chezniewalters

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Some funky packaging

We were given the task to find 3 examples of some fun branding that sticks out from the rest, so off to tesco we went

Example numero uno

Bright yellow and not in some hourglass shaped plastic container, nesquick is doing a fab job grabbing your attention. All those other noobs are chilling in dull purples, blues and browns. I know which one I'm more drawn to let me tell ya.

Example deux

As a child (and honestly still as a 19 year old) I was obsessed with this packaging, I mean just look at it. Sure, you've got some funky-ish looking bottles, but these fellas are made to look like people with hats on. I want to say they stick out like a sore thumb, but that's too negative, they stick out like a single neon painted finger nail on a hand of blandness. The bright colours and interesting shapes are just perfect for attracting that child audience, pure genius really.

The final example in the trilogy

I'm not entirely sure if this is cheating or not, but it's a huge difference which I absolutely need to point out - craft beers vs. normal beers. Normal ones are just so boring, their red white and blue, Where's the variety people?! Craft beers are a whole new level of eyecatching, just look at the variety. There's every colour and style you could imagine on a can or bottle, it's beautiful, truly.

Conclusion

Bright colours aren't just for 12 and under, they attract business. Just think about how successful nesquick is, that bright yellow is working for them. From scanning the isles of my local tesco, I've learnt the lesson that doing your research into how everyone else is presenting themselves is so incredibly important because you need to stand out! Don't get me wrong, nab some inspo while you're perusing the existing branding, but add that pop of colour, be daring, be the craft beer in a world of regular beers.

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Week 8

Dynamics 

I’m so happy to have finished off the dynamics portion of this unit, and looking back, I honestly think it was the best part of a unit I’ve ever done?? Not animation wise, but educational wise. I’ve learnt so much more about the principles of animation than I ever did in college, and I actually think I’m getting good at a couple of them which just seems mental to such an extreme self-doubter like myself. 

Even though I (many times) thought of doing an easier principle, like squash and stretch, for the dynamic animation exercise, I’m glad I stuck with my guns and did something I had no practice in, just because it felt real good when I actually managed to finish it.

Research

Admittedly, I left it way to late to finally finish this essay, and I regret it so much. My reasoning was literally ‘if I get everything else done first, I can just focus on the essay’ which sounds ok if you actually get the other work done quickly and early, but I left one single thing (the dynamic exercise) until the very last week which meant I didn’t start the essay (apart from like a couple of sentences) until this week. 

I found it super difficult to hunt down enough reliable sources. I didn’t just want it to be websites but finding books was not an easy task. First of all there was the heart break of finding the perfect book just to see that it was on loan until the 24th and no library near me both in Norwich and Essex carried, but also I couldn’t just buy it because it was like £20. I’m glad I had the writers journey and the semiotics book though, that was a huge help.

In all fairness, I have gone crazy with the notes, I did set myself up quite well for the essay itself so it wasn’t quite a 1am-Friday-morning-finishing-it off-with-tears-down-my-face kind of situation.

Character Design 

I kind of regret not doing anything more this week for character design, but because I finished the tasks last week, I kind of pushed it to the back to make space for the essay and last bit of dynamics. I will be 100% honest with you though, I could of managed my time this week and last weekend so much better than I did, because I did only have those two things left to do.

If I had the chance, I would go back and make improvements to the character walk cycle the most, there are areas where I did get a bit lazy and only move like the limbs and head after copy and pasting the previous frame over. I still think that it went really well though.

16/11/17

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Since there were only 3 of us, we got 5 minutes per drawing and were given brush pens with black ink. I mean, I’m not saying I hate actual brush tip pens with a body full of ink more than a lukewarm bath, but I kind of am. You had to hold it downwards (obviously to get the ink out like it doesn’t defy gravity) which on just a sketchbook or whatever when you’re sat at a table is probably fine but when you’re at some weird angles on a vertical piece of cartridge paper, the ink struggles to defy gravity and you end up with just a brush stroke of disappointment. So, I soon gave up and moved onto my well lovingly hated charcoal to do the rest.

We then got 35 minutes to draw something and got to pick whatever medium we wanted to so I went for some mid tone paper and three different colours of chalk, white, grey (but it was really more of a blue) and black. It was really fun and one of my favourite life drawing pieces from uni but don’t get me wrong, I still think it’s terrible. Also, looking back at it, it literally looks like I’ve drawn the other life model, you know, the one I did portraits of before so oops.

