Colour Development

A3 Character Designs

A4 Character Designs

                      

Developing Character

Idea Deconstruction

Design and Target Audience

Idea Feedback

The feedback I got from my peers is helpful. This is because it has assured me that my ideas are good and that the idea of the characters work well because they are 'misleading' and you'd stereotypically assume both characters traits would be opposite to what they really are. It has helped me establish my ideas of the characters better.

Using the feedback, I have decided to use idea 1, this is because I have two characters to work by and they seemed to like the idea best as it works and is quite simple for young people to understand. 

Silhouette Sheet

Character Doodle Sheet

Animation Process Flowchat

Trends in Animation

Animation Feature

2013- Frozen/Despicable Me 2/Monsters University  

2012- Brave/Madagascar 3/Dr Seuss's Lorax

2011- Kung Fu Panda 2/The Smurfs/Cars 2        


Similarities between the top animated films

Sequals
Franchises (financial reasons)

• Already got a existing audience
• Merchandise

Computer animated

Well established company

• Pixar, Dreamworks, Universal     
  

Established hollywood stars

• voiceovers

Family orientated films

Adventure fins

Family audience 

Other successful animated films

Lego movie

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs

•  Quirky
• Humour appeals all ages

Horror animated films

Paranormon

Frankenweenie

Coraline                                      

Nightmare before xmas

• All a bit gothic

CBeebies

Milkshake 

• Ben & Holly
• Fifi
• Postman Pat
• 2D Cel Animation

Adult TV Series

• Family guy
• Simpsons
• South Park
• American Dad
• Beavis & Buthead
• King of the hill

Children/Young Teens TV Series

• Adventure time
• Ed, Edd n Eddy 
• The amazing world of Gumball                              
  
• The regular show         

- Episodes are driven by characters and key events

- Erratic, abstract, 2D character, 3D background, mix artistic    

Successful web cartoons

• Early years entertainment - simple, catchy, there for people to repeat viewings
• Experimental cutting edge, educational animation on vimeo
• ASDF
• Charlie the Unicorn                             
  

-Teen audiences

-Short

-Quotable

-Stands up to repeat viewings

Character Shapes

Breaking characters into shapes

Animation Comparison/Process Write-up

The making of:



South Park
The making of a south park episode begins with the animators receiving a 22 minute script which the voices are then recorded and the animators turn the actions in sketched camera shots to 'bring it to life'. They create it a bit like a comic book and design the characters and any new characters if necessary. Once the characters and backgrounds have been made, the lip sync's and expressions have to be placed on the characters. The audio is then put on it.

Dot
Dot was created using a Nokia N8 phone which was attached to a microscope. To create it they had to have 50 different replacements of dot of which were 3 for each pose. When filming they had to use the necessary character, take the shot, then take the character out to then put the next one on and that the shot and so on. Roughly about 4 seconds of the animation was made a day. Dot was made by an animator who created 2D designs and gave them to a 3D modeller who used a 3D printer to make the character. Once they were printed off they had to put her on wire and paint, then when it came to editing the editor had to use a back plate to remove the wire from the shot.

Peppa Pig

The creators of Peppa pig used CelAction to make the animation. They have 'a workflow unique to our methods of production' which means that they can tell the stories they want with no limitations.
CelAction2D is a professional 2D animation which is often used to create films, TV series and commercials. It is very quick to use as they have effects built into the scene to allow them to be animated and edited fast by animators.

http://www.celaction.com/en/celaction2d/testimonials.htmcelac
http://www.celaction.com/en/celaction2d/overview.htm

