This marks the beginning of my major project blog. Here I will record data as my project continues through the next couple of months. Here is a copy of the brief that I submitted:
Name: John Francis Keeley
Project title: Character Designer
Design disciplines which best describe your project:
• Character
• Graphics (Print)
• Illustration
Project background:
Character creator will focus on the creation of numerous characters. Through this I create not only the characters but also a personal history and the world they inhabit.
Throughout the years there have been numerous media where many unique and interesting characters came to be. A popular media today is video game character design. A well known designer in this field is Tetsuya Nomura for his work on the Final Fantasy series. For years he has been the main character designer for most of Square's projects. For A good referance to his work I will be looking at the books that have been published containing his artwork.
Project description:
Character creator is a project that will revolve around the design and implementation of characters. The purpose of this project is to design several characters based around the fantasy genre, giving each of them their own unique background and distinct look.
The target audience will be fantasy fans and anime fans as the look of the characters may be be influenced by Japanese style illustration. The characters will have a serious tone and therefore will not be aimed at young children.
A problem this project solves is how a character's background will influence their look. For an example say a character comes from a very strict household. Does that mean their look would be very bland to go with the household, or would the character be very flashy to oppose the household.
Project aspirations:
Mostly I want to improve the quality of the characters I design. By the end of the module I want to have a far better understanding of the processes involved when creating characters. On a personal level I want these characters that have been on my mind for years to look as impressive as they deserve to be.
I want my characters to be interesting both in looks and in personality like the characters designed by Nomura.
Study support: Your DES509 project blog URL: http://keeley-j.blogspot.com/
The results of this submission may be viewed at:
http://www.justinmagee.com/node/460?sid=179
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Friday, 7 January 2011
Final update: Project Name is Wireframe Fighters
Around the first week of the holidays, on the 16th December (my birthday) I had finally come up with the name for my project. That name is WireFrame Fighters! Sort of obvious when you think about it. It rolls off the tongue quite well.
You know when everything that can possibly go wrong goes wrong. Yeah thats what working on this project the last few weeks have been. I am here to take you through the last couple of steps of my project and why I will never work with stop motion again until I get a far better grasp of it. This is going to be a long one folks.
Before I left for the holidays I had shown a rough draft of my storyboards to my lecturer. We talked for a bit and I had come out of the session with a full understanding of what would be good to do for this project. Shoot some footage of me and my cousin practacing the fight moves I had illustrated to give me a better understanding of how the characters would react. Record some audio. Complete the figures and paint them. Set up a stage and then animate them.
Then it snowed. Heavy snow all over northern Ireland. It was impossible for my cousin to come over with his camera to shoot the footage. Even when the snow had cleared he had no time left to help me as he had to work on his own projects. He did record audio for me to use but as for test footage went I had to watch footage on youtube of test martial arts fighting. I'm not including any links because there was simply too many of them. None of them had anything I needed as the moves were different or too complicated for me to replicate.
Then came time to get the footage. I had set up a stage in my bedroom.
This seemed alright at first but when I went to shoot the footage I encountered one very big problem. My figures could not remain standinging on one leg for very long. Even when I thought I had posed them just right, just when I'm about to take a shot or repose them they fall over. When they fall over I had to try and pick up the figure and replace it in the exact spot or it would look like my characters had jumped. Sadly I had to start over, though this time I tried blue tac on the characters feet. Sadly I there were still instances of the characters falling over. By the end of day one I had been shooting for 12 hours and had nothing to show for it, needless to say I was furious.
The next day I changed rooms and set up a stage on a table. This worked much better though I still had the occasional incident. The figures had a problem with balancing on one leg. This was most likely due the material not being too strong. I apologise for that but it was all I could afford. Because of the balance issues I had to have my figures perform less impressive stunts than I had initially intended to ensure fewer problems in the long run. In the end I got my footage done. I then began editing. No real incident there.
For editing I used Windows Moviemaker as a change of pace as I hadn't used it before. While not as well equipped as final cut or premier it still allowed for basic editing and was easy to use. Though I have to say this much. I don't like how this short animation turned out. I just became so frustrated when I was taking still shots due to the figures falling down. If I had to do it again I would look more into armature construction and get some stronger wire.
