unit8ddadanielbignell

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

Final weekly journal

This week was very stressful trying to get everything done so I could hand in my project, I am so thankful than I am able to say I have finished everything although I would have like to have done more production.

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

Evaluation

Evaluation

My project is about a pixel art animation that can viewed as a game or as a standalone animation, I have done various research into all aspects of pixel art as well as landscape, animations, idle animations, colour etc. I wanted to create a full animation that went from a title screen to the beginning of animation where you get a backstory and some information to start a sequel.

The purpose of my project in the creative media industry is to be an animation that is showing a video game, a pixel art piece showing off different parts of pixel art like animating, text, and illustration or a concept for a video game(showing the tile screen ,character screen and a play button). I think my project fits with all these purposes and I like the idea of my project being all of them.

I am understanding pixel art more and more each time I use it and I enjoy the time it takes to make something look great especially when more pixels are involved, I find myself focusing on the pixels and nothing else around me. Animating my project just made it more fun and enjoyable although animating it was tricky and a little complex but it was very informative researching and learning how I can animate my pixel art better and more efficiently.

I would build on my project in the future by creating many, many more characters with their own animation and habitats, all of them different and have their own unique personalities that would be influenced by the space around them. I would also put all of my animations together in a story like way but still as if the viewer was playing a game, clicking play, changing characters, cut scenes. I would also like to give the viewer of the animation more information on my characters by maybe having some sort of pop-up explaining each character and their traits like in a video game.

Research

My research was extremely informative and very helpful, in the beginning I focused my research on various different pixel art pieces that involved characters and landscapes, I did this because I knew that I was going to be making a large scale character as well as background. All the research I got for character were really helpful, I tried to get different styles of pixel art characters so I could see the difference in them all and see what style of pixel art I would be going for, this was really helpful and super informative, not only this but also very influential.

When I was struggling with my animation or pixel art I was researching what I was struggling with so I could get a grasp on how I could rectify this in my own work, I even ended up researching my own previous work and it really helped a lot and was a good reflection making me a lot more confident knowing that I can do it as I have done it before.

With my primary research I took lots of pictures of cats from the place I work at, I did this as I really wanted to make a cat like character. Although I never got make a cat like humanoid character I did get to put a cat into my animation, which was influenced my cat from my work called autumn, I just wish I made a full scale cat but I think that would have not fitted in with how I wanted my animation to feel. I would have liked to do more primary research on more stuff other than cats and my own work but I am quite happy with what I got.

The feedback I received was really helpful as they showed me what I could research to make my project better as well as gave me a confidence boost when they praised my work. The constructive criticism I got spurred me own to make my project better which helped a lot as I don’t want to make things that look not that good.

This project has made me realize that the amount of research I did was good but how important primary research can be, I know I took many pictures but they weren’t varied enough, I would have liked to have taken more fish pictures as the character I made is a sea creature.

Problem solving

I came across many problems whilst making my project, the first problem I came across was when I first started the production side of my project, I started with the longest part of project which was my final background, I wanted to make a background to end all background but It came with so many problems. I noticed early on that With the background I made is way too big and I was struggling to put in the detail I wanted to put in and as a result I found myself unable to make my background look interesting, I rectified this by copy and paste various parts of my image making it look more full ad layered and giving it a sense of perspective making it look 3d- ish and making the viewer notice that some parts of the image were further away than others. The second problem with my background was the left side of the background, originally there was a mountain but I struggled to make it look really and not a blob of grey on the side of my image, I used research and my previous own work to create many mountains instead of the one grey patch on the side of the screen, however Doing this I accidently removed the natural horizon line that was previously complemented on me by a teacher.

Time was a huge problem for me, with previous projects I had lots of time out of college to work on my work making it the best it can be now that I have a job this has restricted me to not many hours outside of college to work on projects, I did not thinking about this at the start of the project so  I proposed a  huge scale animation that would require a lot of time to make possible and I was sure I was going to be able to make it, however this was not the case I was working every day I wasn’t at college, and during the half term I worked almost every day, this drained me and  and I had little to no time to do any college work at home. I am sad about this but I had to cut down a lot on my animation and sadly I wasn’t able to make what I wanted to make. With that being said I am very happy with what I have made.

In future projects I would propose something a lot simpler and time focused on the time I have available knowing that I would be busy outside of college, I would also try to steer away from pixel art during my college projects and only do pixel art at home, as not only is it time consuming I don’t want to exhaust myself doing it over and over again making people think I am a one trick pony. I want to improve on my drawing/ illustrations skills which will improved me on all aspects of art.

