APPLIED ANIMATION
Weekly Research

Character research and anti-fur campaign reference images 

Tod, character research, The fox and the hound:

Slender red fox, white underbelly and muzzle, long bushy tail, brown paws, brown collar (formerly)

This character is a good model for basing our animation from, because his design is quite broad and can be adapted to easily for everyone in the group. Although our styles of drawing are very different, we can use this to our advantage by transforming the animations process throughout based from Tod, a generic male fox design. 

Disney concept art is a great reference because is offers so many new elements for character expression and movement, in my segment I will be basing my character drawings for each frame with these body layouts. I am not confident in designing a fox character without good reference because of less experience drawing four legged animals so Disney is perfect for representation of character models, and also amazing at creating readable expressions on an animal.

Animal rights campaigners protest as fur comes back into fashion

The biggest auction of furs ever seen in the industry has taken place in Helsinki, when dealers and designers, vying for 11 million mink pelts, two million fox and one million assorted wild animal furs. Prices are expected to reach record levels...

"I remember when Peta released its first iconic 'I'd rather go naked than wear fur' campaign in the early 1990s – back when few people had ever seen a video or even a photograph of how horribly animals die for fur. The impact was huge. Almost overnight, wearing fur became unfashionable and designers couldn't wait to shout about how they were fur-free and fabulous. Retailers such as Selfridges and Liberty brought in strict no-fur policies.

As a group we decided the best way to communicate about the anti-fur awareness campaign was to include a bloody fur coat. This concept was made popular as a hard-hitting poster, originally issued by the environmental campaigning group Greenpeace in 1984, in protest against the fur trade. This iconic poster made such an impact that that it is mostly always recognised, especially in the fashion industry. This image would be used in our animation as a fur coat hanging up and dripping blood, in our last scene before dramatic quote or question sentence. 

APPLIED ANIMATION
Weekly Experimentation and concept art

Experimentation art:

What style of character design would I be using in my scene of our animation? 

I was the first to design a colouring scheme for our fox character based from my research into fox fur and eye colouring. The digital colouring technique is based on my research of a fox character called Tod, an animated character from one of Disney's films called 'The fox and the Hound'.

I always sketch ideas in my book and use basic media for ideas, I like this fox design because it comes naturally for me and my style of drawing.

Digital colouring and notes.


Concept art:

Scene concepts and ideas.

This is my cartoony character design with some concept ideas of him being trapped by a noose. We decided that my part is the half way point of the animation as the style and technique transitions to become more serious and graphic. So it should be a neutral fox design with mostly realistic features, so I didn't use the bottom design but instead something more resembling the top design.  

Based from the top design I created this concept art of the fox trapped in a metal cage and showing signs of being uncomfortable in his body posture with a sad expression.

APPLIED ANIMATION
Weekly 1 Brainstorming Ideas


Brainstorming:
The three of us decided to brainstorm ideas:

Created plot points based around a story of a fox being shown the brutality of the fur trade and fashion industry. We described our stories to each other, which was a good idea because it helped express how each of us planned for character design, environmental features and the overall plot.

We all had several unique stories so we formulated a plot by choosing our best and sectioning out our parts then linking them together for the final story. 
Suzy had the idea of a fox running through a forest and as he progressed the environment became more brutal and humanised, with captured fox's in cages and the tree line becoming a fashion industry warehouse floor. 
I had the idea of the fox being captured and thrown into a cage and being made to live there the rest of his life and experiencing the brutality of the fur trade, bred in captivity, and animals being killed and skinned for a fashion accessory. 
Ro had the idea of a captive fox expressing the horrors of the fur trade by either metaphorically or through illusion of the fox's mind transforming into a skinned fox and experiencing a graphic and torturing human world.

These individual stories work quite well together because we had planned basic idea's before hand which fed nicely into the plot points when we would transition between our styles of animation.

