Project Evaluation

I found this module a lot more difficult than I had first thought, and I really struggled with the workload and time management as I felt there was too much work to be done when considering all the other modules as well. I did enjoy some of the individual briefs that I chose to do. Of the 6 briefs I did, I most enjoyed the 11 Second club brief, the Slipknot brief and the Qwertee brief. I enjoyed the Qwertee brief because it gave me the opportunity to practice my drawing skills and practice new styles to draw in. In particular, I think the style that I drew the Chuckie design in was the strongest and it is my favourite design of the 5 that I did. It was in a style I had never tried before and I’m really happy with how it turned out, even though it did not do as well in the competition as I would have hoped. I also like the style that my Stitch and Gremlin designs are in as it’s quite simple but effective. I enjoyed the Slipknot competition as it meant I could practice my drawing skills and meant I could try drawing a different subject matter to what I usually do.

I really enjoyed the 11 second club brief because I had been wanting to improve my maya skills and try out some more complex rigs. I also had been looking forward to doing some more animating in this module as the large amount of my responsive work has been drawing and storyboarding. I am really happy with the way my animation has turned out. I had limited time to get the animation finished but considering the lack of time. In the future I will work on my time management. The other animated brief I really enjoyed was the bingomation. The idea for the brief was really original and interesting and once I looked up the bingo calls I had many ideas. I am happy with how my animation turned out, although some parts could probably be a bit smoother. This is because I did the animation in 12 frames per second instead of 24 as I did not think there was going to be too much movement and believed it would flow smoothly enough in 12 frames per second. This also saved me some time for my other briefs. If I were to do it again I would do it in 24 frames per second in the hopes that it would flow smoother.

The two briefs that were required for the studio tasks, the YCN brief and the D&AD brief, I did not find as stimulating as the more self directed ones. This is because I did not enjoy the structure these sessions were taught in and meant that I quickly lost interest in my itv2 and WWF briefs. Unfortunately this lack of motivation and inspiration had an effect on my projects. I am not pleased with the way these two briefs went and I feel that if I were to do them again I would plan my time better, and find ways to keep myself motivated so that I create pieces of work that I am proud of.

I was really excited for the collaborative WWF brief, but unfortunately, I had some trouble with my partner as our organisation was not what it should have been and our project suffered for it. In the future I will make more effort both to choose a reliable partner that I work well with, but also to organise my own time better and find new ways to motivate myself on projects that I don’t enjoy, as that is what I believe it will take to succeed as a freelance artist.  I do still really like the idea of working in a team, but in the future I will make more effort to delegate certain roles of the projects to each person instead of both doing every part, as I felt this slowed the project down and left me feeling like I was doing most of the work.

In conclusion, this module has taught me a lot of skills that I will need if I want to be a freelance artist in the future, and it has also taught me a lot about working with a partner or as part of a team. It also really helped me improve my drawing skills and taught me about going out into the world to search for competitions to enter and I will continue to enter competitions in my free time to get my work seen. This module was a very important lesson for me and I will take what I have learnt forward with me into the future and I will learn from my mistakes in this module.

Project Report

11 Second Club- April finished animation

   

Here is my finished animation for my April 11 second club entry. I learnt a lot about using more complex character rigs in this project and now feel a lot more confident moving forward with more projects in Maya. I'm really pleased with how my animation turned out, although next time I think I will attempt to give the characters clothes instead of the bodysuits they come in. I feel that my 3D animation skills have improved and I look forward to improving them more in the future.

I have had some issues with rendering as it kept going grainy because of the mental ray render engine and I do not know how to fix this. 

I've really enjoyed this project and I will definitely be entering more 11 second club briefs.

Bingomation submission

I have submitted my Bingomation animation and I am happy with the way it turned out. I chose this brief because I thought it was an original and interesting brief, and it is a good way to get my work seen, as they shared it on twitter and included a link to my YouTube channel. I really enjoyed this brief and I would consider doing another number in the future.

Slipknot tshirt designs

Here are my finished slipknot designs for the creative allies competition. The first design I drew on some of the themes that slipknot are known for, including a goat skull and the slipknot 9 point star. I am quite pleased with the design, however in my second design I will try a different style. 

