Character Animation | Work in Progress

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS.

THIS IS NOT A FINAL.

Here is my character animation's work in progress. I feel she is very stiff. Upon asking some colleagues for critique, they said that I need to finish her feet, which is something I have found myself procrastinating on. Also, they commented on the unnatural motion of her legs, again something I have to fix. Finally, they commented on speed of the arms, something I have always struggled with. These are things I am all going to try to fix before even working on what I consider the final.

I would love to hear anyone's opinions of the background colors, and if they are okay and not to contrasting to the main character.

WATCH HERE: https://youtu.be/PGykZOHyats

Character Animation | Personality

(Edited this post on March 5th, 2018 to include definition of project, and character name)

This project can be described as designing a character and communicating her personality through the movement created with her. The latter of this project will include adding her to an environment to demonstrate a certain feeling.

I have given my character the name of Poppy! I chose this name because many japanese fashion statements can be described as pop, and that is very much what she is based off of. She is also given the name because her color is supposed to "pop". Finally, I gave her this name due to the poppy flower. I hope I am able to characterize her based not only off her names, but the movement given to her.

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In class we were asked to think about the characters we had started designing. We were to think about the aspects of the character, how the personality is seen through the interactions of the character, and how the perspective of the character may change. What emotions describe your character? Who is your character?

I wrote a quick description during class:
My character is a sweet, poppy, happy type. She may be similar to the Japanese pop singers. She is happy, perky, young, innocent, and very very positive. I picture her falling in love easily. Very cute - kawaii - and she likes to have fun and enjoy those around her. I really picture her being a popstar or a cheerleader. She is supposed to be young and dream like. For a defining reaction, she would say "you should try out for the team," or "totally" and flash her peace sign.

We were then asked to think about the clothing, how her clothing might help define her personality. For example, someone shy might have a scarf.

I wrote a quick description:

Her clothing is cute, perky, and movable. I want her arms and legs to move to show her happy, open, and agile. Her shoulders would be open to the audience, and her long arms allow for reactions that talk with the hands. Large eyes with glitter and sparkles that show her interest. I chose the color pink for the feminist qualities, and the lighter shade to achieve the innocent look. 

I have to really focus on how the design of the character will insist the movement. I have begun pulling apart the character on to separate layers.

Cultural Myth Stopmotion | Final Version for Class

Click the link to see the video:

https://vimeo.com/256430629

Cultural Myth Stop Motion | Rough Draft

Here is the Rough Draft for the Cultural Myth stopmotion created for class. We originally imported all images into Adobe Premiere, not using the sequence. We found that when the images are arranged by type correctly in the folder, we can import them in a sequence.

I had made the audio to fit the 1:23 seconds (non-sequenced) images. Unfortunately, we had to go with this version because we did not have time to recraft the audio for class.

The version I am uploading is low quality and has the Premiere Preset Titles, not our finished After Effects titles we worked on. I will upload the next rough draft before the final.

If I was to do this again, I would change the time of day and working personally hands on with Michaela. We would change the length and the mixing of certain things, along with the way we labeled things and the centering of the images. I would also fix the audio to match the image sequence - something we are interested in doing for the finals.

Cultural Myth Stop Motion | Storyboard

Here is a list of ingredients:

• Sugar - Equality
• Butter - Possesions
• Vanilla - Sunshine
• Egg - Friendships
• Baking Soda - Education
• Water - Exploration
• Salt - Spirituality
• Chocolate - Love

Cultural Myth Stop Motion | Styleframes & Narrative

I tried to symbolize something within the style frames. Unfortunately, we had agreed upon using my partner's kitchen for the set up, so I did not have specific things. I chose to take pictures of eggs because those were items that did not change. This was supposed to show that the style was normal pictures. I used two different lightnings to describe whether there would be artificial light or just overhead light.

AGAIN, the point was to show that the style would be ordinary camera style frames.

We decided are narrative would proceed as follows - first, we would write out happiness in the flour, spread across the counter. Then, we would mix everything into one bowl, dumping the bowl on top of the happiness. We would kneed it so far into the dough that the happiness would be gone. Then, we would bake the cookie.

We have mentioned before that each ingredient will have a label. We have decided we will label directly on the ingredients. A list of ingredients symbolism will be included in my next post along with my storyboard.