Cities Brief - Tsutomu Yamaguchi article & theme exploration

While researching notable cities earlier I started to read about places that have certain real events associated with them, rather than just landmarks or films. And of course there are a lot more of these that are terrible than those that are good, so morbidly I think I will be focusing on cities associated with large scale attacks and death. I don't feel that places like this get much coverage anywhere really as I suppose people would rather not think about them, which is basically precisely why I want to make people think about them. The main inspiration for this came from reading an article on Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the man who survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even referring to the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki just by mentioning their names proves my point, as the disasters are associated so directly with them they are a singular thing in our minds, even though both of those cities are still home to thousands of real people today we still only think of them as the site of particular disasters from history. 

This intrinsic association between city and event is a concept that I am focusing on as the main inspiration for this brief. This article on Tsutomu Yamaguchi illustrates that these events have a profoundly personal effect as well as becoming cemented in all of our history as a collective. All of us know about them but barely any of us understand them, and that is also an idea I want to explore further. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/nagasaki-anniversary-meet-tsutomu-yamaguchi-the-man-who-survived-both-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-10447342.html

Frame - The Fly, The Elly and Me

(Disclaimer, the titled for this post was funnier in my head)

I'm really enjoying playing with composition recently and it has become a really valuable tool in all of my work I feel. I enjoyed this task as it was similar to the roughs one, in the sense that we had to manipulate three seperate elements within a frame, but we couldn't choose them this time. I enjoyed working within the limitations as it made me think more about how each element had to work in relation to the others and I feel that working to those boundaries helped me create some creative solutions as it was more like solving a problem than the last task which we more defined ourselves. I also feel that because we were limited in time, I churned out a lot more ideas in a shorter time span, which I feel like I haven't always done enough of in the past. Because of this I had more ideas to choose from for my final drawing and I think that the choice I made was stronger as I had to eliminate other ideas to make it. The main idea behind this one was just to subvert the sizes of the butterfly and elephant using arrangement, putting the most focus on the butterfly and having the elephant as an element of the foreground. 

Viewpoint & Depth image analyses

I found the presentation today really helpful in understanding the structure of an image, and how not only are the elements within the frame important in different ways, so too is the way they combine and interact with each other. At the start of the slides I wasn't fully sure what to look for but as we deconstructed a few I now feel a lot more confident in being able to identify things like line of sight and viewpoint and perspective and think about how they are used to create an atmosphere or message within an illustration. This task was also really useful in understanding the mechanics of how to express certain actions or feelings within an image, such as the Jilian Tamaka piece, where the viewer can suggest that the animals are moving in between the many smaller frames, as each frame changes and progresses until all the animals are gone. Using the absence of figure and negative space to convey movement is something I never would have picked up on if we hadn't deconstructed these images, as it is a quiet and subtle way of telling the viewer that the world of this illustration extends beyond the frames that are being presented to us, and this helps to give the image more depth.

I also found this task helpful in understanding line of sight, not just as a tool to draw the eye to a certain element to highlight its importance, but also as a method of conveying an atmosphere. An image with a fluid and soft line of sight leading us through the image can create a sense of calm, whereas many juxtaposing straight angles contrasting with one another can convey tension or discomfort or conflict. Overall I would say I enjoyed this task as it allowed me to look at images in a more technical manner as I wouldn't really have though about before, and it has definitely helped me be able to consider the sort of work I want to make and how I can start to improve that by incorporating my awareness of composition, frame and depth. 

Greetings From - Initial Ideas

My first thoughts for this brief have mainly been concerning music and film (mainly film), as there are a lot of iconic locations in fiction and reality that have become staples of cinema. From a cinematic point of view, my first thoughts were of New York, but I thought this could be too generic. I tried to visualise the city initially using fictional landmarks instead.

