This unit is called ‘Living Voices’ in which we have been given a variety of audios from which we choose one and create a narrative from this. Below is my pre-production and learning notes.
In the initial character exploration, I did observational studies of frogs to better understand their anatomy, including their facial shapes, eyes and webbed feet/hands. I wanted to better understand the way frogs move, this naturally being jumpy and scattered. As the character design is directed towards young children, I kept the form easy to read and playful, alongside using circular round shapes mixed with long rectangles as the structural design. To the right are the character turnarounds of Jeremy, I needed to complete this to better understand what the full 360 views of the character would be so I could better animate him. This was a process I found somewhat difficult as I found it hard to understand the full scale and size of the characters’ proportions when looking at it from different angles.
Above is an example of one of my timing charts demonstrating a fast pace of action. This shows the keys needed for the character to catch a fly, demonstrating the pace at which his neck recoils and tongue shoots out; obviously, this timing chart shows in-betweens close together to create a sense of speed.
To suit the anthropomorphized frog, I chose to create a rainforest environment in which he lives. The mood of the backgrounds is strongly set by the dominant and secondary colours, these being green and yellow to create a playful and natural tone. The saturation of the environment is quite pure to draw attention from the audience, alongside the hues in the scene being strongly pigmented and therefore a high-key painting. Furthermore, the colours used follow the analogous theme, famously used by impressionists to create a harmonious feel.
The shape language in these environments mainly makes up of soft edges in the foreground while the trees and ferns in the background are quite sharp alongside having a lot of repetition in shape. I used leading lines in the foreground of the rocks and leaves to direct the viewer’s edges to which the frog would be placed in the scene. Also using the golden light rectangles as literal arrows towards the focal point. Ultimately, I am happy with these backgrounds and reflect the style, tone and mood I displayed in the mood boards at the project’s beginning. However, I would have liked to add more detail to these and or tried a no-line type style.
Initially, when thinking of ideas for the 2D project I was interested in anthropomorphisation and wanted to create a frog character with friendly, human-like qualities. To do this I did a vast amount of research on frogs’ appearances, their movement and natural environments so I could paint an accurate picture in my final animation. For my research, I studied a wide variety of different 2D skills and theories such as squash and stretch, anticipation, follows through’s, etc alongside films such as ‘Golden Hour’, ‘Last Summer’ and ‘Blue Curry’. When reflecting on my concept I feel I created a well-timed and sequenced animation, including a comedic and laughable narrative that flows and communicates well. The character design and lip-synch worked well, both meeting the criteria alongside being an aesthetically pleasing product. What could have improved however was my background design, this was a part of the unit I struggled with the most, painting light and effective colour palettes according to a set theme was a struggle. The process of the lip-synch unit started with a mind map, mood board and character turnarounds, parts of the class I enjoyed the most due to flexibility and free creative thinking. Next, I created an X sheet so I could better understand what the face and lips would look like when the audio was synched together. Moreover, I created background designs, first experimenting with grey scale value paintings and working my way up to colour. Lastly, I keyframed and in-betweened my animation in a software called Toon Boom Harmony, this animation software easily allowed me to lay out my scenes and character movements in an effective way; notably, this is a software I have used numerous times now after learning it as I enjoyed it so much. When reflecting on my final outcome I feel I could have improved on my background design, colour palettes and lighting techniques, however, the overall lip synch, character animation and narrative communicate and flows effectively, a product from my course I am happy with.
Above is the final animtion of my lip synch project.