Author: Jane Lee

Traditional Animation: All line tests, final outcomes and PDF

traditional animation rotation 5 final by jane lee

Task 1: Straight ahead animation.

For this task, I animated a small ball which transforms into a swan. Below is the line test and then the final animation I ended up with.

Task 2: Pose to pose, 3 key facial expressions/poses.

On ones
On twos

Task 3: Bouncing ball exercise (+making it into a creature)

The video on the left is my first attempt as the bouncing ball exercise.

The main reason why this was a failure is because I drew the bounce path wrong, the ground level for the ball wasn’t consistent. I fixed this in the second attempt, as well as the size of the ball. I made more of an effort to keep it consistent in the final version of this exercise.

Final version and the creature bounce animation can be seen below in the order mentioned in this sentence. (both are shot on twos)

Task 4: Pose to pose, ‘Debating’ character exercise.

Drew three key poses for the character to shift from one to the other for this animation. Since each key pose has to be held for about 30 frames each, I decided to apply a five frame boil onto each key pose to make sure that the animation looks less static at these points. (I redrew each key pose 4 more times to achieve this effect)

Easing in and out using animation charts:

This was the first time I’ve ever used an animation chart to ease in and out, and I like the result since it helps to make the movement look more natural. Next time I would like to try making my own animation chart to follow to make sure it is more tailored to the movement I’m going for (since for this task I used the one provided as a reference.)

Short creative writing piece (written in 10 minutes on 28/10/21)

(The prompt was ‘Orange’)

For me? I don’t think I deserve to. No no no please I insist I can’t. I can’t eat anymore. My words contradict my actions, and the juice from the segments secrete into my cuts. Sucrose and Iron mingle and tinge my skin red.


But the sensation reminds me that I’m still here.

Final Motiongraphics film + PDF

https://youtu.be/KrT3DD9iqN0
motiongraphics rotation 6 final by jane leeDownload

Above is the download link for just the pdf containing my evaluation.

Below is a link to where you can find a padlet with the zip folder containing the .mov file of the video + the pdf together. The password to the padlet is ‘bunnyigloo’

https://en-gb.padlet.com/jlee11201931/ec2k0836ap14555d

Early storyboards and inspirations for Motiongraphics

Interpretation of the theme + initial storyboards:

For the theme ‘Connections’ I want to focus on a small connection formed between a person walking in the rain and encountering a frog. (inspired by a walk in the rain in England)

This week’s goals:
1) I intend on working in a different visual style to what I usually do
2) Making shorter narratives is also something I want to improve on, since it’s something I tend to do less.
3) I want the final product to be as clear as possible (referring to the animation principle of staging)

(Might cut out the final walk cycle scene if it’s too ambitious, see storyboards below)

Three artist inspirations:

For this rotation I want to focus on the work of 3 different artists to inspire the visual style for my short animation, the first one being ‘Cermrnl’, an artist who specialises in making moving paper dolls, below are a few examples of their work, but you can see these in motion on their website: https://www.cermrnl.com/

I chose this person because I think the shapes used to construct the puppets are simple but extremely effective and I think this look could work very nicely in a motion graphics sequence.

The next artist is Genice Chan: https://www.genicecream.com/
Her work, especially in the BNA ending credits reminded me of the look motion graphics can have, since most of her stuff is pretty clean and lineless.

I know that character animations like the one seen in the video are pretty ambitious for the time we have to complete the work, but I would like to try my best.

The work of studio ‘HURRAY!’ http://hurray.fun/ in this one video ‘Rain with cappuccino’ will be the final inspiration I’ll look at for this rotation.

My reasoning for all the inspirations I listed is all 3 have a very strong, clean style that I feel would translate well into motion graphics and what I want the final result to look like for my attempt this week.

Final Render, PDF submission and colour notes

3d story worlds rotation 7 final by Jane Lee

Link to the zip folder containing all the files requested for the final submission is below: (the password for the padlet is ‘bunnyigloo’

https://padlet.com/jlee11201931/ec2k0836ap14555d

I used a colour palette similar to this one to colour the objects in my scene, green for the trees, blue for the general lighting and white for the igloo structure. I also used a pale yellow for the glass window panes and the cube street light I made to go next to the house.

Two renders of the scene can be seen above, the second one was rendered before I decided to add some glass sheets in the window sections. More notes can be seen in the final pdf evaluation I wrote.

