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.
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:
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)
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.)
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)
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!
Week 5 was the beginning of our new project on Character Design, and also included a talk on the uncanny. MONDAY On Monday, we were introduced to our character design unit, lasting from this week to the end of week 8. We learnt the fundamentals on Monday, using a template to create various unique characters out of abstracted shapes and forms. To see full coverage on this session, see this post.
TUESDAY Tuesday was our character research talk on the uncanny, and the uncanny valley. Uncanny, in a nutshell, is the look of something that seems slightly off, but throws the entire sense of comfortability around it. Common examples are motion capture films (e.g. The Polar Express) and video games that opt for more realistic graphics (e.g. Mass Effect Andromeda). For my full post on the uncanny, see this post. THURSDAY Thursday was more character design workshops, this time working on how to design a cast from scratch. This involved taking different materials, symbols, etc, and making silhouettes out of them. We added details and little features to give the silhouettes more character. Eventually, we created a full cast in groups of 4 - 5, making one character each for a fictional show, movie or game. For my full post on cast designing, see this post.
SUMMARY Overall, I'm happy with how this week has gone! The introduction to character design was a lot more interesting and engaging than I originally thought it'd be. Being able to learn how to make characters with shapes, colours and more variables to consider more carefully is definitely going to be beneficial going forward. I think the sessions will also help me to break out of my style more, but it'll take some forcing from myself to move away from my comfort zone. The lecture on the uncanny was an interesting one for sure, but considering it in terms of my essay is somewhat tricky. Emmet has surpassed the uncanny valley, managing to reach the point where people question if he's an actual LEGO minifigure or really convincing CGI (it's the latter). I think it'd be important to bring up Emmet's realistic looks in the essay, but maybe not with the perspective of the uncanny and audience confusion; probably more with how the realistic look serves as representation of the LEGO brand accurately.
This session, we looked at how to design a cast. There wasn't very much theory involved, but I'll log what I did write down. We first did a little warm up, where we had to reboot the popular children's series Teletubbies.
(Teletubbies - credit: BBC)
Our reboot was meant to be aimed at a somewhat older audience, so I decided to aim for the Rick & Morty kind of audience; a bit of dark humour, but also quite down to Earth too. So I decided to go with a reboot I nicknamed "Teletubbies: The Mid-Life Crisis".
(see bottom left corner)
After the warm-up, we went through some more principles of character design (for the others, see this post)
Visual Rythm - "Think of it like morse code. Maintain variety, harmony & rhythm, and you'll be saying something." Essentially, keep variety and you'll have a more interesting looking character. Don't design someone completely flat, or only using the same shapes over and over again.
(Wendy Corduroy from Gravity Falls is made up of a variety of shapes and edges, none of which are used in excess or in great volumes with each other - credit: Disney Television Animation)
Caricature - Playing up the unique features and specialties of a character, and playing down what isn't special. Mostly used in comedy to ridicule people / groups.
(In Family Guy, the design for celebrity John Goodman plays on his larger figure to an extreme, making him cartoonishly overweight - credit: 20th Century Fox)
Personification - The representation of an abstract quality or idea in human / anthropomorphised form. Common examples are emotions and personality traits.
(Kronk from The Emperor's New Groove has infrequent visits from an angel & devil on his shoulders, both resembling him physically. As expected, the angel represents good and the devil represents bad - credit: Walt Disney Studios)
Anthropomorphism - giving non-humans human qualities. For a more in depth look at the concept, see this post.
(In the Cars universe, cars are assigned human qualities, both physically and emotionally. This scene shows Lightning McQueen at a bar, with a selection of other cars, as they reminisce. credit: Pixar Animation Studios)
Pareidolia - Seeing patterns in random data / stimuli. Usually faces or human figures.