I believe I planned extremely well if I took time into more of a consideration, I was able to complete my adapted project on time whilst still keeping the in-depth self-evaluation that was important for me to keep track on what I was doing , what I could improve on and what looked good. Time was the only inefficient part of my project which I hope will not be a problem in the future.

Practical skills

I would have liked to have made more characters for my project that would have given me the availability to use more skills on the project however I think that the skill of making the pixel art as well as making the idle animation was really good for my project especially since I really like what I have made for my project I just would have liked to have made more of them.

I learned ore skill and improved the skills I have with pixel art by challenging myself to make bigger more varied pixel art, this was quite difficult as the pixel available in pixel art require a considerable amount of more time which is also something to think about. Making my characters was really confidence boosting for me as they were larger yet still looked good as I put a lot of time into it, I couldn’t have put the detail I wanted to put into my character because I was going to animate my character, therefore to save time and focus on the animation I didn’t put a lot of detail and kept my character simple enough so that I could create a really nice idle animation that I really love. I learned many new pixel art techniques as well as animation techniques. One of the pixel art techniques were based on colour, where instead of using rgb colour I would use hsb sliders on Photoshop instead which gave a lot more control on the colours I was using. One of the animation techniques I learned was shine, which is where I made my pixel’s shine with light on the clothes of my character.

I would like to build my animations techniques where I can make complex movement animation, maybe an attack animation for my character which I believe would look really amazing, with my pixel art techniques I would like to improve on how my pixel art looks making it look far better than It is right now. I can improve my pixel art by practicing and practicing pixel art and gradually grow my techniques sand skill in this area, this work s for the animation as well as it is important to practice as it is a sure why to get better and better and the skill you want to improve on.

Evaluation

I think the evaluation is the best part of my project, I have criticized my work harshly so I know what I can improve on and also made sure I got lots of feedback so that I can evaluate my work further in the eyes of how a viewer would see it, this is important as it can only make my projects in the future better. Next time I can use all the evaluation and feedback I have gained from this project making my future projects better, problems that I faced during this project will be less of a problem during future projects as I know what I can do to rectify them.

Presentation

The start of my blog is structured well and is clear and informative, you can see what I want to do and how I am going to get there whilst also making a start on what I want to do by doing lots of research. However, it slowly starts to derail as I was running out of time and struggling with out of college situations that were unavoidable, however I think I have managed to keep it together and still make a quite a nice blog, I would have liked to make it clearer of my ideas/ intentions for my project as I was getting a lot of question about what I was doing when I thought it was clear but viewers were struggling to see what I was a seeing.

I have learned a lot during this project especially how important having time in your own time to work on projects can drastically improve the quality of the work you are creating as well as presentation of the work I have made, I am going to take this knowledge and improve my work in future projects making sure I have the time to make everything I want to make and with the availability of making more than what I want to do. I am excited to start future where I can improve all my skills and gain knew ones.

Overall I am very happy with my project even if I wanted to make it ten times the size.

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

Feedback

Overall I think is a pretty good concept and FMP.

Pixel art is something that takes a lot of time, but Daniel has produced a lot of good pieces. 

I really like the animation for the starting screen of the game, I think that animation is pretty sweet and the transitions and time frames are on point. 

I think that the landscape/background with the tower in is quite good, I would have liked to see some more colour in it, because green seems to be the dominant colour in that piece, however I do understand that the beam of light from the tower is supposed to consume the whole scene, and it does create that illusion. I think the animation could be slightly better, I like the beam of light and the forest but I am not too sure about the clouds in the back.

I think that my favourite piece out them all has to be the sea creature, “Aqua”! It has an interesting design, and the animation is really good. The background fits and the color palette is really good and it even has a sense of depth to it, which can be kinda tricky to achieve, especially in pixel art. 

Overall is a solid FMP. Good job!~ uwu

Jakub: I really love the concept of the pixel art. I’m a big fan of pixel art and I think he’s done a really good job. I think the colour choices were really good they all matched together and also resembled the sea by having a lot of blue / green colours. I also really like the fact that he made everything on photoshop even the animation, I think the animations looks really good too. Overall really good job!