My second design is in a very different style and I kept the colour palette limited to reds and greys. I created illustrations of each of the slipknot members new masks for their latest album and once again included the 9 point star. I considered adding the text 'Prepare for Hell' which is the tour name, however I feel this made the design a bit too crowded and busy and decided against it. Of my two designs, this is my favourite.  

Creative Allies

Creative allies is a site that offers artists opportunities to design artwork for their favourite bands. 

I have chosen to enter the competition to design a tshirt for slipknot, where the winning design will become an official tshirt on the bands world tour and be seen by millions of people. This would be an amazing achievement if my designs were to win. 

The brief states that the designs must be entirely your own and inspired by the bands image and music. The design must also include the slipknot logo that is provided and be exactly 6" by 6". 

I'm really looking forward to this brief.

11 Second Club

The 11 second club competition is a monthly competition where animators are given a sound file and are given the opportunity to animate the scene that could go with it. This can be done in any medium the artist chooses.

The April competition is a conversation between two men: 

TRANSCRIPT

Voice One: "It's been a hell of a trip."
Voice Two: "Sure has."
Voice One: "But, uh, after all is said and done you, you did get me home, and I really appreciate it."
Voice Two: "Hey, next time... let's go first class, all right?"

I have chosen to do a scene in maya using one of the free rigs provided by the competition. The scene will take place in the storage carriage of a train and at the end of the conversation the two men jump off.

I am really looking forward to learning to use some more complex rigs and improve my skills in maya 

Proof of D&AD submission

Responsive: Bingomation

Bingomation is an online animation blog that gets different animators to create 5 second looping gifs for each of the bingo calls. This allows animators to showcase their work and their abilities and each clip is displayed with the animators name. 

I really wanted the number 88 but it isn't open for claiming as someone else has claimed it, so I have had to come up with ideas for some of the other numbers. 

I looked up the bingo calls to see which ones appeal most to me, and have settled on trying for either 27 or 87, which are a duck on crutches or a fat lady on crutches respectively and will think up some designs for these that are hopefully amusing and successful enough to get peoples attention and get my name out into the world. 

Responsive WWF Storyboard

Here is the storyboard for the WWF collaborative brief. It was done by both myself and Bex Dawson. Bex created the collaged images to get the idea of what we wanted the project to look like, and I created the text frames and compiled the final storyboards in a professional manner. 

Our final piece will be stop motion and built and animated by both myself and Bex in equal parts.

Responsive Collaborative Project. WWF Rainforest concept art

As part of my research into the rainforest, I have done a couple of drawings to help me understand what the trees, plants and animals look like in the Rainforest. This will help us further develop our idea and help to design the set.

While I was really looking forward to doing stop motion, I really like the style of the first drawing and I think doing our animation in this style might be faster and easier, whilst still being a strong piece of art. I will suggest these ideas to my partner.

Responsive Collaborative Project: Stop motion research

To help us determine exactly how we were going to build and animate our idea, Bex did some research into set materials and other stop motion animations. I really like the delicate card cut out designs but did not feel this would get our message across well enough as our idea is about how the rainforest is being cut down, and making an entire animation out of paper did not seem right. We decided to use found materials to create a more natural world, using recycled paper and foliage to create the rainforest, and use old coke cans, plastic bottles and non-recyclable materials for the factories and the dead forest, as we felt this would be more eye-opening to watch the forest being cut down, factories appearing and rubbish and pollution destroying what was once beautiful.

Responsive WWF research

As research into the WWF project for D&AD, I looked into past WWF campaigns to see how they present their facts and images to get their message across.

I also looked into other animations that are campaigning against climate change and trying to make people aware of environmental issues. This helped us to think of ideas to make our animation less light hearted and more hardhitting. To get peoples attention and convince them to do their bit to save the environment.

Qwertee Designs

For my last two designs, I strayed a little bit more from my original theme. I designed a shirt with Gremlins and Gizmo outlined in the colours used in their characters, and originally I had wanted to fit Stitch from Lilo and Stitch in with it, however this was a problem as none of Stitch's colours were the same as the Gremlins and I did not have enough colours to put the two together. 

