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.

CoF - Animated Scenes 2

This scene is taking place after the character has woken up in a forest and took a walk through it only to find that she was surrounded by dead soldiers. In this scene she looks back and reflects on what she passed and covers her face.
Like a lot of scenes, i decided to animate both frame by frame and through tweens.in this scene, the only animated elements are the head and her left arm. the rest of her body is still. i already coloured it and added a shadow to it, but judging the pace of which i am animating the scenes, i am not sure i will be able to add shadows to all of the scenes.


In this scene the protagonist will notice a daffodil at her feet and uncover her face to look at it. At the present state it's unpresent but it shall be added soon. Like the previous scene, only two elements are animated here, her face and her hand.


This scene will take place after a close up shot of the daffodil. She kneels in front of it in order to pick it up. This scene was animated with a lot of symbols in order to keep the same proportions of the character, but they were not tweened. Her left hand reaching towards the daffodil will be followed in the next scene, but it looks like it's going too fast.


This scene is a point of view shot. The protagonist will be looking at the daffodil and reaching her arm to it. The first part of the motion is tweened, as there wasn't a great deal to animate. Once the daffodil will start to glow bright (when it will be added in the scene) the hand retreats. That second part of the motion is animated frame by frame - the forearm is an animated symbol in order to keep proportions.

CoF - Keyframes 2

This post will include scenes  in progress that will be part of the major flashback sequence of the animated short. Unlike the rest of the film, this sequence will not be animated frame by frame but simply with keys and dissolving transitions.
Scene 41 - This will be a long shot of the farm, with Blodwen (the main character, the fairy) playing with her dragon in the yard while her father enjoys his pipe. I've decided to draw the characters in a larger scale so that their resolution won't be altered too much in the final export.

Scene 42 - A medium close up of Blodwen, playing with her dragon, creating bubbles with her wand. The dragon will be partially off screen, but i've decided to draw his entire body as i will make him jump every now and then.

 Scene 43 - A medium close up of her father enjoying his pipe and smiling back at her. Not much of a motion in this scene other than his pipe's smoke. It shall be animated using a bone tool in Adobe After Effects.

 Scene 44 - Is the same as Scene 42 except here the character's attention is drawn off screen to some marching soldiers part of the next scene (Scene incomplete of which progress will be posted soon). The dragon in this scene will keep on playing with Blodwen's conjured bubbles, but her head will turn to her left, simply with a timed dissolve transition.

 Scene 47 - In scene 46, Blodwen will get excited from noticing some soldiers marching and out of fascination she will turn her wand into a sword.
Her father does not want her to have anything to do with the military, so he comes close to her and puts his hand on her shoulder to grab her attention.

In this scene (47), we'll have a close up of her father, looking down at her with a concern look and giving her a discouraging head shake.

In my first attempt to make the keys for this scene, i wanted to show a bit of motion, even if the animation would be minimal. So i decided to show that his hair was affected by the motion of his head. Unfortunately, the drawings of his hair was too exaggerated, that when put in the animatic, instead of shaking his head in disappointment, it looked like he shook his hair graciously (because he's worth it).

I've redrawn his hair on that scene and since, the scene looks good in the animatic.

More posts to come. 

CoF - Animated Scenes

A series of colourless scenes for my upcoming short.



Grabbing her sword, and picking it up, the action will continue in a future scene.






I've been a bit lazy with these scenes, in order to catch up with the schedule. In these scenes, the character is walking towards the camera. The animated background will be added later. Only her right arm is animated frame by frame. The rest of her body is tweened.

Looking out there - h5

In my future animation career i do have plans to make animated music videos.
I am sure there are quite a number of them out there but i haven't stumbled on many of them yet. My experience is not that great with it.

However, H5 has quite the experience in making animated music videos.
I have seen some of them and i could say that they really know what they are doing and i would like to learn from them.

If i could make animated music videos, it would be from H5.

CoF - Keyframes

These scenes will be key frames animated in After Effects. Scene 35 is where the protagonist stares at the daffodils in her hands from a first person perspective. The hands need to be redrawn and the daffodils to be coloured.

 Scene 37, where her mother leaves the baby protagonist on a door step. The background is incomplete.

 Scene 38, the mother waves goodbye to her baby. her hand will be animated in Aftereffect. Background will come.

