Animation Fundamentals - Project 1
14.5.2024 - 11.6.2024 (Week 4 - Week 15)
Vanessa Kei Kurniadi /
0360525
Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Animation
Fundamentals - Project 1: Character and Layout Design
CHARACTER DESIGN
fig 1.1 Character design instructions
My initial plan is to make a female character with a nice body shape and
tender yet sharp expression in her face. So I tried to make a sketch in
Ibis Paint.
fig 1.2 My initial character design sketch, week 5 (22.5 2024)
Then I remembered Mr Kamal saying that a good character design is one
where you can see and distinguish their silhouette from other
characters'.
So I tried to add some features that will work quite well for
silhouettes. I decided that changing her appearance into that of a
valkyrie works quite well. I am not planning to actually make her a
valkyrie, so instead of a full body armor, I gave her some imperial
warrior clothings.
I also added my own little touch which is to give her a pair of little
cape on each of her shoulders. It's basically just for aesthetics and no
other particular uses.
fig 1.3 Changing the appearance of my character, week 5
(22.5.2024)
Once I am satisfied with how she looks, I started to work on her lineart
and then give her some colors. Since the red is very strong and might hinder the distinguishing between lines, I tried to make some variations by changing the inner side of the cape a darker shade of red than the others. This way the red looks less strong in the overall look.
fig 1.3 Doing lineart and colors on my character, week 5
(22.5.2024)
Final Result:
fig 1.4 Character design final result 1, week 5 (22.5.2024)
I also did some full body poses for the character design. For this, Ibis
Paint helped me a lot with their pose assets. I looked for some poses
that I think could work, and then I set them up in the canvas, while
thinking on what emotions will fit them.
After I think they are good enough for me to continue, I proceeded with
the line art and then coloring them.
fig 1.5 Working in the expression and pose sheet, week 6
(27.5.2024)
Upon feedback, Mr Kamal said that the character is okay, just gotta take
note that I will need to animate the cape later, which I already taken
consideration off.
On the other hand, even though the poses aren't bad, Mr Kamal suggested
that I try on different poses other than standing, like the sitting down
pose, etc. But silhouette wise, it's already okay. He also noted that
it'll be better if I use a landscape canvas for this work, and make them
consistent for the other designs as well.
Last but not least, I still need to do a bust-up shot for the expression
sheet of the character as well as the basic turn-around character design
sheet.
When I was given the feedback, I was actually in the middle of making
the turn-around character sheet. So I just focused on that one first
before makin the other sheets and the revision.
For the character turnaround sheet, I used a template I found from the
internet. I removed the background and align them at the center of the
canvas. And then I skipped the sketching phase and directly make the
lineart for the character sheet. Since I am making a front and back
view, the symmetry ruler works wonders for this project.
fig 1.6 Working in the character turn-around character sheet, week
6 (30.5.2024)
After I am satisfied with the lineart, I directly proceeded to color
them in the color palette that I've made from the previous works
fig 1.7 Using color palette from previous work to consistently
color the characters, week 6 (30.5.2024)
fig 1.8 Finishing the turn-around character sheet, week 6
(30.5.2024)
Then I started on my character design revisions.
Firstly, I transferred 2 of the 5 poses that I made that I think are the
best, and put them in the new canvas. This way I won't have to redo
everything from scratch.
For this, I tried to look for other poses in Ibis Paint but the free
ones aren't suitable for the pose that I need. So I looked through the
internet and took some poses that I want to use as guide. Thankfully I
managed to find quite good ones. I imported them to ibis paint, erased
the parts that aren't necessary, and arrange them so they are neatly
placed within the canvas.
Then I lower their opacity and make a sketch.
fig 1.9 Making my new pose sheet, week 6 (31.5.2024)
fig 1.10 Finishing up the pose sheet for my character, week 6
(1.6.2024)
Firstly, I looked for head drawing reference on the internet and took one
that I think would be suitable for my work. After a bit, I found one that
I think should work.