Bear Animation

I created this bear animation by firstly importing it onto after effects, this is how I were too create the movement in the legs and arms. I went onto the bear composition and set the frame rate to 23.976 and changed the duration to '0:00:05:00'. I zoomed in on the timeline so that I only had 16 frames showing because this is the amount i wanted to work with. The composition needed to loop through the 16 frames so it could keep replaying, this was done by clicking the loop button in the preview box. To get the right movement, I used the pan behind tool and went on every limb (left/right arm and left/right leg) and moved the anchor point right to the top of the limb, too ensure it was accurate I double clicked the part which took me to that specific layer. The parts needed to be parented together, so to do this i used the pic whip tool and ensured the head was joint to the body and the arms and legs were joint to the body. To get the movement I had to go through the timeline and key frame the position and rotation of how I wanted it, I did this to get movement through the arms and legs. To get the bending of the knees and arms I used the Puppet pin tool, for the arm i pin pointed the top of the arm, the bottom and where the elbow would be and same for the leg but where the knee would be. Lastly I duplicated it about 6 times and joint them all together in a new composition and added a back drop for the bear to walk across.

Walk Cycle

Shape in Character Design

Character Design

Character design is the combination of physical traits and narrative - Narrative/storyline defines personality, gives context (genre, location, setting) therefore has to feed into look and design of the character. The face is the primary channel to express emotion (a reason for the many large headed characters). A lot can be said with posture and body language - this allows for personality traits to be identifiable in silhouette.
Solarski - states that how a character carries their physical weight can tell us about their personality - which body part they lead with is important.
Hero leads with their chest. If they lead with their pelvis is represents being laid back/lazy. Leading with head often show intelligence and knees tend to represent being a coward.

Cuddy - Power and dominance revolves around expanding
Power: Expand - take up space.
Weakness: cover up, make yourself small.

Leads with chest: 

Johnny Bravo

Johnny is a very big (muscular) cartoon which shows dominance, hence the walk.








Leads with pelvis:

Goofy

Goofy is quite a slim droopy character, this represents dopiness so he leads with pelvis.















Leads with head:

Mike

He leads with his head, simply because he is mainly just a head, this shows intelligence.















Leads with knees: 

Shaggy

Shaggy walks leading with his knees, this represents he is a bit of a coward.

Character Analysis

Researching Pixar

Pixar

History, Ownership and Structure

Pixar, also known as Pixar Animation Studios, is a computer animated film studio which is based in California, America. It came about in 1979 but started as a Graphics Group and later on renamed as Pixar, which then was one third of Lucasfilms (film and television production company) however it then became its own company in 1986 due to it getting $10 million in funding from Apple who the co-founder, Steve Jobs, became the main shareholder. The first film which was produced by Pixar in 1995 was Toy Story where Steve Jobs was the executive producer.  Between 1986 and 2006, Pixar was an independent company, then in 2006 it was bought up by The Walt Disney Company for $7.4 billion. When it was bought up by Disney, Steve Jobs became a member of the board of directors.

John Lasseter began out working as an animator at Walt Disney however he was fired as he was promoting computer animation, he then went on to join Lucasfilms which then became Pixar. He was overseeing the Pixar Films as he was the executive producer, but as Pixar got taken over by Walt Disney he now does the same thing there.  At Pixar, Lasseter directed films such as Toy Story and A Bugs Life as well as a short film, Luxo Jr which is about a large lamp (Luxo Sr) and small lamp (Luxo Jr) who try to play with a ball, it a way of representing the Pixar logo as well as show the Pixar Image Computer's capabilities. The main intention for the short film was to show it at SIGGRAPH which is an annual computer technology exhibition. Another short film made by Lasseter was Tin Toy (1988), this includes a 'tin one-man-band' that goes by the name Tinny who attempts to escape from a destructive baby named Billy, this as well was used at SIGGRAPH.



The main aspects which allow Pixar to be unique about their working culture and environment is the  fact they take risks and the Pixar building. Jobs had an idea that the building could help encourage collaborations between workers, he got the building designed to help people come put of their offices and meet other people. The building has things such as a fitness suite, viewing rooms, large theatre etc. The idea was that because people naturally isolate themselves, it would force them to make conversation with the others and it's a great way for them to join forces and potentially come up with new ideas.