 Scene 39, a slow zoom towards the baby.

Scene 40 without a background. This scene will be animated through After Effects as well. Movements will be slight, bubbles will move a little faster, and the dragon will be a bit out of frame, jumping at the bubbles.

CoF - Lyrics

The lyrics for the song for the animated short have been finished, all with the help of Dan Harvey .
These are the final version in Welsh.

Yn y niwl,

Yr unig bywyd dwi’n gweld,

Yn disgleirio dim-

ond ewyllys da i chi,

Cof i cadw chi yn fy mhyd.

Cof i cadw chi yn fy mhyd,

Cof i cadw chi yn fy mhyd,

Er mwyn eich tywys trwy’r gwaed,

Cof i cadw chi yn fy mhyd.

Ddeilen, petal,

Bob yn dipyn, cam wrth gam, gwraidd,

Ddeilen,  petal,

Gobeithiwch yn gweld y gwir.

Cof i cadw chi yn fy mhyd

Cof i cadw chi yn fy mhyd, (Yr unig bywyd dwi’n gweld)

Cof i cadw chi yn fy mhyd, (---)

Cof i cadw chi yn fy mhyd, (---)

Cof i cadw chi yn fy mhyd, (Er mwyn eich tywys trwy’r gwaed)

Cof i cadw chi, Cof i cadw chi yn fy mhyd.

Ddeilen, petal,

Bydded yr holl wir’n amlygu i chi,

Ddeilen, petal,

Ei’n amseroedd gyda’n gilydd

Ddeilen,  petal,

Rhydw i eisiau chi’n saff,

Ddeilen, petal,

Peidiwch anghofio eich hun,

Peidiwch anghofio eich gwraidd.

Gwaed, tân, rhyfel,

Beth roeddwn i eisiau cadw chi o

Gwaed, tân, rhyfel

Nid hun yw’r anghenfil codais,

Atal hyn, nghariad,

Erfyniaf arnoch, cofiwch.

Yn y niwl,

Mae’r unig bywyd dwi’n gweld,

Byddwch beunydd yn fy merch.

The word by word translation from Welsh into English are below. They will not be used, but they are posted here to understand the them.

In the mist,

The only life I see,

Is shining

only good will to you,

A memory to keep you in my world.

A memory to keep you in my world,

A memory to keep you in my world,

To guide you through the blood,

A memory to keep you in my world.

A leaf, a petal,

Bit by bit, step by step, roots,

A leaf and petal,

Hoping you’ll see the truth.

A memory to keep you in my world,

A memory to keep you in my world, (The only life I see)

A memory to keep you in my world,

A memory to keep you in my world,

A memory to keep you in my world, (To guide you through the blood)

A memory to keep you, a memory to keep you in my world.

A leaf, a petal,

The whole truth will be revealed to you,

A leaf, a petal,

Our times together,

A leaf, a petal,

I want you safe,

A leaf, a petal,

Never forget yourself,

Never forget your roots.

Blood, fire, war,

What I wanted to keep you from,

Blood, fire, war,

This isn’t the monster I raised,

Stop this, love,

I beg you, remember.

In the mist,

The only life I see,

You will always be my daughter. 

The first version of the lyrics were written by me, but their structure and words were modified by Dan Harvey in order to keep up with the tempo of the song and to sound better in Welsh. The first lyrics:

In these mist

The only life I see

Shines you only good will

A memory to keep you in my world

A memory to keep you in my world

To guide you through the crimson/bloody mist

A memory to keep you in my world

A leaf, a petal

Piece by piece, pace by pace, home

A leaf, a petal

Hope you will soon see truth/memory

A memory to keep you in my world

A memory to keep you in my world

(backing) The only life I see

A memory to keep you in my world

A memory to keep you in my world

(backing) To guide you through the crimson/bloody mist

A leaf, a petal

May the whole truth be shown to you

A leaf, a petal

All the times we shared once

A leaf, a petal

All I ever wanted was to keep you safe

A leaf, a petal

Never forget who you are

Never forget where you came from

Blood, fire, war,

The only things I wanted to keep you away from

Blood, fire, war,

This is not the monster I raised

Please stop now/Please just stop/My love, stop

I know that you loved me, but stop/remember

In these mists

The only life I see

You will always be my girl/child