3D Gif - TOAST

This gif was the most challenging in the sense that I'm quite sure my brain almost entirely stopped functioning while I was making it. Turns out my own laptops version of Photoshop doesn't work with video files, and since I'd already filmed everything I needed for this gif, I had to break the video file down into still frames and then transfer those jpegs into photoshop and play them in sequence, all 140 odd of them. This task and brief as a whole has given me a massive respect for animation as a craft and animators in general, as it takes a lot of patience and skill to be able to make something that runs for even a couple of seconds, let alone a few minutes or hours. This one genuinely nearly pushed me over the edge into the void.

Keeping with the theme of giving life to plain inanimate objects, this time I chose toast to give a personality to. I thought about a couple of ways to bring it to life such as two pieces that were in love, but I couldn't really think of a good way for that to loop properly for the gif. I'm quite happy with the idea that the act of being toasted brings the bread to life, as it can be looped to suggest lots of slices are being toasted/Frankensteined to life. I found this gif the hardest to think of a good idea for so in the future I'd try to invest an equal amount of time into each of the three as I feel I spent quite a while on my analogue and digital frames and animations and could have used that time to make this 3D one stronger. 

This gif also has a noticeable shift in the middle where you can tell where I stopped the camera, but I didn't notice that until I was halfway through editing the frames back together, so that is definitely something I'd take care to look out for in the future, as I feel the flow of the animation would run a lot better without that jerk between the frames in the middle. I am however happy with the way the face reveals itself as it seems natural and playful, which is the tone I was aiming for with this one. I also nearly burned the tape with the face on inside the toaster for a couple of seconds because I'm an idiot and animation is real tiring. 

Digital Gif - Alien Box

I wanted to capture a sense of awkwardness in at least one of my gifs, and I think this is the one I succeeded on. I'm not used to creating image straight onto the computer, as I usually work on paper and then edit those drawings using the computer, but I tried out a Wacom tablet with these simplistic shapes to create something different to what I usually would produce.

Through this brief I've watched a lot of Adventure Time both as a form of research and also because its just great, and I've learned that simplistic methods of design and animation can be really effective if they have a solid message or story to tell. While I don't really have a big story to suggest with this gif, I set out to make two awkward characters awkwardly interacting, and I think this simple shape based design works to that end.

This gif really illuminated to me the painstaking consideration that has to be present when trying to make a fluid movement in animation, as an object can barely move between frames if you want to have a natural looking movement, instead of an animation that looks like a fast powerpoint presentation of still images. I enjoyed the process however, it is something I'm entirely unfamiliar with so it was interesting challenging myself and testing what I could do and how effectively I could approach this. Also it gave me an appreciation of the patience necessary to make a moving image you can be happy with, as its easy to rush it and not have an entirely functional outcome. I spent a few hours during my break and after work finishing this gif over the weekend and I'm happy with the outcome. 

If I had more time I would want to create something more advanced with more movement and interaction, but I think that now I have made something simple I'm in a much better position to experiment with that sort of animation in the future. 

Analogue Gif - Baseball

This is probably my favourite of my outcomes as I think it has the strongest and funniest idea behind it. Early in my character designs I thought of this distressed character and I've repeatedly kept turning back through my sketchbook to look at him, and I chose to take him out and use him because I feel he works so much better as a moving image than a still sketch. 

I actually enjoyed drawing out the frames for this character as it felt very playful, as I was able to warp and shift him however I wanted using tracing paper and the lightbox. This gif in particular has highlighted to me the importance of precision and focus when animating, as consistency between frames is the most important part of the moving image. At first I forgot a few shoelaces or stitches and the animation as a whole looked choppy and strange, so I went back in and added everything to make sure each image was the exact same but with differently aligned lips, and I feel that it shows in my final animation.