APPLIED ANIMATION
Weekly 1 Storyboards




Our short story:
The fox will run through a natural forest environment and come to the centre of the forest scene next to the lake/river where he will pause for the audience to admire the sounds and sights of the scene. 
A dark metaphoric hand will reach forward and grab the fox from his natural environment and transition the scene. 
The fox is thrown into a cage, he recovers and looks around at all the captive animals in the fur industry warehouse scene, the large shutters open revealing/confirming to the audience the purpose of his capture as there are displayed fox furs and other animals furs on clothing. 
He stares into his water bowl transitioning the scene again metaphorically into a graphic and torturous environment where the fox is skinned but still alive and he is experiencing the horrors of the fashion industry seeing all the other animals staring at him eyes glowing, then a woman wearing his fur coat and walking off, blood trailing behind her... possibly the end.


Storyboards:

APPLIED ANIMATION
Weekly Group work

Animating as a group notes

Animation is about individual characteristics and in group work, experiments using different styles, adjusting or relating my techniques as an animator to each other's styles and functionality in a group is not a gain for me and I feel limits my potential when adjusting to unique and personally, unfamiliar approach or design under business or college project guidelines. 

Animations I feel are one persons art, taking reference that is of personal effect which doesn't not contribute to a group cohesion to formulate objectives. Perhaps animating in groups can achieve more progress in production so I need to find a good balance between our styles and inevitably dilute my fantasies so we can progress with equal input for our personal projects and animation to produce a strong concept...

PROCESS & PRODUCTION

RESEARCH 3

Earlier cartoons focused heavily on sight gags and cheap laughs rather than the idea of experimenting with character development. Walt Disney was one of the artists inspired by McCay’s work. Disney kept Gertie in mind as he went on to later create characters like Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Mickey Mouse.

McCay was an inspiration through character development and character expression as well as many techniques of early animation. The “McCay Split System” required the artist to draw major frames and positions first and add the “in-between” frames later. This helped to improve timing of animation and the technique became widely used by other artists. McCay experimented with registration marks as well. What really makes Gertie the Dinosaur important is Gertie’s personality. Gertie was one of the first animated characters to ever have emotions in a cartoon.

Walt said, “Winsor McCay’s Gertie and other animation novelties stimulated a great public interest and created a demand for this new medium. This, in turn, encouraged other pioneers to creative efforts that in time", to lead this established character development in the industry and how revolutionary and progressive this concept is for all animated characters, to express more personality and a unique identity 

Walt later expressed his gratitude to McCay by saying to McCay’s son in reference to the Disney Studios, “Bob, all this should be your father’s.” Needless to say, Imagineers found a great way to honour Gertie in 1989 during the construction of their third Florida theme park.

PROCESS & PRODUCTION
RESEARCH 2


The most influential animators in the 20th century such as Disney have been influenced themselves but this was before animation was recognised and wasn't as popular but there was independent artists how created moving images, what does that say about an artist who influenced Disney? That would be cartoonist Winsor McCay. 

McCay's masterpiece, "Little Nemo in Slumberland" (1905), was "the most beautiful and innovative comic strip ever drawn," John Canemaker wrote in "Winsor McCay: His Life and Art." 

His imagery and artistry inspired the likes of Maurice Sendak, they are so inivative in animation because they almost seem to flow off the page, like the page dimentions limit their potential, they are so detailed they move in our imagination, you could almost animate these comic strips as frames duplicated, this was the moment, I feel when animation was right around the corner. 

McCay was undoubtedly one of the most important cartoonists in comics and animation history," said Caitlin McGurk, the outreach curator at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University.

PROCESS & PRODUCTION
RESEARCH 1

Animation history The Silent Era 1899 - 1924

I will be reviewing the impact of Windsor MacCay's, Gertie the Dinosaur then it's impact on animation and how it has influenced animations today. Then I will compare them in my final blog.

Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 animated short film by American cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay. This was one of the first animated film shorts to feature a dinosaur. 

McCay was one of those enormously important innovators who create whole new art forms without knowing at the time how influential this act was on future animation studios, as important as Walt Disney and Chuck Jones are in the history of animation as the ultimate masters of the form, McCay was the man who brought together many of the technical innovations that animators still use today, as well as being the first to create characters with whom audiences fell in love.