16/11/17

[chezniewalters]

Oh boy, I finally finished the dynamic exercise, hurrah.

So after avoiding the dynamics section for easy too long because of the looming essay, I finally sat down and completed the weight and effort task and honestly, I think it’s my favourite so far?! 

I started off with my rough keys, which looked like this:

I had to slow this down in premiere pro because it was going far too quick due to the lack of breakdowns and in-betweens. I wanted to play around with the angle which he was standing most, just purely to test myself really. I liked how the keys turned out (i don't really know why there’s one missing) so I continued and drew out my breakdowns.

It looks a bit like a broken Christmas tree but that’s just because I needed different brush colours to know the different frames. 

You can see my two smear frames quite clearly with the whole multicoloured look but I guess that’s useful with the whole ‘explaining your process’ kind of thing. I haven’t done smear frames in any of my animations throughout uni, and I wanted to see if I still could. I was well aware of the risk that if it looked bad I just wasted a bunch of time, but I kind of like how it did turn out, just because I put them in the point where the box would be moving quicker. Admittedly, it does look a little dodgy when it’s not in full black but who cares, right.

After I finished all my in-betweens, I thought long and hard whether I should go in and trace every frame with neater lines, or if I should photo filter the roughs to make them black. Spoiler, I photo filtered them, but it’s not 100% out of laziness, it is also the fact that being a perfectionist, I do struggle with making my rough frames actually rough, so I can get away with just making them black.

Overall, i’m super happy with the outcome, and think it’s one of the better animations i’m submitting.

14/11/17

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Week 7

Dynamics

I really wish I did more for dynamics this week if I’m honest, I think I spent too much time finally finishing the character design task and not enough improving what I’ve got going on in this section. To be honest, all of the animations I have for dynamics now are kind of mediocre and I really hope I finish everything else relatively soon so I can start working on improving them.

Saying that, I actually managed to finish the performance walk cycle this week (even though it’s just keys and breakdowns)!! I do really like the walk, even if it doesn’t exactly convey a recognisable emotion.

The dynamic animation exercise is something I’m actually looking quite forward to, just because I haven’t studied weight an effort at all during the ‘learning animation’ segment of my life. However, I’m really not excited about the storyboard I created because I honestly hate all three, so let’s just hope the finished animation is slightly less gross.

 Research

Even though I only had 15 minutes of research lecturing, I am so much more confident for my essay than I was before. I have so many points to make I’m starting to think that I won’t even have enough words to cover them all. I did have things to talk about before the talk with Lynsey, but they were all over the place with no real point to them?? Not to mention my list of things I could get some info from or refer to was so painfully small it was looking like my bibliography would be shorter than my pinkie toe, but now I have a possible book (with luck the person who currently has it out on loan will reply to the library and let me have it for a day) and way more articles!! I am still a bit nervous about having a good information source about semiotics but I’m sure I’ll get there.

 Character Design

It was a big week for the character design section I can tell you that. Even though I had the rough frames for the walk cycle and most of the drawings done for everything else, nothing was fully finished. I’m really happy with how everything turned out and I can put that bunny to the side for a minute because honestly, Gibbles was starting to show up in my dreams and I was concerned.

I think the best moment this week was figuring out the colour scheme for him because that was hurting me. The shear stress of not wanting him to look like an Easter bunny got to me has kind of put me off pastel purple. In my opinion, the alien theme I was trying to go for came across so much better when I added colour, and he finally looked less like just an average cutesy bunny.

10/11/17

[chezniewalters]

Honestly, this was my favourite life drawing lesson so far. Not because of my work (because it’s barely mediocre) but the experience.

We started out by folding one sheet of paper into 4 and absolutely smothering it in charcoal to make a nice and messy base to add highlight to later. I made the mistake of wearing a light blue pair of jeans to the lesson but by this point I was just living in the moment and not really giving much care of everything else. The picture above is the result.

After like a good 20 minutes of everyone wrecking all their clothing, we moved on to actually drawing, and even I don’t particularly like how they came out, it really helped me improve my skills of just focusing on highlight first and thinking almost in reverse to what I usually do. I kept my lines loose and light, really just a guideline before I went in with the rubber more hard-core to get that light shining, but because I did my sheet so dark, I didn’t really have any way to go darker so I just had to vary the pressure of my rubber to create mid-tones.

