Animation History, 500 words – project 14, Frances Humphries

After researching a lot of different animators and their work, I think my favourite animator from the list was Adam Elliot. He is an Australian animator who is mostly based in Melbourne. As well as animating he also directs and writes his own short and feature length films, a lot of his films are based on true stories and family events. He has films named ‘Uncle’, ‘Brother’ and ‘Cousin’, all of them based on his family experiences. However, they are slightly exaggerated but not so the stories are unrealistic. Adam Elliot has a very dark specific style, his films are for adults and touch upon extremely strong depressing subjects while keeping a slight funny ‘tongue and cheek’ edge to the films.
Most animation is used for children or humorous films but Elliot uses dark colours, tones and slow movements to give a muted sad feel. He does this so the animation can be taken seriously and the strong points can be put across.

In his animations he touches upon, mental illness, death, suicide and other bad things. I think the slow style in which he animates works really well with the themes and characters of the films, and even though some people might find them disturbing and miserable to watch. I enjoy the dark humour and powerful realism behind his films.  

A lot of people also like his work for the same reasons and I think this is why Adam Elliot has become famous and will go down in animation history, his work will always be remembered because of the strong views and thought provoking meanings behind his films, and I believe that it’s extremely relevant to today’s society as well as animation community because it’s important for these views to be shared.

The animator I didn’t really like was Joanna Quinn. She was an animator and director during the feminist movements. She based a lot of her work on this and wanted her animations to be a voice for women. I think that this is the reason her animations are important in the history of animation, because they were important and stood up for a good cause. I liked this about her films and think that it was good how she showed her views though her work. However, I didn’t like the style in which she animated. She uses very rough drawn sketches and not much detail in her animating.

 Joanna Quinn based her animations on the average women’s life and made the characters very common, which I think made her short films quite boring. However, in a way it’s good because it’s an opinion and view not often seen.

I think that both Adam Elliot and Joanna Quinn use animations to show very strong views and points. However, I think that Joanna Quinn’s views were more important during the feminist movements and can be quite boring now. However, Adam Elliot’s animations focus on life problems that occur all the time and will always be very important in society.

Maya

 

We started off animating a basic walk cylce in maya. At first I thought it was quite hard, but once I played around with it, I got used to the tools and controls and it got quite abit easier. I think the basic walk cycle was quite easy to do. But making sure the weight and speed was right became quite difficult.

Once we were happy with the walk we moved on to doing short animations of emotions which linked to the body language project. I used some of my hand drawn animations as guides for the movements I needed.
Once I got into it I really enjoyed working with maya, sometimes somthing would go wrong and it would take a while to figure out. However, I think it is a really good tool and is fun to animate with.

The emotions I did was. Anger, Sadness, and joy.

Faical Animation

 



Once we had looked at body language we then moved on to facial animation and looking at how emotions are show through face movments and expresions.
I think facial expresions are extreamly important in animation because it can show a characters personality in very intresting ways. As well as showing moods feelings and emotions.
Facial expresions are very cleaver because even the subtlest of things can let you know someone's in a bad or good mood. It's very hard to understand someone if they have an expresionles face. Which is why it is imporant in animation because the audience needs to understand and relate to the character.

 

These are just some images from the animations I have done. I did very basic faces, because you only need the main features to create expressions.
I  did, annoyed, sad, scared and worrid. I also did a suprised face and just a silly face on Flash as small animations.

 

1 Second Week 10

I like this animation. However, the fire could have been better.

www.freesfx.co.uk

Week 8

This 1 second isn't really relevant to my week however, I had a headache and I felt like I'd been hit in the head, so I made this animation. I also tried to involve the facial expressions in with it. I like this animation. However, I think I could have smoothed it out a little and maybe worked on the timings because it's a little fast. 

 

 

Week 7

 

I couldn't upload this one onto blogger but here is the youtube link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN9XPZcv2eE

 

I think it's very simple and the yawn sounds more human than dog, but I think it's cute and the timings work well.

Project 9 - Initial Character Design. 

For project 9 I had to create a character with a developing storyline and personality. I looked at composition shapes and what kind of characters they could be. I started by doing 10 initial design sketches for my ideas. 

This was my first initial character that I designed. He is a young boy who's dream is to become a wizard like his dad. He takes his dads old wizard clothes which is why the cape and hat are way to big for him. I could also draw the boots to big for him as well. 

