next

what i'm gonna do next:

1. a site like peskimo , meomi
   http://www.peskimo.com/web/blog.php
   http://meomi.com/index.html
   
2. some still image and illustrate where does Marchie come from, his living place
3. some promotional item to promote my site/ character
   

Marchie and nutcracker

New Aims

Aims

• a self branding site
  

• create a 2D animation (without dialouge)
  

• create a character with simple outlook and visually engaging

Target Audience
Everyone

Principles

• animation should be visually interesting and engaging

• animation should up to professional level

Learning outcomes

• manage my own learning includes self-evaluation through reflection, and take action that result in self development
  
  1. keeping good track and update my RVJ as a proof to my progress and development
  2. research and look into professional work and compare with my own work
  3. practice the good principles and jot down the bad principles and try to avoid them in my work
     

• apply technical and analytical skills to the conception and production of a range of visual communication media
  
  1. analyse other people work by listing down the good and bad points and reflect on my work
  2. explain why is it good and why is it bad

• demonstrate a systematic understanding of key aspects of my subject, including acquisition of coherent and detailed knowledge, at least some of which is at or is informed by, the forefront of defined aspect of a subject and or professional practice
  
  1. the originality of my character
  2. a deeper understanding on the principles of animation
  3. look at cutting edge character (not just look at it but try to apply)

• generate a body of work that is considered to be at a professional level in terms of conception and realization
  
  1. evidence of professional work and compare my work with their work to professional level

• demonstrate sophisticated communication and presentation skills
  
  1. voice over presentation (maybe)
  2. VSP (visual schematic presentation)

progress 2

I have add in some mirror scene to further enhance my animation to make the message look clearer. As my previous comment to my animation are:

• didn't notice marchie broke his teeth
• animation pace is too fast
• marchie's teeth is too small

So, I decided to add another scene to my animation which is make another mirror scene to show Marchie teeth was broken and gone.

Marchie enhancement

I had done some modifications to my character Marchie's teeth which is to make his teeth looks more outstanding than the original one.

(L to R)
1: Original Marchie (although is cute but he looks a bit evil)
2: Bigger and separated teeth
3: Bigger teeth with a small gap in between (I choose this)
4: Bigger and longer teeth

In the end, I choose to use No.3 which is Marchie with bigger teeth. This makes Marchie looks more friendly, cute and yet look more contrast when he break his teeth. (My first piece of animation, audience hardly noticed Marchie broke his teeth after biting on the hard shell nut)

progress 1

This week, I had done some changes to my animation.
I have made the fire flies flying in the bottle, making the
scene looks interesting and yet bringing life to the animation.

Another modification that i had done was the wall shakes a bit when the nut hits the wall.

3 eyes monster

Initially I want to use this as my main character in my animation but I found it hard and weird to draw his eye movement. So end up I choose Marchie.

above: (left) before edit (right) after editing

Evaluation 1

1. Background is alright. Make the fire flies in the bottle move randomly will be much more better and interesting.
2. Message not clear as in audience didnt notice Marchie broke his teeth when he bite on the hard nut! (Do another cut on the mirror and close up on Marchie's gum and show how he broke his teeth)
3. Background music is fine. Add in sound effects on those little little action such as frustrated sound, broken teeth, kicking nut and so on.
4. Need to exaggerate the animation and Marchie's facial expression/ body movement/ branches moving/ mushroom moving.
5. Eating part (cheating!) make biting shape and eat bit by bit and not one whole nut followed by another one whole nut.
6. No shadow on the character (seems floating in the air)
7. Nut should have crack when it hits the wall.

the making of Marchie

character development

Final character: Marchie
Earlier on, we were discussing on the purpose behind this project. Questions raised during the discussion were:

Q: What's the purpose of this bug?
He is teeth bug. He is here to destroy the teeth. Those who never brush teeth or leave their teeth dirty or with some left over food will become his favourite place to live in; which is he will make a hole in our teeth.

Q: What is he good/ bad at?
He is good at making hole, destroy teeth, and bad at diving (when we rinse our teeth with water, he hates it! he's a bad diver/ swimmer! He name this disaster as his TSUNAMI!)

Q: Who is it for?
This bug is for everyone but target more to younger age children. As i will make this bug involve in some education teaching: Clean teeth.

Q: Why he is here?
He is here to destroy our teeth. So take good care and clean our teeth always.

