Unit 03 Ideas and Concepts in Art and Design

Ideas and Concepts in Art and Design. These are some examples of how I develop my ideas and how I use things that influence my design and development. The pictures demonstrate the way I took influence from other characters to create mine.

Character Development

Game Characters

This is the main character Tokoshu. I did my  profile page activity on him. I had already come up with what I wanted him to look like in my head. So first I did a sketch on paper then I drew him in flash for the final look. His name means unique in Japanese which I thought it was good as that fits him in the story line. When designing my main character I had to think about how he should look. I think he looks tough and serious which fits his personality. His face exspression show his serious side. I gave him a few scares this shows that he has spent his childhood fighting to survive.

The picture below is of my favourite character from an anime and I used the style for his eyes on my character.

 

Gunshi

He acts like a leader figure, but tokushu doesn't always listen to him. He isn't a very physical fighter so he mainly uses weapons. He is clever and is the strategist for the team. I decided to draw him to look like he's quite tough. He is short but has some muscles. Also the scar and eye patch make him look like he has been in many fights. So when you first meet him in the game you may think he is the tough one of the group but he is actually the smart one. I was trying to not live up to the smart guy stereotype. I wanted him not to look stereo typical.

Leroy is very laid-back almost lazy. He works with Gunshi at the start then they join up with Tokushu. He is cheeky and is always listening to music. His role is to guide the team and provide back when needed. I drew him lying down here so it fits with his lazy personality. Also in the two drawings I've done of him he has a grin on his face. This can show his cheekiness and reflects on his laid-back personality as most of the other characters are frowning or have a serious look on their face. Also since most of my characters have a tuft of hair on their head I gave Leroy the biggest one this could also reflect on his lazy personality.

Hisan the flyer. His kind are all extinct and he is the last one. He has big wings and can fly this is useful for the team. He acts very mysterious and no one really knows much about him. The way I have drawn him I believe shows his mysterious nature. He is light blue which is more unusual then most of the other character fur colour. I also designed him with lots of strange white markings over his body. I think this adds to the mysterious background of this character.

 

Ken is the tough guy of the group. He deals with breaking down door and objects others can't handle. Personality: He is a bit clumsy and doesn't always take things very seriously. But he also never gives up and always believes he can win. Also he has a bit of a crush on Naomie. I drew him wearing white trousers. This reminds me of the kind of clothes a martial artist wears. He is the tough guy of the team. I was stuck on how to draw him for a while. I didn't want to do the usual stereotype of a massive muscly guy who acts quite stupid. But I did give him some muscles because he is the tough guy.

                                                                             

 

Naomie the only girl of the group. She is tough and sneaky. She is a thief and they have to break her out of jail to get her to join the team. Personality: She is a bit of a tomboy and she is often tougher then some of the boys. Also she likes Tokushu but won't admit it. She has her ears down. I did this to make her almost look like a girl with pigtails. I drew her to fit her personality. She is wearing quite dark clothes this fits her ninja like abilities and her tomboy personality.

For this character I decided to combine two characters I liked and use some of their features with my style of drawing. I sort of mix them with my ideas to create this character.

 The picture below is a character from this anime I watched and I really liked the way she looked so I kind of took some ideas from her for mine. My character has slightly similar eyes (with no pupil). Also the front hair for my character and colour is similar. Also slightly similar shoes.

 The other picture is of a character from one of my favourite games (sly cooper). I looked the clothes for my character if you look the jacket and trousers are similar. 

This is another example of how my ideas develop over a period of time. We had to come up with our own project ideas. These are some of my journal entries. 

Day1

I decided to start by thinking about the characters and plot for the final project. I already knew that an Arctic fox was going to be my main character. When I first heard that we could do anything we wanted for the final project I started trying to come up with ideas for it. Today I will document how I came up with the ideas and what influenced me to do so. After thinking about styles I decided to change my idea to use my realistic styled animals from a cartoony anime type style.I wrote 2 pages on my final project and how I came up with the idea and why I am doing what I’m doing. 

Reference- The final project (sketch book)

Day2

I started to write up how I came up with the plot and what influenced me. I had recently watched lord of the rings and that started to give me inspiration for my own story. I did think about this for quite a few days and trying to develop the story. Eventually I changed it slightly and came up with a slightly shorter story which I believe I can finish. The first one I thought was a bit too long. So I spent today writing up how I came up with the plot and all the ideas I had for it. 

