Old computer games

Old PC games such as Super Mario brothers always have a unique quality that indicates the old computer style. It can be easily tell that it's digitalised than other styles, which is exactly what I need in the animation that I'm currently working on, due to the content of the character travels through the reality world and the digitalised world. I wanted to make a contrast between the two worlds, and I found that using these kind of old games' style is a great way of indicating the world which the charter is in currently.

The other side:Storyboarding

I roughly planned the animation with the storyboard and had about 20 scenes, and each of them lasts more or less than 1 seconds. The two parts in two worlds each last for about half of the animation.

Simon's cat

Simon's cat is a series of short animations with a cat being the main character. I think it demonstrates that how cat moves, or how to animate a cat's movement in a simple style of drawing, therefore it helps me to understand my character and it's movement as I have got a cat character as well.

I've picked the one which is one of my favourite among the series, and it contains lots of movement and engagement with environment of the character, which is what I need to try to improve. Compare to my style of drawing, the simon's cat has more detailed face expression, that can help a lot with the understanding of  the animation.

The other side:Character

I did a few concept drawing during the generation of ideas, for consideration of the character, due to the time management, I decided to use a simpler character rather than the first attempts. Therefore I had the final outcome of the following:

Minor alter might be applied when I came to the stage of making the final animation.

The other side:Initial ideas

When I was first generating ideas for this brief, I came up to several different ideas in the form of words, such as life and death, reality and dream, maze and parallel worlds. I summed then up and get to the two final ideas, which are life and death, internet and reality. 

Life and death 

Character is dead, then seen the other world, and came back to life and discovered that it was his dream.

Internet and reality

The world in the screen is the other side of the real world, which is the 2 dimensional world verses the 3 dimensional world. The cyber world becoming more and more like reality, and people are starting to get lost in the other side.

You Spin Me Right Round

In this study task I need to animate the character to turn around for four times, and each round is 12 drawings, which each of the drawing turns 20 degrees compare to the previous drawing. I used blue pencil to roughly scribbled out the height and the shape of the character on each of the 12 papers, and did the character in solid HB pencil, therefore the dragon frame wouldn't capture the blue lines and just the character itself.

Captain Character:Angle Views and T-pose

For the preparation of making the turning around of the character, I started to draw the character by turning her around about 30 degrees at a time. Through this method, I developed several different angle of the character, and I think it is essential if I would use this character in one of my animation.

This is the T-pose of my character, I decided to make her standing in this way with her arm not fully stretched to show the laziness in her personality.

Bouncing ball

This is the bouncing ball practice for the preparation of the brief. I used key frame in this piece of practice, I key framed the ball when it hit the the ground and jumps to the highest point, and then fill the gaps with balls with consideration of timing and spacing. 

Captain Character:Character Development

This is a set of development of the character in several different environments, which all presents different expressions and body positions of her. I tried to alter each poses as much I could, and the camera angle as well, in order to explore and present totally the character in all kinds of circumstances.
In the feedback I've got I received for improvements of the stage is to explore more on the character's place in the environments as it demonstrates itself more than just standing poses.

Captain Character:Expressions

I explored a few expressions of the character, some of them are presented on the other sheet of character in environment as well. The main tone of her expressions is obvious and most of them are exaggerated.

Captain Character:Character Development

Through scribbles of ideas I end up with this character design with a approximately four headed length of height, and with a simple shape. It is neither too realistic or unrealistic. I've made this character sheet with its front view, back view and 2/3rd view. The second sheet contains a drawing of the character in environment as well.

Captain Character:Character Development

Continued with the idea of the little girl, I then developed the character by testing out a various different styles or shapes to present the character to figure out the best presenting way of making the personality to stand out. And after a few tests I found that combining the styles together would be a great approach as well.

Captain Character:Idea Generation

The first idea came to my mind for this captain character design is a little girl who's got a strong personality. I named her Pearl and wrote done a few key words such as confident and self-centred. A few experiments has been taken to test out the most suitable ratio of her body, in order to high light her personality.