 This character is quite shy and cute and keeps to himself trying to learn magic tricks. His character develops when his dad looses his powers and he has to go on a mission to find his own magic for his dad. The character develops from shy and weak to confident and strong.
His clothing will be coloured in blacks and shiny blues to create a dark mystic feel to his wizard outfit.

This was my second initial design for characters. It is a fox pixie, which lives in the Amazon jungle. She is quite big. However, she can cleverly disguise herself within the plants and flowers. 

Her wings are so small compared to her body that she can only hover a few inches off the ground and cannot fully fly with them. She is a vegetarian and can change the colours of her fur like a chameleon for camouflage.

She is a shy character and the last of her kind, because of this she embarks on a mission to find another of her kind which leads her out of the jungle and into unknown places. She becomes a brave determined character. The only environment ideas I have for this character are rainforest jungles with a lot of flowers and trees.

This was my third design he is a snail which has a shiny shell and gets bullied by the normal brown and black snails. He is laughed at for being different, even though he is bullied he always tries to put on a smile and is nice to everyone. I haven't really thought of any more story which can go with this character because I don't think it's interesting enough. 

This was my llama called Liam. He lives with the rest of his heard who is owned by a farmer. He is a pretty normal llama except he is blind, and he has to have his friends help him get around. They sometimes play tricks on him and tell him to go the wrong ways. He is very embarrassed about being blind so he doesn't leave the barn much. Because of this fear he makes friends with a bat who lives in the barn and learns sonar, and soon he becomes a friendly happy llama who loves to run and play in the fields. 

I decided to base one of my characters on my own pet dog, so I drew quite a few different initial drawings for this. I am going to work on the story and his personality, once I have the full thought out story. I quite like my first initial drawings. However, I like the mix between realistic and cartoon instead of just realistic or too much like a cartoon.

This was my final character design that I came up with, it is really simple and doesn't have much of a story, basically he is a fussball table player, but he isn't happy with his life because his dream is to play basket ball.

 

I chose to do the dog ralph for my character so I had to develop him further. I decided he would make him a famous race dog which looses his leg and has a mechanical one built for him. I think it adds abit more story into the character and a little more exitment.

 I decided to go for a more cartoony style because I think overall it looks better and more apealing to watch. I also think you can see the cuteness of the character better with a cartoon style where as the more realistic style looks quite cold.

1 Second Animation - Week 6

I made my 1 second for next week quite early because of all the other work I have to do.
I have based this 1 second on bonfire night because it is in a few weeks. 

I did this idea because I thought that it would be fun to make and would be different than just drawing fireworks. (plus I got to eat jelly beans and skittles afterwards) I used my camera and tripod pointing downwards onto my fake granite work top, because I thought the blue background with white speckles looked like a stars in the nights sky. 

I love how this turned out and think that putting sound with it made it come together really nicely. It was simple to make and fun as well, and overall I am happy with it. I think I could have positioned some of the jelly beans a little better. However, the wriggle effect they have makes it look quite alive.

I got the sound effects free from FreeSFX.com They are a great website! really easy to use and have loads of great music and sounds which will come in handy. 

All credit goes to them at. 

http://www.freesfx.co.uk

 

1 second a week - week 5

I was lacking in inspiration this week, so I made this because it's how I felt one morning when I couldn't be bothered to stand.
I think maybe some colour would have made this look a bit better. However, I am happy with the movement in this animation even though it's quite simple.

Project 6 - Character Animation (part 1 Research) - Initial sketches.

Once I had looked into body language I started doing some initial sketches of the spesific emotions we were told to do.

This was my first sketch for rejection. I made the head face down as if sad, and the body hunched with hanging arms as if depressed and hurt from being rejected. I also think the harms being limp shows a slight loss of pride, as if hes been turned away by a girl. I also made the step look like a slow extending walk to give of a slow sulking feel to the shape.

 

This was my second sketch for happiness. Its a simple jump, but lifting her legs back in joy, and her arms held high shows exitment and happiness, also having the face and head held upwards shows pride and glee within the image, all this compined makes the pose show obvious happy emotions, in quite an exaggerated way. 

My third sketch was for boredom, the slumped shoulders and spread elbows creates a very lazy shape, with the hands holding the head up, it makes it seem like they can't even be bothered to lift their own head, which creates a very bored feel. I also think that making the head look upwards gives a bored feel because it's like they are day dreaming.

 

This sketch was for anger/irritation. I think this pose shows controlled anger more than anything else. The head pointing forwards and the high shoulders shows anger instead of confidence. The hands on the hips and spread out chest creates intimidation which shows that the character doesn't want to be bothered if they are in a temper. 

