Rebecca Rubeli Animation

Inktober Day 9: Screech!

Inktober Day 7: Shy!

Inktober Day 5: Sword!

Inktober Day 5: Long!

Today I switched to using fine liner instead of ink. It allows me to work faster and get in more details. So I think I’ll stick to that from now on. Maybe some exceptions ^^

Inktober Day 4: Underwater

Day 2 of the daily creature challenge and I already push the upload to the last second. But one goal of mine is to improve my ability to organise myself.

I haven’t posted in a while and want to change that. Recently I focused more on drawing creatures again, a passion I neglected the last couple months. I wanted to do a “Daily drawing” or more specifically a “Daily creature” challenge for a while now and seeing a lot of #mermay pictures finally got me to do the first step.

#2 Building the set >>The puppet is one of the most prominent parts of the movie. It is the thing that leads the viewer through the whole film. On one hand it has to look the way we imagined it when writing the script, on the other hand it has to be able to be moved frame by frame.

This means the interior of the puppet has to be built so we can fully animate it. Two solid pieces of wood build the base of the body. The limbs and connection are made out of wire which is twisted to give it more stability but also improve how it can be moved.

The material we used for the surface is a mix of white and orange plasticine, which gives a nice skin tone. Since it never dries, we are always able to move every part of the body. Although this also brings a problem, which is that the figure has the tendency to slightly change its shape over the course of many frames. Therefore, while animating, we have to be very careful not to move it too much at once.

In our story the figure first sits in the bath tub, later on a boat. Since the boat is too small for the original puppet to sit in and a larger one wouldn’t fit into the film set, we have to create a second puppet for these specific scenes. The two puppets are built at the same time to keep them as similar to each other as possible.

The last few weeks I have created a stop motion movie together with @liacart and @samlee-animation. In the following posts I’ll give you a look behind the scenes of this project.

The movie is about a giant man, too big for his own home. He starts dreaming of freedom, being gone from his daily life. But sometimes these dreams can turn into nightmares faster than expected.

Content:

#1 Building the puppet >>

#2 Building the set >>

#3 Water experiments >>

What happens when a gigantic wolf and a little girl meet? The almost 8 minute 2D animated movie „Moroshka“ by Polina Minchenok tells the story of what seems to be an impossible friendship. It was produced in 2015 by the famous Moscow studio Sojusmultfilm.

Now it is time to translate the 2D drawing into a 3D model. Through this we will get a fully detailed presentation of the finished character. This can be done in a 3D-modeling program but this post covers how to handcraft a statue.

Materials:

A base (in this case a piece of wood)

Metal wire in different sizes

Tin foil

Styrofoam/styrodur/wood

Monster clay

Glue (preferably two-component glue)

In the first step, the interior of the statue has to be built. The easiest approach is to use a 1:1 drawing of the figure as template and plan all needed parts there. That way the exact measurements can be read off directly from the blue print.

A thick piece of wire serves to anchor the statue into the base. With the Styrofoam, the thicker parts are formed. Styrodur or wood can be used for this as well, the important thing is that the material isn’t too heavy but solid enough. Tin foil is used for the thinner body parts. When gluing together the parts, one needs to be careful that Styrofoam/styrodur can etch when coming in contact with certain glues, which is why two-component glue is advisable.

The last part is modelled with monster clay. First, the whole body gets covered with a thin layer to make sure that the clay sticks. Afterwards the bigger features are worked on first, then the smaller ones. Meaning that the fundamental proportions have to fit before working out the details.

For the eyes, plastic or glass beads can be used. They can also be sculpted with monster clay directly.

A general rule for shapes in sculpting is, that every aspect of the body is either clearly concave or clearly convex. Two of those can merge fluently into each other at the edges but they have a clear beginning and end.

In conclusion, from sketching the first silhouettes over defining details to sculpting, this leads to the finished statue.

The next step, after defining the basic silhouette, is to determine all remaining details. The main focus lies first on variation, then on decision-making. This leads to a fully developed front and side view of the finished character.

The main tools to achieve that, are the three main shapes: circle, triangle and rectangle

- Circle: Round shapes make a figure look friendly and warm. They seem nice and trustworthy since they don’t have any sharp edges. Protagonists and children are often based on circles.

- Triangle: Characters, mainly consisting of pointy shapes, are usually the antagonists. The sharp angles make them seem secretive, mysterious and deceitful.

- Rectangle: A rectangular design makes a character look grounded, strong and confident. They either suggest steadiness and dependability or clumsiness and trustworthiness.

These three main shapes can be applied to every single body part and accessory of a character’s design which will help in creating a coherent character, matching to its backstory. The focus should lie on producing as many different options to choose from as possible.

While developing these possiblities, the intention of the character design crystallizes with each new version. It now requires careful decision-making to choose the variation that does it justice the most, and unify them in one single design.

<< Last post: Creating a character #1 – Silhouette

What makes a character recognizable? How does it have to be built to be unique, yet have a distinct message? Why are certain figures better known than others? This is the first entry of a series in which a character is fully developed.

If we take a look at the most popular characters in film and TV, there is one thing they all have in common. Their silhouette is unmistakable. Even when you can just see their shadow, the character is still clearly identifiable. So when creating my own character, the first step is to draw it as a single shape.

The purpose of this is to understand the proportions of the figure’s body parts and weight out which details and accessories are mandatory to do the character’s traits justice. In my example the protagonist is a little cat girl.

Despite appearing quite shy at first glance, her curiosity gets her into trouble regularly. It is important that her childish as well as her cat like characteristics are united.

To emphasize her young age the head is proportionally much larger than it naturally would be, compared to the body. It’s an exaggeration of the baby schema which lets a creature look like a child and thus usually appears cute to us. This effect is also simply called „Cuteness“.

Starting with a silhouette determines the basic appearance of a character. Details may still change over the course of developing its final form.