The Pixar business revolves mainly around customers and what they want to see at the theatre, especially something new. This makes Pixar want to take risks in hope they can please their audience, they have no idea if it'll work, but they try it, which helps them spread their range of ideas further because they have an idea of what the audience want more, but they wouldn't be able to do this without taking the risk in the first place.
They made a film called WALL-E which is love story about a robot in a world full of trash, they had no idea how it would work, but they took the chance and it did.





Types of product made

The type of animated media Pixar make is CGI animated monition pictures. The genres of their films are they're fun, entertaining, adventurous and suitable for any age.

The most significant films made by Pixar were firstly Toy Story, this is because it was Pixar's first feature length computer animated film which was released on November 22nd 1995. It had a budget of $30 million and it's box office was $361 million recieved worldwide and it also gathered many awards including Best Animation, Special Achievement, Best Individual Achievement (Animation, Directing, Music, Producing, Design, Writing), Best Original Score which are just a few of many. There overall reviews were very positive so they went on to make two sequels which were Toy Story 2 which came out in 1999 then Toy Story 3 and that came out in 2010 and came to be among the 50-highest grossing animated films. I personally really enjoyed all the Toy Story films because of their creativity and the fact I grew up with them.
Since Toy Story, Pixar have gone on to create films such as A Bugs Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, Wall-e, Up, Toy Story 3, Cars 2, Brace and Monsters University, all these films have made overwhelming success and combined made more than $6 billion at the worldwide box office.

Not long before Toy Story was created, Pixar were being forced to make TV adverts because of the huge money loss over the past years. Steve Jobs thought he could get some money back by using their animation to create adverts for TV. Pixar was then being approached by some advertising agencies due to John Lasseter's short films, which they wanted them to create commercials for their individual brands.
They recently teamed up with Sky and they used Toy Story characters to create a advertisement for the internet provider, Sky Fibre Broadband. As Toy Story is very popular, it works well using the characters because the majority of the audience will be familiar with it. The idea of the advert is to not only promote Sky 'super fast' fibre broadband service but to also celebrate the arrival of the new 30 minute Toy Story of Terror TV Special. The concept of the advert is Buzz, Woody, Jesse and the others struggling to get online because of their original broadband provider and it results in Sky Fibre being the solution to this.




Technologies and techniques used

Pixar use CGI animation to create their films, this is often used for 2D and stop motion animation however it's 3D CGI animation has because more popular due to Pixar using it for films such as Toy Story. Pixar established itself as a leader in the industry from its CGI films.
Pixar created a rendering system called PhotoRealistic RenderMan, this was so they could render all of their in-house 3D animation from movie productions and to create high-quality images.
Another software they created is called 'Marionette', this is used in-house by Pixar for their animation movies and short films. This software can't be sold and is only able to be used by Pixar.

Pixar also made a graphics designing computer called 'Pixar Image Computer' it was originally developed by the company when it was named Lucasfilms. They also created and used 'Computer animation production system' also known as CAPS, this was to computerize the ink and paint and post production processes of traditionally animated feature films.

Animation Products Research

Film 

Toy Story

Year of Release - 1995
Company made by - Produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures
Directed by - John Lasseter
Animation style - Computer animated
Target Audience - The target audience is both male and female. It is mainly targeted to young children in primary school years however people of our age 16+ attract to it as we'd have grown up with the film.
Purpose of Animation - To entertain young children
What I like - I like how their is not much realism to it but that makes it entertaining.



Short

Luxo Jr

Year of Release - 1986
Company made by - Pixar
Directed by - John Lasseter
Animation style - Computer Animated
Target Audience - More likely to be young children as they would find it amusing
Purpose of Animation - Something to entertain and represent the Pixar logo
What I like - I find it quite cute and it's a bit out of the ordinary and simple yet very effective.