I'm really happy with my final animation, as it is literally my first ever attempt at creating a moving illustration. I cleaned the white areas up on photoshop to get rid of unnecessary pencil marks etc but I think the mismatched pencil lines and felt colours work well to convey a sense of rapid movement. To improve it I would spend some time creating a background and movement lines to help suggest that sense of flight and inherent dread the character is feeling. I'm also just sort of amazed that I didn't cock up the teeth on any of the frames. In the future I want to be more careful with the quality and thickness of line, because some of the pencil lines are inconsistent in their density and it can be distracting. I enjoyed animating this way as its a method that allows you to review as you go along through the various traced panels, so in future animation tasks I'll probably go for the analogue method and try to improve at it, as I have enjoyed it. 

Focus on Story

I think I have enough ideas for character to move forward with at this point, now I'm focusing on trying to come up with brief but interesting stories for my characters to be involved in.

I'm starting to get better at visualising ideas that loop or continue indefinitely, I'm pretty sure at this point I'm going to use my baseball character for my analogue gif, and a variation on this Box chaarcter for my digital gif. 

This idea basically comes from me being at work a lot lately and all I see are boxes on boxes on shelves above and below more boxes, and they're all so bland and I hate them. So I chose to try and inject some life into one to quell my boredom with boxes. I think the various expressions is an okay idea, but I aren't sure how many frames I would need to allow the face to change naturally and in the right time, so I may just stick with him having a straight expression throughout, as that would convey the sense of plain and boring that cardboard boxes exude in my eyes. I also think its funnier to have a character that is so boring he's actually oblivious to whatever is happening around him in the animation, as that's often what I feel like at work. 

Some Storyboard ideas

I've just been thinking about how to make a Gif that loops properly and interestingly, and how to make sure the story I'm trying to tell ends where it begins. I thought it could be funny to see a tree trunk act independently of it's leaves, as while they are part of the same plant, they each change in very separate ways throughout the course of their lives. Trees and leaves change in appearance all the time independent to each other so I wanted to see a tree and its leaves interacting as two separate entities. I wanted to suggest a sort of awkward friendship (more of an acquaintanceship) between the two, as I cant imagine they would have much to do with one another than smile. The only problem is I can't really see this idea going much further, and while I enjoy how awkward it is, the gif would probably have to be longer than I'd like in order to convey that sense of awkwardness that I enjoy about this idea.

This idea was a more dynamic one, as I wanted to investigate what a tree goes through every year when the seasons change and it loses all its leaves and grows them all back again rapidly. From a human perspective that sounds very stressful, so I thought speeding up the process could prove to be funny. I think this one would loop a lot better too as the end point and start point are more clearly defined and roughly the same. I feel that this sort of movement would be a mad challenge to animate too, so I'll continue to investigate other routes to make the best use of the time we have.

Adventure Time - Masaaki Yuasa - Food Chain

It was only a matter of time before I started talking about Adventure Time. (Only a matter of adventure time. heh)
I just watched the Food Chain episode, which is guest animated by Masaaki Yuasa, and I think its bloody beautiful. It is an example of a singular creative vision, as the creators of Adventure Time gave Yuasa basically complete creative control in the story and visuals for this episode, and due to his background in anime, it is wonderfully bizarre and different to the usual (and still amazing) Adventure Time animation. Everything that appears in this episode is bursting with personality and character as it feels personal and non digital, as a lot of the illustration is watercolour.
The fluidity of the movement in this episode contrasted with sudden jarring frame shifts is almost dizzying but in a hypnotic way instead of an "I'm going to get headrush and vomit if you don't turn Transformers 2 off" sort of way.


Finn and Jake as flowers being devoured by caterpillars is both hilarious and horrifying and its the kind of tone I'd like to make in my gifs, something that has humour but is also a little bit disturbing. I think this episode has resonated with me so much is because it has such a personal feel while still adhering to the simplistic style of Adventure Time that I love. I also think that because it is a one off guest animated episode it seems a lot more special and unique, as this method of animating maybe isn't the most practical way of developing a whole series, but when it appears out of nowhere in the middle of a series it's a welcome departure from what the audience is used to. I'm hoping to use what I've learned from watching and researching this episode to create some animation that has personality and makes the viewer laugh or recoil or feel anything as Yuasa has done with Food Chain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQFhd3X8p6g
I couldn't find any gifs or still frames that do this particular bit of the episode justice, so I have linked it above at YouTube. I'm sorry if you are singing it all the rest of the day.