Now it was time for the longer, bigger drawing (or rubbing I don’t really know how to phrase it when you’re taking the drawing material off of the page instead) and I was actually pretty excited. I do think the torso is too long and the arms are just like ??? but apart from that I do kind of like it a little, weeny, tiny bit.

09/11/17

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This is disgusting and I want you to know that I know that.

For the dynamic animation exercise portion of the dynamics project, I just created 3 super rough, super gross, story boards to kind of figure out what I wanted to do for it (since I picked weight and effort and although it hurts me I will persist).

I don’t even know if I want to go for any of these ideas exactly, but I do think I will follow up on the whole ‘kettlecise’ idea just because I can get some seriously fab reference material from my wonderful mother.

09/11/17

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Character Design W7

Lynsey, you’re wonderful and i love you.

Even though I only had like 15 minutes of an individual tutorial, it might of just been the most useful 15 minutes of my educational career. I was super struggling and panicking over this essay but now I’m actually almost excited about it??

The first thing we discussed was the question I start the essay with because I was struggling hardcore with that. It only took like 3 minutes and we had: 

‘How are the (social) themes of ‘The Little Prince’ represented through the character of The Little Girl?’

Social is in brackets just because i’m not sure if my entire essay will be about the social commentary in the film or not sooo??

After that miracle, we talked about points in general, and I know I did that HUGE post on all the things I need to include, these are some points that are more specified to my essay and not just the essay assignment in general:

Voice 

During the film, the areas where she is submitting to the social expectations of her, she barely speaks, and when she does it isn’t very emotive or it’s got a kind of sad undertone.

Variation in animation style

There are 3 variations in the animation style. You have the reality which is 3D with characters looking more human like with only the usual animation exaggerations (neoteny, having juvenile or 'babylike' characteristics (large head/eyes in proportion to body size)), the stop motion world when the story of The Little Prince is being told which is further away from reality and lastly the 2D on the story pages being the furthest away.

Semiotics

The Little girl has a very bold character design, and the variation of shapes used are almost giving the idea to the viewer of her breaking free of constructs like the construct that heroes are usually rectangles, villains are triangles and so on. But also, within those shapes, everything is quite soft, keeping that child appearance.

Colour schemes

The most obvious thing with her colour schemes is actually the colour schemes of the film in general. When she is in that time frame of ‘growing up’, the colours are dull, grey and just bleak, especially when compared to the vividness and saturation of the more child like times.

Character movements and characteristics

The characters movements and main characteristics are actually mimicking her Mothers for the beginning of the film, but as she progresses through the heroes journey and kind of finds herself, the movements differ and become move emotive and child like.

Character design

The key thing with her character design is the contrast between the neat, school uniform and the ruggedness of the old and used pilot hat, aviators and scarf. This almost represents the contrast between the fantasy world in stop motion and the real world, as at the end of the film they come together, just like her clothes do.

I found another character designer who worked a little bit on The Little Girl and sent him an email. His name is Peter de Sève and this is his website:

http://www.peterdeseve.com/

Some more good websites and articles!

An interview with the director:

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/interview-mark-osbornes-personal-journey-little-prince-141977.html

All about the author of the book (some good quotes in there):

https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/02/03/exupery-little-prince-morgan-drawings/

Some more stuff about it in general:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-strange-triumph-of-the-little-prince

The writer journey ebook:

http://craftywriters.club/reading/christopher-vogler-the-writers-journey.pdf

08/11/17

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Wow, a performance walk cycle!

So this is the result of the predrawn character called Ericka turnaround (pictured below) and Photoshop.

Once again refusing to use TV Paint (apologies), I created the keyframes and breakdowns for my performance walk cycle. I do like how it turned out kinda but I think a big part of it is that it doesn’t have inbetweens. Honestly, if there wasn’t an impending deadline I would 100% go back and completely finish this off, neat lines and all, but I’m just going to leave it here until I’ve finished everything else and know that I do have the free time.

Basically, I have no clue what emotion this gal is trying to convey but it works I think?? I’m quite proud of the proportions staying true (I did make the neck, wrists and ankles thinner because she just needed it), but that’s just because I basically traced it from the turnaround and moved it to where I needed it to be. I don’t think that’s cheating because the whole point of this was to keep the mass consistent and on model??