This sketch is to show tiredness, I think this pose can often get mixed up with boredom. however, there is a few subtle differences, such as the head pointing downwards as if falling asleep, the shoulders are more relaxed due to lack of energy, and one arm is supporting the head while the other relaxes on the other arm, this shows no energy and they are close to falling asleep.

I also did a number of other sketches by hand.

As well as this I went and sat in cafes and watched people and their body language, this was a big help to see how people look in real life situations. I took some pictures and drew from them.

In cafes most people look quite relaxed if not bored while they just sit and chat.

I also drew some other emotions from body language I've seen.

Anger, sadness, and shyness. I took pictures of myself and drew some of these from those picutres. 

Project 6 - Character Animation (part 1 Research)

For the beginning of this project I have been researching into basic body language, and movement. I looked at how body language can show a large amount of emotions through even the subtlest of movements and positions.

I find this topic very interesting because it can be used greatly in real life as well as in animation. Body language in real life tells us a lot about a person and how they are feeling. It can make us decide a lot of our own actions towards people and situations.

Our own body language can affect our own emotions as well as others, simply just standing tall and open can make you feel more confident as a person. A lot of tests have been made looking into body language and how it can affect moods and feelings without our conscious mind even knowing.

For this project I had to look at body language and how it's used and how I could use it in animation. Body language is a key feature in animation and is exaggerated most of the time, animators exaggerate body movements to make the emotions more realistic and believable. Sometimes this exaggeration is taken very far almost to the point of unrealistic. However, if the movements are based on real life body language it becomes a believable movement or emotion for the viewer.

To learn how to animate believable emotions and movement I need to learn how real life people move. I looked at different images of body movement to get a basic idea of shape and form.

Looking at real humans stood in positions helps to see obvious body language. This is good because in animation it would be obvious and exaggerated. However, in real life body language can be a lot more subtle. I need to look at both and get a good drawn and visual diary of all kinds of body language so I can animate emotions in lots of different ways.

 

I also looked at some gesture drawn body language which is a good help because it gives me an idea of the sketches I’m going to do for my own drawn research.

I think the gesture drawing is good because you can look at the different body shapes and initial poses which create body language.

The best form of research for body language is watching people in real life. It's good to sit and watch people to see all of the subtle movements of real daily life. This kind of life is good to take quick sketches from to get the basic shapes and movements.
For the more in-depth exaggerated emotions such as anger and excitement. I will find poses of people or act out these emotions to look at how the body reflex these intense emotions with exaggerated movement.



Jan Swankmayer

Jan Swankmayer was a Czech artist and surrealist film maker. He is most famous for his bizarre dark stop motion films and surreal creepy claymation. However, he worked in a lot of different mediums and even did some famous live action films. He worked and lived in communist Czech and had to do a lot of his work underground when it was banned in 1972, because of this most of his work is based on the dark sides of communism and politics. His films have very strong meanings shown in dark sinister ways, which sometimes are quite hard to follow. 

 The Quay Brothers

The quay brothers are American animators who live currently in London. They were commissioned by Channel 4 after their work was thought to be influenced by Swankmayer. However, they had never heard of him before but still made the documentary. Only one of their films has speech and most of it is gibberish. They have a very dark depressing theme that runs though their work, a lot of it using creepy toys and dolls. There work is always very surreal with an edge of humour. Their work is also very hard to follow even though they usually have deep meanings.

 

AX1111 - Model making and introduction to life drawing, with Steve Dee

After my research was finished I started doing some initial designs for characters.

This was my first design that I did. It is a female kitchen brush, the bristles are meant to look like a skirt. This design was just practice for character design and making products look like people.

Once I had my research and a few ideas with the group we spoke about different story lines and came up with 3 main ideas. Once we had these Ideas we looked at which would be best and worked on that one the most.
We did design some characters for the other ideas just so we could look at which one would be the best. 

This ice skating ring idea. 
These ideas were for a Christmas themed idea, I like the reindeer made out of sausages. However, I think this idea would be hard to make, and not very interesting.

The superhero idea. 

For this idea I did a basic villain character, too look at what characters we would need for this idea. 

This was my villain "mr chop" I think it was pretty simple and I didn't think that the story would be very interesting because most cleaning products are portrayed as superheros. 

We decided not to do this idea.

The Halloween Idea.

This was our 3rd idea, we thought it would be a good idea to do kitchen safety instead of cleaning. We also wanted to do it for children, so we needed cute characters which the children would like. We decided to base it on Halloween because it's October and we thought it would be cute to have products wearing little Halloween costumes.
For this idea I made some character sheets. 

We might not use all of these characters, but I think we will definitely use Dr Frankinbrush.

 Once I had drawn my characters I developed them more to look at different ways I could make them look. This was the Bleach monster. I looked at what colours would look the most dangerous such as reds and yellows. I also looked at different eye shapes to decided which was the most menacing. I toyed with the idea of him having "goo" coming from his head. But I think it would have been hard to find the right material to use. |
This character was Designed and made by Frances Humphries

 This was my cheese grater character. I think he was the simplest to draw. However, it was quite difficult to develop him because he is such a simple character. I looked at different eye colours and shapes, and decided that the square shape would be the best, so it would be easier to make.
This character was designed by Frances Humphries and made by Matthew Harrison.

 Mr Frankin brush was my main character to develop. I had to think about the making quite a lot while developing this character because I had to use a real brush which meant I was quite restricted. I looked at different colours and hairs, which if I changed the hair colours I'd paint the bristles. I think the most important part about this character is his mouth. Even though I looked at the eyes a lot, I decided I would give him normal "googly" eyes to had a bit of cuteness in. Because of this I had to focus on his mouth so that his changing expressions where clear.
This character was designed and made by Frances Humphries

This was just a title page for the Halloween idea. It's got the first simple story board on it. We later developed this storyboard more in-depth.
Designed/Drawn by Frances Humphries
Storyboard written by Frances Humphries, Matthew Harrison and Gemma Rickers.

The first model I made was Dr Frankinbrush, We bought a normal dish brush, and then I glued gloogly eyes onto the top of it, and the sequin to create the made scientist look. We also made different shaped mouths out of felt which we could change so that we could lip sync it. I think this worked really well even though we only did 4 different mouth shapes I think it lip sync well and looked really good.

We used felt, pipe cleaners and googly eyes on a lot of the characters to give it a kind of theme. Only Dr Frankinbrush and Count Spatula had different mouth shapes.
We painted a large back bored as the set using normal paints. I designed and drew the image on the background using the original Frankenstein film sets as inspiration. Me and Gemma then painted all of the set in dark dingy and spooky colours.

Once the set was finished I made the monster Bleach. I used a normal bleach bottle and stuck on simple paper eyes. I then took the labels off and drew my own spooky labels with a stitched together theme. I also used green and red colours to show bright dangerous colours. I also used two drawing pins stuck into the neck to look like bolts. The last think we did to the Bleach was cut the mouth out so we could have him spewing bleach all over.

The other model I made was the spider sponge which is a small background character but is quite cute. I made him by cutting a washing up sponge in half and threading black pipe cleaners through it as legs. I then threaded string though so he would hang as if on a web, I think this was quite effective. The last thing I did was stick on googly eyes. I think it looks very cute.

The set we made was pretty simple, we just painted a back board and then made 2 electricity conductors out of card and ping pong balls. These were simple to make and looked quite effective. The only other prop we used is the red curtain which we just made out of cloth. 

All 3 of us worked together on the animating, Matthew Harrison set up the lighting and controlled the camera while me and Gemmer Rickers moved the characters, we decided that we would move certain characters each, I controlled the Bleach, Forks and Cheesegrator Ghost. This worked really well because we could keep track of what had been moved and what needed moving. 

Once the animating was done all of the pictures needed putting together and the whole film editing. Me and Gemma Rickers used Sony Vegas pro 10 and 12 to edit the animation. Gemma did the lip syncs for count spatula at the beginning and end. While I pieced the frames together in the middle adding effects and timings. Matthew Harrison found the background music and sounds effects which I then added in at the rigtht times. Gemma recorded and edited the voice audio and then added it to the film in the correct places and times to the lip sync. The last thing I did was mask the cheese grator at the end so he could pop on screen with count spatula. I think the masking looks quite good and runs smoothly.

I really liked working with Matthew Harrison and Gemma Rickers. I think we worked as a team really well and developed our ideas together in interesting ways and then helped each other with what ever we needed. I think the animation as turned out well because of the effort everyone in the team put in. I enjoy working in a team because you can discus ideas and opinions so the work can be made better though critical development. 

In conclusion. I think that this project has gone really well and the animation has turned out great, I'm very happy with it.