Computer Animation II: First Project

Motion Graphics: First Assignment

First Motion Graphics Project based off of a
comic book design I did for Media Studies
Design.

My porch model for my 3D project in the works.

Order and Chaos VI

Here is a revision of the title shot and Riley's character. I changed the names to fit their personalities more.

Order and Chaos Part V

Here are some storyboard sketches and a few storyboard panels.

Order and Chaos Part IIII

I'm starting to work on the storyboard for my sequence. I decided I wanted to show the two girls in a couple of different settings like the library and the cafeteria together. You would see Wendy Order being her neat clean and tidy self while Jenny would be her crazy, chaotic and care-free self to show the extreme differences between the two characters. I want to end the sequence showing the two girls playing in a band together and how both order and chaos can even out to a compromised outcome.

Order and Chaos Part III

Character updates and logo:

Order and Chaos Part II

To go more in depth with my final project, I want to dive more into how the mentioned artists will be influencing my work. First and foremost, Tim Burton is one of my heroes. He is the person who peaked my interest in animation. His style of characters with long, slender bodies and larger heads with unique qualities and quirks has influenced my Jenny character. He uses a lot of pointed shapes with curling limbs. I plan to model Jenny's bedroom after this sort of art style.

I have recently learned of the animator and director Adam Elliot. His animations explore the realities of human nature. Everyone experiences humor and tragedy alike in their lives, not like the normal tales we see by Disney. He explores handicaps and illnesses and brings them to light in a realistic manor. He shows us the true colors of life. I like how he makes ordinary people unique and interesting. I want to use his character personalities to help show the differences between an ordered life and a chaotic life. He just brings a lot of life to his characters I have yet to see in any other animators. I think taking some of the trivial details that occur throughout our everyday lives could be employed into interesting episodes for my idea.

I have read up on Ray Caesar and he is quite an interesting man. I encourage you to read his bio at http://www.raycaesar.com/pages/bio.html. It is one of the most interesting bios I have ever had the pleasure of reading. I also found it interesting that his illustrations are computer generated and they are 3d images to boot! That impressed me because I have just started the journey of learning maya and it is not an easy program. I feel like I can relate to his work a bit more now and it gives me an interesting idea of what the possibilities of the medium include. His art mixes bright colors with victorian clothed, gothic style figures. I like the expressions of the models and the realistic colors he uses on them. He also makes humans with unique builds such as animal like parts or mechanical parts. His art has a sort of blend of characteristics I am looking to mimic.

Yoko D'holbachie is an artist that attracts my intention because of her use of lots of color and rounded forms. I like how she uses an entire range of colors for one single piece. She also creates unique creatures which kind of remind me of Dr. Seuss, one of my favorite childhood authors. I also like how her creatures had a sort of patchwork stuffed animal feal. I plan to use her style to design Wendy's room and her wardrobe.

The character of Wendy Order is going to be your typical uptight bookworm. She does well in school and is very intelligent. She keeps her room neat and clean and tries to keep her life to a schedule. She wouldn't experience much adventure if it wasn't for her best friend Jenny Chaos. Jenny is an artist who unlike her appearnce, perefers to paint light and fluffy things with bright colors. Wendy does have the surprising twist that she and Jenny play in a band together. Wendy rocks the guitar and Jenny plays the drums. The two learn a lot from each other. For example, Wendy keeps Jenny's focus on her studies when needed and Jenny teaches Wendy how to let loose and have a good time. The two differing personalities play off of each other well and teaches the girls how their different traits fills in the other ones flaws or empty spaces. The two attend highschool and throughout the series go through experiences such as crushes and heart break. Monstrous science projects with melfunctions, crazy wardrobes and speradic bullying. All of the scenarios we ourselves faced in highschool. I want the cartoon to be more realistic and personal to the viewer.

Order and Chaos

Through this project, I am going to illustrate the words order and chaos. I want to create a story board for a title sequence to a cartoon. The cartoon is going to be about two friends with very different personalities. Throughout the series, they learn how both order and chaos have functional contributions that can add to a very ordered life in Wendy's situation and an extremely chaotic life in Jenny's situation.

Artistically speaking, I want to add both elements of Tim Burton, Henry Selick, and Adam Elliot's gothic styles with the brightly colored styles of Ray Caesar and Yoko D’holbachie. I want to combine opposing styles into one to show the extreme differences of the characters. These are two styles I am really drawn to and am delighted to combine into one cartoon. I think it will have an interesting and unique result. Pictured below are inspirational images of the artists mentioned above.

Cake Stop Motion

For this piece, I want to create a short stop motion to show the flow of movement and create visual illusions. I want to go through the process of making and baking a cake using a Lego man as an assistant to the baker. The whole idea of stop motion for me is to create the illusion that inanimate objects can in fact actually move. I will mix pieces of live action with pieces of stop motion to get things like eggs and the box to move by themselves. The Lego man will be getting the ingredients put into the bowl. I will use transitions to show the Lego man putting in an ingredient that is not needed and then reversing the images to make it appear as if he is taking the ingredient back out. I will also use transitions to help with repetition of certain parts of the film. For example, when the Lego man has to dump several cups of mix into the bowl. I am going to have the Lego man seem to fall into the cake and get baked. Then when the cake is done, the figure will emerge from the cake and frost it. I plan to use both camera photos and video stills to create this short video. I will also use the natural light from my kitchen to complete the project.

Here is a youtube link to my project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppE85HB8tl4

Camera Lens Project

For this project, I am given various different camera views to depict in any medium and any fashion I decide to use. I am using a series of seven images to tell a story from a song I chose called Carolina Drama by the Raconteurs. Each of these images are going to use different mediums that I will combine together for each panel in a pop art type of style.

The song tells the story of a woman and her two sons who live together in a house in South Carolina with the woman's boyfriend. Billy, the oldest son, witnesses his mother's boyfriend trying to strangle and beat his father, the priest, to death in their home from an outside window. Upset and disgusted by this terrible display of aggression, Billy grabs the bottle of milk from the back porch and storms in the house. He strikes and kills the boyfriend with the glass bottle and his mother tells him that the priest is his father and he had been paying all the bills. At the end of the song, the younger brother of Billy enters the room with a bottle of Gin and the milkman's hat drunken and singing.

I am going to use digital photographs that I plan to manipulate in photoshop to show the seven different camera views. I also plan to use filters to get different textures for the photographs. I am going using hand drawn elements to make the images graphic and unique. In each image, I want to include a comic book style narration or dialogue box with the lyrics from the song.