CoF - Animated Scenes 6

In this scene the protagonist wakes up from her flashback and looks down at her sword.


In this scene she will slightly tilt her sword and transform it back into a wand. The reflection of her eyes will be visible on the blade but that will be added after colouring in.


In this scene her father will put his hand on her shoulder and she will look at him. Part of the blinking animation is copied from the previous scene. I am rather undecided if i should make the father slightly transparent or leave him solid. He is a ghost or an illusion after all, but if i turn him transparent, visuals of his animated parts will look bad. Turning the hand transparent, we would see the tunic through it instead of the environment.


Close up shot of her father smiling at her. The first version of this scene was him with smiling constantly but i decided to make him sad at first and then smile. There will be two layers in this animation and i am still undecided how to give him the graphical representation of a ghost/illusion if i can't make him transparent.

CoF - Animated Scenes 5

In Scene 29, the character will be walking towards the camera, arriving at the final daffodil. The daffodil will be in foreground, and for the character we won't see anything but her legs. There wi be some focus at play in this scene. for the first part of it, the daffodil in the foreground will be in focus, but for the rest, the character will be focused on.



In Scene 31, the character looks at the ruined house and then kneels down to pick up the last daffodil. I don't know if others can notice, but i will say that i've cheated for this scene. i copied the kneeing animation from a different scene, but redrawn over it, so it would match this scene (where the character is wearing a dress) and so that the flicker won't make it noticeable.



In Scene 33 the character wakes up from a flash back and notices that she has wings. There wasn't much animation to be done here. Her wings are a tweened symbol, and her face and arm are animated frame by frame. Her arm has been copied and pasted.



In Scene 34 she examines her wings and then turns her head in front to look at the daffodils she has picked up. In this scene her wings are tweened symbols as well, but her turning head is animated frame by frame.

Looking out there - Ovosonico

In one of my previous posts i have mentioned that my inspiration goes outside the domain of animation, and this time it lands again in the domain of gaming.

This time Ovosonico falling under my radar, for their inspiring game, Murasaki Baby.
Just like the previous ones i played from Ubisfoft, Murasaki Baby was quite an emotional experience and artistic inspiration. From it i can tell that this studio has a broad perspective, they're not afraid to come out of their comfort zone and their inspiration comes from different areas.

Murasaki Baby has a Tim Burton-esque style to it, but the soundtrack is different, both its vocalist and the title is in japanese (Purple Baby), all of an Italian based studio.
The game is exclusive to PlayStation Vita, a handheld console with touch screen functionalities. It could have been available to other platforms but the experience of the player is to use the touch screen to hold the character's hand as if he was parenting her.

These are the courage to step out of a comfort zone that i was talking about. Such artistic awareness and multicultural inspiration is what would make me want to work for Ovosonico.

Looking Out There - Ubisoft - UbiArt

As an animator, i find relevant interests in both story and graphical inspiration in other domains as well.
I can shamelessly say that i find a lot of art in video games as well.
Some video games have echoed for me as being unforgettable while others have been just for the fun.
But such pieces of art that have appealed to me for both these categories, are the games created by Ubisoft through the UbiArt Framework. Rayman Legends, Child of Light and Valiant Hearts - The Great War, all had a great emotional experience to me, and each moment spent in, made me awe  the art style.
These games have further inspired my interest in making interactive art, despite of my domain. But the UbiArt Framework looks very interesting and artist friendly. If i had a chance to make my art interactive to an audience, i would deeply take it.

CoF - Animated Scenes 4

In Scene 23, the protagonist must reach for a daffodil that is close to a dragon's snout. She is unsure if he is dead or sleeping but she can't take the risk, so she'll just stretch t get it. This is probably the only scene i experimented with 1s. It took a lot of time but at least now i see how it looks like. I did it like other scene, i copied a lot of body elements to keep the proportions right.



In Scene 25, she wakes up from the flash back and finds out that the dragon was actually hers. In the planned animatic, she would be crouched as far away from him as possible so she won't stir him. Her next pose would be for her to hug the dragon . If she were too far, that would have been too much to animate dragging herself to the dragon.

Apologies if there will be too many typos in the upcoming posts...my keyboard is acting up. 



In Scene 26, she find the next daffodil next to a flag. There are a lot of scene of her kneeling down in this short, so for this one, i decided i would make her throw down her sword first and then kneel.




In scene 28 she wakes up from another flash back, with her daffodil in her hand and she will straighten the flag next to her.

