I am currently en route to Sedona, and I stupidly left my laptop at home so I won't be able to share any photos with you today. I'll probably post some backgrounds when I get back on Monday or Tuesday, but for now we will all have to make due with this bland and imageless blog post. I also can't check the word count on my phone, so I'm just going to wing it and hope I end up above the requirement. Also, enjoy this large font that I can't change back to normal.
This week, I mostly worked on more of the same: drawing frames and backgrounds. I actually had to switch out the nib on my tablet pen because the edges had started to fray from all the use it's been getting these past months. One new development is that I've been drawing walk cycles for different characters. These are pretty self-explanatory, but in case you haven't heard of it, a walk cycle is a series of frames that show the different parts of a gait and loop to show someone walking (or running, shuffling, etc). Previously I've only done walk cycles in Flash, not Photoshop, but so far there isn't really a difference between the programs. I haven't made one that I'm satisfied with yet, but I do have an old one that I might post along with the other drawings once I have my laptop.
I'm not sure whether I mentioned this, but I was planning on the last scene of my animation being a dance party (mostly because I want to animate weird movements and it's a good excuse to use bright flashing colors, but also for legitimate narrative reasons, I swear). A few days ago I found a short that solidified this plan. It's called Slaves of the Rave and was made by William Garratt. I think that link should work, but blogspot keeps warning me that Safari is an unsupported browser and ''may behave erratically," so if it doesn't work it's easy to google. The short doesn't actually have much dancing, and it's not super visually complicated, but I found it very entertaining and I really like the line quality, so if you have a minute you should definitely go watch it. It also has a lot of yellow and I love yellow.
Someone else that I've been a little inspired by is an artist named Juliette Brocal. I recently was talking to a classmate of mine from a RISD summer thing, and she mentioned this artist. I really like how illustrative and gestural her work is; it reminds me of concept art. She mostly does digital art but uses very textured brushes, and her backgrounds sometimes look a bit like a collage. Her color palettes especially caught my eye.
Sorry again about no pictures, but I'll put them up after the weekend, or at least in next week's post.
The "Slaves of the Rave" video was too cute! How long do you expect your animation to be?
ReplyDeleteI hope you enjoy Sedona, and I can't wait to see your pictures in a later post!
I really like that animation, I think it does a good job of telling a story and being visually interesting but still keeping things simple. I still don't know exactly how long I expect my animation to be, partly because I'm a bad judge of time and always make frames either too fast or too slow and partly because I'm really enjoying drawing backgrounds. Last week I mostly put the actual animation on the back burner, and while I'm not going to do that this week, I think my priority has shifted from "complete the story!" to "draw the story a bunch of different ways to see how it changes!"
DeleteHello.
ReplyDeleteI hope you enjoyed your time in Sedona. I'm sure your eloquent writing will make up for the lack of images. Your post is 489 words long, so congratulations on your successful winging. The larger font is certainly easier on my feeble eyes.
What's the difference between the frame and a background? Wow, you must be doing a lot drawing and stuff for your pen to wear out. Are you willing to let us know what characters are in your animation at this point? I am looking forward to seeing LEAFMAN shuffling. It's good that there isn't a difference. What character is in the old walk cycle?
I am more than slightly suspicious of these vague "legitimate narrative reasons." Slaves of the Rave was mostly enjoyable, except for the banjo part. I especially liked when they all drowned and then performed a synchronized swimming routine. If you couldn't tell by now, the link was functional. I also hated the amount of yellow. I hate yellow so much.
Brocal sounds like SoCal but for bros, which I have mixed feelings about. What's concept art? Is what you're doing considered digital art? I guess her color palettes probably had a lot of yellow in them or something.
I am eagerly awaiting your latest pictures.
Sorry to hear about your feeble eyes, best of luck with that. A frame is a piece of a video while a background is just a drawing that sits in the frame (along with whatever moving elements there are). So for example I just posted a leafman gif for you, and the background is the leaf and the frames are the slides containing the leaf and the leafman that loop to create the blinking motion. I can't tell you what characters are in my animation because I keep changing my mind and I don't know. And the character in the old walk cycle is just a yellow Dr Seuss-looking thing (my love of yellow started young).
DeleteI like banjos. Please do not insult them. I also love yellow. Please do not insult yellow.
Concept art is GREAT and INTERESTING. It's the art that animation studios use to figure out how a movie is going to look. For example, here's some Frozen concept art by Claire Keane, who I like a lot and who is related to Glen Keane, who you probably haven't heard of but who is basically THE dude at Disney. http://www.claireonacloud.com/frozen/ As you can see Elsa's character design was significantly different (these drawings were made back when Elsa was going to be evil).
Digital art is just art made with a computer, so yeah, I'm making digital art.
I'm interested in the point you made about walk cycles, does every character have their own unique one? Btw, I read your idea for a dance party and immediately thought of this: http://i.imgur.com/HRtYDRN.gif
ReplyDeleteCharacters SHOULD have unique walks, but I don't have much experience so I don't know how well I'm gonna be able to do that. And I don't watch anime but I'm pretty sure that gif is from kekkai sensen (maybe?) because two of my friends once got into an argument over whether that ending is better or cowboy bebop's.
DeleteI like the Slave of the Rave animation! Im really looking forward to seeing your pictures. You said your friend from RISD uses a different style than yours. What style would you consider your paintings to be?
ReplyDeleteThe pictures are up! Woo. And I think as far as styles go, the artist I mentioned is just a lot more settled into her style than I am. I still kind of don't know what I'm doing, so it's hard to figure out a certain look. I guess the best indicators of my digital style would be the images I post, which are mostly pretty simple. Hopefully the more I work digitally, the more I'll be able to develop and stick with a unique style.
Delete