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

FMP - Behance

You can see my fmp on behance @ https://www.behance.net/gallery/81223537/aqua

Koneko animation concept 

Koneko is the name of the animation, the animation is a person playing a game called “Koneko” where you choose a character and go on a quest like adventure.

Title screen - On my title screen I have a looping animation of a  cat in the background with the available options in the foreground aswell as a animaton of a mouse selecting the play button.

Character select - This is similar to my title screen animation, but shows the “playable character”, “aquarius” with his idle animation  aswell as the habitat where my character lives. This screen also has a similar animation to the play button for my title screen but it is far more singular and straight forward.

Adventure screen - this is where you see the evil tower and enemy of the animation, the idea is the viewer can see the inpending doom coming from the tower. The character can see this from a distance and will have travel to the tower to stop it.

Game - if this were to be created into  a game, the characters would be much smaller and would play like a top down turn based combat game.

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

Week 9 + 10 journal

 These 2 weeks I did little to nothing for my final major project due to no fault of my own, I was very ill during the first week where I was in bed the whole time, and the second week I was working during the holiday and on my day off I was at a funeral and was unable to do any fmp work, I am worried that I am not going to be able to finish my project due to these disastrous, to try and finish my work I am chaning a  few things that will save me some time, I am stopping the recording of my work as it is taking to long to put the files together and upload to youtube, I am a little annoyed by this as I enjoyed making the timelapse video of the creation of my FMP.

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

Week 8 journal

This week has been very productive and I have got a lot done even though I haven’t completed anything yet, I have made great strides in finishing my main background and my first character animation, these next 3 weeks are going to be critical Making me finish on time. I am excited to make more for my animation although it is far less as expansive as I hoped. Research has helped me a lot this week making it so I can produce better work and faster as I have more of a grasp on how I want things to look as well as I have more insight on how I want to make it.

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJOUTSy0fQI

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

Character design - “Aquarius”

Aquarius is a fish-like alien, that has a huge monstrous squid-like body, where the character is from it is considered royalty, and uses wave vibrations to communicate to it’s loyal subjects, Aquarius created an underwater castle that replicated the castle of the surface dweller. Aquarius is fluid and is somewhat transparent, he has no bones and needs oxygen to breath.

I had this inspiration for this character for a while, and it was pointed out to me to note this down in my blog as it can show the viewer what this character is and how he is like.

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

Research

8 bit to 16 bit is a big difference, the amount of colours that are available from 8 bit to 16 bit skyrocket making the creator be able to make much more in depth and in detail  art.

Connor's Blogging. (2019). Task 1- Raster and Vector. [online] Available at: https://cobweb93blog.wordpress.com/college/year-12/new-media/unit-19/raster-and-vector/ [Accessed 16 May 2019].

I think people love 8 bit colours as there is not as much colour to work with so you don’t get that blend of colour, but you get a solid colour which im not sure how looks really good . you also have to thin of the nostalgia factor of how when computer art was first made they were all 1 bit to 8 bit images.

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

Research

My teacher gave me some really interest insight on how I can make my background better and it has helpede so so much, The pictures are hard to see and the sketches were made on recycled paper but they have helped me see what I can do to make my background better in photoshop.

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

First character background

I want to make a great background for my character , one that is not a complex as my other background but one that looks really good, I don’t want it to be too complex as I am short on time and I want to be able to get the most done in the most little as time possible so i can make my deadline.

Thumbnail sketches of different  backgrounds that I could use for my character backhground.

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

Background update

My background has changed alot over the weeks I have used the feedback and research I have gathered to influence my background design quite dramatically from when I first started making this background. I am very happy with the way it is at its current state but there is much more work to be done before this is finished. I will need to finish the bottom part of the background by putt ing in more trees and adjusting my building so they are in perspective as curretly my lonely wood house at the bottom looks terrible in y background and I am not happy with it.

In the video it shows the process I have gone through remaking the right and left mountain as well as putting more mountains in, At first I made a mistake by going down the same path I made with the mountains I had a problem with before, but on right side of the page I tried making different mountains that were much more 2 dimension and they started to look really good, so after a while of colouring in these new mountains I copied and flipped them to the part where my mountains looked terrible and began creating something really nice.

I moved the top of my the trees on the right downwards as I believe they would fit there and I could still put mountains behind them, I like what I had done but as an effect I accidentally removed the nice horizon line that was pointed out  to me by a teacher, and I am not csure how I feel about it however I am so much happier with how it looks right now compared to how it looked before.