3D Story Worlds: Initial ideas, mood board + mind map

For this week I wanted to make a model of a house for my character to live in. (The character I created in Rotation 8: character design, please check the posts related to that to see more information about her)

Below is the the mind map I made + some rough sketches of my ideas of what the inside and outside of her house could look like.

For the mood board I collected references for both indoor and outdoor settings since at the time I hadn’t decided which I was going to model on Maya yet for the task.

I eventually decided to model the exterior of the house since that would be much easier to accomplish within the time constraints we were given to complete the task.

The mood I was going for for the environment was cosy, compact, cold and cute. I wanted it to look like a warm safe haven for my character in the midst of a wintery forest.

Character design development (01-02.11.21)

The prompt I chose was winter, I chose to draw a character based on a snow bunny I made last year.

Intial sketches of my character + some iterations of what the final could look like:

(other iterations were lost due to file crashing, but I salvaged this)

(The ears are actually hair tied into a loop shape, so the middle is see through)

I chose this hairstyle because I wanted it to resemble bunny ears and I feel like this hairstyle does that well.

Words I chose to focus on: cold surrounding, warm feeling, graceful, cute.

I was worried about the snowflake skirt idea being too detailled visually (for animation), but because I simplified it to how it is in the image above, I think it looks effective enough to stay for the final drawing/turnaround sheet.

Facial expression iterations + character expression sheet

Experiments while considering different eyes, nose and mouth that my character could have.

This was done while trying to finalise the design overall.

I would’ve like to explore more expressions and poses in the sheet below but because of time constraints I decided to move on.

Green line is the line of action, added in just for clarity

Character construction sheet + colour iterations

I wanted to try making a construction sheet too, just for practice. This helped me to think about how this character would look animated and what to consider noting down for others about how to keep her appearance consistent.

It also helped me to finalise the design of the character ready to make the turnaround sheet next.

Actually I ended up with two versions of the characters face seen in the construction sheets below. I like the one without the nose more due to personal preference, but I will be choosing the one with the nose to move on with because I think it does a better job at showing what animal my character is based off of.

I added a green skirt to match the holly leaves and her hair bands (it was the first colour I tried out after implementing red for the eyes and berries)

The next colour I tried after this was grey, I prefer this to the green because it makes the red stand out more.

Other colour iterations I tried can be seen below:

The brown was nice but it reminded me too much of a deer or a Christmas pudding. The first blue I tried (seen below) contrasts the red better than using just green like I did initially, but this shade of blue is too strong for the mood that I want to go for.

Final construction sheet + Colours:

I changed the blue to an eggshell blue colour so the appearance is less harsh on the eyes. I then decided to make the green and red lighter to make the overall colour palette more cohesive.

I feel like the softer tones suit the character better, since I envision her to be a soft and gentle fairy-like creature.

Thoughts I have moving into the character design rotation task. (+ chosen artist references)

After today’s lecture, I was left thinking more about diversity and different body types and shapes a character can have.

The character designs I’ve created in the past for my personal project(s) do have different body types and face shapes in my mind, but I feel that my current skill level isn’t high enough to show it well.
As a result, the majority of the differences in build, face shape/structure etc. is lost due to the way I tend to stylise my work.

This week I want to work on showing these differences better in my drawings and make an effort to more actively challenge why I draw in the way I do.

For this week’s rotation I decided to pick these two artists to focus on for inspiration: Takegarou 竹画廊 (Take, 竹) and Ramdaram (람다람).
For a long time these two artists have been a source of inspiration for my art style in general, but this week I want to look more specifically into the way they choose their colours and shapes for their character designs.

Both their designs are used in animation, (Take’s work is also used in video games) which is different to what I’ve made my character designs for in the past (which was more for comics and conveying a narrative through illustration rather than animation). I want to start practicing making designs for animations and thinking more about what to consider when making characters more suited for this medium.

Firstly, Takegarou 竹画廊’s character design work can be seen in Pokémon Sword and Shield and World’s End Club:

Even though I know the bare minimum about World’s End Club, I can still infer what each character’s personality is just by looking at their design due to her effective use of shape and colour.

Next, 람다람’s work features characters that they use in animated music videos that tell vague stories. I think their work has a strong aesthetic I would like to draw inspiration from.

The characters themselves have a wide range of different colours and outfits/accessories which is the focal point of what makes them unique, rather than a range of different body types & skin tones (this is seen better in Take’s work). The coloured outlines are effective for making the design stand out too.

https://youtu.be/_LLCz1FCWrY
https://youtu.be/IX955_LTQPA