Animal Firm experimenting and reference

Here are some images i used as reference and help to produce my characters and backgrounds:




I put these 2 images together before i started work on these backgrounds as i was curious to see what it would roughly look like once complete:

Second Animal firm background

This is my second coloured background. This time i chose to apply dark colours as i thought it may come across more 'intimedating' once the gang members are put into place. I also tried it with the policemen aswell and i feel it also looks good.
Once i had finished applying the colour in photoshop i added some lighting effects to it make it look darker in places than others just to make it look more authentic.
Overall i like this background as it works well with its characters and does this better than the first background of the street as i feel that image is a bit too bright for the circumstances.

Heres a few more images i have experimented with. :

Police in Street

So now i have two policeman to go together i thought i would try putting them in a background like i did with the gang members. I like the outcome as it looks like they are patrolling the streets and keeping trouble away, i also think that the gang members would look better with a darker background such as my other background,

The alley.:

Stag 2

I quickly made another version of Sergeant 'Stag', this is similar to the badger but i wanted to see what this character would look like in this uniform and i thought it wouldnt matter to much long as i tweeked it a little as they would all look similar to each other anyway.
I like this outcome and i particularly like the pose of looking to the side instead of a straight on shot as it makes it look like he has seen something and caught his attention.

Sergeant 'Stag':

Another Character

This is another character for Animal firm. I chose a badger for this character as i thought it would fit in well with the armed forces look in terms of colour. I really like this character as it looks usable in a cartoon or short film. The only thing i would change as im not 100% sure about would probably be to add a policemans hat as it shows that they are on duty but i thought being a cartoon you can kind of get away with little things like this as its not suppsoed to be completely realistic.


This character is on not to be messed with, he likes the action of his job and isnt afraid to get involved. He is also Sergeant Rob Stags right hand man and occasionally his partner when they arnt fighting riots and mobs.


lieutenant John Elphick:

Animal Firm Sketched backgrounds

I know this is in a bit of a funny order but i found the originals and thought id better upload them here to show progress throughout the project. I wanted to use one point perspective as this method shows a sense of depth and i just like the style and effect. My first background idea was for the gang members to be standing in a darkish alley way to try and portray them as back street characters, characters that are wanted so try to keep out of the lime light.

For the police characters i have produced a high street so that it looks like the armed police are patrolling or looking for something/someone, this is also the same style. I like the two backgrounds as they are fairly detailed (might prove an issue when adding colour) and could easily work as backgrounds holding the characters.

Animal firm Background

One background completed for my animal firm project. It is very simple as it is the style i am going for and keeps the attention on the characters. I also blurred it a little in photoshop to take the sharp bright edge off as it was drawing your eyes away from the characters again.

Overall i dont mind it too much as it does the job but it is a bit bright and could probably do with attention to some minor details.

Group Blog for What project

Throughout our project we thought it would be a good idea to produce a group blog so that we could all keep on track and see how everyone is getting on with their work.

http://talkinggoats.blogspot.com/

I feel this was a good idea as it clearly displayed our work and progress and we could see what was needed to be done. It shows work from concept design all the way to final completed pieces.

Animal Firm Continued.

I have now finished two more characters in their digital form. I am happy with the outcomes as the look clean and i could imagine them as characters in a TV Series or a short film. They are two characters from the gang, Jared Lee carries out the dirty work and is short tempered and Robbie Boatman, a cocky little young squirrel who is a 'Jack the lad' sort of character The two characters shown are :

Jared Lee (Boxing Hare)

Robbie Boatman (Youth Squirrel)

More Animal Firm

Heres some rough drawings iv chose to scan in and upload for development purposes. My characters have started to change and form into their final pieces now which i am happy with. I started out by drawing them and then using water colours so i could see the colour scheme for each character, i then scanned them in to photoshop and produced some digital verisons which i personally find much more attractive to look at and work better as characters. So far i think they are looking good and il be happy with them once turned digitally. (Not all characters shown are going to be used)

Animal Firm

This is my first animal firm post, i would have put them up sooner but i had been busy with the what project. Any way here is one finished character made and designed in Illustrator and Photoshop.

This is Sergeant Stag, head of the riot police.

