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!)).

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.

I think that the poses really work now, including the ones at the beginning. This was changed after I got feedback from the animation presentation earlier. A lot of the curves have been tweaked as well, to make them more broad and “curvy”. Some of the facial animation has received some polishing, including some more exaggerated and improved lipsync. I am most happy with the “IGOR!” bit, where the scientist makes a claw with his hand, mostly because it seems so hilariously stereotypical.
The things that didn’t work so well in this piece of animation are the editing and camera work. This should have been addressed during the blocking of the animation, to make all the animation stay within frame, and to remove unnecessary animation. Even though the camera work isn’t that good, I got rid of some of the empty space in the composition.
There are still some remnants from the ‘rough’ stage in the final animation. Not that it is rough, but not fully taken to the point where I could call it ‘clean’ (the transition between “we can fix this” and “bring me”). Fortunately that’s only a small part of the whole piece.
Overall I’m fairly happy with it, and think it’s an acceptable piece of animation, but wish I had planned it out better from the beginning.

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

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

Alphabet: F for Fighter (leaving the surface) (later addition)

Alphabet: S for Scout

Alphabet: T for Team

Alphabet: W for Wasteland Scavenger

Continents: Japanese Fortress (fantasy) (unfinished/lacking detail, but suitable for delivery)

Continents: Odin

The Twelve Labors of Hercules: Hydra (not too happy with the coloring and contrast on this one)

The Twelve Labors of Hercules: Stymphalian bird (with razor-sharp feathers and toxic dung(yes, really))

Traditional media: Self-portrait

Traditional media: “Creature” (pen and colored pencil)

Zodiac/Chinese year sign: Rat (Chinese year sign obviously. This was the first drawing I did for DC3, and is interesting if you look at the difference between this and the later drawings (Hercules, Continents))

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.

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!

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.