Animation Unit:BA1a

In Character Design I learned so much more than I originally expected I would learn. I have made up characters in the past, but working on this project has shown me that there is so much more to characters than just drawing them over and over. I have learned new methods and processes on how to create any character from scratch, and how a lot of characters are made up of shapes which can hint at their true personality. Creating backstories and desires for a character has also shown to really help, as you can build on a character even further from just that. A lot of iterations were made on my character but that is good as it helped me explore new possibilities for them and helped me discover their best look. Throughout the designing of my character, I explored and tested a lot more than ever before, so for the first time it was a character that I had put a lot of thought into and gone in depth with. Creating and animating this character was something I found very fun, as it was something new and I could give them whatever emotion I wanted. I think in my Character walk cycle I captured his character and personality very well, as it shows his emotion clearly through his movement and appearance. Apart from just designing and making my character, I learned a lot about storytelling and characters, and everything that is essential in order to create these to the best that they can be.

Throughout this project I have discovered a lot about dynamics and believable movements, along with the elements that make these movements work well. This whole project was my first time ever animating and I feel that a lot of progress has been made and my skills have grown and evolved at a very fast rate. I have gained a lot of knowledge on certain software and digital animation, encouraging me to create animation through even more methods and software. I have really improved on my walk cycles as I created so many, and I’m much better at creating them now without struggling. I think my skills with squash and stretch movements in this project have all gone really well too. I tried to develop and take a lot of my dynamic animations further by adjusting them and giving them more movements. In my opinion, working with dynamics during my first ever experiences with animating was a very good place to start. Although some of the animations look like basic scenes, the movement really was important and I think that is definitely essential when making a good looking animation that works. With the pendulum swings and ball bounces, I really focused on the loss of momentum and landing. I really think that after all of the dynamics work, I have a much clearer idea of how to animate movement well in future with even more complex scenes and details. I also really learned how to show emotion in movement, especially with the walk cycles.     

We had a class involving acting, which looked at types of movement and motions. I learnt a lot about how important obstacles are, and how both super objectives and regular objectives are both very important and essential when showing true story and character. We looked at different kinds of movement and what makes them, including punching, slashing, gliding, floating and more. We then practised these movements when walking, which was also very helpful as it made me put more thought into different kinds of walk cycles and how to show these different kinds of motion.

Shrek and Fiona get married

“A hero sometimes proceeds through the story gathering and incorporating the energy and traits of the other characters. She learns from the other characters, fusing them into a complete human being who has picked up something from everyone she has met along the way.” Christopher Volger. The Writer’s Journey, 2007. Pp25

Here is my finished Character walk cycle. I have done much more to it since my last developed animation, including adding hair, more details and going over all the outlines in black pen. I tried to give his hair a bit of dynamic motion when he enters the low position by shaking the hanging fringe. I think this walk works well as the details and movement of him really make him look tense and on edge, like he’s a bit crazy. I positioned the shoulders and upper torso very carefully in every individual frame in order to create believable and strong motioned movement throughout the walk. I think one thing that also assists in giving him the right look is his muscle outlines on his arms and face, it makes him look more serious and dangerous, especially after the lines were gone over in pen. Overall I think that his emotion is correctly communicated well through both his movement and facial expressions, so I feel that I’ve created a very suitable walk cycle for my character.

* A single gesture can undermine a thousand words. * Facial expressions, body movement/posture, space, gestures, tone of voice, eye contact and touch are all things to look out for in animation as they can show instead of telling. * Body language can say a lot about how someone may actually feel. * We notice and pick up on how a character is really feeling through all of these gestures, they are very important when animating characters. * Movement is crucial to our understanding that something is alive.

* Semiotics: Study of meaning-making, the philosophical theory of signs and symbols. * Representation is an essential part of the process by which meaning is produced. * Signifier: The thing we see (shape, colour, posture, clothing etc.) * Shape has a way of communicating universally, because the concept of circular versus triangular shapes originate very much from nature. * Circles often represent friendliness and innocence. * Squares often represent strength and confidence, but can also represent clumsiness. * Triangles often represent danger and villains. * Colour can determine a character's meaning or feel. * The style and way you draw a character can represent different impressions and meanings.

