I ended up painting a very simple background. I actually wanted to add more details, but I thought that these details would distract you from my characters. My characters are quite simple looking. I know that the background is important, but I did not want it to outshine my characters.
I kept the background in the same colour scheme, only because I didn’t want to make it too colourful. I like colours, but I don’t think I am good at harmonising them.
I look at these turnarounds and all I can think of is that they look very fun. I love playing with colour. I might even make them into stickers.
Fun colours, but not that suitable for my animation? I ended up going for a very settle colour scheme instead, but I did enjoy seeing my birdies in more vibrant colours.
I don’t really know why my turnarounds look this neon on wordpress, because in reality I had gone with pastelly colour scheme. I don’t hate it but is is just not what I had made?
They look a bit mean, don’t they? Tiny bit? I don’t think I had ever thought that birds looked mean before I started drawing them.
I am very heavy handed, so most of my drawings have quite thick outlines. For this animatic it is not an exception. I went for the stereotypical male and female characteristics. Lily’s eyes and eyelashes are big. Even gave her pink outline.
When it came to Frank, I couldn’t really play with the colours that much. If I had picked any other colour for him or had even given him a different outline, it probably wouldn’t look like superb bird of paradise. I made Frank a bit taller than Lily just to make him look a bit more intimidating. In reality these birds are quite similar size. Females might be even a bit bigger.
The first time I drew Lily, I had made her a bit more voluptuous, but it wasn’t looking that great. She looked like she could eat Frank.
My idea for this module was to have a dance between two birds. Recently I had been looking at many documentaries about animals. They are very educational and comedic at the same time. I wanted to do something very similar.
After seeing superb birds of paradise final form I knew I will animate it. I have done some research about the superb birds of paradise. They live in rain forests. Male superb birds of paradise carry a two-pronged, iridescent blue shield on their breasts. They have small territories which they defend from other males. Female superb birds of paradise are quite plain looking, as almost any other females in animal kingdom. The reason behind that is it’s eassier for them to blend in with the environment, so they can protect their babies.
Keep it simple, stupid!
………………………………….. the same as it was with the walking cycle I struggled with sneaking up walk as well. This one ended up even more tragic. I faced the same problems. Clearly I had not learned from my mistakes. I struggled with the armatures feet, and I also struggled with the magnets. There are flaws everywhere. Left and right. It’s almost like I do not even know where to begin. I made this animation when I had to deal with some problems in my own life and I think it just reflects in my animation. I clearly wasn’t patient enough or able to focus on this project.
THE HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE WALK CYCLE!!!!!!!!!!!!
I do not know how people can make it look so effortless. I wanted to go for like a very exaggerated walk, but it ended up not turning out great. I looked at so many tutorials online but still ended up producing this sad animation.
It found it really hard to work with magnets. The amount of times armature fell, because it wasn’t sticking to the magnets was unbelievable. I spent embarrassingly long time creating this animation. At the end I was just exhausted. It was giving me so much anxiety.
I wish I had tried to do a 2D animation instead. I am not skilled enough to make it work in stop motion. Won’t know till I try it.
When we were given the task to show emotions trough different media I found it to be quite exciting. I was comfortable with drawing all the different emotions, because I enjoy drawing. That was easy.
I had never used armature before so I didn’t know how that is going to be like. To my surprise, I found it to be quite fun. I was not a big fan of stop motion animation in the first semester, but after playing with the armature I knew that I will want to explore stop motion a bit more.
Not going to lie, Maya is still something that I do not like. I was sort of dreading to do the poses in Maya. I did them. I do not think I did them very well. Just by looking at them you can see a lot of mistakes. I guess, that I am way too independent to ask for help. Or maybe I am just too scared to do it. That reflects on the finished product.
JOY
ANGER
FEAR
UNCOMFORTABLE
HELPLESSNESS
SAD
Overall I found this task to be fun, even though I didn’t do that well with Maya poses.
Loish is an artist I have always looked up to. I wanted to do animation course because of how inspired her work made me. I don’t know any other artist with a style like hers. Everything looks so effortless. I can only imagine how hard it actually is to make it seem like it is not. I just hope that one day I will be able to achieve the same results.
When we were told that we need to produce a showreel the first thing that came to my mind was this exact production that she had made years ago. I can’t even compare my showreel to hers ha I have a long way to get to her level.
Here it is! My baby!
Basically my year summed up in one video. Didn’t add even one video made in Maya. Still not friends with her. Maybe next year? You can see a lot of my work from Making of in this showreel, because I had enjoyed doing all the mini briefs for it. I have learned more about Photoshop because of them. Which I find to be a great thing. I have also become better at Stop motion animation. Slow clap for learning something new!
I am quite a slow learner so this is a big improvement for me. Might not seem like it but it is. I have also gotten used to drawing on cintiq which is making me happy.
Flop! Flop! Flop!!!
For my video essay I wanted to make a set and a little stop motion animation. I was mainly focused on making a set, but I had really wanted to make an animation as well. Sadly, I had not scheduled my time well enough for that to happen. As I had previously stated in my blog posts – Illustrator is not my friend. My inspiration came from the couple Hari and Deepti that makes beautiful shadow boxes. All of their boxes were handmade.
I had wanted to use laser cutting machine for my project but that still required for me to cut everything myself in order to trace my work in Illustrator. In a way it was pointless, because I had already done all the job to make the light boxes. I would have needed expensive material to use the laser cutting machine and at that point I had already spent quite a lot of money on paper, foam boards, led lights and glue. So I dropped my initial idea and did my project by hand the same way as Hari and Deepti had.
I follow a lot of odd Instagram accounts and one of my favorite accounts is Hexenkult. He likes to post pictures from the pet cemeteries. I was inspired by his posts and I wanted to tell a story of a little boy who was missing his dog who had passed away recently. A little boy who had picked up flowers to put on his pets grave. Maybe if I had more time it would have been easier to tell what I was trying to get across.
I have to mention the led lights. I had bought cheap led light strips which were working fine, but once I had put them in my shadow box it was really hard to see them. I wish I had known how many led lights Hari and Deepti had used for their projects, because mine were just invisible. Maybe I had used paper that was a bit too thick? I had made prototypes with paper that wasn’t as thick as the paper that I had used for the final animation, but it would end up ripping apart from a gentle touch.
Although it was a bit of a flop, I did manage to do everything that I wanted to do. I just didn’t know how to make all the little details work together. I think my shadow boxes came out looking nice I just didn’t have the skill to make them work together. I liked this project. I would attempt to do it again. In my opinion, you could really make a great piece of work by following this technique. You just need to plan everything first.
JAM on toast 