Posture

In the life drawing session we were tasked with quickly drawing the posture of a figure which moved from various poses every few seconds. I realised here that my visualisation of the human form can actually delve into the shape and form of the human figure, as apposed to the line-work specifically.


Each sketch consists of few lines all made within a few seconds. I forced myself to leave the image once I had drawn it, despite the fact I had the urge to go back and 'correct' it.

This pose below is my favourite as once again I am forced to deal with forshortening, this time with only a limited amount of time to capture it via thick line work.

Here also, perhaps inadvertantly, there is a sense of perspective to this pose, almost as if the figure is looking down at us. This in a way actually accentuates the body language and the arc of his swing.

After studying these thumbnails I decided to put my observations to the test and scanned each image and compiled them into a very crude animation, just to see if the body language of each has some coherent fluidness to it.

This is abit crude, as I said, but I quite like the fact you can 'feel' the overall arc of the body via the four images. I seem to have exagerated the form of each, as I percieved it in my mind, and this has helped to make the action readable, even on this basic level. This goes some way to highlighting the importance of Exaggeration in Animation, and why it is one of the key principles.

Mark Making

With these studies, using the life drawing lessons, I was able to consider how I use my pencil. Again these are loose, and so I use the familiar loose linework but in some cases I adopt varied manner of creating tonal value, which adds some measure of depth and shape to my drawings.


These quick head studies were made by using the edge of the pencil, holding it almost like a pallet knife. My tonal strokes, particularly on the neck area, create these nice bold lines, most of which flow in the same direction which creates an almost cross hatch feel.

The canteen is a very useful place to make very quick observations of human gestures, something with which I hoped to focus on with this project. Alot of these thumbnails are devoid of any detail, with the intention of removing the line work and just putting down as quick as possible the basic gesture of the character.

Another thing I particularly enjoy drawing is multiple subjects inhabiting the same space. You have to you use your line work carefully in order to seperate the two whilst still making it look like they are both occupying the same space.

Hands are very useful in capturing the gesture and body language of various people. It is often the hands, or feet/leg, that defines the posture instantly. Everything else is secondary.

Less lines!

One of my noticible habits is covering my thumbnails in many lines, so these were an exercise in seeing whether I could capture a certain pose using less lines, and this time using a thick marker to ensure I had to be bold and just make the lines thick and fluid, without being precious.




This thumbnail is my particular favourite as here I have to deal with perspective and forshortening of the figure. This means I have to abandon any preconcieved notions of proportion and just draw the distortion that I see.

These thumbnails required me to think more about composition, rather than just the subject matter of the human figure, and being aware of the space in which it inhabits in your drawing. The architecture of the room can also help to compose the image correctly.

This one added abit more detail, though I seem to suffer from the over use of line work again with this one.

The Brief

When given the Visualisation brief, I began to think about the many varied subject matters I could focus on over the weeks, and ultimately I wanted to follow a line of thought that would be appropriate with, and adhere to, the principles of Animation. With this in mind my initial thoughts were to just focus on the area I am most comfortable with. The human figure.

I began to use the weekly lifedrawing sessions to really highlight the areas I most wanted to focus on, at the time this was more about the shape and form of the human figure, and how the line of action can be interpreted using various mark making techniques.

These are some examples of my studies in the line of action.


When I start a sketch out I'm always using my loose lines to create the skeleton, as it were, of the figure, even going so far as to visualise the joints and their arcs pinpointed at the shoulders and hips specifically. This helps for me to capture the depth and three dimentionality of the thumbnail.

These sketches show my loose linework only vaguely suggesting the human figure, whilst the thick black line represents the line of action that can be traces throughout each of them.

When the subject matter is moving, I can rely on the position of his feet which don't move, so they become a sort of Anchor to the drawing. They remain a constant, whilst from the waste up the whole body is turning from left to right. This helps to centre my sketch, and to keep both images fitting coherently with each other.

Also of note is how the line of action dramatically changes, and the weight shifts from one leg to another. Desipte the fact he is relatively umoved from the waste down, it is important to pinpoint this shift in weight.

Munch Invaders

The final game has been completed, after much tweaking and altering of the sprites in our discussions of how 'retro' they should look. However the game itself has come off really well and I really pleased with the outcome of Ricky's efforts. It's turned out better than I thought it would. To see/play the game and view the trailer follow this link: http://www.munchinvaders.blogspot.com/


Evaluation.

So far the project has been really fun to explore, not only from an animation point of view but from a marketing and also a video gaming perspective. My area was the pre-production aspect of things but sadly our brief, that required us to use the existing Monster Munch characters, really didnt give me much room to exlpore via character designs. Having said that, however, I do feel I learned alot more about how the production pipe-line dictates the process of video gaming, for example the same thought process needs to be applied when creating the Monsters in their sprite form to imitate the 'retro' pixilated look. At first I thought it was a simple matter of making them and then lowering the resolution, but as we found out it required a much more complex approach. In my earlier brainstorming sheet I explored how 2D and 3D often mingle in their design processes, now I can add what I have learned via the video gaming process.

Animatic

Due to time contraints, and also for a more focused and relevant approach, we both agreed on the second idea as it related directly to the Atari video gaming in it's intirety, as the previous only revealed that theme towards the end. This was an Animatic that I put together which intends to realise how the advert might flow. Due to Ricky's progress in making the 'Munch Invaders' game it wasnt necessary for me to animate the game footage shown, as we plan to film it for ourselves as a non-scripted sequence. Instead the only real emphasis is the change from game footage to a scripted event that is strictly for the purposes of the trailer. In this case it was the product shot, that is absolutely key in all advertisements, that appears towards the end. The Pickled Onion flavour crisp packet lands ontop of the the Monsters in the last scene, with the potential to either hold that frame with a tag-line over the top or to cut away to the tag-line. My only concern is that the trailer might just look like prolonged video game footage and when the sight gag happens at the end the audience may have lost interest.

Storyboard ideas

These are some of the sketches I made of the initial Ideas we discussed, above and below are the rough storyboarded sequence of the 'space invader' trailer. Ricky has now finished his test and has crafted the game to an almost complete status, in this way we can send both that finished game and use it for footage for the trailer in the coming deadline.

In the closing shot the packet of Monster Munch, in pixilated form, crashes down on the monster before morphing into a clear image of the package design, this is the product shot at the end.

Another concept was a much more 'theatrical' trailer, very much in a tongue and cheek manner. In the vein of 'v.s' movies the trailer features various 'hero' shots of each of the monsters.

After each brief close up of the new monsters we cut to close ups of their predecessors, each followed by 'dramatic' text, each scene shortened one after the other until the climax is reached.

As a theme for the potential 'confrontations' in the future game ideas my story incorperated the notion of the previous monsters with the new monsters, who are ironically the original monsters, come to take back their rightful place. This allows for more room to breathe in a creative sense, now we have six monsters instead of three, and they all represent the same three flavours ( or there abouts) which leads to a nice dynamic and potential for the game designs to revolve around.

For the next frames I considered the composition of the 'close ups', using the iconic panning shots used in countless films that depict similar confrontations. In the last scene I imagined the camera rotating to a birdseye view and then morphing into the pixilated overhead view of the space invaders but with the monsters in place of the 'barracks' and 'invaders'.