(Godzilla in the clouds? credit: Cape Ann Images, Pain Science)
These are all in addition to the original seven principles. We then moved onto more tasks, which was the majority of the rest of the session. First, we had to take scraps of paper and small coins and make silhouettes out of 3 of them combined. Every time we made one, we'd have to rip the scraps in half, and continue making smaller and smaller silhouettes until we had 10. Next, we had to turn the sheet around so that someone else had our silhouettes. Using the other person's silhouettes, we had to add on limbs and features. This made the silhouettes more into characters, giving them expressiveness and a little bit of personality. Our next task involved drawing 10 variations on an exclaimation mark (!). This involved different ways of drawing the line and the dot, making them as varied as possible. Once 10 were drawn, we did the same again as with the silhouettes; turned around the sheet (so we got our original silhouettes), and add limbs & features to the other person's exclaimation marks. After that, we took some scraps leftover from the silhouette task, glued them down, and made faces out of them. They could be long pieces of paper, squared, weird shaped, whatever there was... make a face out of it. Our final "prep" task was to look into our sketchbook, at our observational drawings, and make characters out of some of the objects we drew. The ones I'm happiest with are the microphone character and the CCTV camera character, adapted into a stout, coat wearing man and a curious robot, respectively. Now, onto the main task. In groups of 4-5, we had to create a cast using any of the characters created prior on the large sheet. They should've fit into the archetypes hero, villain, mentor, ally and trickster / shapeshifter. Not just that, we had to come up with a name for the figurative show, an ideal audience, and character names. I was in charge of designing the villain. I chose a silhouette which was originally quite stout, but used a lot of triangles and angles; traditionally antagonistic shapes. Our "show"'s concept involved characters from different time periods, so the villain I designed was meant to be from the future. They're like a robotic overlord, who has no real identity. I named them Karnaak, a somewhat villainous name. We named the show "Out of Time", in allusion to the concept of characters being from different time periods. We aimed at a early teens to early 20s age group; something similar to Rick & Morty or Gravity Falls. The other characters we had were Henry (hero), Bill (mentor), Alex (trickster), and Fibbage (ally).
In the end our sheet looked like this:
Overall, I'm really happy with this session! This was our first real journey to letting our individual imaginations and styles loose onto characters, and I was excited to bring my ideas to the table! Working with other people was also beneficial, and the input from others definitely helped with the designs I did. I'm looking forward to more!
In this session, we looked at the uncanny, the uncanny valley, and what animation is good for regarding ways to present things. The uncanny is the line between something looking 100% real and looking believable enough. It's commonly attributed to things that look slightly off, but gives off a largely uncomfortable feeling. It's especially common when something that isn't supposed to do something... does that thing, in a strange way. The term was coined in 1835, by Friedrich Shcelling. It's defined as something "strange & unusual".
"The uncanny is apprehension rather than experience, dread rather than terror... the uncanny is built on uncertainty" ~ Reagan
In German, the word for uncanny is unheimlich, a word which when broken down into it's core words, means un-homely (heimlich directly translates to homely). Therefore, the uncanny is something we don't feel "at home" with. It can also mean unconcealed or unsecretive; even Schelling wrote that unheimlich is the name for things that "ought to have stayed secret and hidden". The uncanny reminds us of what we're not conciously aware of. For example, when an uncanny thing breathes or blinks, we're suddenly made more aware of it, and somewhat more conscious of it.
(Street of Crocodiles - dir. Quay Brothers)
The Uncanny Valley is linked to the uncanny concept. The term comes from a line graph, demonstrating how much a thing looks like a person, vs how familiar we are with them.
(credit: Psychologenie)
As the anthropomorphism / resemblance to humans grows, the familiarity does too. However, between the point just beyond humanoid robot and healthy human, there's a sudden drop; the uncanny valley. This is when human-resembling entities don't look exactly right, and become uncomfortable to look at. Characters coming from video games (designed to look hyper-realistic) and mocap animated films fall into the valley the most often.
(The Polar Express - dir. Robert Zemeckis)
(Mass Effect: Andromeda - developed by BioWare)
It's reached a point where the uncanny valley has transcended the screen, and has entered reality; robots are being made which fall directly into the uncanny valley. An example of this is Hiroshi Ishiguro's "robot twin", dubbed a Geminoid, which he created to understand "what is a human". There are five categories of realism: visual, aural, motion, narrative and social. In terms of the uncanny, it relates to realism of motion. Sometimes, you don't need realism in your animated motion; the 20's / 30's rubberhose style shows that unrealistic movement that breaks the laws of physics can still be appealing. Cartoons involving Ub Iwerks utilied this style, including his work with Walt Disney and his own projects. The style has recently made a comeback, with the 2017 game Cuphead spearheading.