Q: Personality?
^gone crazy when see food
^evil
^funny

facial expressions

still testing out some character but i think this is the ideal character that i want. experiment into different facial expressions.

Beast and bug

hairy creatures

Some character testing out! Quite like this set of character as it looks interesting and very refreshing to me.

20 character design tips

1: Research and evaluate
Study these characters and think about what makes some successful and what in particular you like about them.

2: Design and plan
Where will the character be seen and in what medium? For example, if the character is for a mobile-phone screen, there’s no point designing it to have a lot of intricate details and features.

3: Who is it aimed at?
Think about your audience. Characters aimed at young children, for example, are typically designed around basic shapes and bright colours. If you’re working for a client, the character’s target audience is usually predetermined, “Commissioned characters are usually more restrictive but no less creative. Clients have specific needs but also want me to do my ‘thing’. Usually, I’ll break down the core features and personality. For example, if the eyes are important then focus the whole design around the face, making this the key feature that stands out.”

4: Visual impact
Your character needs to be strong and interesting in a visual sense to get people’s attention.The Simpsons, offer the viewers something different. The characters’ unusually bright yellow skin colour would grab their attention.

5: Line qualities and styles
Thick, even, soft and round lines may suggest an approachable, cute character, whereas sharp, scratchy and uneven lines might point to an uneasy and erratic character.

6: Exaggerated characteristics
Exaggerating the defining features of your character will help it appear larger than life. Exaggerated features will also help viewers to identify the character’s key qualities. Exaggeration is key in cartoon caricatures and helps emphasize certain personality traits. If your character is strong, don’t just give it normal-sized bulging arms, soup them up so that they’re five times as big as they should be!

7: Colour me bad
Colours can help communicate a character’s personality. Typically, dark colours such as black, purples and greys depict baddies with malevolent intentions. Light colours such as white, blues, pinks and yellows express innocence, good and purity. Comic-book reds, yellows and blues might go some way to giving hero qualities to a character.

8: Adding accessories
Props and clothing can help to emphasise character traits and their background. For example, scruffy clothes can be used for poor characters, and lots of diamonds and bling for tasteless rich ones. Accessories can also be more literal extensions of your character’s personality, such as a parrot on a pirate’s shoulder or a maggot in a ghoul’s skull.

9: The third dimension
Depending on what you have planned for your character, you might need to work out what it will look like from all angles. A seemingly flat character can take on a whole new persona when seen from the side if, for example, it has a massive beer belly. If your character is going to exist within a 3D world, as an animation or even as a toy, working out its height, weight and physical shape is all important.

10: Conveying personality
Interesting looks alone do not necessarily make for a good character; its personality is key as well. A character’s personality can be revealed through comic strips and animations, where we see how it reacts to certain situations. The personality of your character doesn’t have to be particularly agreeable, but it does need to be interesting (unless your characters is purposely dull). Personality can also be expressed simply in how the character has been drawn.

11: Express yourself
Expressions showing a character’s range of emotions and depicting its ups and downs will further flesh out your character. Depending on its personality, a figure’s emotions might be muted and wry or explosive and wildly exaggerated. Classic examples of this can be found in the work of the legendary Tex Avery: the eyes of his Wild Wolf character often pop out of its head when it’s excited. Another example of how expressions communicate motions is deadpan Droopy, who barely registers any sort of emotion at all.

12: Goals and dreams
The driving force behind a character’s personality is what it wants to achieve. This missing ‘something’ – be it riches, a girlfriend or solving a mystery – can help to create the dramatic thrust behind the stories and adventures your character gets up to. Often the incompleteness or flaws in a character are what make it interesting.

13: Building back stories
If you’re planning for your character to exist within comics and animations then developing its back story is important. Where it comes from, how it came to exist and any life-changing events it has experienced are going to help back up the solidity of, and subsequent belief in, your character. Sometimes the telling of a character’s back story can be more interesting than the character’s present adventures… or not, in the case of the Star Wars prequels.

14: Quick on the draw
Don’t be afraid to experiment and ignore all the rules and tips about planning and crafting the look of your character. Going against what is supposed to be the right way of doing something could create unexpected and exciting results.

15: Hone, plan and polish
Instead of just drawing or doodling without too much pre-planning, Nathan Jurevicius prefers to take a different approach. “I take a long time creating finished looking roughs and also thinking about how the character could be expanded beyond a 2D artwork, what the character will do in a specific world, and how it speaks and acts,” he says.