CoF - Animated Scenes 3

This is a POV scene. The protagonist wakes up from a flash back and sees her gauntlet disassembled, falling off her hand.



This is what happens next. She gets scared and jumps. What little pieces of her gauntlet that are left on her hand, fall off in this scene. She notices a dead soldier in front of her, that's why she looks at the camera.



In this scene we see what the protagonist was staring at. A soldier that she killed and a drip of blood seeping out through his helmet.



In this scene, the protagonist gets scared, picks up the daffodil and runs out of the shot. After that it will pan to the next scene but this is not covered in this upload.

Ultimate Image

I was given the task to promote myself via an 'Ultimate Image'. This should speak for me, to give a sample of pieces of work. Like i did with other design tasks, i kept the family design of my Ultimate Image and added some of my created characters to it. Most of them are part of my upcoming animated short, CoF.

My final design.

Below is the process i've gone through to creating my ultimate image.

Looking out there - Cartoon Saloon

I could say that i am rather stubborn when it comes to traveling great distances ...well...outside of Europe. Within it I have no problem. But that is because I would like to make an impact where I am. People in the animation domain would fly the Atlantic and continue their career in USA or Canada. But i see a potential here as well. The way i see it is that European animations are not as famous as American ones, but then there are studios that show that there is a possibility of showing the world that great films can come from here too.

One such studio is Cartoon Saloon.
The first animated shorts i've seen from this studio were Cúilín Dualach and Old Fangs. 
Even though i didn't really understand the first short (since it wasn't in any of the languages i spoke) i could say that it was friendly for any audience that didn't understand the language. My other interpretation is that this short is a cultural expression that encourages audiences to learn a new language. It's something i totally agree with, that's why my latest short will be in Welsh.

Old Fangs was interesting for me as well, but the animation that made the most impact for me (as well as others) was The Secret of Kells. A celtic themed story, inspired from Irish history, an animation of simple designs but all so beautiful to look at.

I am very confident the same quality is in Song of the Sea as well (their latest animated feature). I would gladly like to make such cultural inspired animations that are also an awe to look at if it means working for Cartoon Saloon.

Business Card

I finally have a business card. I was too gitty to create it before i created myself a website. So now the final print has an address to my blog on it instead.

I went for a family design with it, same style that can be found on my Blog's banner, Website's banner, Youtube banner, Twitter banner and ultimate image.

Just like all the banners mentioned above, i started out with creating a background of a collection of works of mine. I added a parchment layer over them so that they can be blended. Around everything there's a frame of an unstable architectural construct with vines growing over the frames and a grassy ground floor.

It's on my business card that i first added this type face to my name and then changed the one on my blog.

 On verso I kept the same design of but readjusted the texture level so that works in the backgrounds can be viewed better. There is no writing to interfere with here, so why not?

Website

The moment has come to actually create a website. When it will be fully published i might have to move there and post my future posts there and leave this blog behind. But that is for the future. When the website will be published, this blog will have a link to it so you can go check it out. It should be up before 24th April 2015.

Until then, enjoy reading the process of creating it.

                                          The Golden Apple: http://goldenappleseries.com/
                                          The Dead Pirates: http://thedeadpirates.com/

                                          Heart Shaped Skull: http://www.heartshapedskull.com/
                                          Giant Sparrow: http://www.giantsparrow.com/

                                          The Line: http://www.thelineanimation.com/
                                          Erick Oh: http://www.erickoh.com/

                                     

Looking Out There - The Line

I like to say that some time after graduation i would like to make animated music videos. Making an artistic marriage between audio and video, giving the the audience an both visual and musical enjoyment...my mind goes on fireworks when experiencing something like this and i would like my audience to do so as well.

The Line may not have been in charge of making the music, but they sure knew how to 'paint' for it. Their music videos for the track Easy by Mat Zo & Porter Robinson as well as the one for Strange Enough by N.A.S.A. feat. Karen O & Ol' Dirty Bastard were their first works i stumbled upon. The rhythm for Strange Enough was a bit questionable for me, but the style was something out of my high school fantasies. But the animation for Easy was just perfect.

These may be very few music videos but it's the quality alone that made me admire it.
Other pieces of animation have a graphical style that could inspire anyone, and they are aiming for a large audience. Wallflowers seemed to be a success and people seem to want another part of it. As well as Everything I Can See From Here. They seem to be aimed to be screened on smartphones judging by their aspect ratio.

Same courage i see in Ovosonico. If there was a place where i can share more art with the rest of the world, with music and eye candy it would be from The Line.