(Balloon Land - dir. Ub Iwerks)
(Cuphead - developed by Studio MDHR)
However, Disney's hunger for realism in the 1930's lead to the industry straying away from the rubberhose style.
(Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - dir. Walt Disney)
However, there are some examples of cartoons that fail to integrate more cartoony designs & movements with more realistic ones. An example is Gulliver's Travels from 1939.
(Gulliver's Travels - dir. Dave Fleischer)
The animation mixes the more cartoony Lilliputs with a rotoscoped Gulliver. The two styles don't really meld together very well, and look too different to belong together. Gulliver could be considered as being on the border of the uncanny valley, where the Lilliputs aren't close to it. Overall, animation tries avoiding the uncanny, by ensuring their animation has verisimilitude. Verisimilitude is giving something the quality of seeming to be true or real. But that doesn't always mean exactly so; it can mean it looks "real enough". Walt Disney wanted verisimilitude in his animations, so since Snow White's release, up until the company's final physical animation, they used a machine of their own design, known as the multi-plane camera. Designed for animations with multiple layers which would move at different speeds in reality, each layer can be moved individually to give a more realistic camera movement.
(credit: Walt Disney Studios)
After this session, I considered whether Emmet, my character for the character essay applies to anything to do with the uncanny. In response, I'd say that no, he doesn't. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that Emmet figuratively jumps over the uncanny valley, to the point where people thought he was an actual Lego minifigure.
In an interview with one of the animation directors on The LEGO Movie, it was brought up that many people online were confused as to whether the film was stop motion or computer animation. Where the answer is simple (it's CGI), the fact that so many people thought it was real speaks volumes. The film successfully achieves a realistic look better than other films, and even reaches the point where people thought actual cameras and minifigures were used. Could this be applied to the essay? Possibly. When talking about visuals, it could link back to my question in the form of "the film accurately portrays the product", or something along those lines.
This session introduced us to the character design project! We had Jon as our lecturer for this session, and we'll have him for all future character design sessions. We started out with some sheets of paper. Surrounding a blank circular area in the middle were some black rectangles, triangles and circles. And yet around THOSE shapes were some miscellaneous ink / paint splatters in various pastel colours. We were first tasked with seeing how well we could remember how certain characters looked by drawing them from memory; these included Mickey Mouse, SpongeBob SquarePants, Snoopy, Moomin and Mario. After the brief exercise, we were told to try and find shapes and characters with some of the ink blots. We could make them as large or as little as we liked, with any kind of details we wanted.
After about 10 minutes, we finished up with that and moved further into the middle, looking at the shapes. Before we got to do anything with them, we had a look at shape theory. Shape theory is essentially what shape conveys to an audience, mostly about what a character is like. Typically there are three main shapes:
CIRCLE - Cute, friendly, peaceful (e.g. Po from Kung-Fu Panda)
SQUARE - Stable, solid (e.g. Superman from Justice League: The Animated Series)
TRIANGLE - Dynamic, angular, somewhat evil (e.g. Jafar from Aladdin)
Combining shapes and highlighting specific ones make a character's personality and sometimes archetype stand out more, especially when reduced to just a silhouette. Using the shapes, we were encouraged to make just those: character silhouettes. Not for characters that exist already, but for whole new ones. We did this for about 10 - 15 minutes, and I was trying to find characters that'd both feel like something I'd make, but also seem very unusual and weird. I found a couple of characters I really liked, including one with coils for limbs, a bird thing, a robot and an evil Shakespearean snowman. We were asked to choose one character from our silhouettes, and draw how they'd look regularly in the blank circle in the middle. I opted for the bird thing, both out of necessity for a smaller character, and because it hits the sweet spot of being both weird and normal for me.