I made another short animation before making this one, to go along with my animation as development work. I used transformers and tried to do it without a stage set up. I used the same camera and editing method but frankly I am more pleased with this test animation than my final piece. I didn't mention this animation earlier because I was listing all the bad things that happened with the main film.
I filmed it on my bedroom floor and used my adjustable ceiling lights. Yes I filmed the whole thing on my floor, my knees and elbows were wrecked by the end of that that. Unlike my main film the transformers rarely fell down though again my figures mostly fell down due to weak material and Transformers (as well as most mainstream figures) are made to be balanced.
So to conclude my final project I have to say this. If given the choice I would not work with stop motion. If I have to do it again and I have to construct the armatures then I will pay the extra amount and buy stronger wire. While I enjoyed making the transformers animation I did not enjoy making the main project. If I had been able to come up with a better idea, or a story for the figures to follow then maybe I would have enjoyed it more.
You know when everything that can possibly go wrong goes wrong. Yeah thats what working on this project the last few weeks have been. I am here to take you through the last couple of steps of my project and why I will never work with stop motion again until I get a far better grasp of it. This is going to be a long one folks.
Before I left for the holidays I had shown a rough draft of my storyboards to my lecturer. We talked for a bit and I had come out of the session with a full understanding of what would be good to do for this project. Shoot some footage of me and my cousin practacing the fight moves I had illustrated to give me a better understanding of how the characters would react. Record some audio. Complete the figures and paint them. Set up a stage and then animate them.
Then it snowed. Heavy snow all over northern Ireland. It was impossible for my cousin to come over with his camera to shoot the footage. Even when the snow had cleared he had no time left to help me as he had to work on his own projects. He did record audio for me to use but as for test footage went I had to watch footage on youtube of test martial arts fighting. I'm not including any links because there was simply too many of them. None of them had anything I needed as the moves were different or too complicated for me to replicate.
Then came time to get the footage. I had set up a stage in my bedroom.
This seemed alright at first but when I went to shoot the footage I encountered one very big problem. My figures could not remain standinging on one leg for very long. Even when I thought I had posed them just right, just when I'm about to take a shot or repose them they fall over. When they fall over I had to try and pick up the figure and replace it in the exact spot or it would look like my characters had jumped. Sadly I had to start over, though this time I tried blue tac on the characters feet. Sadly I there were still instances of the characters falling over. By the end of day one I had been shooting for 12 hours and had nothing to show for it, needless to say I was furious.
The next day I changed rooms and set up a stage on a table. This worked much better though I still had the occasional incident. The figures had a problem with balancing on one leg. This was most likely due the material not being too strong. I apologise for that but it was all I could afford. Because of the balance issues I had to have my figures perform less impressive stunts than I had initially intended to ensure fewer problems in the long run. In the end I got my footage done. I then began editing. No real incident there.
For editing I used Windows Moviemaker as a change of pace as I hadn't used it before. While not as well equipped as final cut or premier it still allowed for basic editing and was easy to use. Though I have to say this much. I don't like how this short animation turned out. I just became so frustrated when I was taking still shots due to the figures falling down. If I had to do it again I would look more into armature construction and get some stronger wire.
I made another short animation before making this one, to go along with my animation as development work. I used transformers and tried to do it without a stage set up. I used the same camera and editing method but frankly I am more pleased with this test animation than my final piece. I didn't mention this animation earlier because I was listing all the bad things that happened with the main film.
I filmed it on my bedroom floor and used my adjustable ceiling lights. Yes I filmed the whole thing on my floor, my knees and elbows were wrecked by the end of that that. Unlike my main film the transformers rarely fell down though again my figures mostly fell down due to weak material and Transformers (as well as most mainstream figures) are made to be balanced.
So to conclude my final project I have to say this. If given the choice I would not work with stop motion. If I have to do it again and I have to construct the armatures then I will pay the extra amount and buy stronger wire. While I enjoyed making the transformers animation I did not enjoy making the main project. If I had been able to come up with a better idea, or a story for the figures to follow then maybe I would have enjoyed it more.