Overall I’m semi-happy with it, I think it has good character but weird movement.

08/11/17

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Oh my god honestly I am so pleased with this. I did have a small hiccup along the way but that’s ok.

So after a big designing process and practice keys, I finally animated my dude Gibbles and I love it. There’s obviously flaws like the fact his ears are a stiff as a metal ruler from the graphics department but aside from that. I had a bit of a moment after I rendered the video, exported it as an image sequence, imported it into Premiere Pro, exported it as an MP4 and converted it to a QT file, and realised that the legs made literally no sense.

This is the original:

I don’t know if can really tell that much, but basically, I got muddled up with what leg was meant to be in front and what leg wasn't so if I remember correctly, pass 2 and a few surrounding frames is where it happens, but somehow I managed to switch it back to the correct leg for the rest of the animation?? It didn't actually take me too long to fix the issue, and I’m so glad I did, it was just a bit of a hinderance honestly. 

I animated this in Photoshop and put it all together in Premiere pro.

03/11/17

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It did take me way too long to get around this I will admit, but, it came out pretty swell.

So this my character design sheet or character turn around (whatever you prefer), and it definitely took some playing around to get the colours I liked. Originally, I wanted a purple bunny with some green/blue/pink highlights, but after doing some very rough colouring in, I discovered there was no possible way to make a purple bunny without looking like he just hopped out an Easter sign you would see hanging in CO-OP. I then took to these sites (which I love dearly) to try and figure out something different:

https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel

https://coolors.co

I came across a Monochromatic green palette, slightly similar to the colours I later chose to use and felt a wave of wonderful inspiration while sitting on the train to Essex. I rushed back to Photoshop and grabbed a random teal, minty and a little bit pastel green and wham bam yes ma’am, Gibbles had found himself. After that is was just a case of finding what went well with that base green and I’m super happy how it turned out. 

I limited my pink and purple to just the mouth, and kept his body just in the greens and yellows just because I thought that looked best, instead of having obvious contrasting colours.

After I found Gibbles’ true colours, I finally got to finish my character model sheet and it was such a sweet, sweet relief. 

I wanted to add a couple close up faces to the sheet purely for the giggles. I wanted to mess around with facial expressions and thought ‘hey, what a great place to do so’. I also added my little palette in the middle for some easy access.

It was only in the model sheet when I started to realise what Gibbles’ character was like (and also that his name is Gibbles). Seeing what poses he looked OK in and what just wasn’t working was super interesting, and helped me when it then came to the walk cycle because of how I could make him walk to compliment his personality best.

In conclusion, I’m really happy with how Gibbles turned out, and I’m pretty sure I can draw the dude blindfolded as this point honestly.

03/11/17

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After much difficulty, I finally managed to finish the key frames for a silly/characterful walk cycle with my dude Gibbles.

I did both front and side views and I think it’s really rather obvious which is my favourite one. In all fairness, I didn’t give myself and easy ride with walk cycle I created, but I didn’t take into consideration what the front would look like while I was drawing the side. 

I tried my best to add a bunny hop that wasn’t a classic two legs come up and the bunny hops kind of thing so I added a random one leg hope in action?? Honestly I’m not too sure how it’s going to look when I do all the inbetweens but I’m certain that I will use the side view. 

Honestly that front view is awful. I really suck at proportions of things coming at you or that are further away.

03/11/17 

[chezniewalters]

Let’s just start with the fact that I used a palette knife for the second time with this so if it’s terrible that is like 65% not my fault.

I really enjoyed the lesson today, even if I can’t paint to save my poor soul, it was really relaxing just to sit and paint (badly) for 45 minutes.

02/11/17

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Week 6

Dynamics

Weight and effort were the two words I chose because out of all the options, I hadn’t done this one yet, like ever, so I really wanted to try it out. 

I will admit, me refusing to use TV paint and use Photoshop instead was slightly petty BUT I know that if I tried to attempt this fancy walk cycle in TV paint then I would’ve struggled to not only just complete it in general, but also finish it in time. I’m still learning, but it’s just about walk cycles and not software.

Research

Jeepers did I need those 3 hours just for Harvard referencing. I’m so happy we covered it and citations for all that time because I was so super confused and stressing over it. Even though I still don’t fully understand all the ins and outs of it, I’ve written down all the sites, the tips and a few examples to send me on my way with a wee bit of confidence. 

