Tuesday 31 January 2017

Sketches in the train station

Here are some quick sketches made in Newcastle Central Station. For a challenge, I skipped drawing columns and banisters, focusing solely on sketching people. Also, since I knew how elusive these little humans can be, I did all of the sketches directly in pen, so I wouldn't spend any time erasing and outlining again. I had limited time to lock in a position before the targets resumed moving, so there's not much focus into detailed features. The overall experience was awesome, and I feel like the observing part was more important than what happened in the pages...





Wednesday 25 January 2017

mini-project: final mask expressions

For the mask mini-project, I digitally drew and coloured the masks and the transitions between them, all based on these 3 face expressions:


After more drawing and coloring, the final result was this bad boy:


Tuesday 24 January 2017

Mask development - 12 frame personality

For the Masks mini-project, I started a first attempt of the animation directly on paper, by drawing three facial expressions (one underneath the other), then drawing the transitions on the right.

How it was done:
-I drew the key facial expressions at the beginning of each row: excited, worried, angry.
-I then drew nine empty faces next to them, three on each row.
-If  "excited" is frame 1 and "worried" is frame 5, I went to frame 3 and figured out the middle position between the two emotions.
-I then made frame 2 to be the transition between "excited" and "so-so", and frame 4 the one between "so-so" and "worried"...
-I then went and did the same stuff (last two steps) between the "worried" and "angry" expressions.


This test made me figure out the core structure of how to do animate like this, and I'm now ready to start animating a new mask, digitally...

Monday 16 January 2017

Don't make a face... Make several faces.

The latest mini-project of the class involves making a bunch of wacky characters, by digitally combining the bodies of dancing volunteers (including yours truly), with faces drawn and animated by all of us. To warm up for the faces part, we did a quick drawing session along with a lesson on how the smallest details can convey very strong emotions... Since freedom was the name of the game for drawing the faces, here are mine:


Friday 13 January 2017

3D Sandwich Skills...

For my first actual 3D animation, I knew from the start that it's a more complicated form of production, which will need to be dealt with really pragmatic and straightforward. I needed something with a fixed set of art assets, that can provide a predictable workflow and will be quick and easy to animate, so... Sandwich.


With a storyboard in place explaining the order of the actions, I took care of drawing and modelling all of the ingredients... I also decided to not give them any complicated textures because of the art style I want the animation to have. At that point it was fun to guess the perfect colour for each type of food, since it had to suggest all of the spots, lines, bits and any other visual aspect, but in a flat colour.
After the art assets were all covered, I went on animating it, following the script and doing tiny adjustments on the way as needed.
As I'm writing this my animation is being rendered, with Cinema 4D applying its light-and-shadows computer magic to every shot, turning it all into a video... And that process should be done relatively soon...