Self Evaluation: Character Design

So I was recently asked by the school my mother works for to design a small character for their campaign against bullying. There were some specifics to its design such as:

• should include the school's logo
• should include the school's colours
• have a similar aesthetic and design to 'Mega Man'

One thing I will note right now is that I am not a character designer, nor am I an illustrator, or even a good 2D artist. But I do love Mega Man and since the school would be pretty much happy with whatever design I gave them there was no pressure for it to be of a high professional standard. However that doesn't mean I didn't try to make it of a high professional standard, its just that this was something out of my expertise so I told them not to get their hopes up (wow, so optimistic).

Anyway, I wanted to turn this into a little self evaluation for this blog. As its more of a mini project itself I wanted to focus on the basic illustration elements of the design.

At first I did some research into Mega Man, the proportions of his body and how he is built as a character. I did a few sketches of Mega Man just so I could understand why his design is good.

From there I just doodled to see what I could come up with.

After some feedback from the school they were happy for me to finalise a design.

So as I said, I'm no character designer, but I was pretty happy with how it turned out. Sure it may be a little cliché and unoriginal but whatever, the school were happy with it.

I thought I'd turn it into a little self evaluation though. Surely any work is good work towards self improvement so I'll evaluate this mini project with these aims:

• Design
• Pose
• Line Work
• Colour

Design

"Anti-bullying" and Mega Man were the only two things I were given to go on. Being a primary school they are also not bothered what I did with the design. So I made sure to keep it simple, it would've been easy to get carried away with all sorts of robotic elements but keeping a Astroboy/Mega Man superhero look (the cape helps with that) means its easy to identify as a hero or good guy.

I was happy with the design overall and for the time scale I was given (about 2 weeks in spare time amongst other work) I thought it was fine.

Pose

I include this evaluation in here as although part of the design, I think it can be applied to other work if considered separately. I tried a number of different poses and angles for the character. From my visual research of Mega Man (mostly just memory) there's a lot of action shots. This helps give the idea of superhero, action fighter type of character. I think this was where the school wanted the Mega Man influence to be in relation to anti-bullying.

I originally had a stance with a simple thumbs up but from feedback from others I decided to go for a mid-running pose. I'm not so comfortable with making up poses on paper, I can never seem to get the proportions right or the action looking strong enough. This is something I have been actively working on (mostly in Creative Research) in order to improve my animations. As you can see from the sketches there are some dodgy poses. When I brought this over to digital format I was able to correct things like the legs and get them looking more natural. I think this was done satisfactory but there's always room for improvement.

Line Work

My typical 2D digital work often consists of Flash style drawings, mostly with thick lines and not much variation in them. I tried to go for a thinner line than usual which helped to make it a more crisp design but there's still a long way to go.

Something I've recently discovered is using a colour palette just for line work, where it takes a shade of colour from the object, darkens it and uses it for the line, rather than just black all the time. Although this is more of an illustrator based skill to practice, there's no harm from exploring this further at some point.

Colour

I include this skill evaluation mostly to do with the shading and shadows included in the final design. It's actually the first time I've used shadows in a 2D cartoon drawing. I thought I managed to do this reasonably well for a first attempt. They just help to give the character depth and form as opposed to a flat image.

If I were to improve upon this, I would tie the colours in to the line work to just improve the quality of the drawing overall.

Industry Awareness - Continued

From the first week of presentations it became clear to me that a lot of classmates were picking companies who they really had a passion for. Although I admire Studio Distract's work their content never really appealed to me as much as I'd liked. Again, although I have a passion for the work of Pixar and Dreamworks, I didn't particularly want to research them again so I kept exploring other smaller companies.

I decided to change my own presentation to focus on another company called StudioAKA, an animation company based in London. They are relatively small and often work with directors who approach them with ideas, they focus on the journey of the project rather than on the end goal.

They have done work in the advertising industry but have also created their own short films. One project of theirs I admired was 'Lost and Found', based on the children's picture book by Oliver Jeffers. The animation style is soft and emotive, which reflects the tone of the book.


For the section on job requirements and skills I kept the same criteria as on my last presentation which can be viewed previously on this blog.

View my presentation on Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bjw6ure3wqjrqvg/CAP%20Presentation2.pptx?dl=0

Pole Walk Animatic

I was eager to start animating and have been doing so already, the frames for this were saved but I just hadn't rendered them out yet. Here is my animatic for the "running into a stationary object" animation, or as I have it: drunk guy walks into pole, fights pole, loses.

Spell Casting Animatic

Industry Awareness Presentation

As part of the Computer Arts Practice module we were asked to give a short, informal presentation on research we have done on a company in the industry we want to work for.

I have previously looked at animation companies before for a similar task but I had only considered the larger studios such as Disney Animation Studios, Disney Pixar, Dreamworks and Blue Sky. Although its great to have ambition I thought I would look at smaller companies as they'd be my likely choice following on from university.

I looked at companies such as Blue Zoo, Axis Animation, and others but decided to look further into Studio Distract, a 3D animation studio based in Manchester. They have worked on a lot of producing their own content as well as working with clients such as Disney, Hasbro, BBC and Mattel.

A project they are currently working on is Rollie & Friends. An animated series targeted towards children and located in a theme park. The company have designed everything themselves from the characters and environments to the character rigs and story.

You can take a look at their showreel for more information or see my presentation attached at the bottom of this post.


Studio Distract 2014 Animation Showreel from Studio Distract on Vimeo.

While this studio didn't have any animation jobs currently available, I used the other companies I looked at to gather a basic understanding of what's required from a 3D animator. Some companies hired freelances while others had some permanent jobs. A showreel is always required and having experience in the industry always helps.

The skills required are the same as most jobs in the creative industry such as good communication and teamwork skills and the ability to work within a deadline. Skills more specific to animation include an understanding of the principles of animation, knowledge of anatomy and cinematography.

View my presentation on Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/skqok726frfyfto/CAP%20Presentation.pptx?dl=0

Concepting Story Ideas - Crossing Stream

I was less sure of where to go with the idea for the crossing the stream animation. I originally had the idea of having a character going for a jog while talking to a friend behind him, he'd then turn around just before the stream and attempt to make a safe crossing but would still be carried forward by his momentum and then face plant the other side of the riverbank.

It was a little too similar to the pole walking animation and decided to go for a more cautious approach the stream as an obstacle to be crossed. I've not fully explored this idea, I'll come back to this later.

Sword Swing Animatic

I've finished my first animatic for the sword swinging animation. I'm pretty happy with it as it effectively conveys what I want the animation to look like.

I was told there were perhaps too many frames in it for an animatic and that I was spending maybe too much time on it. I will try and cut down on frames where possible so that I can get to animating sooner.