I will now be talking about the final stages of my major project and showing the final pieces I made to put my work together.
Like I stated in the previous Blogpost, as more time went on the reality of the possibility of not finishing my project to the deadline was worrying for me, I needed to re-strategize my workflow to help myself construct a new plan.
The struggles with Covid especially this year has been harrowing for everyone, It was hard to communicate online especially when previous years we where there in person, however I feel I have managed well with my time structure and classes which I am proud of myself for. As I thought further into this I felt a trailer would be perfect to show both my Artwork and my Animation skills.
Below you can see the stills I made for the in-betweens of the trailer
I then worked on creating a Ending scene which you can view here:
When finding a program to create my trailer in on time, it was a struggle as I only had a few days to complete it in, this was the ultimate struggle I faced as I wanted to show my animation skills as well as my artistic abilities, I opted to unfortunately use Moviemaker and a program called Camtasia Studio to produce my work in, I felt the completed project wasn’t bad as it shown my abilities in Animating and artistry however I wished I’d have timed myself more accurately so I could have taken the time in learning a program such as Sony Vegas or Premier Pro.
But with the struggles I faced as I said, I feel the quality of working in Movie maker shouldn’t affect the work I have shown through ought my blog and have produced for this Project.
You can view the full Product below, thank you for reading along with my journey this year, I have learnt a lot and grown in my art, I hope for the future I hope I can continue to work on my craft and continue to seek and find work within the Industry.
As stated in the last post I will now be going through and showing my animation process and my thoughts behind them.
Before I started I made a quick walk cycle of one of the raptors to get a feel of how I would animate them, you can see that here;
Art by Lauren Meenagh
As it was a quick test I didn’t want to spend too much time on it as I just wanted to gain a feeling before I animated them, I didn’t want to waste any time before diving in to begin animating!
I then began working on the foundations of my animation by thinking of how to time out my work efficiently, I then decided as sketching takes me the longest I would sketch the harder frames and then sketch the easier frames next.
The tools that I used to animate is the digital program called Clip Studio EX, Clip studio is the leading comic and manga creation software worldwide developed by Celsys Inc, I was originally going to use Adobe photoshop but I enjoyed the feeling of Clip for animation overall and I wanted to work with a program that was right for me, especially if I was to make my entire project within it.
When learning to animate in this new program as stated before, as I was used to photoshop I searched for tutorials on how to efficiently learn along with the video, I used these two videos specifically for educating myself so I could continue to work at a efficient pace.
(( this includes Keyframes, Blocking and refining and colouring etc.))
When talking with my one-to-one tutor on Tuesdays I was given good advice on how to improve and take onboard the critiques given, I felt pleased the more I worked on my project and with the critique I was given I always tried to apply it to my work even after the fact.
When I began to think about a colour pallet to use for my backgrounds I wanted to keep it simple, so again I began looking on Pinterest to create a mood board for colour pallets I could use or looking for inspiration to choose the best colours and painting progress for my backgrounds, you can see the link here https://pin.it/xZr804a you can see I had already begin working on the backgrounds in the animated examples above.
During this time I kept working on my animated short, however as time ticked on I came to the struggle of figuring out how I could finish what I have in time for the deadline on the 12th of May, this was the main challenge I came to realise and what ended up shaping my decision to keep my short as a episode-like trailer instead, this in the end proved to make me feel more confident in what I could produce as I had compleated the assets needed to create a trailer, but my challenge was to piece it together as one.
As shown in my previous presentation shown to the class, the critiques given helped shaped this decision as well, you can see the work I compiled with what I had finished during that time of my work below:
Art by Lauren Meenagh
I had edited this clip from the original but the original critique I got was that the animation was a bit too quick, so I had slowed it down in this instance to show what it would be like, another critique I received was that it was hard to tell between Tyra and Rex, which I changed when it came to finalising the scenes I would be using for my trailer.
You can see them both coloured in the scenes below;
In the next Blogpost I will be finally talking about and showing the final process toward my animated trailer, I will be showing the final pieces I created to put my trailer together.
Storyboards have always been a craft that I am passionate in, I felt that the storyboarding process was the more enjoyable aspect of this project, and it is something I definitely want to seek out to do work in, in the future, As I struggle with structuring stories in written form I enjoy putting life into written work through my art, I will now go into the process behind my Storyboards and eventually Animatic at the end of my discussion, I will also go through and talk about the various changes I had made throughout and what I wished I’d have done differently in the outcome in the blogpost where I will be talking about the animation process.
After the storyboards where completed I then began the animatic process to show what the story I am creating would look like on screen, you can see the Animatic here;
When it came to showing our works in a short presentation like stated in my previous post regarding the Raptors and their legs, I was informed that it would be hard when coming to animate to differentiate between the two and the floor, so I opted to change and make their legs thicker but keeping to their chicken-like appearance as I wanted to again keep it realistic but also incorporate my style and keep the cartoon-like appearance consistent throughout.
In the next blog post I will be talking more about my animation process and the challenges I faced along the way, I will also be explaining how I fixed and rectified the issues I came to realise toward the end of the project.
Like the previous post stated, Now I will be going into the first steps I took when beginning my project. as I wanted to create a story with Dinosaurs my first step was to find a species that I could portray in my style accurately but also in a cartoony stylised manner, I also wanted to use dinosaurs that all lived within the same era to one another if I could.
My first two characters I created where intended to be the almost comedic relief of the story, so I knew I wanted them to be rather small to the main characters in comparison, as I went through with my research I came across the small raptor known as Acheroraptor.
Acheroraptor was a small species of raptor, cousin to the velociraptor that lived primarily around parts of the US. They where small in stature with various patterned feathers.