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Development: Figure armatures
For the last couple of weeks I've been working on my figures to use in my stop motion piece. I had decided to buy some wire at a gardening shop and then construct the wire frame for the figures. Then I was going to coat it with plastercine. However when I had tried moving the figure the wire kept cutting through the plastercine.
As you can see in the pictures my frame was very loose and uncontrolable. When plastercine was applied I could pose it alright, at least until the limbs snapped. In the end the whole thing collapsed. This was due to the wire shredding the plastercine around it. So next I was going to try covering the wires to reduce this. I tried masking tape which works well at covering the wire. The problem was that even though the figure was flexible it was still very loose. I then decided to revise my tactics.
I asked my lecturer to recommend some books on the subject. Th next day I got some of the books and skimmed through them. For figure modeling the best one was "Stop Motion Craft Skills for Model Animation" by Susannah Shaw, this one had caught my eye because on the cover was a figure sketch and a person making a frame by coiling two strips of wire together. On page 52 is the beginning of the modeling section, where it explains how to make the figure and how to cover it.
I admit I didn't go exactly by the book though I did take segments from it. I began coiling the wire which gave my figure more strength and stability. I wrapped more wire around the lower and upper arms taking care to avoid the elbows. I did the same fore the legs avoiding the knee joints. Though the book calls for an alluminum cover on the arms and legs I decided to go with masking tape which thankfuly worked well.
When constructing my figures I used a scale drawing of a man I had drawn for 3D to ensure a good strong shape. I am very pleased with the end result. To the point where I'm considering not coating the figure in plastercine which is funny becuase my lecturer had suggested that scenario in our last class.
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
I'm Back with my idea
I'm sorry I know I haven't been posting much lately. This is partly due to personal issues and my inability to accurately time other things. The point is I've either haven't had time or haven't really had much to type.
You'll be glad to know that I have been working on with other things (for this project) this last week which I will get into soon.
I do seem to have forgotten to write up something very important. My idea.
While watching animations featuring stop motion like "Jazz's general problem" or many of the other transformers stop motion out there (theres too many to count), I got really excited about actually trying to make something like this so I set my eyes on stop motion. One of the reasons I want to try this is because it is new territory for me and while I like and am comfortable with Adobe Flash I feel I need to challenge myself.
In the General problem and other movies and shorts I've watched like animtor vs animation or Guyver (enen though I hated it) there have been fight scenes where the characters will do battle. While I did try to animate a fight scene in my youth it didn't turn out so good so this time I'm going to look at fights in the movies and try to create something with a similar feel and energy.
For a fight scene I felt poseable figures would be ideal but then I thought; why not use plastercine afterall its flexability would make for some interesting movements.
So esscentially I want to make a claymation fight scene. I have already chosen the title "Fists of Clay" in a sort of homage to the fight movies that were very famous in the seventies.
You'll be glad to know that I have been working on with other things (for this project) this last week which I will get into soon.
I do seem to have forgotten to write up something very important. My idea.
While watching animations featuring stop motion like "Jazz's general problem" or many of the other transformers stop motion out there (theres too many to count), I got really excited about actually trying to make something like this so I set my eyes on stop motion. One of the reasons I want to try this is because it is new territory for me and while I like and am comfortable with Adobe Flash I feel I need to challenge myself.
In the General problem and other movies and shorts I've watched like animtor vs animation or Guyver (enen though I hated it) there have been fight scenes where the characters will do battle. While I did try to animate a fight scene in my youth it didn't turn out so good so this time I'm going to look at fights in the movies and try to create something with a similar feel and energy.
For a fight scene I felt poseable figures would be ideal but then I thought; why not use plastercine afterall its flexability would make for some interesting movements.
So esscentially I want to make a claymation fight scene. I have already chosen the title "Fists of Clay" in a sort of homage to the fight movies that were very famous in the seventies.
Sunday, 24 October 2010
Development of Research - Stop motion
A while back I looked at some stop motion films like Evil Dead 2and some films from youtube. Needless to say it has me very interested in learning stop motion. To start me off I looked for some stop motion tutorials online, and let me tell you, for every good one you find you're going to find at least 5 bad ones. By bad I mean that they don't really go into any great detail, were hard to understand, or just had some awful music playing.
