Barry Purves talk

Had a talk with an stop motion animator called Barry Purvis, who came to visit our institution to explain what work he has done and how we as up coming animators can improve our pieces, followed by giving us tips on how to make a perfect animation and factors we would need to consider in order to do.

I feel that I found a lot out about Barry himself from my notes it says that he has been animating for 37 years, is a storyteller that has worked with the feature and originally wanted to be an actor. He told us that the way of making a good story is to have an item in an animation that your character can relate to and have talk to in order to generate narrative, feeling and emotion e.g. Mary Poppins and her umbrella. He stated that people find out about what the animation is about through the props that the character interacts with and don't just think of a story straight, try to create scheme e.g. Sci-Fi, Fantasy. I enjoyed his company his work was great and his animation called plume worked very well, the characters were designed according to the setting and worked well with the scenery.   

I personally thoroughly enjoyed the talk because Purvis opened my eyes to new ideas and helped me understand the techniques of animating correctly and making and animation. This is the main reason why I enjoyed the talk but also because he explained the steps he need to create his personal animations   , personally I felt this help me identify the mistakes I have made with animation in the past because his faults were very similar.

I would say his work and researching into him would help me in the future with develop my skills with animating and idea generation. Reflecting on this notes will help be remember his valuable lessons on making a great animation.

      

  

Gainax Presentation

To day we worked on PowerPoints for in relation to the studios that we would like to work at in the future. I mainly talked about Gainax as a study and why I wanted to work there, what work they produced over and how working with Gainax could help boost my career as an animator.

The presentation went well, but I personally struggled to say much about wanting to work at Gainax because, I am not really interested in working for someone full time, my objective is only to work for a company a few years until I gain the experience of working on big animation. My main focus is to become a freelancer for my self working on both graphical and animated work.

Knowing this was my goal I really didn't want to publicly speak about this as I am still thinking my whole process and plan for this future career. I felt like this task was forcing me to make a decision because my ideas we so open to many companies and I had to pick one that some else in my group has not chosen so even if it was a company I did not like, I would be forced to that decision because I don't really know too many animation companies because I don't pay a lot of attention to companies because I don't really plan to work for a company my whole life, this probably the main reason why I only know a few.

Luckily Gainax was one of my options because it is my favourite animating that specialises in only Japanese anime. The main reason for liking Gainax's animations is because their stories and animating style, they work well together but my main reason for liking Gainax's work is that there style of animating is complete different to the anime you usually see so much that their distinguishable.

Previously stating that I struggled with my presentation, I personally think it went well over all, I got my points across and made my message clear in where I wanted to work and why, I mainly explained that I would not be looking to work in a company long term because I am looking to become a freelancer in the near future. my only area of struggling was looking into the role I would want if I wanted to join Gainax as an animation studio based in Japan's capital Tokyo.

Personally I would not like to be forced to make a decision based on my future career again because I felt that think about a working for a certain company is too soon and I was restrict on making a decision based on some body else choosing the same company as me. But in future if I am to do this again, I would make sure I research throughly into a potential company I could work for and make sure I gather enough information and would make sure its correct and fits the asked requirements.

      

Mark Crilley

Mark Crilley is one of my favourite artist of all time, I have always followed his videos on YouTube to help me learn the art of drawing manga.

I like his work because its very close to the Japanese way of drawing manga, but is different in style and he uses different media to colour his characters effectively. Main reason for liking him is because his tutorials are very simple and broken down so the steps are easy to follow, not just this he makes you understand the human form through basic shapes and positioning. He teaches you the best ways of shading and drawing detail to produce an both effective, coloured and detailed images through the use of basic colouring crayons, paints, colours and many more traditional tools.

Green screen induction (part 2)

To day's lesson was all about editing the green screen footage on after effects and how you can use the certain settings to your advantage to adjust and filter in a background to go with your stop-motion scene.

I personally found this exercise useful but uninteresting because I felt that this does not appeal to me for the reason of my self not ever using green screen for any of  my animations in the future. I see my self as a 2 dimensional digital animator, so for my animation my scenes will be digitally developed or hand drawn.

