Final Week - Showreel Complete

I have finally finished editing and rendered my Showreel animation!
It took me while to fiddle around with the editings since I have made a few mistakes on the image sizes. But My tutor has kindly sorted them out so everything is fine now.

My 2D Animation Showreel on YouTube from Here

From this project I have learned that I enjoy 2D animation very much, definitely something that I like to do and something that makes me enjoy animating. 2D work requires a lot of drawings and also staring at the laptop screen for many many hours... but I think these times are definitely worth it for my outcome and also for my future.

I am pretty much happy with my outcome, however my showreel ideas has changed a lot throughout the time. I am glad that I have managed to add more work than I was planning to put in. The only thing I could improve for the next time is to make sure I have set everything in the correct size and format so that I won't need to fix everything up at the very end, also I would definitely draw my animations more clearly, some of my work are quite low on the quality so I will make sure to spend more time on each animations. 

Final Week - Storyboard

 I forgot to post these storyboard when I made them while ago, so here it is. Storyboard for my Fish animation and Girl and Boy animation.

Week 12 - Girl and Boy Animatics DONEEEEE

Girl and Boy animation/Animatics DONE I think. I've worked on this for such a long time and I think I am happy to add this to my showreel now... FINALLY!!!

This one was probably one of the most tricky animation that I have ever animated. Both of the characters are anatomically difficult since they are human and I got to get their movement right, otherwise it will look strange.
I was going to make this into a full proper animation but since this work is for the showreel and the whole plan from the proposal was to show how I can create the storyboard, so I have decided to leave it like Animatics. (I guess it's smoother than just animatics? I'd say this is half Animatics.)

From now on I will be working on putting all my works into one video and actually make my showreel.

Week 12 - Flying animation done

Week 12 - Bird

Character sketch of my bird.

Week 12 - Flying Animation

Another Experiment, a bird.

Week 12 - Change in Proposal

I have realised that I have not been too good at following my first proposal... which was to create a short storyboard based on fictional stories. I found it very difficult to create a 'short' storyboard based on the fictional stories, I'd rather create a long proper film to tell the whole story but not enough time and I thought it would be better if I just create a couple of short storyboard and animate them, rather than just sticking with one animation/one drawing style.
I also wanted to experiment the animation that I have never animated before, for instance, my previous post of "Hair Animation' was definitely a challenge, but worth  me since I have managed to learn more about it.

For my Showreel I would like to put the basic animations such as walk cycle at first, play each of them for 10 seconds and then at the end I will put my 'Girl and Boy' Animatics/Animation.  By adding them all together I am hoping to achieve around 3 minutes (or more maybe) in total, I would guess this would be an enough time to show my skills.

Week 12 - Hair animation finished

Finished animating and colouring the Hair animation.

This one was very tricky one since I had to think about the natural hair movement and also the shadow under the hair on the face. 

I've also experimented with the speed.

This one is faster than the original one, I kind of prefer the faster one since the movement looks smoother.

Week 12 - Hair added colours

Added colour. No shading on the hair yet.

Week 12 - Hair movement

Another new animation today, I've concentrated just on the hair movement.
His head and body stay still, except the hair.

Week 12 - Girl and Boy nearly done...

Week 11 - Horse Walk cycle complete

A bit of change on his head movement.

Week 11 - Cat Dance neaten

Added tail and neaten up on Photoshop.

Week 11 - Cat bite re-drawn

edited and changed some timing.

Week 11 - Cat Walk Cycle complete

Re-drawn the walk cycle and added tail movement.

Week 11 - Fish animation finished

Holiday work - SNAIL!

Just because.

Without any movement, just messed around with the timing.

Holiday work - Fish animation

With bubbles and colours.

Holiday work - Something different

Okay... so I got a bit fed up with doing my main animation so I thought I'd do something different today...

I honestly don't know why I have chosen fish, it's just came up in my head and got desperate to draw them out.

Holiday work - more animatics... again, again again again

added the last scene and a bit of colours, I've decided to not do lip sync since I thought it's better without any voice.

Holiday work - Animatics improved again

Added background and another scene at the end

Holiday work - Horse Walk cycle complete

Week 10 - Walk cycle again

Week 10 - 4 Leg Walk cycle Ideas

I wanted to try animate 4 leg animals... and the first animal that came up in my head was SHETLAND PONY. They are basically a pony with very short legs, this odd-looking but adorable pony just popped into my head and thought I'd try animate them.

Week 10 - Animatics again... continued

I've been concentrating on this animatics for past 2 weeks, it's slowly getting better I think, but still a lot to work through.

I think I will use this one for the short storyboard, and after this I will be working on a small animation such as walk cycle, part of the other storyboard (Bunny) etc.

Week 9 - Animatic again... again

Week 9 - animatic again

Improved

Week 9 - Animatic continue

Added a few more scenes

Week 8 - Animatics for Girl and Boy

Only first part

Week 8 - Hair

Hair movement

Week 8 - a bit of lip sync

A bit of Lip Sync of "I Love You"

Week 8 - Girl animation - expression

Week 8 - Cat Walk cycle improved

Cat walk cycle with less lines on his leg joint.

Week 8 - Girl's head movement

First attempt of animating girl character. Animating this style is actually really hard.

Week 7 - Walk cycle front with body

Week 7 - Proposal

I've just realised I have not uploaded my proposal for this term so here it is.

Essay – Proposal

Thinking of my future seems to be the one of the hardest tasks I have to do since I am still confused about my true dream and I do not have a definite dream.

My opinion often becomes like a balloon, it floats in my head for long or short period of time rising up and down. Then suddenly pops and disappears depending on the things going on around me or the experiences that I've had. My absolute honest condition that I am in right now is that, I am genuinely confused with my future.

What I know for definite is that I always enjoyed drawing since I was young, making short stories and drawing them out in a notebook. This has never disappeared from my heart and during the pre-production stage of the animation I enjoy making storyboards and character designs the most.

For the project for this term I would like to concentrate on 2D animation and I would also like to create my own short story. Recently I have discovered a 2D animation that has been created by one Japanese comedian, who isn’t a professional animator called Tekken (鉄拳). He has created the animation which recently became one of the famous 2D animation on Youtube. His animation is all based on people’s life style, how it can be happy but difficult at the same time and I got inspired by his work. I always enjoy reading or watching emotional stories based on people’s life both fictional and non-fictional, so I would love to create an emotional short piece of 2D animation based on people’s life.

To achieve this I will be using either flash or flipbook to create the animation, the reason for this is actually simple, 2D animation requires a lot of drawings and I would prefer to get them organised digitally. For the storyline ideas I would like to use the non-fictional story as the base line and add fictional details inside, so I will start off by listening to my family’s history of life to get some ideas.

Also in terms of an animation career if I could work as either a storyboard artist or character designer I would enjoy these the most.

To become a storyboard artist or character designer I will definitely need more life experiences, the idea for the storyboard could be gathered from a variety of places such as our daily life style, looking into something that you see it every day in depth may look interesting since you never look into things that you see on an every day bases in depth. Also getting influences from outside will be important, meeting people and observing their actions, poses and emotions would help to create an interesting character. I also believe that looking into an environment would be a big benefit, researching and actually visiting the places could possibly give me more ideas. Visiting new places and meeting new people, animals, plants and their environment would definitely increase the possibilities of the ideas that I could put into the storyboard or Character design.

I will also need to develop my general drawing skills, starting off with life drawings so that I could learn the anatomy of human which is one of the most essential skills that a Character designer would need. Also observational drawings, drawing from simple object such as the object that you could find at home to something complicated such as drawing animals.

Being Japanese and bilingual I could make two big choices, one is to go back to Japan and concentrate on Japanese animation. If I chose to concentrate on a career in Japanese the first large 2D animation company that comes to mind is definitely Studio Ghibli. Studio Ghibli work has always been my favourite animation since I was young, what inspires me the most is that their animation can be enjoyed by all age groups. For the young people they would enjoy their unique sweet style of drawings. A good example would be Totoro from My neighbor Totoro (1988). When I was young I used to enjoy their art work more than the storyline. But now I can understand the story better and I enjoy the film in different way. The Japanese art work has unique style, they often look for the appearance that is pretty, attractive or something that catches audience’s eyes. Japanese style of drawings really inspires me, one of the possible reason is because I grew up in Japan with Japanese animation. Another reason that I love Japanese animation is that their animation is simpler and quieter, for example Disney animation has a lot of movements at one time but most of the Japanese animation only has one or two movement since they keep the animation as efficient as possible. Personally I like the efficient environment since noisy environment is confusing.

Week 7 - Walk cycle front again (neater)

Neater version of front walk cycle. Just went over it with darker colour.

Week 7 - Character design (boy)

Week 7 - Cat dance improved

Week 7 - Cat Walk cycle (only leg, front view)

I've struggled a lot for making walk cycle at the front view, especially my character has very short legs it was hard to show the knee bends. This GIF is only his legs, I will add the rest of his body next.

Week 7 - Walk cycle side improved

 Improved version here, added the knee movement. The top one is the original one, it doesn't look like walking, it looks like sliding rather than walking. Compared to the original one I think the bottom one looks better.

Week 7 - Cat dance animation

Week 6 - Girl improved

The one on the left is the first Character design of the Girl, the one on the right is the improved version of her. Her clothes are a lot simpler with less crease around her sleeves, changed the angle of her legs so that she is more balanced (so that it doesn't look like she's about to fall over)

Week 6 - Bunny turn 45 degree

Week 6 - Walk Cycle Side

Week 6 - Wark Cycle draft

Basic movement of legs and body going up and down. No arms, ears, or face.