The citation thing though, I literally had no idea that one, we needed to do it and two, it even existed so thank you Lynsey for saving my life and my grade.

Character Design

I love photoshop and I honestly missed it in these past digital lesson but I finally got to use it, and with a Cintiq!! All my drawing dreams came true, no joke. I just used the lesson to get on with the character sheets and things because I’m already familiar with the software, BUT, I learnt about dodging and burning which I was just sat there like ‘why didn't I already know that’. Honestly, I don't think I’ll use it a ton but thats just because I like block shading and it’s just easier for me to do it with a brush.

05/11/17

[chezniewalters]

Character Research W6

It was finally time to dive into Harvard referencing and honestly I left with a headache, like, it’s a lot.

Basically, today was all about how to Harvard reference and how to use citations correctly and it is so super confusing that I want to cry. However, we were shown so many useful sites to help us if we ever get stuck with that I think I’ll at least be able to do 90% of my references right.

Useful sites for referencing:

http://www.neilstoolbox.com/bibliography-creator/index.htm

https://www.zotero.org

https://books.google.com/?hl=en

https://library.nua.ac.uk

http://www.citethisforme.com/harvard-referencing

31/10/17 so spooky

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Photoshop&Character Sheets

OH MY, not only did I get to use my baby, Photoshop, but for the first time in my reasonably short life, I got to use a Cintiq and it did not disappoint.

(please ignore the remanence of my poor nail vanish, I like to scratch it off)

Ok so I’ll it over and done with because it’s not really part of my character design unit, the Cintiq was beautiful and made me slightly emotional. It took a bit to get used to not going to lie but it was just fab to work with honestly.

Anyway, we had a photoshop workshop which was quite chill for me because Photoshop has been the software I use for animating, illustrating and whatever else for over a year now, so I didn’t feel absolutely lost like I did with TV paint. The only thing I struggled with was getting used to the default workspace, brushes and shortcuts, simply because I’ve customised mine on my laptop and obviously then gotten used to that. 

I haven’t finished my character sheet yet so this is just like a part 1 I suppose but it was really nice to start working on my traditionally drawn sheet and make it into digital instead. It also gave me some time to improve the work I’ve done, since most of those drawings were very rushed and honestly a little terrible.

I’ll be adding more poses, some close up facial expressions and maybe some colour which will all be super fun.

30/10/17

[chezniewalters]

Week 5

Dynamics 

TV paint was interesting, I can tell you that. I’m completely undecided if I like it or not but that’s just because Photoshop has been there for me what feels like my whole life (like the past year because I only learnt how to animate on it recently) and I’m so used to the shortcuts, the brushes, the layout and all the personalisation I’ve put into my Photoshop workspace that I feel so lost in TV paint. I do understand that you need to practice it and whatever to really get to grips with it but I’m just so comfy and regrettably stubborn that my heart doesn't want to move away from photoshop. 

The ball bounce in itself was pretty easy, it was just like all the other ball bounces but because I was still getting used to the software, it took me ages just to do the bare minimum which upsets me honestly. It didn't turn out bad or in tears so it was reasonably successful. 

Research

Even thought the actual lecture didn’t really push my essay forward that much, it made me go out of my comfort zone and actually email a complete stranger and ask them about their work. I’m really hoping he does reply because honestly that would help my work in so many ways I think I would cry real, cold tears. 

Also, learning about rubber hose animation and realising that there is an actual style to most of my animations that isn't just ‘I’m not too sure where this dudes bones are so why not just not do any’ that I was previously thinking it was really cool and eye opening.

Character Design

Oh goodness I loved modelling, but only after my first two attempts and 30 minutes into the new model. I’m not good at this and I know that very well, I’m just terrible with putting tiny pieces of clay into the right space and making big pieces of clay not look like something a 5 year old threw on the floor in a tantrum in the middle of Tesco. However, after it started going my way half way through the 3 hour session, I steamed ahead and made something that even my Dad was proud of (he's not mean, just a very polite critic). It also made it a 100x easier when it came to drawing the turnaround.

The modelling sheets are still something I'm working on, it’s actually super tricky to get an originally creepy bunny to do some weirdly-average-but-not-at-the-same-time poses and draw them quickly.

29/10/17