Production Report

This project was the last big project of the year, we were to get into groups and decide from two briefs which project we wanted to use. We chose this 'What' project as we felt we had more freedom with it and less limits to the sort of thing we could do. We first started off by brainstorming and coming up with a few ideas for stories and characters to get a rough idea of what we were all interested in and happy working with. I opted to be the lead animator and editor of the animation as this is the field I am interested in and the audio if I had time to work on it. Once we roughly knew what we were doing I started to design the backgrounds for the animation which consisted of:
• Interior of a house.
• Exterior of a park.
• Exterior of a town high street.
• Exterior of a Night club entrance.
• Interior of Night club by bar.
• Interior hospital.
These were then reviewed by the rest of the group and some were scrapped as we had drastically changed the idea. The rest that survived were approved of and put into further development and were then included into the story boards. The job of developing the backgrounds was then passed over to Patrick so that I could start animating the animatics from the story boards which were to last around 1min. These animatics were very basic and were just to show timing and a rough layout of the animation. If I were to do this sort of thing again it would look a lot cleaner and professional as I had not used flash much before this project but was willing to experiment with it. I submitted this animatic to the group and we all reviewed it and then there was some editing to be done. I re-done some of the animatic and adjusted the timings so it was now around 1min 10secs, it looked smoother and less pacey so we were getting somewhere.
Whilst I was developing the animatics Sam and Charlie were working on developing the characters so I had something to work with once I had finished with the animatics. Once they were done and out of the way I started animating the first scene with Dave looking at the photo and the ring, this took me a few days to complete and it was pretty straight forward as there wasn’t too much movement and was just a simple animation of Dave seated so no walk cycles or anything too hard. I was then left waiting for a couple of days for further characters and backgrounds so I could carry on working on the animation. My next scene to animate was Dave leaving the house and walking down the street, this was my first difficult animation in flash as it included a walk cycle which I find very difficult to get looking right and to stop the character looking like they are sliding instead of walking. I feel it looks okay but could be better, he does look like he’s sliding a little bit but I think it may be due to the background moving as well and depends on the angle of the background and the direction the character is walking. The characters were also quite hard to animate as the way they were designed and made seemed a bit ‘botched’ together to me and would have worked better as still images because as soon as you moved the character a little the whole thing looked off and showed sharp edges.
I then went right back to the very beginning to animate the open scene of the house exterior and the zoom onto the silhouette of Dave. This was very simple and consisted of just a simple symbol and them a zoom on top. Next I was to attempt the scene of Dave walking to meet Kate, this was fairly difficult as it again required more walk cycles. I needed to animate him walking forward straight on and walking away from the camera just seeing his back. Both were extremely hard again due to the angles especially the back shot walk. My next job was the street scene with Kate and Dave walking passed the gay couple, again the walk cycle for Kate was very difficult as she has big hips which need narrowing whilst she walked to show the passing point. This is one of my favourite scenes I had to produce for this animation as it includes sound as well and syncs with the mouths well. The gay couple look a bit rough though, not because of the animating but because the characters were a made a bit sketchy. The last two scenes I animated were the scenes inside the club, the one when he enters and it zooms to his face I feel worked very well and I also like the barman’s animation when Dave walks to the bar. I was then helped with the remaining animation as we started to run out of time and the rest of my group had little to do and because the characters were delayed they helped out. My last job of animating was to do another walk cycle but this time for the Granny walking towards Dave in the hospital bed. This was by far the easiest one as her feet were not going to be in shot so it was a simple leg, torso and head movements to produce this cycle which I feel is also the most successful because of its simplicity.
I then had the job of compiling the whole clip together in Premiere to produce the final outcome which then only required a backing track to be finished.
I liked the way it all came out even though it ended up three times longer than the original planned animatic but I did not see this a problem as we didn’t have a set time to keep to anyway. Overall I feel this project went extremely well and I am very happy with the final outcome and I like the style we worked in. I also feel more comfortable working in Flash and Premiere now. If I was to go back and do it again I would definitely focus a bit more time on the walk cycles as I feel they are key points of any animation.

Animation sequences

Overall there is 18 single animations but they are too large to upload on here so here is a rough final piece. It wont change much from now apart from the sounds which need to be added on. Up to know i feel it has gone well as we have worked well as a group and managed to get a lot of animating done even if we did take on a large work load. Have a look and see what you think so far:

Character Walks Cycles

So being the leading animator in my group for this project i was given all the walk cycles to do (hardest job!). I feel i learnt alot about flash by doing this as it took me many hours of playing around to achieve a finish that i was reasonably happy with.
I found it very difficult to animate the characters walk towards and away from camera as the angles made things tricky. The Granny walk was pretty simple as she is wearing a dress and has no feet as they would not be in shot so i didnt see the point in animating them.
The walk cycle of Kate was also hard as she had really large hips so every movement towards the passing point i had to try and make them a bit thinner because of the angle of the shot. It took me a while but i think i done a reasonable job (even if the feet do look a little funny).
My most succesful cycle i feel is the side on view of Dave walking, i also by far spent the longest on this one as i knew it would be used the most and needed to make sure it didnt look like he was sliding.

Production

So we scrapped our original idea for animation so some of the backgrounds shown below were scrapped and were not put into development. We kept a few such as the club and etc.
Here is the animatics for our animation to try and work out the timing for the clip:

1st attempt


2nd Attempt and development

What What What Project

This term we have started a group project. The idea of this project is to only use the word 'What' 4 or 5 times. I find this sort of thing really interesting as it leaves a majority of the work to the audience as they have to piece together the script/dialogue in their head. We have kept the story pretty simple so far by sticking with every day actions and events that people could familiarise themselves with.

