shilloet of character

Octonauts, Pokemon, T.M.N.T and Adventure Time character design analysis

Octonauts
The facial expessions of this character are very simple and happy looking. It is important it has this simplistic style because it is aimed at a young Cbeebies audience. The character is a primary colour which is also suitable for this audience. It is comprised of a few simple shapes and clearly represents a turtle

Pokemon
The style is very typical of pokemon. It incorporated lots of highlights and has a 3d look. This character is instantly regognisable becasue of the style. The eyes are typical of this kind of aniamtion.
The colour blue reflects its powers. It has water based powers.

TMNT
These characters are very dymanicaly shaped with muscular bodies and straight edges. This gives them an aggresive style which is suited to what they do, they are fighters. They have human like features and are more the shape of humans than turtles. Which makes they're personalities more relatable to the target audience

Adventure Time
The turtle princess in adventure time is quite a passive character and it is reflected in the illustration. Relatively small arms and legs with a big body and blonde hair. She is very simply drawn and uses a few colours without any self shading. This workd for the target audience because they are used to the simple colouring of adventure time.

Initial Planning

The form of animation i am planning  is an abstract music video. Using the track 'Saukrates- Father Time' The video will be 2 minutes long so the video will be shorter than the music track. This means that i can choose good parts of the track that would would for a video. I need to match the style of music to the style of animation whilst making it entertaining and relevant to the genre and artist.

I have chosen to use part After Effects Vector animation and partly stop motion. I have chosen these forms because the music track is quite varied in the beat pattern and the music is quite different to what i have heard before so i think a more abstract approach to the animation is appropriate. Saukrate's other videos are quite abstract and don't follow a specific narrative. They include conventions of the hip hop genre and i will try to include some of these recognisable styles within my video.

The genre is sbastract animation because it doesn't follow a specific narrative but it does reflect the style of the music. This is important to make the video related to the music which will increase awareness of the video as well as the artist and the music. I hope to create something that is different and unusual but also reflects the genre and the artist. The music sticks to an old school style of hip hop and i think this should be reflected in the music video by using imagery associated with it.

P2. Peer Idea Feedback sheet

Representation And Ethics In Animation

The writer of the article believes that cultural stereotypes are being used and the it is all to common place in modern day animation. He points out that the main characters are white Americans. Even one character that is born and raised in Rio still has this white American accent. This is demonstrating a cliched idea used in many big budget animation films.

Whereas other characters in the film are vioced by non-white actors. these charcters parts on the whole are usually involving singing and dancing. Actors like Will-i-am (African American) and Bruno Mars (Mixed Race Hawaiin) are used for side kick and comical characters.  it seems the trend that African American voice actors are used as the butt of jokes and the less influential characters. Also British characters are used for the villians which the writer believes  is an all too overused representation in film.

PEPs are a concept talked about by Da Costa stands for Problem Contexts, Entertainment Contexts and Performance Contexts. It involves the idea that black people and other genotypes are used as characters who are exceptional. Who for example will strive to make others happy or to be extraordinary.

Da Costa thinks we end up with social stereotypes in animation for different reasons. One being the time frame that animations need to be completed in. Because of the long extensive animation process it means there may not be much time for sophisticated character development. So it is naturally forced into conventional stereo types because they are simple to understand and can resonate with the audience. Also to widen the customer base of the animation companies feel obliged to put in many different racial representations. Sometimes without much ethical sensitivity.

Animation Process and equipment

I am using After effects mostly for my animation but i am also including some stop motion as well. I think these two methods together work for the music i have chosen for the video because it is quite unpredictable and sporadic.

My process started with Initial idea planning. Thinking of lost of different ideas and noting them down. Then analysing which ones are better than others and which ones have certain aspects that could be used with other ideas to strengthen them. The main goal of the animation is to suit the music which is in the video (Saukrates- Father Time)

StoryBoarding.
Although my storyboard ended up slightly altering from the animation. It is the crucial guide lines for  my animation. I storyboarded 6 scenes with 16 shots. Noting the character and assets movement, effects, text, audio and style

Asset creating
Before I could start animating on After Effects I had to create my assets that I was going to animate. I did this in Illistrator and made things like, Backdrops (grass, walls, sky etc.) Then I made characters and other elements like props for the characters to hold

Animation
I was using After Effects to animate so this involved the movement and adjustment of key frames to create character movement, Placing layers on top of other layers to get the desired compostion for my animation. I used a screen size of 1280 x 720

How far into Animation i am

My animation at present is incomplete, I have done around 1 minute of animation and still have a large portion of more complicated animation to do. have done 3 scenes out of  6 planned scenes. Overall I think it is going quite well but I need to improve the speed at which I do it at.

I still need to create a few new assets. I would be using illustrator to do this. I have found this is one of the most time consuming parts of the process so I am budgeting for this asset creating time.

I think to speed up my animation process time I will do a mix of a few techniques, including spot animation so I can get on with finalizing the process and creating an animation I am happy with in a time frame that will be quick enough.