 

Thought bubble comic festival

Thought bubble was full of people yesterday, it was jam-packed, there was so many amazing comic artists around and I managed to network, the work produced was very inspiration and I managed to collect many business cards from various artists, I felt like I Could not leaved and spent the whole day there met some phenomenal people with great comics. I like going every because this convention feels like home, I am surrounded my new and exciting art and many amazing artist with different styles of producing art. This is an event that takes place every November 14th and is one event I plan to attend every year because of my art speciality and interest which revolve around comic books and comic book art, this event helps me build connections I can keep for a very long time to help get in-put on my work through social networks like e.g. Twitter, sometime I plan to book my own stall and start selling my work their when it comes around again.        

Web toon (area of interest - website)

This is regarded as the biggest interest to me because I love comics, web comics a free website open to all comic artist and based online, the aim for the artist is just to produce their own web comic with different seasons and episodes. They currently have a comic competition to create your own personal superhero with his or her own comic and upload it, the winner will have their superhero published by marvel's Stan Lee.

I was introduced to this web site through a friend and have been using it ever since to read comics done by other people because it is a very strong interest of mine since a very young age when I used to read a lot of Beno and Dandy. I am considering to enter the superhero comic competition to possibly win and build my profile as a graphic artist/illustrator and animator, not sure of what superhero I will create just yet.

http://www.webtoons.com/en/

Loop de Loop (area of interest - website)

Loop da Loop is a animation competition which takes place every month with a different theme where participants have to submit animated gif or clip relating current theme if certain submission are good enough they will be rated by views based on there content, only 100 of these submissions relating to the theme will be shown around the world if there good enough.

This demonstrates my interest with in the creative industry based on the content provided, Loop de Loop allows you to be creative with animation and makes you think about what you need to do before you upload, themes are always very creative through one word and many artist take part, I like this competition mainly because it allows me to get a taste of other peoples work and allows me to develop my own animations through observation of other animators work.

http://www.loopdeloop.org

 

Catsuka player (area of interest - website)

Catsup player is a media player that showcases work done my other animators in the industry, a lot of the work is Chinese and Japanese oriented, mostly uses the influence of Japanese anime in style and the animation are very clean in motion. I didn't come across this until a few weeks ago when some one uploaded a link to an animation to the site interested because of the video footage based on the anime style.

I felt a connection to this site because there were many amazing styles on there all using different media, but this site got my attention mainly because majority of the work was anime based which is and area I am interested in, I like to watch anime everyday because the stories are very imaginative and the animators in Japan come up with many new ideas never originally thought of in general, I would go as far to say that the animation industry in Japan comes up with better ideas than the film industry in America because there ideas are not repetitive and they don't try to bring back old films, instead they move on a create new and imaginative ideas for people to see and enjoy.

http://www.catsuka.com/player/  

Spectrum (area of interest - website)

Spectrum is artist website that host competitions, they work similar to IBA with competitions and host many different ones every year and places the best 100 pieces of illustration into a book covering a wide range of different types of work from concept art to comics and many more topics.

They currently have a competition going similar to IBA's but this one gives you freedom of choice and allows you to illustrate anything you please. This another site that works with one of my favourite forms of art which is illustration/Graphic illustration, it allows you to open your mind and create pieces never seen before and that is why I like this site because it focus around what I like to do and use competition as a way of making you known.

http://www.spectrumfantasticart.com/entryinfo.php

Infected by art (areas of interest - website)

Infected by art also known as (IBA) in short, is a competition site based on illustrating, it allows you to work in any form and work with your creative illustration skills, there is a competition every month with different themes. I recently entered one of IBA's competition, this was based on genres and the aim is to design multiple illustrations for any genre of your choosing and enter it into the competition its self where you can win IBA's published book with your artwork in along side many other artist illustration plus 3000 US dollars.

I chose this website as one of my resources because it has allowed me to enter competitions doing something I love to do and that is illustrtaing and being visually creative. I hope to keep working with is site and will illustrate and focus on developing new illustrated imagery for the site.

http://www.infectedbyart.com

Hayao Miyazaki

Not really watched all of Hayao Miyazaki's anime films but I like his work for his imaginative mind and how he works with his characters and scenery. His work is similar to that of satoshi Kon in that is very creative and imaginary, His anime I find works well in how his story is told to me because they are very nice to watch they are always positive and never feature any murder or killing scenes in them like the other amines. Most animes can sometimes be a bit twisted and dark but his work is never like that that is what makes him different to other Japanese animators. This is another reason why I was drawn to art because like him i want to create my own positive animation because there are not many anime out there that a lot of children can watch and I my self are not a fan of dark horrific,bloody and gory animals like e.g. Tokyo Ghoul which I find very disturbing.The films of his I enjoy most are Howls moving Castle and Spirited away.