Reference- coming up with the plot (sketch book)

Day3

I began my research into interactive stories. I found these things called motion books on Deviantart. They are like moving comics so I thought they would be good things to look at and do some research on. I also found a comic about wolves. I thought it would be good to look at some of that as there is a wolf in my animation. There was also a snow leopard which is another animal I am planning to have in  mine. While I was looking through the comic I found some really nice background paintings of snow and mountains. They way it looked really inspired me to do mine in a similar way I really like they painted snow and how it looked.

Day4

I decided that today I would do the other research. The research that is personal to my project and what inspires me. I thought since I had already come up with the story I would use this research to explore the types of animated films I enjoy. I will be partly looking at the styles of the characters. I know that I would like to do a kind of realistic style but before I decide to do that I want to explore the other art styles of the animators. I will look at Disney and DreamWorks and then compare that to things like watership down which has a very unique and strange style to it. The style I think I will end up with referencing the most is from an anime called wolf’s rain. Although it is an anime I remember watching it and thinking how realistic the animals looked.I know I really liked the style it was done in so I expect after I’ve looked at them all that one will give me the most inspiration for my style.

(refer to influences research posts)

Day4-continued

Today I didn’t finish the styles research I was planning on doing. I started it and have done the first half. I decided to look up and write about animations I had watched on YouTube before. They were all unprofessional animators’ work which I have been very impressed with. I spent the day watching their animations and viewing some of their other work. Two of the channels also put up a “how I animate”video. I watched those to see how they did it. One was done in flash in a similar way to how I plan to animate mine. The other looked very confusing and time consuming. They were animating in Photoshop then putting together in an editing program. After watching those videos it gave me an idea. I could use the screen record at college to show how I animate as part of the final project. 

Day5

Today I wanted to finish the research I started yesterday. I had looked up YouTube animations now I’m going to focus on company produced films that I know have inspired me from a young age. I have already mentioned I would be looking watership down and wolf’s rain but I know that I am also going to look up Spirit a film about a horse and Balto.

(refer to influences research posts)

Day5-continued

I have just finished the research into all those films. I got quite court up in watching clips from the films. They gave me some good ideas about mine own project. But my prediction was right after looking at all the styles I defiantly like wolf’s rain the most. I also really like the animation in the series.

Day6

Toady I added some more research into yesterdays. I looked at wolf''s rain some more. I also got some pictures for all the videos I had researched yesterday and the day before. I now knew that all the research has to be presented in a sketch book so I am trying to find pictures of all the movies and animations I had researched so there will be some visual stuff on those pages and not just the writing. I will also leave up the video links to all of the animations, mentioned in my research, on the Blog.

(refer to influences research posts)

Day7

I looked at some games which have interactive parts in them other than the game play. I couldn't find much so I ended up just righting about some games I already knew about. 

Day8

I decide to quickly sketch up some different styles to see what kind I could do well enough to animate. I took some references from all the videos I had watched. After I have done all the sketches I plan to pick my best style and then I will design my characters.

Day9

After practising all the different styles in the sketch book I’m still not sure about how my characters are going to look. So I decided to start drawing them in flash and see the kind of styles I come out with. I am planning on animating my final project by doing all the drawings straight into flash using the mouse to do them. So I am going to further the character design on the computer.   

Day10

After doing the character design yesterday I feel as I have picked a style to go with. It’s my own take on a slightly realistic style. When I was drawing the characters I was referring to pictures of real animals. Now I know a realistic style and less cartoony is what I going for I need to get the sizes of the animals right. Since it’s rare to see a snow leopard and a wolf and an arctic fox all together I’m not sure how they would all measure up to each other. I can guess the fox is obviously the smallest but I have no idea about the leopard and wolf. I would like my project to look good so I am going to research the animals and find out their heights/sizes. Then I will align my characters up together and re size them to fit my research.     

Day11

I thought now that I know what the characters look like I thought I should try and do some animation. I know this story is going to take a while to do so I need to get started as soon as I can. The one thing I can animate before writing out the scripts and plot is run cycles and walk cycles. I started off with a walk cycle today. I did the fox’s as she is my main character. I started off by doing the outline of the walk and then I added colour. I had to different versions at the end. The first one I did the foxes head was up. I showed my dad and asked for feedback on it he said that the walk was good but he wasn’t sure if foxes walk with their head up like that.

Unit 05 Contextual Influences in Art and Design

I this research I have displayed my opinions towards different types of websites. I looked through the different website and described why some weren't very good and why some where. Looking through the good and the bad websites I was then able to think about how my website should look and what things I shouldn't put on it.