I nicknamed it "Fletchling", but that didn't matter at that point... because we were going to interpret everyone else's characters! By this, it meant putting everyone's characters onto the screen one by one, and then getting 2 minutes to draw them in our own way, using different markmaking tools each time. We ended up doing this for around 40 minutes, and it was really interesting seeing what everyone came up with! At the end, we cut all the characters out and gave them to whoever drew the original. I managed to amass a collection of interesting looking Fletchlings, as seen here by a few of them!
And in the end, I had a sheet that looked like this!
This session was about learning the process of character design; the absolute basics. I thought it was a lot of fun, and didn't really have any issues with anything! I'm really looking forward to more character designing, especially since that's my favourite part of the animation process! Overall, a successful character design introduction!
This week concluded the dynamics research sub-unit, with a final practice task and an introduction to our final dynamics task, which we submit with the rest of the unit's work. ANTICIPATION (JUMP) I did two animations for this task: an original jump, and then a more refined one.
"Starting off, I knew that I'd need to make multiple layers for my guide. The neutral start / end positions and the anticipation / follow throughs would be standing on the exact same piece of ground, with overlap in the positions if done on one sheet. So I made 3 different guide layers; one for extremes, one for anticipation / follow through, and one for inbetweens. This was a big help, although did prove a little tricky when trying to inbetween, because I was trying to look through my current sheet at two sheets underneath, instead of the usual one.
I linetested my first attempt, resulting in this.
While it gives off a convincing enough effect, I realised that the anticipation at the beginning didn't signpost the movement coming up well enough. I needed BIGGER movements.
So, I went back to the drawing board (literally), and made more inbetweens at the beginning to give a bigger movement. The arms go up further to a bigger extreme, and thus, give off a better signal.
The second jump feels a lot more natural, with the more obvious anticipation and smoother jump in general.
I think if I was to do this jump again, I would try and give it a little bit more personality to the jump with more unique actions for the anticipation and recoil, instead of generic poses.
Overall, I'm fairly happy with this task. I did hit a bump along the way, but instead of letting it get to me and make the work seem lesser, I took it and improved upon it. The talk on failure last week made me feel a lot differently towards work going wrong, especially comparing this task to when my pendulum swing originally went wrong." - original thoughts from this post.
Looking back at the end of the week, I'm definitely more happy with it than I was originally. While it was still fresh in my mind, I was deliberately looking too hard, being too nitpicky. But taking a step back after a while helped to see how the animation actually turned out; it's fine, and while a few things could be tweaked and altered, I'm satisfied at this point with it.
FINAL DYNAMICS TASK For this task, I'm still going with the idea of the guy throwing his head towards a basketball hoop and ultimately missing. I've found a good piece of live action reference for the ball hitting the wall, made by professors at San Diego State University. Their tennis ball in slow motion shows the exact type of squash and stretch I want from my cartoon head when it hits the wall. I'll make individual blog posts for tests, timings and final productions.
(credit: Prof. Matt Anderson of SDSU)
ANTHROPOMORPHISM Anthropomorphism was the topic of our character essay lecture. While this didn't apply all too much to my chosen character (Emmet, The LEGO Movie), it was an interesting lecture nonetheless. For all my thoughts and notes on this lecture, see this post. FINAL THOUGHTS This week went well overall. The dynamic exercise brief definitely had me the most intrigued, since we were allowed to really go in depth with whatever we wanted to do, without any real limitations. Creativity trumps most other things in this case, so I'm excited to get started on actual animation! The anticipation workshop went well, and I came out with a lot more knowledge about the topic than I originally had. It also helped to go and work on something, then go back and make it better. As mentioned in previous posts, the talk about failure and iteration really helped with that. Anthropomorphism, as mentioned before, was in intriguing lecture but not one I can apply
all too much to my essay. At this point, I’m pretty certain on my
question, being something along the lines of “How does Emmet represent the LEGO
brand and group accurately?” I have to talk about visuals and movements
regarding this, and I think that I have some good points that tie in with both
of those factors, plus my question. Visuals can be discussed with how Emmet has
little imperfections and LEGO accurate designs, which show the more realistic
minifigure look than other LEGO projects have. For movement, I want to discuss
how Emmet only moves in ways LEGO minifigures can; no “illegal” movements.