Spirited away

Howl's moving castle

Genndy Tartakovsky

Love this animators design work since I was a child, my favourite animation done by him has to be Samurai jack because of its simplicity and basic background. I had watched many cartoons before samurai jack that featured many shapes e.g. The Powderpuff Girls, Dexters laboratory, these were simple but what stood out more about Samurai Jack was a both serious and action packed cartoon that was presented in style never seen before it was original and effective. shapes as we learned in animation makes the character feel and look different in appeal, certain shapes give character circle e.g. circle- soft, triangle or rectangle-Serious/Dark. Tartakovsky put both soft shapes and a serious story background together to create Samurai Jack, it opened my eyes to a different way of thinking because it made me se how shapes don't have to be used in one vain only they can be used to communicate different feeling and emotions.

Genndy Tartakovsky got me hooked on Samurai Jack and the characters, thats when I felt a real connect with animation, this is what got me into drawing, samurai, Japanese characters and katana blades, from then I thought a lot about drawing samurai, swords, designing and even animating some of these characters in the future when I had the skill and the grasp to. Thanks to Tartakovsky I now have a style of my own based around shaped characters and backgrounds.

The reason for liking Gennedy's style is because it is different, it appears soft but is very hard in how the story is told and can be treated seriously in terms of its story line. the colours are great and the character design is very well presented all the scenes and characters work well together because ther design are close and the colour palettes are very similar

Samurai Jack

  

Katsuhiro Otomo

Katsuhiro Otomo is know for being a manga illustration artist, that has worked on many great stories e.g. Akira, Steambo. I have always loved his style of illustrating because it moves away from the same old anime and manga style of all the characters always having big eyes. His illustrating is very well done because of its representation of japanese people, they look a lot like japanese people as a true representation which is what I like about Katsuhiro he to also uses very imaginative images that give me ideas for stories similar to Satoshi Kon because they leave you always thinking about the characters and the direction of the story, I tend to look back into the characters background to find out where they came from and how they got to the present situation they are in.

I like him mainly for his illustration style its like something I have never seen before, it's very unique and original because its his own style and it works very well, The characters look close to Japanese people. He tend to draw a lot of Sci-Fi characters and stories, this what got me into animation because i though to my self if Katsuhiro Otomo could develop his characters in animations so could I if I learned to animate. I always believed that his illustrations were amazing and works well with animations plus the narrative works well with the characters and is something i need to work a bit more on because I am alright at developing a story and need to become better that is another reason why I was influenced by his work and other being so why I entered animation.

Akira

Steam boy

Katsuhiro Otomo

    

Satoshi Kon

Satoshi Kon is what I consider a great animator with his narrative, character design and animating, my favourite animation produced by him has to be Paranoia Agent which is a story based on multiple lives of different characters which happen to be tied into one story. What makes me like this story is its use of characters and mysteriousness, after every chapter it leaves you thinking and wondering about the direction the story line will head in e.g. will it be dark and dreadful of positive and light. Those are the questions I ask my self when watching the show, gives me shivers, but thats what makes a good story, animations that you have to put together like puzzle pieces to make sense of the story line as it progresses.

This is the main reason why I like his stories because they connect with me and they give me mixed emotions towards the characters and the way they behave, his animations make you feel something but for me personal they help me to imagine my own stories and characters. He makes me imagine though his imaginative stories using both wired and wonderful characters, form watching his animations so far I have noticed there is always a characters that imagine weird and wonderful things from the little slugger kid in Paranoia Agent to Dr Atsuko Chiba a scientist experimenting with peoples thoughts in Paprika.

He demonstrates my interest throughout the use of his stories and characters which makes me wan to create some funny characters of my own because I know I have the capability to, because i have been animating regularly and watching more animations for ideas.

Paranoia Agent - (Little slugger)

Paprika - Dr Atsuko Chiba

Satoshi Kon

Lesean Thomas

I never really know about Lesean Thomas until I university because he is not really mentioned as a popular animator, especially for an animated show called boondocks. He is responsible for all of the character design and animating for all four series of the show and is not mentioned. I am a fan of his work because he works in a anime style which is one of my favourite styles of animation which is not very obvious as an anime because he has created his own style which I like, its very different and has been an animator and style I have been interested in for some time, I just never realised who was behind the work.