16: Drawn in mud
“The character should still be able to work with a stick dipped in mud and drawn on asphalt.”

17: Real-world drawing
Ian, of I Like Drawing, generates some of his characters away from both the computer and the sketchbook, allowing outside elements to influence his work. “I really like characters that interact with their surroundings,” he says. “The environment normally suggests an idea and then I let my strange mind do the rest. I prefer drawing in the real world with a pen instead of on the computer, because it feels good and odd things happen.”

18: Release the beast
Show people your creations and ask them what they think. Don’t just ask whether they like them or not. Instead, see if they can pick up the personalities and traits of your characters. Find who you think is the suitable or ideal audience for your work and get feedback specifically from them about it.

19: Beyond the character
In the same way that you create a history for your character, you need to create an environment for it to help further cement believability in your creation. The world in which the character lives and interacts should in some way make sense to who the character is and what it gets up to.

20: Fine-tuning a figure
Question each element of your creation, especially things such as its facial features. The slightest alteration can have a great effect on how your character is perceived. Illustrator Neil McFarland advises: “Think about the meaning of the word ‘character’. You’re supposed to breath life into these things, make them appealing and give them the magic that will allow people to imagine what they’re like to meet and how they might move. I think it’s strange how creating characters for the sake of it has become a distinct branch of graphic design.”

The worm

After failing to use finger puppet as my character, I came out with this worm. A worm who live inside tooth a.k.a tooth worm. He can't survive without "leftover food" that stuck in between out teeth. He loves hole (cavity) because it can keep him warm and protect him from tsunami (rinsing mouth action), he hates clean place and will get excited when he sees food!



// characteristics //

• love food; especially sweet one
  
• funny
• stupid
• imaginative
• dream a lot
• slumber
• no leg! can't walk fast, only can crawl

above: He gets really excited when he sees food. (trying to fulfill one of the principles of animation: exaggeration)



I'm not going to use this worm in my animation because I have a better one in my head now!
Marchie on the way~~

achieving clarity in cartoon characters

// on the last day of winter //
I went to Central Library and lend a book entitled How to Create Crazy Cartoon Characters

"Everything you can imagine is real" by Pablo Picasso

Creating a memorable character is all about personality!
Character design is static. It cannot move around to express itself. It cannot speak. You can give it speech balloons, but still it has no voice. Your character must express itself through gesture. Gesture, as in mime, involves the entire posture. In order to make a clear gesture, your drawing must have no confusing parts or ambiguities. Hence the importance of the body or silhouette. The choices you make in determining the angle of the character is seen from and how an action or attitude is depicted are called staging. Cartooning is a flat medium; you don't want your characters to look confusing or ambiguous on screen or paper, so you need to stage every action or attitude with maximum clarity.




Achieving clarity
Walk Disney told his animators to : "Work in silhouette so that everything can be seen clearly. Don't have a hand come over a face so that you can't see what's happening. Put it away from the face and make it clear." with thought, planning and experimentation, you should be able to draw any action or attitude so that it seems both natural and clear. If you take time to order your thoughts on paper, you will achieve your drawing goals with fewer mistakes and greater clarity. Slow down in order to speed up.

finger puppets

Before starting anything, some trying and testing out characters were below:

above (finger puppet) was the first set of character that i came out from my character. I got this inspiration from my glove :) I dropped out this idea because their eyes and mouth are all in simplified form; so is not what i wanted in facial expressions study.


above (finger puppet) facial expression are too simplified.

my aim

My first aim was to

• meet the brief from D&AD and create a piece of animation
• create a 2D animation (try not to use dialouge)
• create a character with simple outlook but with interesting facial expressions
• experiment into different kind of facial expressions
• make the character interacting with surrounding
• experiment into the principles of animation
  
  

Personal learning outcome

• animation is up to professional level (a complete animation at the end, visually interesting and engaging)
• build the character in 3D (by the end of MNP)
  
  

Principles

• animation should portray the character unique personality
• animation should be funny
• animation should engage everyone
  

D&AD brief

I hope is not too late for me to start my blog now :)

I got my brief from D&AD where the brief is to Create a character then portray it through an animation to express its personality.

http://www.dandad.org/studentawards08/briefs/pdf/ANIMATION_HSI.pdf