After seeing how looping worked with the walk cycle I decided to try and incorporate a looped animation into one of my illustrations.
Another instance of it turning out mildly creepy! I think because there is only small sections moving it becomes really eerie. I should’ve made Kai’s head move as he goes to lick the ice cream, and the balloons are very poorly animated but I think I’d kind of given up at that point. I’m happy with how the bear waving looped, and also the snakes tale, even though it doesn’t make sense in terms of physics!
The walk cycle was something I’d made attempts at a few years ago, to varying levels of success but it was great to finally have more resources and a lesson on different kinds of walks. Steve mentioned he wanted to combine all our characters walk cycles in a digital march about climate change, so I drew my frost fairy character Alfie, grumpily marching along because we’re melting his home:(
I will get around to drawing the rest of their scarf one day…
Maryclare was very complimentary about my drawings, and the only criticism she had was that I didn’t draw enough of the background. I wasn’t actually aware we were supposed to be drawing any background, but I will bare that in mind during her next classes
Today we had a tutorial on how to animate in photoshop and it has made me never want to touch the software ever again!! It’s very clunky and inefficient with animation, and it’s so frustrating to me how difficult it is to go back and correct past frames!!
We started off by playing around with the brushes, and despite me not having used photoshop to illustrate for a couple of years now, I immediately defaulted to the brushes I used to use. As an exercise we tried to create silhouettes which signified a certain emotion. I chose sadness for the first two, then anger, then enjoyment, and I even tried to exaggerate the character’s hair to reflect enjoyment too.
When we came to animating I was constantly shouting at my tablet and photoshop! I really can’t get over how frustrating this app is in comparison to Clip Studio Paint, Toon Boom, or TVPaint! I don’t understand how anyone would favour Photoshop for creating frame x frame animations!
Anyway, we had to animate a bug flying into frame and landing on a flower, before flying off again, and we were asked to pick an emotion of the bug’s entrance and exit. I decided to make the bug really excited and urgent to get to the flower, and then once it has re-charged from it, the bug is in a satisfied, almost drunk state as it flies of screen. I added some floppy legs to try and exaggerate the movements even more.
Today we had a class with Bianca Ansems on character design, wherein she talked us through a selection of character designs she’d done and the process of creating them. We looked at turn arounds and expression sheets, and then we had about an hour and a half to design our own character and create a turn around for them.
I didn’t have much time to come up with a lot of details about him, other than their name is Alfie, they’re a frost fairy, and he really hates the cold, which is unfortunate for him as they live in Antarctica! Bianaca’s feedback was very positive and she noted that she’d be interested to see what the other characters in this story might look like, and whether they’d be as wrapped up in clothes as Alfie.
This exercise was really fun for me, as in the past whenever I’ve created an original character I always put weeks and weeks of thought into their appearance, their style, how they hold themselves, so this was a nice opportunity to show myself that I can create things quickly, and that I’m just as motivated to delve more into Alfie’s character despite spending much less time creating them.
I decided to do my presentation on British animator Rosa Fisher. Here are the slides and my reasearch:
ABOUT ROSA FISHER
Rosa Fisher is a Cumbrian born, London Based independent animator who has won awards for her animations, such as Best Documentary and DepicT! ‘Random Acts Special Mention Award’.
Her background and journey to animation came from an enjoyment of designing characters and narratives, and a desire to see her characters move.
She uses observation from everyday life to tell stories which are playful and engaging, but have underlying social criticism.
Fisher has a particular interest in how you chose to combine sound with image and the different meanings you can convey with this
She aims for a deceptive simplicity, communicated through expressive drawing, visual metaphor and sound
PROCESS AND AESTHETICS
Fisher describes her process as starting with the concept and letting that lead all the decisions going forward, and whilst researching a topic she is also constantly thinking of ways she could visualise complex ideas simply, using an abundance of metaphors
She uses photoshop to animate characters frame by frame and often utilises different textures such as hand drawn backgrounds on paper using a soft pencil, or a thick painted texture, and even paper craft and stop motion.
Her most frequently used style showcases a bouncy and exaggerated movement, influenced by classic Rubberhose animation
Fisher is also heavily inspired by UPA animation traditions, admiring and adopting the way they only include necessary elements in the background to give a sense of the space, and the use of a simplistic, vibrant colour palette
THEMES AND VISUAL METAPHORS
Fisher has particularly powerful visual metaphors throughout her works, whether it be a half full humanoid in Conformity juice, a slowly colour changing character in ‘Elsewhere’ or a jagged, ill-fitting jigsaw piece in “The Purpose of Friendship”, each character and scene holds weight and purpose to the narrative.