After the positions are arranged, I started to do the sketches while
thinking what expressions I should draw. I came up with sad, neutral,
scared, shy, and annoyed.
fig 1.12 Working on the expression sheet, week 7 (7.6.2024)
Doing the closeup shot has its own challenges, which is that I need to pay
more attention to how the little details such as eye and mouth to create a
very different expression. And while it would be nice to exaggerate the
expression to make it even clearer like how a character design usually is,
I already stated at my initial design that this character is the calmer
and more poker faced type of person, so I kept in mind not to make her too
"expressive".
fig 1.13 Finishing the expression sheet, week 7 (7.6.2024)
Final Results
fig 1.14 Initial character design final look, week 7 (7.6.2024)
fig 1.15 Character expression sheet final look, week 7 (7.6.2024)
fig 1.16 Character design pose sheet final look, week 7 (7.6.2024)
fig 1.17 Character design turn-around sheet final look, week 7
(7.6.2024)
LAYOUT DESIGN
fig 2.1 Layout design instruction
Since my character seems to have a fantasy and older era clothing, I had
to look for images that aren't too modern, and I want it to have a bit of
a fantasy touch to it.
After some time of thinking and scrolling through Pinterest for a good
background, I decided that I want to draw my character sitting in the
handrailing of a castle balcony at night looking at a beautiful night
view.
Visual references
fig 2.2 My visual references, week 6 (27.5.2024)
After some thoughts, I also decided to use the 3rd picture for my
visual reference as a base for my background. I was gonna use the
night version of it, but I think the daylight one will be more
useful for me to catch the details in the drawing.
fig 2.3 Artwork progress: making the sketch and lineart for the main background, week 6 (27.5.2024)
Of course, when I'm semi tracing, I don't want to just completely
redraw the scene. I want to add my own touch to it to reduce, if not
remove, plagiarism. But one thing is that since I'm not really good
at drawing door texture and I'm a bit tight on time, I decided to
use a door texture from the
Artfactory.com\
For decoration, I also use a leave brush to add some vines and
plants in the pathway/ balcony area so it's not too empty and
lonely. Not only that, it also helps to create the atmosphere of an
old vintage castle.
fig 2.4 Artwork progress: Lineart, shadow, and decoration,
with door texture from internet, week 6 (29.5.2024)
After the lineart process is done, I proceeded in doing some
coloring and adding some effects here and there to finish up the
artwork. As easy as this sounds, this artwork took me more than 9
hours over the span of weeks to finish. But maybe that is also
because I was meddling too much with the details and thus making
very slow progress. Not to mention after flying back home in week
14 I had so many family events to attend.
Progress Dump:
fig 2.5 My work progress dump, week 7-15 (4.5.2024 -
4.8.2024)
fig 2.6 My artwork time-lapse, week 15 (3.8.2024)
Final Result
fig 2.7 Layout design final result, week 15 (3.8.2024)
FEEDBACKS
Week 5
- It's better to make the canvas horizontal and use the same size for all the designs so it looks nice and consistent.
- Add the turnaround sheet and expression sheet.
- The character silhouette are okay, but maybe can try out poses other than standing up for variation.
REFLECTION
Experience
During the time when I was tasked with this project, I was actually overwhelmed by both other module projects and my own personal things. Not only it took me every bit of the will in me to start or continue what I was working, I was also very distracted and unmotivated during the making of this task.
That aside, when I was feeling like it, I could actually take all my sweet time and experiment on different things while drawing because not only I was challenged with drawing so many new things, I also had to get used to the drawing app that I was using, which is Ibis Paint and Procreate.
Observation
I noticed that my friends are doing one hell of a goo job with their own works, and sometimes I just feel like I'm a bit behind in my skills both in drawing and animating. But that just means I gotta push my limit a bit further and see what I can do with my own hands and knowledge.
Findings
When I was working on this task, I had the opportunity to test the perks of both Ibis Paint and Procreate.
Ibis Paint has a perk that it is actually made especially with my type of drawing (anime and comic drawing), so it has so many featured that helped out with the drawing process. It has the stabilizer that works so good, a really nice and smooth drawing experience, rulers, symmetry guide, etc. But the downside is that since it's a free app, it has a few ads when opening another canvas or even around the work area at all times. Some of the awesome locked features can be opened by watching an ad, but not all can be used that way.
Procreate is in my opinion suitable for more kinds of art style. It can go from painting to illustration if we need it. It also has a lot of brush variety even in the vanilla version. The work area is aesthetic and pleasing to the eye with the dark background color (I think ibis paint also has this feature but it is locked for free users). It also has the line correction for straight lines and arcs and even simple shapes. But what I think is a bit unnecessary is the way that we need to set a layer as reference layer if we don't wanna color the whole canvas. Especially for me that likes to do line arts in different layers if the drawing is too complicated.
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