Art, Portfolio, Showreel
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.
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.
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:
Finally done with the animation. It actually got finished today, and a bit of the beginning of the animation got changed in the last minute. This is why it isn’t of the same quality as the rest, so I’m not happy with it at all! I’m fairly happy about how the rest turned out though.
Also I just used perspective view very quickly, to render, so the angles don’t really work that well.
It’s been quite a while since I animated, and it’s horrifying to look at that block turn into a rough.
Oh, and the animation:
This is the stage where I’m starting to see the end of the tunnel. The main animation is there, but still lacks something.
I started to do the lipsync with phonemes, but it took too much time, so I started doing jaw movement instead. This sped up the process significantly, and made it less like a chore. I tweaked the mouth afterward, to form the phonemes.
The dynamic facial expressions aren’t there at the moment, but I have put in a sad look on him, to help me “feel” the character more.
Here’s the clip (in .avi-format):
http://andreasnor.com/media/movies/cca_ica_clean_and_lipsync_01.avi
Finally got to a rough animation. The main movements are there, but there’s still a lot of work to do besides the lipsync.
The poses are timed to fit the voice acting, but it’s not quite there yet.
I have tried to make it look less like a block animation and getting some follow-through there. But all the poses are more or less there.
Here’s the clip (in .avi-format)
This is the stage in between block and rough, simply because I made the block half-finished before I made it into the rough animation.
The timing is getting fixed and the poses tweaked a bit. I tried to experiment a bit with the lipsync, but decided I should delay it until I started closing in to the clean animation. I am not too sure about the animation and poses in the beginning here, but there should be time to fix it.
Still in .avi-format:
http://andreasnor.com/media/movies/cca_ica_block_rough_02.avi
Invader Zim, a huge inspiration for my animation
I started on the animation by blocking out the key poses, and tend to use quite some time at this stage. This is important, because I want the exaggerated poses to follow through to the final product.
My inspirations have been Invader Zim, with it’s economical animation and hysterical characters, and the stereotypical Dr. Frankenstein-scientist type we all know and love.
Here’s an .avi-file of the block-in-progress (Max wouldn’t render to .mov for some reason):
I’m a 25 year old norwegian male student, currently residing in Middlesbrough, UK
My goal is to get a bachelor degree in Digital Character Animation at Teesside University, and get into the industry as an animator or concept artist(when I’m good enough).
This blog is here partially to push myself to become a better artist.
Jeff Smith, Mike Mignola, Jhonen Vasquez, Steve Purcell, Andrew Loomis, Alan Lee, John Howe, James Gurney, Richard Williams, Ed Hooks, Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Sergio Leone, David Fincher, J.R.R. Tolkien, Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, ILM