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Different to Me

This is a short strip with a rhyme about one of the odd wonderings that came into my mind one day.

'Whistler' Illustration

My lucky brother, Liam, and some of his friends spent their Christmas and New Year in Whistler, Canada on a skiing holiday. Before going, Liam asked me to do a cartoon that he would have printed onto hoodies for everyone in 'Team Whistler'. His brief was simple... "a wee boy with a big referee style whistle" (presumably a 'Whistler')...

One of the first things that I sketched out was what the overall shape of the boy might be, considering that he will be blowing into a whistle. What were the implications of this action in terms of composing a dynamic illustration? I thought in terms of how I would animate it...

 
The anticipation for the blowing action would be a great big gulp of air: the chest would fill up with air and the whole body might arch backwards, poised. When the character breathes out the body shape would do the opposite with the head coming forward as if to help the momentum of expelled air. The front of the body goes from convex to concave as the air from within is released. For the illustration I wanted the boy to be in the middle of blowing on the whistle. Accordingly I did some sketches of the boy and his enormous whistle with the above 'breathe out' body shape...

In these sketches I felt that there was not a close enough relationship between the boy and the whistle. There is a distance between the two caused by the breathing out shape: the boy arches away from the whistle. I tried some sketches with the boy arching towards the whistle to bring the elements together despite this meaning he would be closer to the 'breathe in' shape...

  

 I was much happier with the results of these sketches. As well as there being a closer relationship between boy and whistle the body shape of the boy highlights the oversize nature of the whistle: he's bending backwards, it's overpowering him! With the body curving into the whistle it was easier to have him holding on which helps the feeling that he's struggling with the size of the whistle.

Above are a few character development sketches. I wanted to keep the design simple while showing the stress and difficulty of the task through his facial features. Having decided upon the basic design of the character I sketched it out a few times looking for one that was just right through the slight differences that come when drawing the same thing again and again.

I liked this one...

I scanned the desired sketch to copy while producing the coloured, textured image in photoshop. I wanted the composition to be a circle like a 'badge' for the hoodies...

I gave the boy a nice christmas jumper since 'Team Whistler' were on a christmas holiday and because it was a ski holiday he's in the mountains. On his grassy hill in the mountains he's putting out the call on his whistle just like an Alpine horn player!

So here is the final image with a border to contain it a bit more pleasingly...

Practical Research- plasticine referencing

The style of animation that I have been gravitating toward recently is one that uses 2D digital puppets, in software such as Anime Studio Pro, in order to cut down on the time consumed by animating everything with frame by frame drawings. This means that whole characters can potentially be animated with only one drawing and the technique enables me to bring to life a very direct translation of any given sketchbook image so my animation retains the same qualities as my illustrative style (as in my Father Time character for the Apex project).

the sketchbook drawing

the final animation

In this very direct translation of sketchbook images, however, there lies a problem. The animation will, inevitably, have a very 'paper cut-out' feel. I am, in fact, making cut-outs albeit digitally. Where such a style is the desired effect this is all very well but I wish to explore the possibilities of translating my sketchbook characters into more 3 dimensional beings while sticking with 2 dimensional animation techniques and the use of software such as Anime Studio Pro and After Effects. I have in the past felt daunted by creating more 3 dimensional characters and, apart from those with the most basic of geometries and features, I find it quite tricky to envisage and put to paper drawings of a character from many different angles that are consistent and that are clearly of the same subject. With this in mind I felt that a solution could be reached with a process that I have been imagining that would use plasticine models as reference for 2D drawings.

The plan is simple. Firstly start, as ever, with a sketchbook character. With this drawing as reference, model a 3 dimensional plasticine figure of the character. Now you have a model to be referenced from any angle for a more dynamic and believably 3 dimensional animation. In order to experiment with this idea I decided to simply animate a head that rotates a full 360 degrees. Once I had made the plasticine model I photographed it at different angles to inform the animation. In fact, I photographed the model for every frame of the planned rotation so that I had essentially made a photographic version of my animation already that I could rotoscope into my 2D illustrative style of choice.

One of the biggest problems with this technique is my plasticine modelling ability. Character design will, potentially, end up being compromised because you are adding an extra medium with an extra set of limitations: as well as being an illustrator I am now asking myself to be a sculptor. I may end up making decisions on character design based upon what I am able to build in plasticine whereas my imagination may manifest more easily with pen and paper alone.

I think that, for a relatively simple piece like this, the above technique could be useful. When you increase the complexity of the sequence, however, there would come a point at which you would need to actually be animating the plasticine character, features and all, in order to provide reasonable reference for the final, drawn product. You would perhaps just be adding to your work load unnecessarily, feeling as if you were animating twice, when you could just be working through the sequence with the final media alone (perhaps in trial and error mode). Nonetheless this technique certainly works and it would also be useful to reference light and shadow from the physical model adding form to the 2D final product. I'm happy with the outcome of this short experiment and I think that I may explore this further in the future. 

Apex Animatic

This is the animatic (of sorts: more a rough animation test really) for the Apex project. I think it's shaping up well. This is a digital test and I still hope to shoot the moving background in stop motion with some movement in the objects (rotating flowers etc).

Some other obvious discrepancies-
- The end won't last as long once the full view is seen.
- The duck will be reacting to it's environment much more and will be less robotic.
- Perhaps some foreground effects can be added digitally (like snow falling in winter).
- The father time and mother nature characters will obviously also be animated.

Memory Animatic

Here is a rough (somewhere between an animatic and full animation) of what I'll be producing for the memory project. I did this in photoshop, just adapting the image and saving the next frame as a jpeg. It's basically just a digital version of how I plan to produce the final (mixed media on glass maybe) which will hopefully have a more ephemeral quality. 

Luke Pearson

Just set this as my new wallpaper. It's by Luke Pearson and was for an exhibition by Edinburgh's very own Analogue Books called 'Turn up the Colour'. Missed the exhibition unfortunately (it was in August 2010). I think it's cool: true to Pearson's apparent love of drawing rocks and mountains-