A strong connection throughout Fishers work is the themes of anti-establishment and non-conformity.
I personally love how they’re often in the background of the narrative but the visuals really make you aware of the messages being portrayed
These stills are from 4 different works and I spotted several more parallel visuals throughout other works of hers
CONFORMITY JUICE
Conformity Juice explores ideas of group identity and social norms.
In the film, a group of cup-headed humanoids line up to let a tap fill their bodies with a mysterious blue juice, but one holds back, and we see how the half empty humanoid learns to adapt and thrive by themselves, not conforming to the herd mentality that the others seem to have
Crude line drawings partnered with discordant music and off-beat timing creates an idiosyncratic final piece
Conformity juice grew out of frustrations that Fisher had felt with groups that prescribe strict sets of rules and ideas, concentrating on group thought rather than the thoughts and opinions of individuals.
The film is about embracing difference, stepping away from the crowd and discovering what it takes to break the mould.
SENT AWAY
Fishers most recent film, Sent Away explores the psychological impact that attending boarding school had on Rosa’s father, Tom.
The film is an insightful analysis of what happens to sensitive children forced to live in strict and dispassionate situations.
Using yellow as a symbol of self-expression and confidence, the young boy becomes smaller and smaller, eventually enveloping himself in an icy shell to protect himself from his environment.
Sent Away, despite focusing on the childhood of a middle-aged man, was prescient in the lead up to the UK’s general election in December 2019, in which one of the candidates for prime minister forged his identity in the competitive toxicity of Eton, the UK’s most elite boarding school.
In fact, the majority of the political leaders in Britain have been through this system which leads to questionable ways the country is governed.
Fisher was greatly influenced by the research of Nick Duffel in this film, who has written at length about boarding schools, and writes that boarding schools force children to alter themselves and suppress their vulnerabilities in order to cope with the sense of abandonment it brings.
After the climax of the film, we discover that music saves the young boy from becoming totally lost, and the sound design in the piece rises and falls with the protagonist.
SOUND
I think the sent away trailer is a good example I can show within the timeframe of how Fisher works with sound to establish a stronger theme and narrative in her works.
She frequently works with musician Martino Gasparrini who elevates the sound and score, writing all the music and working closely as a duo on the sound design and decisions.
Fisher wanted to have the sound of the french horn running through the film, used both musically and in more abstract, distorted ways, for example as part of the building drone in the clip I just showed, or as it mocks the rhythmic sound of the cane at certain points, referencing an integral part of the film which was that learning French horn was the thing that helped her father survive the experience and kept him connected to himself whilst being at the school.
Also prominent in the trailer and throughout the whole film are the beating drums which were used to bring in militaristic connotations whilst building tension.
Conformity Juice also features a hauntingly hypnotic choral effect from the crowd-following group.
Fisher’s film ‘Elsewhere’ is a film about the breakdown of friendship due to change and unforeseen circumstances.
What I particularly like about this film is the use of different instruments to act as voices of the characters, using light, playful clarinet and saxophone, juxtaposed with an unpleasant, obnoxiously over-blown french horn playing the antagonist.
Even in just 30 seconds at the beginning of ‘Elsewhere’ shows how effectively Fisher and Gasparrini worked together to create a seamless partnership of audio and visuals
With the notes on exaggeration from last week, I decided to have a go at creating a simple double take animation.
I have to say, the hair this time was a lot less satisfying to draw, I think there is something about the big movements like in the bouncing head animation that makes it look a lot more natural, the smaller movements are more difficult to keep precise.
I wasn’t overall happy with the final product and I definitely think I should’ve exaggerated more. At the moment I think it’s my drawing style that is holding me back from really exaggerating too much, as I start to worry that the drawing wont look accurate or of a high enough standard if I distort it too much, which results in the animation’s standard suffering. Hopefully this is something I will overcome soon!
That being said, the smear frame was really fun to do^-^
This exercise was to help experiment with exaggeration, making the character stretch unnaturally for a single frame.
It is far from perfect and I definitely should’ve squashed the crisp packet more but I was a great exercise to help me understand just how far you can take exaggeration in animation.
This week’s exercise was to animate a bouncing ball with either a tail or something similar attached to practise follow through.
First I drew a dinosaur with a worryingly floppy neck,
Then I animated a bouncing head simply because I wanted to make an attempt at working out how the hair would move. It turned out a lot creepier than I anticipated…
Upon reflectionI definitely needed to add more exaggeration to both, like squashing them when they hit the floor and stretching them when they rise up. However I’m really happy with how the tail and the hair moves on each of them.