Website Design research

examples of badly designed websites.

http://www.jamet.tm.fr/#/bored

This website is a very confusing one to navigate around. Also I have no idea what the website is even about mainly because it is in French but even if it wasn't it would still be unclear. 

The layout of the page is very strange. The first thing that appears on the page is the logo and just some small text. Straight away it is unclear on what you have to do. There is nowhere to click and nowhere to go. If you wait a few seconds instructions appear and it tells you to use the arrow keys to navigate around the page. When you do this though there is a quick animation taking you to some more information and it goes on to more and more and when you reach the end it looks like the picture. 

It is hard to read and see some of the information and some is upside down. Also when you've gone through all the information there is nowhere else to go and no more information to find you only get what’s on the screen. 

This isn't a very good website because most people click on a page and only look at it for about four seconds before they decide if they want to continue looking at it. Also animations on websites taking you to more information aren’t a very good idea as most people don't wish to wait or aren’t patient enough to watch it. They just want the information straight away. 

Access speed: It doesn't take long to load but it takes a long time to navigate through it. Navigation through the website isn’t great as you have to go through all the bits of info to find the bit you want or to see all the information on the page which is also very unclear. 

The page is very plain and doesn't have many colours which doesn’t make it look very interesting. Also there is only one picture and it really doesn't look like a website. It looks more like a presentation.

http://www.futuro-house.net/

 

The readability for this website isn't very good. The background is sparkling and it might distract the reader also the words are in strange colours and don't stay the same size or colour throughout the page. This means that reading the page isn't exactly easy or simple. It is made more confusing by all the different things going on at once.

The navigation though the page isn't too bad. The navigational bar at the side takes you to different parts of the site and it doesn't take long to load as it doesn't leave the page the content just changes. Although these bars would usually be more clear and most of the time would be placed at the top of the page. So another bad point is that the bar is very small and you may not straight away notice that its there.

The picture navigation is terrible. I clicked on one of the photos at the top and it took me to a completely different page. It was just some moving pictures with no relevancy's to the website whatsoever. So that didn't make any sense. When I clicked on a picture on the left side it took you to a broken link. This could show that they rarely check or update their website. 

good examples of webpages

http://rafaltomal.com/

Here is an example of a much better layout for a website. You can immediately tell its someones online portfolio. It is easy to navigate through as there is a navigation bar at the top of the page although its small you can see it straight away because its layed on a small bar at the top of the page.

The colours maybe simple on the website but this can be a good thing as it wont have any over powering colours on it or words that are hard to read against the background.  

The access speed is quick. It doesn't take very long to navigate through the bar and the websites style is kept consistant throughout the site.

The readability on the website is good as most of the font colours are white against black or black against white. Also important information is highlighted by a turquoise coloured box around it. On the homepage it has very simple information and text basically just telling you who he is and what he does.

 The target audience for this website would be people interested in hiring a web designer or graphics designer also people who are interested in those subjects and enjoy looking at other peoples work.

He has a useful bar at the top that takes you to other parts of his webpage. Home is the first almost every website should have home on their navigational bar. Blog is next which is a good one to have if its your portfolio website. The portfolio is next which contains all of his projects which are easy to navigate through as there is a sub navigation bar to help you look through that easier. Then about and contact are the last two headings. Contact is important to have on your personal webpage because if someone likes your work they may wish to contact you about work or your skills or for help ect...

Other websites

 http://jump.dexigner.com/directory/7873

I decided to look up an animation portfolio website because animation will be what I want my website to mainly feature. So I thought I would do research on one. I have a mixed view on this website. I has some good points and some that could be improved. 

The access speed is ok it could be improved a bit. It has to load the first time you click on it but likely it doesn't take too long. But then it comes up with continue and you have to click it to get to the home page. To make the access speed a bit quicker it could just load onto the home page but it's not a very big fault it just takes a few secs to atchually get to the home page.   

The content of the page is mainly just pictures, videos and links and there is hardly any text. This could be good or bad depending on the viewer. Some people like just having pictures and videos to look at. But I would say that text is needed on most sites. There is practically no text on their web. They like to show off their work visually. I do believe there should be a bit more text then there is though. 

A good point is that at the bottom of their page they have got some more navigation. It has a link to her resume. Which is a good thing to have on the page of a free lance artist. Also they have a show reel of work which gives you an idea of the kind of things they do. Also they have an interactive animation at the top of the page which is a nice feature to have on the page. 

A bad point is the website is very small on the screen. The good thing is that its not over crowding but when you click on the animations the video your watching is very small and there is no way to make it bigger. This could frustrate people. 