Hoping to have a solid plan of action for the essay soon! Still, excited for the character design workshops and for more to come!
In this session, we started our Character Design unit. The brief of the entire unit is easily broken into two main goals;
Engage in the character design process
Bring one character to life in a walk cycle.
The unit will focus on creating characters in a 2D landscape, but the same basic principles can be applied to 3D and Stop-Motion as well. When we reach submission day on the 16th of November, we'll need to hand in:
A Cast Model Sheet - 4 to 10 characters on one design sheet
A Character Model Sheet - taking one of the characters from the cast and showing the fundamentals of their design
Character Design Sheet - showing the final character design in a range of poses and under different circumstances
Animated Turnaround - a 360 degree look at the character, which spins around.
Animated Walk Cycle - a shot of the character walking on the spot, showcasing how they'd usually walk and how their personality can be expressed through that
We can choose how the characters look, in terms of style, but if we take influence from other's styles (e.g. Pendleton Ward's Adventure Time's style), then we should do well-informed research on it. We were told there are 7 principles to character design:
Research - If the character is based on something, how accurately does it portray that thing? For example, if a character comes from Asia, they shouldn't follow Western practices out of habit.
Shape Language - Also known as shape theory, this suggests that three main shapes portray different moods and characteristics to an audience. Depending on which shapes build a character, the audience will assume differently of them. Usually, the three shapes are circle (represents peace, cuteness, friendliness), square (solid, stable, reliable) and triangle (angular, dynamic, somewhat evil). Characters can also use subversive shapes; for example, an evil character could be made of all circles.
(Aladdin character designs and corresponding shapes - credit: Walt Disney Animation)
Silhouette - The design has to be unique and recognisable enough so that if you were just seeing a silhouette of them, you'd still be able to tell who they are. They need to demonstrate clarity and appeal.
(Various Cartoon Character Silhouettes - image credit: Sporcle)
Asymmetry - Making sure the character doesn't look exactly the same on both sides of their body. This leads to blander, less appealing designs. Usually, asymmetry is utilised via the hair or face. Asymmetry can also come from unique poses, and avoiding always having a front on pose.
(Misty from the Pokemon anime is an asymmetrical character; her hairstyle throws her symmetry off - credit: Nintendo, 4Kids)
Abstraction - How simple can you break the character down to be? Will it's base components give enough of an idea of who they are?
(Inside Out shows 4 steps of abstraction, albeit in reverse - credit: Pixar Animation Studios)
Appeal - The character should be interesting to look at, be it through simple design choices (shapes, colours, style), or depending on their design complexity (antagonists usually more detailed, protagonists more simple)
(Most of the designs in Hilda have a bouncy, round look to them, making them nicer to look at - credit: Netflix)
Movement - How the character moves should tell us something about them. How they usually feel, their weight, etc. A standard walk cycle can make a character seem dull, so a more animated walk cycle, full of personality, helps communicate more about them.