So far this is the story:

Int: House

Dave gets ready and leaves house.

Mother standing in the doorway arms crossed.

Dave gestures 'wot!?'

Ext: Outside House

Dave walks down the road.

He pulls out engagement ring box from inside his pocket.

Smiles and puts it back again.

Ext: In town, night

Meets Katie and is all over her.

They walk together.

Daves arm is round Katie.

They walk past 2 gay builders

Katie wolf whistles.

Dave Frowns at Katie. She goes "What?!!' (flirtacious and teasing)

They go to the club.

Stopped on the door by bouncer.

Dave gives him ID.

Bouncer gives Dave a suspicious look.

Dave is worried/nervous "what..?"

Bouncer lets Dave in.

Int: Busy Club Scene

Dave goes to buy drinks

Bar man gestures to a selection of drinks

Daves turns and sees Katie getting off with another guy (Henson.)

Storms over angrily looking at Henson.

The Henson guy smiles cockily "What..?!"

Dave punches him.

Int: Hospital. Day

Daves in bandages, Mother shaking head next to him.

Dave wakes up. Looking at his hands "whaa..att.." (what happened)

Looks to the side and sees that the ring has gone out of the box with the word WTF!?!

scrawled on a note inside the box.

Ext: Wedding. Day

We see ring as its put on Katies finger by Henson. And the married couple Kiss.

Int: Hospital. Day

The scene transits to a newspaper image handed to Dave by his Mother.

Dave goes WHAAAAATTTTTTT!??????

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This our second idea we came up with because we ended up editing the first one so much it completely changed.

My job for this project is the Background Designs, Animating, Sound, Editing. I much prefer this sort of post production work over pre production as i prefer manipulating the images and making them do what I want.

Up to now iv designed a few rough backgrounds for the script, they are pretty basic at the moment but it is just to show the group the sort of thing im thinking of.

The animation will be made in either Flash or Toon Boom as we want to keep it 2D. The style id like to use would be pretty commercial as in Simpsons, Family Guy with bright colours and keep everything attractive to look at.

So here is the backgrounds so far: (I didnt have access to a scanner at the time so used a camera)

If these are approved of i am going to re do them but in more detail and also add colour to them by using water colour paints as i feel they can give good effects, blends and i find them easy to use.

2D flash project finished.

I managed to finish off my flash project today. I feel the project went pretty well considering iv never used flash before this project. I enjoyed designing and producing the character and also enjoyed working in flash once i got to grips with things.

I produced the character in Illustrator and then transferred it across to flash as i felt more comfortable doing things this way.

The lip syncing part wasn't too bad but very time consuming but its a good feeling to see the final outcome. I also wanted to make the head move a little and maybe the paws but being inexperienced in the software i thought id leave it as it is as I wasn't sure how to achieve this.

3D Environment Complete.

So after hours of working on this project iv finally completed my project. I went about designing an open plan bedroom/sitting area as I thought it would be different and allow me to add more objects into the scene. I feel I paid a lot of attention to detail with little things such as a clock on the bedside table etc.

I enjoyed this project as I like playing around in Maya as I feel I learn something new every time I use it. I made good use of adding textures and editing the mapping in the UV Editor. I found the most awkward part was the lighting as its a little unpredictable and takes a fair amount of fiddling to get the results you want.

Flash Project conceptual ideas.

Whilst listening to the provided sound clips I was thinking of animals that I could apply to the voice/s. I have chosen the second clip around half way through with the voice of Alice Kemp (Fine art student) mainly because I liked bit when she says "Oooo English Essay" and can imagine having fun animating it. For some reason whilst I was listening I thought of either an Owl or Cat/Kitten as I could imagine her voice coming from one of the two.

My final outcome at the moment is a kitten standing on a tree stump with its paws on a wire fence. I thought it looked like neighbours chatting over a fence as in real life, it also does look like its in a pose for conversation.

I drew out a couple of quick sketches of what I thought would work as an animation:

If the text next to the images are not visible enough it says:

(From top to bottom) 'Having a quick doodle I thought about having a cat on a fence talk for my animation. After watching the previous 1st years attempts i thought this would work in a creature comforts style.

Or was thinking a bird on a perch and thought an owl would be a good choice because i can imagine them talking for some odd reason'

I also find it a lot easier to draw animals than humans and fine them more exciting to animate and interact with.

Background project.

Right iv not been on here in a while so thought its probably time to get back into the swing of things soo, we have been working on a background project with kathy. I have found this quite an amusing project as it is to me out of the ordinary and iv never done this sort of thing before (apart from sketching of course).

We had to do an exterior image painted and one in pencil, i honestly preferred the pencil method by far as its where I feel at home at and i'm also not a huge fan of paint.

I like the pencil drawn one as it shows a lot of tone and a lot more detail to the painting one although I am pleased with how the tree turned out on the colour one. Iv not used water colours much before but i found them really easy to control and blend to give different tones.

Any way here they are to have a look at yourself,