Animation Fundamentals: Project 1
14/5/2024 - 4/6/2024 (Week 4 - Week 7)
Seh Zi Qi/ 0355872/ Bachelor of Design(Honours) in Creative Media
Module Name: GCD61104/ Animation Fundamentals
Project 1
LIST
Project 1A: Character Design
Project 1B:
LECTURE
INSTRUCTION
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PROJECT 1A: CHARACTER DESIGN
"Your goal here is to create a character design that should reflect his or her personality in the story and be visually appealing to the targeted audience. To begin, take any references from the existing character that resembles your character. It can be from any movie, anime, comic etc. Note that your character must have 2 legs at least to be able to practise the walk cycle in Project 2."
Deliverables:
- A turnaround sheet (front, side, back and ¾ view perspective)
- Pose sheet (Various poses in different emotions) - 5 poses *full body
- Character facial expressions - 5 expressions * focus on chest up
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Progress
Using the Google doc he provided for this project, I knew what I needed to do as well as having prior knowledge about the subject. Since I've already decided who I wanted to draw which is my OC, Original Character, named Raina Jenesis who's a Dragonborn Chef, it was an easy task to start with.
Character Sheet Progression
I had already made a portrait of her during the DND Campaign I was in so I was able to easily replicate her face when making the character sheet.
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| Fig 1.1, Raina Jenesis Portrait |
Her class is a chef barbarian so she needed to be slightly buff and athletic since she goes out and wanders for ingredients, making her an agile being with slightly strong arms and legs. Since she's also a chef, I decided to give her an apron, kitchen utensils and herb bags for her first outfit while her second outfit is a more casual outfit and easier to draw and animate.
Fig 1.2, Character Sheet Progress #1
When I figured out what the character needed to wear, I went ahead with drawing the side, back and 3/4 view perspective poses that were required in the brief
Fig 1.3, Character Sheet Progress #2
Once I was done with creating the poses, I went ahead and coloured the character to my liking. Since she's a red Dragonborn, I wanted the colour scheme to lean more into the warmer tones like reds and oranges.
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| Fig 1.4, Character Sheet Progress #3 |
Poses Sheet Progression
Once I was done with the character sheet, I went ahead with creating 5 different poses. I wanted to do 2 standing, 2 sitting and one miscellaneous pose to challenge myself in drawing a new character.
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| Fig 2.1, Pose Sheet Progress #1 |
After getting feedback from Mr Kamal, he said that poses 2 and 5's foreshortening was a bit odd and I should use a cube to visualise the foreshortening that was happening in the poses so I did just that.
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| Fig 2.2, Pose Sheet Progress #2 |
Even after adjusting the character's poses to the cube, I still felt that it was a bit weird so I scrapped the ideas and tried either drawing new poses or repurposing old ones.
Pose 2 leans heavier into the foreshortening, having an almost complete bottom-to-top view perspective while I completely remade Pose 5 into a sideways sitting pose to replicate the side profile in the character sheet.
Fig, 2.3, Pose Sheet Progress #3
Facial Expression Progression
Once I was done with the poses, I went into the facial expressions sheet. I needed to do 5 facial expressions ranging from different types of emotions. The ones I chose to do were happy, sad, angry, scared and flustered.
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| Fig 3.1, Facial Expression Progress #1 |
I realised that the facial expressions could benefit more if I added a darker colour to indicate shadow or cheek flushes so I added that after.
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| Fig 3.2, Facial Expression Progress #2 |
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PROJECT 1B: LAYOUT DESIGN
"For this work progression 2, you will create layout designs for an animated project using perspective. Your designs will be used as backgrounds for various scenes in the animation. Your goal is to create visually interesting and dynamic layouts that enhance the story and the mood of the animation."
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Progress
Once I was done with the character, poses and facial expression sheet, it was much easier to do the layout design since I knew the ins and outs of my own character. I wanted her to be in a forest as if she had been wandering around the forest for some herbs but it became nightfall too quickly and she had to camp out in said forest.
After fleshing out the story, I went ahead and sketched a rough silhouette of the layout design.
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| Fig 4.1, Rough Silhouette Progress |
Next, I used the silhouette as a guide and drew out my first draft of the layout design; giving it to Mr Kamal to give feedback on.
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| Fig 4.2, First Draft Progress |
Mr Kamal suggested a lot of things like:
- The bushes near the camera should be more detailed.
- The fire should invert the colours since hotter = lighter colour
- The camp and character should be more angled because it doesn't look like there's a specific point of perspective.
- The background should be lighter since it's further away.
- Have more variation in the tree trunks.
- The character doesn't look relaxed enough so I should change the pose.
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| Fig 4.3, Mr Kamal's Feedback |
After listening to his advice, I drew another rough sketch of what I should improve on and worked on it more.
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| Fig 4.4, 2nd Rough Sketch Progress |
I decided to finish the background first and then tackle the angle of the tent and character. I drew 2 poses that I felt were relaxing and I asked my friends which one they'd prefer because I couldn't choose myself. The majority chose the 2nd pose as the more relaxing pose so I went with that and finished my layout design.
Fig 4.5, 2nd Layout Progress
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FINAL Character & Layout Design
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| Fig 5.1, Final Character Sheet of Raina Jenesis |
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| Fig 5.2, Final Pose Sheet of Raina Jenesis |
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| Fig 5.3, Final Facial Expressions of Raina Jenesis |
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| Fig 5.4, Final Layout Design |
REFLECTION
For this project, it wasn't as hard as I thought as I knew how to draw before coming into animation fundamentals and had made a few characters but I hadn't made any of the sheets mentioned above. It was very exciting to try something new and to flesh out a character that I had written in my Film Studies & Cinematography module; it feels as if I'm connecting the modules together with my character and it's really fun! One of the struggles I had during this would be in Project 1B: Layout Design as I struggle a lot when it comes to drawing backgrounds. It was one of my concerns when it came to this project but I had gotten good feedback from Mr Kamal on what I should improve on and encouragement from my friends who had watched me struggle who also gave me tips and tricks on how to draw better; Thanks to them I was able to have a better time on drawing my layout design. Overall, I had a lot of fun doing this project and can't wait for other projects.
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