I really liked the style I did the Gremlins design in though so I created the Stitch design in a similar style and submitted both. 

Qwertee Designs

My original idea for combining Disney villains with horror movies wasn't doing as well on Qwertee as I'd hoped, and also was quite limited as it was very difficult to find Disney characters and horror movies that fit together really well. Because of this, I decided to broaden my ideas to all well known cartoon characters. I really liked the idea of putting Chuckie from Rugrats in place of Chucky the doll and I'm really happy with how it turned out. 

It was really difficult to keep the colour palette to just 5 colours until I learnt how to use half tones on photoshop. This made it much easier to create all the shading that I needed to make my design better.

Qwertee Designs

Here are my first two Qwertee designs, combining Disney Villains: Cruella de Ville from '101 Dalmatians' and the Evil old hag from 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs', with horror movies 'The Shining' and 'The Ring'. The biggest challenge I faced with these designs was keeping the colour palette limited to just 5 colours on a dark coloured T-shirt, and 6 on a light coloured shirt, however I learnt that colours that match the T-shirt colour chosen do not count in the design, and that made the Ring a lot easier to design as I could use the grey shirt as the last colour I needed. 

I struggled a bit more with my Cruella design, as the door in the design stood out too much against any coloured T-shirt, but on a white T-shirt, Cruella's hair did not look right as it blended in too much and there was no distinction between the door and the background. I tried to blend the edges of the design in with the T-shirt colour to try and make it sit better.

Qwertee

I have decided to enter a collection of designs onto the Qwertee website.

A lot of the most popular designs already on Qwertee involve well known and well loved characters, or movie references and movie crossovers, so I think it might be possible to get a popular design by using well known characters and putting them in other movies. I have decided to try placing Disney Villains into well known horror movie scenes.

I have made a list of Disney Villains, including Cruella De Ville, the evil witch from Snow White, Jafar, Yzma, Ursula, Hades, Buddy from the Incredibles, and Dr Drakken and Sheggo from Kim Possible.

I then made a list of horror movies, and have started trying to fit Villains with movies.

So far, I have decided on Cruella De Ville in the place of Jack in The Shining, and The Evil Witch in the place of the girl from the Ring. I think these could be successful ideas and hopefully get a lot of votes on the Qwertee site. Hopefully they will get accepted.

I need to think of 3 more ideas to make this a collection.

itv2 Storyboard

Here is a basic storyboard for how I would like my itv2 animation to look. I might change the colours in the final thing but this is the style it will be in and presents the idea for the images of some of the shows. It also gives an idea of what the voice over will be like.

The music will be upbeat but simple, I think this will make it grab peoples attention and hold it. 
I have chosen to leave the itv2 logo out until the very end of the ident to make people wonder what it is about and keep them watching until the end.

Itv2 Peer Feedback

After showing my pitch boards to my peers I got some feedback.

Strengths.

• The colours stand out- attention grabbing. They are also appropriate to the target audience.
• Memorable- The use of imagery helps us remember the programs effectively.
• It's fun. As well as the colour, the association makes is a nicer approach than perhaps more obvious ones.
• Audience has been well considered.
• Contextualisation is exciting. It really works and looks professional.
• Pitch boards are clear and communicate idea well.

Areas for Improvement.

• Start storyboarding. It will give an idea of how it will flow and move.
• Have you considered other compositions?
• Develop imagery more?
• More research into existing idents will help inspire you.

Questions

• Will there be any additional sound or text?
• Will the tone of voice appeal to a wider audience? Does this matter?
• How many programs will be included?
• Will there be more than one ident made?

itv2 Idea Development

I have decided that, to sucessfully portray the fun atmosphere and themes of the itv2 shows, a Pop Art style, similar to the Viral Tap logo, would be an interesting style to use. I have researched into pop art and have decided to create my ident in a style similar to Andy Warhol.

I will create one image that represents each itv2 program in this style and then animate ways to make one image turn into another in a fluid motion.