McCay conferred with the American Historical Society in 1912, and announced plans for "the presentation of pictures showing the great monsters that used to inhabit the earth".

He spoke of the "serious and educational work" that the animation process could enable. Rarebit Fiend episode in which a hunter unsuccessfully targets a dinosaur; the layout of the background to the latter bore a strong resemblance to what later appeared in Gertie.

This short film was featured before live audiences as an interactive part of his vaudeville act; the frisky, childlike Gertie did tricks at the command of her master. McCay's employerWilliam Randolph Hearst later added a live-action introductory sequence to the film for its theatrical release

EVALUATION

• How have you used formal elements such as line, tone, colour and shape?
• What materials did you use, and why? Did they work successfully?
• What meaning and messages did you want to convey and were you successful?
• Are you happy with your final piece? Are there any elements you like in particular?
• Is there anything you would change? Why?

This animation has been easier for me to produce because of my increasing experience using Photoshop timeline, using key commands and selection tools to transform the drawings and speed up the colouring process but also the drafting of line work.

Now that I have found a sustainable method for animating on Photoshop, I feel that need to process my research and experimental stages more and create better designs for the animating stage, instead of improvising the character and/or environmental designs during the production stage. I should produce ideas and experiment with concept art and more reference sheets, creating better and more streamline like character designs and environmental drawings for reproduction in animation.

The formal elements in my animation are mainly a type of generic modern media, using all digital elements such as bold black outlines which only contain basic detail and bold fill colouring with little to no tonnage only in the background environment. The colouring does describe the environment and characters well, though there was limited tonnage on the interior of the restaurant compared to the into outside at the entrance. 

There is also no tonnage on the characters and they both use bold coloured sections and this might communicate the wrong feeling for textures, especially on the dragon compared to the warrior, using only the bold outlines to describe his hard horns and scales. Limiting the detail for the audience, they could assume the dragon has soft skin like the warrior without the outlines around his scaly features. 

The aspects I like about my character designs are their individual personalities and ability to explore different characteristics when combined in a story, the warrior and dragon ironically have opposite personality traits, in every response to a scenario, this opposing relationship is a very humorous combination because it's something we can relate too and understand, even the not so obvious sarcastic remarks in conversation. These messages I had panned for the audience to pick up on around plot points that then related later on in the final stages of the animation. These humorous messages I have conveyed I think are successful because there is no backing features, as I can confidently animate the scene and structure the plot points knowing that the audience will pick up on these funny plot points. 

Overall I feel that this animation is well structured as a final piece but maybe the research and experimentation could have been stronger so that I wouldn't need to refine the character designs later on in the production process. In particular there isn't anything I would change expect the production process when drawing the characters in the development stage.

Pixilation - Final battle scene

The final battle pixilation, the hero enters the hallway to confront the villain who stares out the window of her domain. A fight to the death ensues after the hero swings her weapon, the villain defends herself with magic! But then the hero counters the deflected momentum into a secondary attack, hitting the villain on the neck, giving her the advantage and finishing her off while she is down.

The first encounter with the hero as she walks in was takes on two's and emphasises on her pacing, like she is walking with pride or honour. Accompanied with the eery sound track, I have chosen a dark dungeon themed track for suspense because I want it to seem like the villain is powerful, dangerous and very evil. I have timed the sound track to build in suspense as the hero approaches the villain before striking at her, when she is deflected by the villain the sound track starts its intense music. 

The action begins! This is taken in one's or single shots, because the pace is increasing and there is faster action and more broad poses between camera shots.

Midway through the villain uses her powerful magic and both characters fix their feet placement and act like there is a strong force between them, pushing them apart, the magic force is accompanied with a high series of tones that resemble the sound of magic. 

The hero the takes a sideways stance and the villain assumes a falling pose or off balance position, this was quite challenging because it was quite literally an off balance pose so I had to take improvised shots while she moved to the ground in a practiced fall. This was done with a series of rapid camera shots and while the hero spin around, and because of that, the next part of also improvised but I feel that it worked well in the finishing move that ended the Pixilation.

Final animation