The way he got me interested in animation was the fact that he could work with a style that already exists like anime and make it his own by creating his own features based on reference to Japanese characters. This is something I personally want to do and I am working On developing my own personal Japanese anime style of my own, I want to do this to the point where it is not recognised as an anime but a cartoon.

The Boondocks

Legend of Korra

Green screen Induction (part 1)

We learnt about the importance of green screening and how it is used in the movie making industry the main focus for this induction was lighting and how it should be tackled when working with a stop motion object in the for front of a green screen sheet. Main thing I learnt was that there are many views to take pictures from when using green screen and most of all how you must avoid shadow in on your screen as it can result in poor display of your scene when reviewing the film content.

Things that must be focused on when using Green screen is the lighting most of all because it gives your film life and makes clearer for the viewer to see and can be used as a source to represent day and night. The positioning of is also important for the way that you want to view your set, moving the camera back is called a fall out and is very useful for panning out of a scene and allows more light to feed into the camera and the set it self.

Three different cameras are what provide the light you have your ; Edge light, Fill light, Key light which are all used for the same purpose but are considered to be different for quality, the fill light fills in shaded spaces on a set which you don't need, Edge light provides bright light from the side to hit the object in the centre and the Key light gives you the spot light, the edge and fill lights are both regarded as the both most powerful lights out of three from first to second.

Last but not least the green screen is must important for adding background effect and projection for movies and scenes if and object along with the green screen is the same colour, then this is a major problem and can effect the background projection because it will result in the projected image interfering with both the model and set along with the green screened background, so what ever is going to be used for a set needs to be anything but green.

I found this whole experience and learning very interested, grasped the understanding how screen screen is used and why but I don't feel this tutorial will be of any use to me because I don't plan to use green for effect, I regard my self as both mainly digital and traditional so I will not be looking to had create sets, I will look to construct these by computer. I am still glad i have gathered this knowledge as something to remember for any point I do end up needing screen but for now it looks very unlikely.

 

Social networking

To days session was all about social networking and build my own profile we talked about how is important to have your own personal networking blog, so that you are in touch with professionals and building a profile for your career, I was told this profile has to be professional, you must not link this to your personal life because that will give of a really bad impression to professional people who work in  the art or other professional lines of work.

This talk has been very useful and has helped me understand the importance of networking professionally and why it needs to be done through a talk about the dangers of being personal with networking and what needs to be avoided why and also highlighting what makes a great profile for professional viewing. After all this information gather I feel that I understand what it means to be a professional.

Social Networks

    

Drawing characters in different angles

I am alright at drawing characters in specific angles but not all I can only draw the character front and side on but I personally need to work on drawing a character in all areas so I am able to have an idea of what they will look like all around. Right now I can only draw in two angles which means I am limited in the way I represent my characters.

To improve this weakness I will use tutorials online and drawings books I have to help develop an understanding of my weakness and how angles can be drawn, even practicing with observational objects and turn arounds would help improve my understandings of shape and perspective angles.

        

Perspectives

In the past I was good at drawing objects in different angles but have not drawn perspectives for a long time, I have plenty of books on drawing perspectives and scenery, personally in order to get better again I just need to practice using this book to improve my understanding and work with still object on on observation.

I will practice using the books I have on perspectives to help me understand how to draw from any angle possible.

 

Script writing (storytelling)

Storytelling skills are good but could do with more improvement, because of lack of ideas for stories, I have no problem writing, its just ideas for generating stories is limited so I think I need to read in to more narrative books and comics to get an idea of what makes a good story and practice script writing my self. I would say the lack of ideas for stories comes not practice how to write stories, I also have not created a comic strip or read a book properly through to the finish which always effects my understanding of a story.

I would say to improve on this is that I need to read more and work on more stories for the future.

Animation walk cycle

I understand the order of the animation walk cycle but struggle to get it right based on the movement of my characters, I have cut out a lot of stages form previous walk cycles I have done resulting in jumped and inaccurate movement when I have produced characters, I think this is because I only have a general understanding of movements but no understanding of the stages and how they work.

I want to improve this because my understanding of movement is limited and I want to improve this, but it can only done through practice and I plan to develop my understanding through research into the walk cycle using the animation books I have at home and studying movement through practice with digital or traditional animation using Photoshop, After Effects and Illustration.