What is composition? - Roughs

The main thing I wanted to achieve in these roughs before the session was a basic sense of foreground, mid-ground and background, as I feel I don't pay enough attention to the background in my work and how equally important each of those sections is in an illustration. I enjoyed this because it feels playful and you can focus more on telling a story or creating a mood through how you arrange the elements together rather than just on solely what each element looks like on its own. My three focus points I chose were a knight, a sword, and a tree/trees (I was admittedly reading some Game of Thrones before starting this task). I chose them because I feel that together they have a sort of immediacy in terms of story, Knights are associated with adventure/heroism, swords are associated with old fashioned conflict, and in a woodland setting they all create a sense of sort of fantasy. This simple idea really helped me visualise the scene a lot better when it came to composing the roughs, as I think it's much easier to percieve a character with a distinct look and assumed personality running around in an established area with an object that connotes certain story tropes and traditions, than it is to throw three random objects together and have them interact compositionally in an interesting way that says something.

My main objective was really just to tell a funny little story with the arrangement of the three elements while trying to encompass the foreground, middle-ground and background equally to make a more well balanced image. 

Inanimate Objects R Fun

These ideas are a product of trying to let go of my conventional views of what a face/body should look like, and basing my drawing more on basic shapes and simplistic ideas. I think because most of my knowledge of character design comes from animation and comics, I can get stuck in perceptions of how a person is put together without considering just simplifying it way down until it's just the bare essentials needed to be recognised as a face or a body. For this project I want to move on from 'traditional' (it's not really traditional but it's sort of traditional in the sense it's been in my brain forever) ways of putting characters together using humanoid forms and comic inspired faces. I think this will allow me to find something new and exciting to use in my gifs, while also not being over complicated. 

I'm also focused on the overriding theme of my gifs being that of giving life and personality to uninteresting inanimate objects. I've been enjoying playing with character when there is the specific purpose of making something lifeless seem like it has a personality, instead of randomly churning out characters of every sort. I also think that some objects have personalities written into their appearance anyway, such as trees seem peaceful, baseballs seem mental, guitars ooze cool, even though all of these things are just things that can't actually think or do anything (unless photosynthesizing counts as something) independently.

I See Faces - thoughts on the best (I think) non human character in the galaxy

While overlooking the last few pages in my sketchbook and writing that last post about going more for totally non human designs when thinking about character, I realised one of the best examples and inspirations for this way of thinking about character comes in (in my opinion) one of the best pieces of character design in film.

(drumroll)

(drumroll obsolete when the image can be seen straightaway)

R2-D2 came to my mind because he is as far from human as a character could possibly be, yet his appeal comes from our innate ability to take visual cues like rectangles and circles and imagine in our mind that whatever we are looking at has a recognisable personality. If someone was raised in solitude without ever seeing another human face but could see every other object we use in our day to day lives, they would probably think this blog post was about a futuristic wheelie bin. The genius of this character is that its humanity is only present when reflected in our own.

The official (Wookieepedia) classification for this character is an "Industrial Automaton R2 Series Astromech Droid", confirming that technically, he is a literal piece of equipment like a keyboard or a wrench. But the simple inclusion of two circles of differing size and colour on his head allow us to suddenly see this piece of fictional equipment as a little person. I think that the circular shape for his 'mouth' is representative of the character, as it makes him look like he's in a constant state of curiosity or wonder. And all the way through this post I've been unthinkingly calling him a "he", when he doesn't have any of the features I'd normally attribute to something with gender, i.e. arms, hands, a head with a neck underneath it etc. Outside of just his physical design he doesn't even sound anything like a person, he communicates entirely using electrical beeps, whirrs and whistles, and even then we are able to perceive him as a little person rather than a computer on wheels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdEu3MRTWG0 This clip of sounds illustrates a breadth of human emotion without using any sort of recognised human language. There are sounds that suggest everything from fear, to laughing, to caution, to confusion, to excitement, all using whistles and electronic beeping. R2-D2 was designed by Ralph McQuarrie and his sound design was done by Ben Burtt, both of whom I think are great inspirations for character designers through their ability to give life to an object that usually would have none, and through this remind us of our inbuilt human passion for and ability to identify with something and feel emotion towards it, just because of a few cleverly placed circles and lines. 

