come up with. C2 is meant to be amorphous, and be able to control the size and separation of body parts. So using this, I made quite a few of the poses with this in mind. I also kept in a few generic poses, just to demonstrate what C2 would be like when doing more simple actions.

This session was definitely meant to leave us all to our own devices, with everyone just getting on with it, expected to finish the tasks in our own time. I'm certainly very happy with how mine all turned out. They all looked how I wanted, and look a lot better than characters I'd designed in the past because I kept all the new theory I'd learnt in mind when creating this cast. I don't think there was anything I'd change, but I'd like to revisit this cast at some point in the future, when my style and knowledge of character design has improved.

DYNAMIC EXERCISE - TESTING AND TIMING

In this post, I'm going to go step by step from the beginning of animation to ending of testing.

Firstly, I created my keyframes. Where others may prefer straight ahead animating, I prefer getting my main actions in first, and then building everything around it. I ended up with 12 keyframes, all of which were the extreme ends of other actions. The first few keyframes are where the most variety is held, with actions being quite grand and obvious. The middle of the animation has keyframes that only really apply to the head being thrown, since the body remains mostly, if not completely static. In the end, there's a little bit more body animation for when it slouches to the floor.

I used the tennis ball video as a reference for when the head hits the wall, but not for the direction it takes after impact. While the physics are the same for both, I wanted the head to be slightly heavier, but heavy enough so that it'd course straight down instead of veering up after crashing into the wall. 

I then line tested all 12 keyframes, leading to a half a second animation. This was to be expected; the inbetweens hadn't been drawn yet, so I had to work out how many to do and actually make them before calling the animation "finished". Retiming the keyframes in DragonFrame was simple enough, just right clicking each frame and letting it hold for a number more frames.

Once I had the timings down, I wrote down how many inbetweens were between each keyframe, and started to work on them.

In the end, my timing test ran like this:

While I was happy at the time, I may end up changing the framerate in the end, so that it's not super quick like this.

CHARACTER DESIGN - OUR CAST

In this session, we started to put down our designs for our individual casts!

There were four tasks for this session, which involved one large sheet, split into 4 parts. Each section focused on an area of the cast design, including:

1. Cast Lineup - The whole cast standing side by side. Used to show scale in relation to one another, and how the characters look generically.

(Cast lineup for SpongeBob SquarePants - credit: Nickelodeon)

2. Character Model Sheet (Turnaround) - One character as seen from the front, side, back and from a 3/4 view.
   
   
   (Supergirl's model sheet - credit: Warner Bros.)
3. Character Design Sheet - One character in a range of different poses, e.g. fighting poses, running, walking, etc.
   
   
   
   (Design sheet for various Rainicorns from Adventure Time - credit: Cartoon Network)
4. Walk Cycle - Showing the way a character walks, usually expressing some kind of personality or emotion
   
   
   (Fan made walk cycle of Sans from Undertale - credit: Leaphy on Weasyl)

Using our characters we drew in our sketchbooks, we started out drawing our casts. We did silhouettes first, so we could clearly see what they all looked like next to each other. Through this, we could work out what kind of scale we wanted to have. I ended up altering mine when we moved from silhouettes to full sketches, because I wanted one of my characters to be much taller than the others.

When moving on to the primary sketches, we were encouraged to show what shapes were underneath clothes and larger appendages. Adding general shapes into the character helps establish space and what certain parts of the character, for lack of a better term, feel like.

(My cast lineup, both silhouettes and full sketches)

We next moved on to the character model sheet; for this, we had to choose ONE character from our cast, with the only rule being they have to be bipedal humanoids. I chose my protagonist, C2 (seen on the far left of my cast lineup). This stage was where I made quite a substantial change to my character design. I made the forearms much bigger, keeping in mind the morse code analogy where keeping the shapes used varied is more interesting and has more rhythm to it. Also, doing this made the arms look less like tubes, and more alien; appropriate for the character.

From there, it was quite a simple road to creating the model sheet. Making a set of guide lines to keep the head, torso and legs to correct scale proved helpful.

(C2 model sheet)

Next step was the design sheet, which was the part I enjoyed the most. For this, we were given two types of prompts we had to draw our character around; an scenario or an image. For example, a scenario given was "your character is late for the bus", and we had to draw what that character would look like running to try and catch up to the bus. An image example is this image of Michael Jackson, which we had to replicate with out characters.

We ended up with around 10 drawings each, in a wide range of poses.

(C2's design sheet)

Our final task for this session was to make a basic walk cycle for our character. We used the basic guide from The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams as a template of sorts, and then applying small changes to accommodate our characters' needs. I originally went in the direction of having larger steps, to represent the larger stature of the character. I drew that up, and then realised it wouldn't quite simulate the weight I wanted from the character.

(C2's original walk cycle; notes below the cycle are changes to be made.)

And that was it, essentially! In the end, I ended up with a full sheet looking like this:

I'm happy with how the character looks at this point, although some slight adjustments in terms of proportions and particular body parts may change naturally. Our next step is to start bringing these characters and sheets into the digital space, using Photoshop and TVPaint. I'm eager to get started with it!