I have always had a keen interest in the history of Raptors during the era of the dinosaurs, the movies produced by Steven Spielberg has always made me very fond of the animal as a whole, so I definitely wanted to have a species in my animated short.
The next dinosaur I wanted to work on was the two main characters, which both are the large Tyrants known as Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Tyrannosaurus Rex was a large carnivorous Theropod and is one of the more well known and popular dinosaurs for it’s time. The Rex is possibly the most well known for its portrayal in various projects from Jurassic Park to The Land before Time. It was known to be more of a scavenger but for my story I will be taking some artistic liberties to apply it to the story I want to tell.
The final dinosaur I knew I wanted to add was to be a herbivore of some kind, Like I said I wanted to only use dinosaurs that lived in the same time period together, even if they didn’t live in the same areas as each other I wanted to be somewhat accurate with the time periods. with this I knew my final dinosaur was to be the Edmontosaurus.
The Edmontosaurus was a large Hadrosaurid which diet mostly consisted of various plants, it had no teeth but a strong “beak” that it would use to crush twigs as well as seeds.
With all my research on what species I wanted to use within my short I then went through and began to create the initial sketch concepts for my characters, adding all the typical characteristics from each dinosaur and tweaking to add a more unique spin on the animals as a whole.
Art by Lauren Meenagh
The first character I began to sketch concepts for was the little Rex I later called “Tyra” This was to be the main protagonist and the one who is telling their story, I wanted to have Tyra’s gender be up to the viewer as I wanted my story to apply to everyone who saw themselves in the character on screen.
The second character I began work on was Tyra’s friend, known as “Rex” Rex was a little difficult to design as I wanted the Rexes to be different than each other in stature and size without confusion between the two, as having two characters of the same species that are known to be big and bulky would be a challenge to have differences in appearance, however I believe I did a good job in portraying what I wanted to do.
Art by Lauren Meenagh
As you can see I have noted my thoughts on both concept sketches, with Tyra I wanted them to have rounder more friendly features while still being recognisable as a Tyrannosaurus. With the second character Rex I wanted him to have a more battle-heavy appearance, that he has seen more of the world in comparison to his smaller counterpart, I gave him more angular blocked shapes and a sharper looking head more akin to that of the typical look a T-Rex would have.
Continuing on from the Rexes I then began to work on the final characters I would be using, the raptors and the Edmontosaurus. I found these guys a lot easier to work with in terms of building their shapes and structure to draw, the Raptors specifically where my favourite as I found ease to differentiate them between each other with their feather shapes and lengths.
Art by Lauren Meenagh
At first I wanted to use stick legs to create more differences between the main characters and the raptors, but after my animatic and a one-to-one tutorial I had, I ended up changing this which I will be getting into in my next blog post.
I then began working on a few designs for the Rexes, as I wanted to get their colour pallets completed before I moved onto the other three characters in the animated short.
I browsed the website Pinterest for more inspiration to help me create a friendly design, specifically for Tyra, you can see the link here; https://pin.it/6DWTrmr as you can see I have found these various plush toys that seemed to have a colour scheme I thought was unique and eye-catching enough to be in the world I am inserting them into, I then started to create various colour pallets with these ideas in mind.
Art by Lauren Meenagh
Tyra had various designs before I chose their finalised one, I always knew I wanted Rex to be red as I find red to be a colour most used in intimidating-looking characters, but when I spoke in another one to one we discussed Tyra’s design in more depth for what I wanted, I then realise the pallets that I had made for them, none that I had currently felt like it looked right.
I then took the Brown design on Tyra’s section of the designs and changed the saturation to a more blue toned, and I found that it then was perfect and what I envisioned for them.
Art by Lauren Meenagh
The only tweaks I made was to make the design more simple so when I began animating it would be less time consuming and I could keep the designs consistent.
Continuing on I also created a few environment studies for my project, which can be viewed below:
Art by Lauren MeenaghArt by Lauren Meenagh
In the second study you can see a few characters that I was originally planning but decided not to, as I didn’t want to have to animate a lot of characters due to the nature and short timeframe we had to complete the project, none the less I added them into my workflow.
When building the foundations for my project at the beginning I always knew I had wanted to do something with 2D animation, I love the look and feel of hand-drawn animation be it digital or traditional, I love telling cute stories and I feel my art style has a very cartoony-feel to it, I have always been inspired by hand drawn animation since I was smaller and it has greatly impacted my personal art style in the current years.
At the beginning of the year my idea was vastly different as I was going to go for a more 3D approach, leaning towards building a world circulated around a fictional species that I would create an animated short with; however when initially sitting down and attempting to work on building the world, I felt like it was out of my field and I would loose interest fairly quickly which is what I would not have wanted.
As stated before what I wanted for my project was to have passion and hold the same standards throughout for myself, however as I continue to take you through this journey of how I started and the ending product, it was one of the challenges I had to face and I will be explaining in the later half of these blog posts in the creation and progression of my Animated short. To begin I started drafting up ideas of what I wanted to create, I thought for a while about the story I wanted to portray and what I wanted to animate.
I love animals and my art is influenced by my various pets and love of animals; one of my favourite topics to research and look into is the history of life on the earth, specifically dinosaurs. Ever since I saw Don Bluth’s classic film “The Land Before Time” I was infatuated with everything to do with dinosaurs, and it matched what I wanted to create and my notion of wanting to hold the passion throughout. I started by deciding where I wanted to go with the story, So I began thinking of how to create a simple yet fun story with dinosaurs that is unique yet easy to follow story for the audience.
This first post was to explain the beginning stages behind my idea and overall talking about why I chose to create it , the next few posts will go further into the creative process and artistry behind my animated short, there you can see Work in progress pieces, Animatics and eventually the final product. My intentions behind constructing my blog this way is so that it is easier to read and follow along, informative in that you can understand the idea from my perspective in the creati
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