The website is with websafe colouring as it is very simple. The colours used are mainly black and white. websafe colours means that if you create a website with lots of colours mixed in you may think that its looks greate when you create it but when someone else looks at it certain colours may not stand out as much as they did on you screen. Different computer screen will show colours differently and to make it websafe you should use colouring which would look fine on all kinds of monitors.

The font isn't too dificult to read and its all in the same font which is a good thing. It is consistant in its style and doesn't change the whole website layout when you navigate through it. The navigation is also good and simple to do. The headings are in a clear and easy to read navigation bar which makes it easy to navigate through.

Overall I think this website is good an just needs some improvement to make it a bit better.

2D research

 This is a manga book I have and is useful for research. This contains images of different manga drawings and anime is based on manga comics. I thought this could be good research as I am doing an anime style animation.

When I was designing my characters I looked at this page for hair style ideas but I ended up going for a style from a animation show instead.

This book has lots of mythical creature descriptions and drawings in it. This would be a really good book to use if any creatures would be in the animation. I was thinking about a dragon for the wave so this page is a good source of research.

 

 This infomation is good in the book to help with chatacteristics. It tell all the features of people and other things.

The style of my characters is sort of based on that of people in digimon. I was trying to look at a style I liked and thought wasn't too complicated to draw. The two characters below are the character from digimon and one of my characters first design. You can see that they aren't the same but there are a few characteristics I looked at when drawing mine. They both have gloves, big spiky hair and big shoes. The body shape on mine is a bit longer. Also the eyes are a different style. But in anime there are two types of the way eyes look. The other characters eyes are more detailed and are closer to the digimon character but the villains eyes are simpler.

 The original concept of digimon is believed to have come from Akiyoshi Hongo. It is produced by Toei Animation and Bandai of Japan.

Unit 01 Visual Recording i n Art and Design

These are some examples where I have used visual recording in my research. My 3d animation research is displayed below. I describe a zoetrope in the first paragraph and the I have put a picture that fits with the text. Later in my research I have added pictures from the video link I have added next to my text about the video. This research is very individual to myself as I have talked about animations I have watched on YouTube and I have been influenced by. They inspired me for doing my own stories and styles I also have really enjoyed watching them. This makes the research very personal to me.

3D Animation research

Animation began with the Zoetrope. It was the first form of animation. It had a strip of drawings inside it which when you spin the Zoetrope you could see the drawings moving like an animation. The most common one of these was a horse running. Technology has moved on from this now and people are able to create the most amazing animations. The most commonly used in industry at the moment is 3d animation. 2d has become less used as time has gone on but it is still used for a lot of things... for example anime is mostly 2d.

 2D animation can be done in a different number of ways but the most common one is done by drawing the character in one position then on the next frame you redraw the character moving slightly from the first then you keep drawing until you get the animation of the character. This process also takes a very long time to do.

3D is very popular and it is being seen more often in different types of media. You see it in adverts, Most/ all console games contain 3d, films have CGI and animated films. 3D can also be used for many more things.

Animating in 3d is usually done by creating a model in the computer, of the thing you want to animate, then you add bones or muscles to the model so you can move certain points of it. Then you have to move the points in the model and get the character to move how you want it. Its all done very slowly and the character only moves a bit each frame then when you play it through the character will be moving fluently. A very commonly used program for 3d animation is mia. Its one that a lot of big animation companies use and universities often teach 3d animation using this program.

Another way 3d animation can be done is by motion capture. Some 3d film use this technique for making their movie. One I know of is monster house. The whole film is animated. The three main characters are kids and they were animated by using motion capture. The actors would have to put on strange costumes and they get all these dots stuck onto there face. The computer captures their movement and expressions when acting out the scene. Then on the computer they change how they look and turn them into the cartoon character. Bellow is a picture from monster house. As you can see on the right is how the character looks in the film and on the left is the actor with all the motion gear on while acting the same scene.    

Avatar is another example of a film that used motion capture. Lots of the film was done with CGI (3d animation). The backgrounds and robots, the animals and action scenes would most likely have all been done using CGI where as the characters talking and some of the action scenes with them ruining ect would have been done with motion capture. Motion capture is probably the best way to capture realist movement by a human. Its very different to other animation as you have most of the key frames from the actors movement you just have to detail it with the cartoon versions features. But then some animation is still involved in motion capture. For example in Avatar they have the basic movement for the person but they also have to add on and animate a tail. The hair is also needed to animate. Bellow is a picture from Avatar.     

Other then using 3d animation in films and games it is also used for:

Interior designing, Architecture, Medicine and Business.  