I See Faces - further characters

I think my starting point for this brief has been a good way of allowing myself to keep to more simplistic designs to represent my ideas. Following with this, I started producing some characters in response to the feeling of being pissed off, which I was feeling mainly due to a particularly horrid stocktake at work over the weekend. I've tried to simplify faces into straight lines and small circles to convey anger and feelings of disconnect.

I've also started to move away from humanoid figures in my drawings, because I feel with character the easiest way to make something look like a person is just to draw it like a person, and I don't think the easiest way is necessarily the best way, as there can be a lot more charm in something completely inanimate and non human with two goggly eyes stuck on it. I hope to keep this attitude in mind throughout this brief as I really want to make something much different to my previous work for these gifs.

I See Faces brief - first day thoughts and experiments

I'm feeling hopeful about this brief as it focuses heavily on character which is something I always enjoy, although I can improve massively. This brief will be a great opportunity to change how I think about character and a chance for me to get away from established ways of drawing that I think I've been getting stuck in.

 This is the first page of ideas I had responding to the word "hopeful". The owl character was the first thing I thought of because of a relation to my COP essay and the themes I've been discussing in that. In the graphic novel Watchmen which I have analysed for my essay there is an owl themed character, Nite-Owl, who works as a representation for humanity and is the only truly hopeful and non-cynical character in the narrative. Because of this I just automatically associated the word hopeful with the imagery of an owl.
Overall I began to focus on round soft shapes and large eyes because they suggest openness and optimism, but after going over it with Matt, these elements are more restrictive than anything else to my ideas as I think I have started to become stuck in the process of using the same aesthetics across multiple drawings and I really want to try something new. I also think that I need to get more confidence in my ability because we also discussed that without noticing I often go over and repeat lines as if I aren't convinced that they look very good. these are all issues I'm happy to have had discussed and feel that I can move forward from this point.
 This page is much more experimental and was borne from the idea of taking the basic shapes of a large circle and two smaller circles and warping them into new shapes to better express a greater range of ideas. I think these characters immediately have more personality than my initial ideas that are probably generic and pretty safe/boring.
      
These pages continue the experimentation as I was trying still to focus on a different use of shape and arrangement, while trying to come up with some ideas that I think would be quite funny as a mini-narrative, as narratives are where characters thrive. Seeing as my hair is probably the most prominent bit about myself, I want to explore a character that appears to be defined by it, and then loses it in some comical way. Talking about it with some people in class one idea was that the whole hair gained a consciousness and ran away, or that it just burned off during sleep. I like this idea as I think it could work well as a sequence, even though I haven't actually started thinking about the final design of any of the GIFs. I have also started to repeat drawings more, as its a good way of gauging what elements do and don't work and how one change can have large impacts on the overall feel of the image.
 This final page is the beginnings of my initial ideas in response to stress and bad luck, mainly because it was my personal bad luck to be at work this weekend for the horrible in depth bi-annual stocktake. We had to do five recounts of hundreds of items that I swear do not exist, and then I had no dinner because the girl who ran out to get everyone's forgot me because I was running around looking for polo shirts that had actually been sold two days prior, and then the bus I was on this morning had the back window caved in and I had to speed walk the rest of the way to get in on time. The combination of all this sh** at least will work well as great inspiration for exploring characters in response to the feeling of being stressed and/or pissed off.