      

Life drawing (female figures)

Personally I don't struggle with Life drawing and am used to human anatomy because I practice drawing human figures daily. The only problem I have with life drawing is sketching female anatomy because I am not used to drawing a woman's body in proportion, I would say this is because I previously used to draw a lot of male characters and have never practiced drawing female characters properly so I struggle drawing cribbed lines and female parts e.g. breast, to human proportion and not like the exaggerated images you see in comics. I can draw female characters but only in comic form which is not regarded as completely accurate in body representation, so I would say that I need to focus on real female forms in order to get better.

I don't find drawing men hard because I  have been drawing male daily as superheroes and have been since I was studying art at high school, I focused a lot on comic images but also life drawing books I personally use at home to practice my figures and poses for male characters.

Now I am working both male a female figures and hope to continue practicing female anatomy, I will do this by doing more research on models, female bodies and poses to help build an understanding female muscles and body structure, this will benefit me because I will know how to draw certain shapes for specific parts of a woman and will be able to get my forms right on the basis of my clear understanding of a woman's body.

Female space woman (White)

Male space man (Black)

I draw by hand because I like to ink regularly and I draw better traditionally this reason because I have always drawn by hand before and have been very used to it because it is a style I prefer. I draw a lot neater when drawing by hand because my hands are more accurate on a physical piece of paper rather than a touch screen.  

Personal logo design

Previously before joining, my animation course I studied graphic design at leeds college of art at Vernon Street. I have always had a passion for graphics because I like the look of illustrative images especially in comics and the way they can be arranged, mostly because graphical work is every where and is used in almost everything meaning there are a lot of jobs around for graphic designers like me and the industry is still growing. 

The following designs below are for a Logo design I am creating for a friend who is looking to set up construction company, he has given me a theme, Title, name and colour to focus on when designing because He is looking to create a construction company called "Cyan Build". The main focus has been the words Cyan and Build so I have focused on designing logo that works around the colour blue, followed by a form of construction e.g. a house so far my client is very pleased with the current progress.

I like graphic design work because it is something I have worked for a long time and their is so many ways of communicating using graphics, I consider it as a clean way of creating a form of communication. 

      

Logos

Inking and colouring (strength)

Inking and colouring are skills developed though practicing my drawing, analysing and watching tutorials. I have worked on outline for a long time, it has just come naturally and I never had to work at it I would say that I gained the interest in this technique through reading different comics and analysing the different artists, styles and techniques about used. Practicing and referring to images drawn admired artist like Jim Lee is what developed my understanding in to outlining and helped me develop my own personal fine-lining skills which have now developed even further to day now that I have been working with this skill more and often when I draw anything.

I both use and like Jim Lee as a reference because his work looks very well composed and stands out when you look at it which is based on the way he inks his work, which gives it that depth and detail.

          

Presenting (strength)

Originally I was never really confident with presenting my work based on my lack of belief in my art and feedback that would be given towards my work always stated that my work need a little work because the way I had drawn each piece was very rough. But the more I have entered competitions, asked for peoples opinions and posted my work on social media, I have developed my confidence due to the positive commentary I have received from friends and other people who follow my accounts which opened my eye to receiving criticism and that, it is not for the weak and can help change your work from average to amazing based on the changes given by others which will not always be right but will improve your massively especially when toy receive the same comments from different people which is useful in suggesting there is an obvious major floor in your work. I have also now developed the ability to challenge comments with my own opinions and am able to present my work publicly due to my confidence in my work.

Storyboarding (strength)

Always had this skill, was developed through the love of comics, I have been drawing comics from a very young age and still do so, have entered a few Thought Bubbles in the past to experience competing and artwork produced by others. Studied stories with a personal tutor who help develop my planning skills and would say this is the reason why I can draw up a storyboard today.

I use the storyboarding book developed by Francis Glebas to help me work up scenery and visualise a character to work with based on my type of story, I think this skill have been strengthened and developed through years of practice and understanding. Why I am strong at storyboarding is because I have been working with stories and thumbnails for a long time by entering comic competitions, working up scripts and having my tutor check my story ideas and give me critical feedback to work on to help improve me and strengthen my writing and story development skills for the future which is why I can draw up thumbnails with good narratives.