How 3d animation can be used in the medical field. It can provide people like educators, surgeons and other medical professionals with an interactive model of the human body and parts of it. It makes it possible to view models of the human anatomy on a microscopic level. With this researchers can run simulations to find out which procedure would be best to take and would end up being the most effective for the patients. 

3d animation can be architecture by having a 3d model example of the buildings they are trying to design. It will give them an idea about how their building would look if they decided to build it. If you link that into Interior design you can also see what the building could look like on the inside by having a 3d animation simulation of it. This helps the designers figure out how their ideas would work before putting them into practise. 

Next I looked at animations that are good examples of all the different types of animation and I looked at ones that could help me be inspired for my final 3d animation.

Examples of 2D animations that I have seen on YouTube and really liked.

Eighty-six
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6C5k4iIhk
This first one is an animation done by somebody on Youtube. I subscribed to her when I saw their first video animation. It was a story about a pack of wolves. She draws them so detailedly it was amazing. She is still animating the story as a series but recently she uploaded this. This was a very interesting and strange animated story she had created. I am very impressed with her work.

The Rebel Howl Credits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ6Ca7z6NWM
This is another 2d animation with wolves in it. My main interest is in animating animals so I am using lots of the old animations I have watched on Youtube in my research. I spend a lot of time looking up animated stories on Youtube and trying to get inspiration from looking at other peoples work so I can get motivated to animate my own ideas. I also enjoy looking at different styles people draw in. These wolves are very different to the ones in the first video I put up.

 Warrior cats ep1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XYgtSCHvp4
This is a fan animation. A group of people on Youtube have worked together to create this animation. The story is based on a book called warrior cats. I loved the animation for this it is so well done. I have chosen the first 3 videos from some of my favourite animations on Youtube. Then I went on to do further research into other animations. 

The butterfly dragon 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAQ56_dfOfY
I found this animation. Is a beautiful peace of work. There is no talking and there is only music in the background. It is a short animation with a fantasy type story to it. This could be good for inspiration.

stop motion

Gulp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieN2vhslTTU
I couldn't find many examples of stop-motion but I did find this one which is cleverly done. They animate using the sand at the beach.

3d animations

A fox tale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgDUEp238tQ
Now some examples of 3d animation. I found this one and thought it was quite interesting.

In sickness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgpMutZKsY4
This one is a good example for a 3d animation project and I thought it was done very well. It is quite surreal at the start and then by the end you start to understand a bit more of whats happening. 

3d animation used in games
http://youtu.be/C4cfo0f88Ug
3d animation is used in many if not all consol games and in many computer games. They use 3d animation for the game play as well as cut scenes. This video is a animation for an online game. One of my favourite games actually combines 3d and 2d animation. The game play and some cut scenes are all in 3d but when you have completed a whole level the cut scene is set out like a 2d comic with small bits of animation included.

3d animation in advertising
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay-1WWRXbQw
3d animation isn't used for movies and shorts alone there are many other uses for it. This is an example of it being used in advertising.

3D animation in films

3d animation is used in most animated films now. These are some of my favourite ones. Bolt is the first one. I really enjoyed the story and the comedy moments in it but I also loved the way it was animated.

Ice age is one I've always loved. When I watched it the first time on video I watched the special features which explained how they made it. This was when I first had an interest in animation. It was very interesting to see how they made it. They first sketched out character concepts and storyboarded it. They clay models of all the characters were made. After that they scanned them into to the computer and then they started to move them around. It was a very long process as most animation is but one thing I found incredible was how they had to move Manny's fur about every time he moved to make it look realistic.

 

Finally kung fu panda. I really loved the animation in this film especially in all the fight scenes. They were really amazingly done. I love the animation in those scenes and it is really inspiring.

After looking at all of these I know I would like to do a character animation as I can see from my research it is clearly the thing I am interested in the most. I have decided that I create a cartoony animal character. I want to do this because I can try and design one that will be not to complicated to model. That would mean I can spend more time on the animation. I really like the butterfly dragon animation. I might take some inspiration from that. I like how their animation just has some simple piano music in the background so I might do something similar in mine. You have to read their expressions in their faces and not their words. Also I will sketch out the character and make designs for him first because I want him to be the first thing I model. I have done a lot of animation before in programs like Flash and Toon Boom but never in 3d before. I found the modelling quite hard and I don't know how difficult the animation for a character will be. I'd like to figure out that first so I can then see how hard to animate a certain story will be. I already have a few ideas. So I will continue to develop these for now.