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

First character animation( Aquarius)

I have encountered a problem export my character animation as a gif in photoshop with these computers I am afraid that it is much to hard work for these computers to process what I need it to  do... I can rectify this, I will just need to wait til I am at home ti be able to put my animation into a viewable state.

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

Research

As I ma about to create an idle animation for my character I think it would be best if I researched some Pixel art animations / idle animations, not only will the research make sure I am not doing anything wrong It will also give me inspiration and influence in my own character animation.

YouTube. (2019). How To Pixel Art Tutorial Part 15: Idle Animation. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sKpG7VMEBQ [Accessed 14 May 2019].

I really like this video as it shows simple pixel art idle animation, it is also not a too long video where you would get bored after 10 minutes and it is easy to understand. This has given me a little more understanding on idle animations but I am concerned that this will not work for my character as it is a monster that is a non-humanoid however I get the concept of how the idle animation should look and I don’t need to copy the inputs of this video as it has a completely different character.

Studio Miniboss Idle Animation tutorial

66.media.tumblr.com. (2019). [online] Available at: https://66.media.tumblr.com/ed4ce7ac0af70344aa71f6592dc52a1f/tumblr_inline_osooe1sm4w1qdiwz3_500.gif [Accessed 14 May 2019].

The people at studio miniboss are amazing, time after time I always come back to the pixel art tutorial the people there make the best pixel art animation tutorials  as they make them with pixel art , showing the viewer exactly what they need to know. I am going to use this tutorial to make my animation better as it has given me alot of influence and I am excited t otry it out myself, I need to be conscious of the fact the a my character is a lot bigger that the character made in these tutorials , I hope that it doesn’t make the animation not work but I guess we will find out...

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

Feedback

I think that this piece is probably my favorite one so far, I really like how you presented your character, as well how you included the colour pallets and codes you used to make your piece. I like the colours you picked, because I think they go quite well with the character, however I think that it could do with a background, but that is just a personal preference. 

I agree that it needs a background and I’ll get on that after I have made the animation for my character.

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

week 7 Journal

This week I made one character in Photoshop and began creating another character. On my second character I don’t like the colours I have used so I am going to go back and change the colours I have used. other than this I have quite enjoyed making everything I have made this week, there is stuff I can improve on like speed but I am happy with what I have got so far. Next week I want to begin animating a character to see how it looks I would also like to make a background for the character so that part of my animation will be complete.

[unit8ddadanielbignell]

first character (Aquarius)

I made the first character for my pixel art animation, I used my sketch of my character to use as a base for the creation of my character in pixel art, As my pixel art canvas was small , the resolution of the sketch i imported onto the canvas was tiny compared to the actual scanned image, I used the scanned image as well as the drawing I made to make an outline for my character before I put colour on to it. In my timelapse video you can see the quality of the scanned image I was trying to work with... having my drawing in front of me helped as I could follow it with my eyes making sure my pixel art was going in the right direction.

This character I made for a different project , however I really liked the design and effort I put into th drawing that I decided I wanted to develop it into pixel art and animate it.

I looked for colours on hsb slider that I thought would suit my  character, following this I used the knowledge and tips I gained from my research on “MortMort” youtube video on HSB sliders to make 8 colours that worked really well for my character.

To find a nice colour for the clothes of my character I Imported the colour code of the colour of I used for the main body of my character, I used this colour code as it was the colour I used the most in my image, after this I used the website adobe color which automatically shows me the best colours that go with with the colour code I put in.

On the complementary colours option in adobe color there was a brown that I thought would make a really nice colour for the clothes my chracter wears however I thought it was a little dark, therefore when I put the brown colour code into photoshop I followed “MortMort” ‘s video again and adapted it to make a lighter colour that still complemented my character. I think the colours for for my characters clothes worked really well and I really like it.

I ddi somthing similar with the wings of my character, but I think the colours definately worked better witht he clothes and my characters body rather than my character and its wings, I was trying to get an ethereal look to my characters wings, but as you can see in my timelapse video I ended up recolouring my characters wings as I was not getting the desired effect I was looking for.

I really like my wings now but I think they might be a bit to green, I think I should have used colours similar to colours of my characters body rather than using the analogous colours that I gathered from Adobe color

Color.adobe.com. (2019). Color. [online] Available at: https://color.adobe.com/create [Accessed 8 May 2019].

https://youtu.be/wNKY9OiSngU