My first matte painting ever! Whoooo!
Obviously heavily inspired by Dylan Cole’s LOTR Mordor matte paintings, but this is made from scratch (if you don’t count the photos (which is part of making a matte painting btw!)).
Here’s the final animation along with the critical appraisal.
Critical appraisal:
From the beginning I was always inspired by the staccato animation style of Invader Zim. The style was going to be similar, but also infused with my own kind of animation.
(Fixed!)
You may have noticed that the banner has changed, and that I claim to be a freelancer. This is not the case ATM, as I just added that for my Studio Practice and Business module.
(I will change this now)
However, I AM seriously considering the prospect of becoming a freelancer
The time had come to finally deliver something for the DC3 module. It was interesting considering that the only delivery was at the end of the year, but I don’t complain. The final part of the ICA, before handing in things, was to draw pictures of “The continents”.
So here are the drawings that I delivered (had to be twelve, and two of them had to be in traditional media), and it seems like you can learn a lot from observing life to learn to draw as well. I didn’t draw as much this year as I intended to, but still I can see improvement in my work. Wonder what it would look like if I had made drawings all the time… Well, that will be something I’ll have to work on, after all the other modules are finished.
Anyway, here are the pictures that I delivered (in alphabetical order), some unfinished (like the environment and the scavenger), and some of them you’ve seen before. As always, click to resize.
Alphabet: D for Dragon Head
Taking in on the constructive criticism that I received earlier, I tried to create some stronger arcs for the character’s movement. This is very prominent in the part where he’s listing things for Igor to fetch. And I have to agree, even if the change is only over a few frames, it made that part feel more natural and better.
The eyes also “think” more than they used to do, looking at different places.
The major change however, was the beginning, where he realized that his bird had gone to it’s maker. I decided to scrap my initial idea of his very extreme posing for his cry, and went for a more “intimate” pose. He still is a bit disconnected from it all, which I think I showed in his eyes.
The last part of my ICA is to create something from the continents of the world (meaning I can do almost anything I want), so I’m going to make a Japanese fortress/city. For this I needed a cloud brush, which worked perfectly, but I got lost somewhere… Making a SPACESHIP!!! Oh yeah!
Well, it ended up as a speed painting, testing more brushes from the same package. These brushes are from Adonihs’ deviantart page, and can be found HERE.
Now back to work!
Seeing as I have a lot of modules to finish before I can relax, I’ll just post the video instead of explaining too much. This is one minute, as required according to specification, of a two to three minute short film. This is it, and I’m not satisfied at all.
After the presentation I got some feedback:
A very effective piece overall. You gave some thoughtful analysis but your presentation was unprepared and you were unable to show some of your video reference. For the next stage look at tightening up the camera because there is a lot of dead space in the corner of the screen. Also, try and use stronger arcs because some of the gestures are too linear in parts. The character animation and performance works well but check the twist in the characters body when he refers to the bird because it appears unnatural. Finally, check the eyes so that they lead the head more when he is moving around.
For the final hand-in I’m of course planning to look into those things, especially the cameras, as those were incredibly rushed in the first hand-in.
Realized I hadn’t posted this one before, the final animatic:
