Miho's Animation blog (show reel production): February 2013

Thursday 21 February 2013

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.