* The archetypes are patterns of instinctual behavior. * Heroes can be willing or unwilling. * Willing: Butch, tough, gung-ho, brave,can't wait to get into the action. Answers the call to adventure at once. * Unwilling: Timid, uncertain, doubtful at beginning, but hero comes out of them during story. * Heroes need convincing reasons to propel them into the action of the story. * Empathetic means 'like me.' * Sympathetic means 'likable.' * Anti-heroes = Protagonists who may be deeply flawed but for reasons are still essentially likable. * Tragic Heroes = They are admirable and have a fatal flaw which leads to their downfall. Giving into the dark side could end badly. * Where does the anti-hero end and a shadow begin? The answer is... It's a gray area. * Shadows need to be totally evil or wicked. * Motivation is what a hero must have, it works for so called baddies too.

* 'Find a character like yourself, who will want something, with all his heart.' Ray Bradbury * Put real emotion and strong desires into a character. * Is the character's desire a big enough 'want' to be able to drive a story plot? * You cannot just describe a character as 'cool.' Write about what actually makes them that way. What would you be like in that position? * 'Pity and dear' is good to feel when watching a character in a story. * 'Adversity brings out the true personality of a character.' * It isn't the size of the want that matters, but the difficulty you have achieving it. * Characterization = Everything you could know if you stalked someone for a month, i.e. observable qualities. * Character = Closer to the meaning of 'moral character' or 'true character.' The way a person behaves under pressure, the way we are 'deep down.' * True character can only be revealed by action. * Back-story = Character development = Convincing character. * Ice burg theory for characters * What do you want right now? Use that to inspire a character's desire.

I’ve added more frames to my Character Walk Cycle, but still haven’t added the detail. Now that there are more frames I can see the movement better and I think it works well. I put quite a lot of thought into the collar and shirt moving when his body moves and I think this really works. Although it still needs more done to it, I can already clearly see that this character is angry and mad, which is the exact emotion I was aiming and hoping to capture in his walk. The character’s head/facial features need improving because his head changes shape too much during this and it takes away some of the believability. I need to keep his head more even shaped but still move it around at the same time as I want to emphasize the power in his walk.

On F12 paper I have designed and drawn the key frames for my character’s walk cycle. He is missing details at the moment, such as hair, veins etc. This was just a test to determine the movement, although it is hard to determine how well it works with such few frames. I am trying to mainly capture strong shoulder movements in the way they roll and the body twists to make him look more angry and strong.

This is my Character Sheet for Brian. I’ve included in this, his contact and pass position for the walk cycle, and multiple expressions and poses. I focus on his two main emotions that represent his character the best, rage and sadness. Although he is shown as an angry, remorseless murderer I also draw his guilty and regretful side, really highlighting his humanity that is really there deep down. I think this shows that he is a tragic hero more than anything, as it shows no happiness at all. All we see here is a broken man who is built up with negative and angry emotions, living with his mistakes and letting them eat away at him. I feel like I have communicated that he has ventured onto the dark side and wants to escape, although he cannot anymore and is miserable and feels guilty.

I've created my 75 frame dynamic animation on Dragon Frame. This focuses mainly on squash and stretch, although it also contains some impact and reaction as well. It shows a square falling on top of a ball, and bouncing off it. Then a sharp triangle falls on top of the ball and pops it. I really tried to capture the squash and stretch when the ball fattens when being slightly squashed by the square. I also made the ball shake a bit once the square had bounced off. With the impact and reaction I made the square wobble and lose momentum when it hits the floor before eventually stopping, then I also showed it again through the popping and deflation of the ball. I think this turned out pretty good, but I think the squash and stretch motion is shown more easily in this animation.

This is my Dynamic walk cycle with emotion added to it. I created this on TV Paint digitally. I have given the figure a sad, hopeless motion in their walk and I mainly did this by making the footsteps more subtle in their movement and giving them less emphasis. I made the arms hang more instead of swing, and leaned the head down to show the figure looking upset and hopeless as well as hunching their body downwards too. I think the aim of this walk is a success as I can definitely see sad and lonely motion in the figure's walk, but if I were to improve this I would do it by making the lines more neater and giving the figure more human-like features.

I have drawn some hand poses here, using pencils. These are a couple that I think turned out okay with proportions and shapes. Not a lot of time was given to draw these poses, so they lacked detail in the wrinkles and shade. If I was given more time, I would focus more on the scale of the hand and the details such as hair, veins, nails, wrinkles and folds.

In this life drawing class, an hour was given to draw a portrait of the model’s head. I spent a lot of time trying to alter and fix his proportions so that it would look like the model, and overall I can definitely see the model in this drawing through his features and think it resembles him well. I used shade to bring out his older age instead of just drawing lines to show wrinkles and details. The trickiest part in this drawing was the nose, as I kept getting the shape and size wrong. Although I had a longer time to draw this, I still needed much more time to capture all of the details and features to a better ability. Overall, I am happy with result and how his features have been captured.