(Amethyst from Steven Universe moves and act much like a child would in this scene, hinting at her more immature, reckless behaviour - credit: Cartoon Network)
After the session, we were tasked to look at three animated casts, and analyse them regarding audience, shape, silhouettes and asymmetry. CAST 1: Gravity Falls
(The main cast of Gravity Falls - credit: Disney Television Animation)
The main cast of Gravity Falls is, from left to right, Soos, Dipper, "Grunkle" Stan, Mabel and Wendy. Immediately, we can see shape theory in play. Soos is primarily made up of circles and rounded edges. From this, we can safely assume that he's meant to be a friendly, caring, safe character. This is correct, as we see in episodes like Soos and the Real Girl and Blendin's Game. Twins Dipper and Mabel Pines both use round shapes, yet Dipper also has some square elements to him. Using this, we can guess both twins are friendly and safe, but Dipper has a more stable element to him. This, again, is true, as seen in Dipper and Mabel vs The Future and Carpet Diem. Grunkle Stan is an example of subversive shape design. He's made up of mostly square shapes, suggesting a more solid, stable figure. However, the show goes out of it's way to show Stan's recklessness, and later on in episodes like Not What He Sees, how trust in him should be questioned. Finally, Wendy uses more triangles than any other protagonist on the show. While she's not got the evil factor that triangles are associated with, she definitely acts a lot more dynamically. In episodes like Weirdmageddon Part 2 and Into The Bunker, she's an athletic, fast-on-her-feet independent. The silhouettes of the characters are somewhat recognisable, mostly through specific features. Dipper and Mabel, to the untrained eye, would seem almost indistinguishable from each other in silhouette form. However, Dipper wears a large baseball cap, and Mabel has much longer hair and a skirt. Not to mention, Dipper's cap is his most defining detail; Bill Cipher, the show's antagonist, nicknames him Pine Tree because of it. Soos' larger figure and unique head shape make him more recognisable from the other silhouettes, not to mention his leg to body proportions. Stan's broad shoulders, thin legs and fez all contribute towards his silhouette, in order to make him arguably the most recognisable character. Finally, Wendy is probably the least recognisable. Her proportions are somewhat "normal", and fits in with the background characters. Her boots could be a giveaway though; most Gravity Falls extras have legs that fit snugly into their shoes, where Wendy has a lot of room left. The only asymmetrical elements of characters come from clothes or accessories. Where Dipper and Wendy only have asymmetry in hair flicks, Soos, Mabel and Stan have more noticable asymmetrical details. Stan's fez has a fish(?) design on it, which would flip directions if Stan was fully mirrored. The same can be said for Soos' question mark and Mabel's shooting star, seen on their torso. Plus, Stan is often seen with his 8-Ball cane, which contributes to giving him a more unbalanced look. CAST 2: Eddsworld
(Individual character sheets for the main characters, created for "Eddsworld: The End" - credit: Paul ter Voorde, Thomas "TomSka" Ridgewell)
Eddsworld main casts, from top to bottom, comprises of Edd, Tom, Matt and Tord. Despite the original character designs coming from a teenage Edd Gould, we can still see some light elements of shape theory. While all the characters have hair spikes, two characters have an added roundness to theirs; Edd and Tord. Interestingly, this can be seen in different ways for different characters. Edd is the nice guy, he wants to have fun, and is completely carefree. However, he can tend to be reckless sometimes, given the dulled down spike. This shows a more carefree, innocent character with a little bit of edge to them, but not too much. Tord, on the other hand, has the inverse of Edd's hair. It's mostly spike, with a little bit of roundness leading up to it. The design could be a subversive one, given his development from pretending to be friends with everyone to being an enemy. He goes from rounded ally to spiked enemy. The hair plays a key role in their silhouettes as well. All 4 of the characters wear identical clothes, just with different colourations, so it's up to their natural features to dictate their silhouettes' impact. Edd, Matt, Tom and Tord all have vastly different hair shapes, ranging from flattened, short hair to tall, huge spiked hair. However, the heads themselves also help. They all have some unique aspect to their head shapes too; Matt has a squared jaw, Edd's head is smaller than everyone elses, etc. Once again, their hairshapes define another attribute of the characters; their asymmetry. Looking at the characters, their hair all seems to lean somewhat. It could be leaning back like Tord's, or forward like Tom's, even when looking at the characters dead on. This helps to give them a more natural feel, and not like they were designed by a machine. CAST 3: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Majora's Mask consists of 4 main characters: Link, Skull Kid, Tatl and the Mask Salesman. However, Link gets three extra looks to him using transformative masks, being Deku Link (pictured), Goron Link and Zora Link.