TV Series

The Simpsons

Year of Release - 1989
Company made by - Gracie Films, 20th Century Fox Television, Klasky Csupo, Film Roman
Directed by - Neil Affleck, Bob Anderson, Mike B. Anderson, Wes Archer, Carlos Baeza, Brad Bird, Kent Butterworth, Shaun Cashman, Chris Clements, Susie Dietter, Mark Ervin, Matthew Faughnan, David Silverman, Milton Gray, Klay Hall, Jen Kamerman, Mark Kirkland, Lance Kramer, Nancy Kruse, Jeffrey Lynch, Lauren MacMullan, Michael Marcantel, Pete Michels, Rich Moore, Steven Dean Moore, Matthew Nastuk, Rob Oliver, Raymond S. Persi, Dominic Polcino, Michael Polcino, Jim Reardon, Swinton O Scott, Chuck Sheetz, Ralph Sosa, Alan Smart, Gregg Vanzo.
Animation style - Still Animation by hand
Target Audience - Teenagers and adults because they can often relate to the ages of the family
Purpose of Animation - To entertain the audience
What I like - I like how stereotypical it is and that it is funny/entertaining

Music Video

Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc

Year of Release - 2005
Company made by - Virgin Records
Directed by - Jamie Hewlett and Pete Candeland
Animation style - Computer generated imagery with two dimensional animation
Target Audience - All ages depending on your music style
Purpose of Animation - To fit with their unique style as all their videos and characters are animated
What I like - How unique it is and that it fits well with its genre.



Advert

John Lewis - The Bear & The Hare

Year of Release - 2013
Company made by - Adam & Eve/DDB
Directed by - Elliot Dear
Animation style - Hand Drawn 2D animation with 3D Sets
Target Audience - All ages probably more aimed at young children
Purpose of Animation - Promote John Lewis for the Christmas season
What I like - The choice in animation that was used, this is because it's something adult viewers will possibly remember from when they were younger and as well it is enjoyable for young viewers because it was always aimed at children.




Web Series

Salad Fingers

Year of Release - 2004 (Didn't make internet popularity until 2005)
Company made by - n/a
Directed by - David Firth
Animation style - Flash Animation
Target Audience - Teenagers
Purpose of Animation - To entertain the audience with such an unordinary idea.
What I like - I find it a really bizarre idea but I like that because it's very different to anything else and it's strangely entertaining.

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After Effects Animation

To create this animation, I began on photoshop using the shape tools to create the character. For each part of the body I made a new layer, for example the 'Body' was a layer, another layer would be 'Right arm' etc. However i did not make the mouth during this. I then imported it into after effects, this is where i moved the anchor points to each part of the egg, this allowed me to key frame the area i wanted to move, so i made his arm go up then down, like he's waving. To create the mouth, i took a series of photos of myself saying 'yeah boy', i then uploaded these onto photoshop and sketched over them, these were then put into after effects with the egg man. I key framed them where i wanted them into the sequence with the 'yeah boy' audio over the top.

Rotoscope

To create this gif, i filmed a small video of me doing a movement. I then uploaded this too photoshop and went onto 'window' then 'timeline' and cut down the frames to the amount i wanted, which i have only used 4. I then went to my layers and added another one above each frame layer, this i so i could draw on top of the image, i did this buy using the eye dropper tool, this helped me get a more accurate colour. I went on to draw over the top of my frames layer by layer. After i completed this, removed all background images, leaving just the rotoscoped layers then added another layer underneath to give the white background.

Gif

To create these gifs I went onto photoshop and click 'file', 'import' then 'video frame to layers' i then chose the clip i wanted and selected how much of the clip i wanted. If it's longer than i hoped for, then i deleted some of the frames on the timeline. I then saved to web.

Rocket

1) Window - Timeline

2) Select all frames and duplicate 6 times

3) Hide necessary frames

4) Change length of frames

5) Click the tween bottoms and change 'frame add' to 15

6) Save for web (gif)