I became acquainted with this while trying my facial acting and then tried a couple of other illustrations and gifs in the same style.
Lineless Coloring
Storyboarding
Storyboarding was an alien concept to me up until its first session. I remember I called up my friend who is pursuing film studies and asked her all about camera angles and perspectives and whatnot. She told me how they use three key lightning points, i.e., key, back and fill light. How they are used and what does things like a close up imply. I am due to have another session with her soon to get into more details about it.
We(some of the MACA classmates) also started a storyboard group on WhatsApp to try our hand at it after the first session we had. The theme was Halloween and I wanted to do a wordplay around “Ghosting”. How people get ghosted over dating apps and wanted a draw a funny take on it. I ended up explaining the story so that wasn’t a good sign but go ahead and meet Johnny Ghost-o! This poor chaps get ghosted every now and then and cannot seem to fix it.
Facial Acting
The need to try something new with every exercise led me to really exhausting animations but they definitely helped me grow and learn. I wanted to try the lineless way of colouring with this one. One of my classmate’s styles pushed me to give it a shot. Also, I definitely like it better when my animations have colours in them.
I recorded myself for this exercise and tried to use it as a reference and exaggerate expressions while drawing. However, The expressions may have been a little over the top but I didn’t feel the need to change it later.
Body Acting
One of the biggest things I learnt with this exercise is to never color the keyframes without doing the in-betweens. It was a blunder and I ended up spending way too much time on this then I should have. I started working on this exercise on procreate as I hadn’t bought tv paint by then so it was all the more complicated to animate it properly with the colored frames.
The idea of doing this exercise with a robot hit me while re-watching wall-e. Here are a few frames that I really like from the final animation.
Peter Parr
“Drawing and sketching are central to the art of animation. The contents of an animator’s sketchbook can sow the seeds for legendary stories, characters and layout designs.”
A number of topics are covered in the book, including the use of shapes, perspective, drawing figures, setting up landscapes, capturing movement, developing ideas, and laying out and composing.
I ended up looking at Peter Parr’s sketches and enjoyed every bit of it. He is called “an artist for all seasons” and rightly so.
I feel like all his drawings, be it of an animate or inanimate object possess a lot of character and life. He has also added a lot of cartoon examples in the book and it got me excited about it in the first place.
He is a professor at Bournemouth and often challenges his students to the 30 days challenge wherein they have to fill a sketchbook in 30 days. I plan on taking it myself over the Easter holidays.
Understanding Perspectives
From the very beginning one thing that I wanted to work on when it comes to drawing is my understanding of perspectives. I look to books, articles or videos every time I get a chance.
One of the books that helped me break it down a little was by David Chelsea. It is a really old book but I got my hand on it in about two months back and so far it has been helpful.
“Acclaimed artist and autobiographical cartoonist David Chelsea and his hollow-headed pupil Mug together explore the many aspects of perspective, the art of rendering the visual effect of distance on objects. In an entertaining, step-by-step comic strip format, David and Mug demonstrate basic concepts of perspective by constructing vivid, spectacular landscapes and architectural interiors. Though designed with the beginning artist is mind, Perspective! for Comic Book Artists will also be useful to working professionals looking to brush up on their skills.”
The book covers all three of these perspectives in a tongue-in-cheek way, demonstrating how to use them in practice, giving you shortcuts, explaining the construction, and even providing templates to help you start.
One thing that stands out is there is no assumption that you are stupid or a genius, and the information is presented in a way that any artist can understand.
It is a hefty book and I still haven’t come around to finish it but so far, I have found it useful.
Having said that, my understanding of perspectives is still bleak and I hope to better at it.
Simulated Work Experience
I was paired with Vaibhavi for this exercise. She hails from India too and contacted me almost immediately after the email was out. On our first call, she ran me through her final project idea and told me about her style and showed me some of her work. I realised her style isn’t very complicated and she uses very limited colors. I really really liked the movie that she made for Children’s society and was very relieved to know that she is very flexible and accommodative.
Roles given to me:
She is already done with her animatic more or less and she is amending it now. We discussed and decided on a few things that I can do immediately and few things that I volunteered to do over Easter holidays as well, if need be. She asked me to do the background initially but she was given new feedback and is changing a animatic a little so that is on hold. I started with colouring a character for her and making an expression sheet and hand sheet for another. I also did a turnaround and will be working on helping her with sketching one last character.
She sent me references for all these characters. Since her story is based in India, with the characters being Indian too. I was able to understand the cultural nitty-gritties of it and make a few suggestions.
Feedback Recieved:
I was able to properly complete my deliverables and Vaibhavi seemed to be happy with it. The color pallet had limited colors and shading so it went smoothly. Similarly, I did justice to the turnaround and expression sheet. The last bit was designing the new character which is something that Vaibhavi is not very sure of as yet. She received some insights from the tutors and is rethinking how she wants to go ahead with it.
How did I perform:
I feel like I did justice to the tasks assigned to me and would want to be involved in this even after these two weeks.
What could I have improved on:
I don’t think that there is anyplace where I lagged with this whole exercise. I was able to deliver what was assigned to me without any corrections.
How does the given role relate to industry roles:
Honestly, I didn’t feel like two weeks was long enough to drill down into this. So, I am unsure how does this relate to industry roles per se.
Did you enjoy the experience:
I really enjoyed the whole experience. My second year was really sweet and accommodative. She didn’t really push anything on me and asked me what am I comfortable with and also asked for my suggestions and opinions. Her style is very different from mine so it was a good change.
What was successful during the collaboration?
I think what really worked for us was constant and clear communication. I was very clear on the timelines and what was expected from me from the get go. It also gave me a glimpse of everything that we would be doing in the second year.
Challenges faces:
I think the biggest challenge is the amount of time given for this entire experience. Since, the second year was in her animatic stage, there wasn’t much that she needed me to do. Although, I feel I would have been able to do more had the second year been on a more advanced stage of her film.
New technique/skill learnt:
I think, for me, all of this was an extension of all that we have learnt about character design in the course so far. How to think of different characters in a story and make them work as one. I did not get to animate anything as such because my senior’s film is at a very nascent stage as of now.
How did I use the skills I have learnt so far:
I think the previous answer pretty much covers it.
What will I bring into my practice from this experience?
Diwali
I wanted to animate something for Diwali. It was early on the course and I wasn’t really sure what was I doing but I wanted to make something colourful for the festival of lights.
I ended up not posting it anywhere because it didn’t do the in-betweens properly but it was nice to play around with this colour palette.
An Ode to Dennis
“I will have an extra hot latte please”, said Dennis. He frequents the cafe I work at every week. Quite a heartthrob, I must add. An old man in his eighties perhaps. He enters the cafe and everyone’s face lights up. Amidst the hustle and bustle of the day, the words “Dennis is here”, is exactly what everyone at the cafe wants to hear. He is one of the people who I look at and I immediately want to hug and protect. I wish all Dennis out there have someone who is looking out for them always.
Walk Cycle
When we were asked to do a walk cycle, Steve mentioned how we can probably base it around a protest that was going on. Honestly, protests made me think of incompetent leaders and made me think of Trump. I decided to make a Trump-like character(the hair being the highlight) who is walking around wearing a cone of shame.