Link's shape theory varies from form to form. In his regular human form, he's mostly shown to be made up of squares and triangles. While not evil, this shows his dynamic side, given his athleticism. The squares also represent his stability and sturdiness; appropriate for the "hero of the land". Deku Link and Goron Link both soley use circular shapes; Deku uses it for the cute factor, and Goron uses it for the safety factor (the ability Goron Link gets is increased defence). Zora Link's shapes are influenced by his abilities too; he's mostly made up of triangles. Tatl is made of just one circle. This is another subversive design; Tatl is meant to be a fairy, who help out the Kokiri people like Link. Tatl isn't helpful, and is downright rude most of the time. Skull Kid is an interesting design; where a lot of the base body uses squares, the Mask they wear is made up of many triangles. This can be read as representing what actually happened to Skull Kid; before the mask, he was living feral in the forest with Tatl and Tael (another fairy). However, after finding Majora's Mask, he became corrupted and evil. The Mask's spikes and triangles may resemble this. Finally, the Mask Salesman. His bag contains mostly circles, leading the audience to think that what he's selling is safe and this guy could be friendly. However, the triangular angles on the actual character suggest otherwise; his pointed shoes, his ears, even his facial features are noticeably more angular than other characters.
Their silhouettes are very recognisable through several features. Link has his long, green hat, a sword & a shield, Skull Kid has the flares all over his clothes, plus the spiked Majora's Mask, Tatl could be considered a silhouette already, and the backpack & hunch of the Mask Salesman gives him away. The alternate versions of Link are somewhat more tricky to identify. When Link transforms, he becomes one of the species he's got the mask of. However, this means that his silhouette is identical. Someone could easily mistake Goron Link for just a Goron.
The characters also have some asymmetrical attributes too. Link has a sword and a shield in each hand, as well as a belt strapped around his shoulder. His hat also tends to droop to one side, instead of falling flat onto his back. Skull Kid has his flares somewhat asymmetrical, given that there's no exact pattern or structure to them. The Salesman has his masks on his backpack to give him the sense of asymmetry, with nothing else giving him that. The other 3 Links and Tatl have no defining features to show any kind of asymmetry.
Overall, I'd say this was a good introduction to the unit! I'm really excited to start out, especially since I've been designing characters myself for so long, and now I'm going to be able to learn how to make better ones!
This session, we were mostly running down what we're going to be handing in for our Dynamics submission. Beforehand, we had a talk from animation graduate Millie Woodcock. She gave a talk about overworking ourselves, and how it's often glorified. A huge emphasis was placed on us managing our time correctly, and learning to take a break to do nothing!
"Doing nothing often leads to the very best something" ~ Winnie the Pooh
We work so we can live, not living so we can work. The biggest advice given was to take regular breaks from the computer / animation work! 5-10 minute intervals are healthy. Also, going outside is beneficial.
("The Closest Feeling to Death That Isn't Death - dir. Jaiden Dittfach)
After the brief talk of wellbeing, we moved onto our Dynamic Exercise Task! The breakdown of the animation is
Be 50-75 frames (around 3 seconds)
Can be either digital or hand-drawn
Only one shot, no cuts
Black and White
Simple
... and the animation should focus on one of these pairings
Weight and Effort
Speed and Acceleration
Squash and Stretch
Impact and Reaction
We're also recommended to use live action reference. It helps to understand movement and timing, in a more realistic way. Directors will often act out a scene to communicate what actions they want to the animators.
(Toy Story: Behind the Scenes - Pixar Animation Studios)
Animators will often use mirrors to convey facial expressions onto characters they're animating as well. Once we got the brief, we started storyboarding. After some ideas, I eventually settled on a final mini-plot. In it, we start with a stick man and a basketball hoop. The stickman looks up at the hoop, then smirks. He removes his head (in a cartoony sort of way), and aims; he's trying to score. He throws, aaaand... misses. His head bounces off the rim, and hits the floor. His face shows indifference, but his body overreacts and falls to it's knees, pounding it's fist on the floor. I'm definitely going to go with pencil and paper drawing for this task. While I'm more experienced in digital animation, I've really grown to enjoy the "traditional" methods. It'd be an interesting challenge, not to mention somewhat enjoyable. In the session, I lined out my rough keyframes. I'm going to work on the task on days off and in spare time between lectures, but I'll try to work on it as much as possible.