If I want to do stop motion then I needed to know where to start off. So while looking for tutorials I came by tutorials4brickfilms. This channel only has two uploads but these two videos detail how your studio should be set up, and what you will need in it and then there's the second video which explains about the lighting procedure.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Tutorials4Brickfilms#p/a/u/1/KuCirymLd6E
The first video explains about setting up and filming on a sturdy desk to avoid knocking over objects on film. It goes on to mention that daylight or any other unnecessary lightsource should be blocked out. The second video covers what lamps and bulbs you should use for good results. It also suggets not wearing white or light coloured clothes because if you move it could cause light flicker.
What I like about these is that it shows me how I could do this with a small budget which is a big factor to me.
If I want to do stop motion then I needed to know where to start off. So while looking for tutorials I came by tutorials4brickfilms. This channel only has two uploads but these two videos detail how your studio should be set up, and what you will need in it and then there's the second video which explains about the lighting procedure.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Tutorials4Brickfilms#p/a/u/1/KuCirymLd6E
The first video explains about setting up and filming on a sturdy desk to avoid knocking over objects on film. It goes on to mention that daylight or any other unnecessary lightsource should be blocked out. The second video covers what lamps and bulbs you should use for good results. It also suggets not wearing white or light coloured clothes because if you move it could cause light flicker.
What I like about these is that it shows me how I could do this with a small budget which is a big factor to me.
Monday, 18 October 2010
Animator vs Animation
There is a series of flash movies which have been around for a while. They are amazing!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxM1cnphLpw&feature=related
In this series a person creates a character in flash. Soon the two are locked in battle with the animator using as many programs as possible to get rid of his creation, and and character destroying his computer. These are some damn fine animations.
The whole thing is animated with Flash. The various computer tabs, backgrounds and icons were taken from print screens and edited in photoshop. The character is a stick figure so it is far easier to animate than a more complex character, and the characters actions can be more exaggerated.
The sounds were recorded from the pc or were downloaded from one of many sound sites.
One of the reasons I enjoy these animations so much is the action, which is all well executed. I would imagine that fight scenes are very complex so it would be interesting to animate one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxM1cnphLpw&feature=related
In this series a person creates a character in flash. Soon the two are locked in battle with the animator using as many programs as possible to get rid of his creation, and and character destroying his computer. These are some damn fine animations.
The whole thing is animated with Flash. The various computer tabs, backgrounds and icons were taken from print screens and edited in photoshop. The character is a stick figure so it is far easier to animate than a more complex character, and the characters actions can be more exaggerated.
The sounds were recorded from the pc or were downloaded from one of many sound sites.
One of the reasons I enjoy these animations so much is the action, which is all well executed. I would imagine that fight scenes are very complex so it would be interesting to animate one.
Monday, 11 October 2010
Now this is awesome
I like Transformers, so naturally I look for youtube content with them. Thats when I came across this gem;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r1WasN5JFQ
'Jazz with a General Problem' a stop motion short using Jazz from Transformers and a transforming version of the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard. Don't read too much into it.
What I like about this is of course the animation. All of the actions were well choreographed and the camera work was excellent. Wat I still don't understand is how they did the midair stunts. If anybody knows then tell me ASAP in the comment section.
Jazz' lines and the sound effects were ripped from the transformers cartoon. While the general Lee's was all new.
If you liked it then I suggest watching the rest of Patrick Boivin's videos on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r1WasN5JFQ
'Jazz with a General Problem' a stop motion short using Jazz from Transformers and a transforming version of the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard. Don't read too much into it.
What I like about this is of course the animation. All of the actions were well choreographed and the camera work was excellent. Wat I still don't understand is how they did the midair stunts. If anybody knows then tell me ASAP in the comment section.
Jazz' lines and the sound effects were ripped from the transformers cartoon. While the general Lee's was all new.
If you liked it then I suggest watching the rest of Patrick Boivin's videos on youtube.
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