Jasmine Masters, BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester.

Today we looked at character facial expressions for human and animal characters and considered how inorganic characters would express themselves. We also looked the type of props a characters would have depending on their cultural/ historical setting, as well as consider clothing folds, hair flow and side kicks within a cinematic universe.  For my side kick I decided to go with another mouse that would have similar interests to my lead character but is more cautious when it come to approaching man made things and humans in general. I still need to figure out may style for the main mouse character; but feel I am getting closer, as I want something that is seemingly realistic but had a more of a comic look to the character as it still want the mice to move the same way as they naturally would. Outside of Class. In Class.

So in this session with Moom's weight lifting, I looked at adding in slow in and out as well as looked at adding in hangtime, moving holds and overall rhythm to Moom's actions. Below is the are the following outcomes and lecture notes.  

In this weeks sketch jam with Meg, we looked at creating characters by using the shape of the colour blot we laid down and then drew over the top to create a unique/abstract characters. Below are my outcomes from the session and feel that it has opened up my concept of how to approach designing characters.

To start off this weeks life drawing we did a series of sketches revolving around having a set amount of time consisting from 1 minuet to 20 seconds. Below I mainly focused on capturing the curves and contours of the models body and focused not so much on the finer details of the bodies forms but more on the fluidity of lines in the models frame. From there I did a 30 Minuet sitting of the model in a seated pose. With this I found it tricky to capture the correct angles of the body, but through iterating the position a few times I was able to get my head around where the leading body lines lie and and get to a position where I had something similar the pose I was replicating. Unfortunately,  I had to leave earlier than I intended, but felt that I needed to get into the swing of drawing people again. So found  a few similar poses our life model would have carried out and replicated those in photoshop, leaving all the sketch lines and mistakes that you would have seen in a sketc...

To start with I looked at building up a character and scenario for them to follow. To do this I used my research to help structure my Scenario; which consisted of using real time events to cause a chain reaction within the stroyline. Production Bible 2 by Jasmine Masters From there I started to think about what a mouse would have in his home to reflect that of what he does on a day to day basis; this included bits and pieces from his day of learning: wire, buttons, watch hands, pocket watch , batteries, fairy lights etc. I also  looked at what The Borrowers (1997) used in their set designs to gain further inspiration. With this mind I started to design some props to fill the mouse's home in the wall and looked at creating a initial concept of the mouse's front door entrance. With this set design  (above) it gives an idea of the sort of space the mouse lives in, but after talking to Justin found this could be improved so that it isn't so obvious that a mouse is living in ...

Moving forward with the hotel bellhop scenario I started to look as things you would have in a hotel lobby. This came with looking at imagery to add to the lobby set in the storyboards to make it seem more real-world. Refined Storyboards: From there I then crested a 2d animatic from the refined storyboards and adding in a static effect over the top of the clip.  2D Animatic (No Sound).

Moving on from the meeting on Monday, I got chose the scenario of the Bellhop (most of us chose the scenarios we had come up with).  With this I designed a couple of costumes for the Bellhop for Moom to wear. For this I tried to keep it simple; as I really wanted his personality to come through, this consisted of adding in his scruffy attire of too small trousers, high socks and unties shoes with his Walkman in tow. Design 1. Design 2. We then discussed further in a second meeting with Alan, how we wanted to shoot the scenes since it has to be filmed from a stationary point of view. with this in mind we as a groups thought it be good to set it up as if it is being filmed through a CCTV camera. - Much like a you've been framed scenario where accidents are caught on film. So keeping this in mind, I then designed a rough storyboard to see how the scenario will play out. With this I found it hard to imagine how the set will look, but feel I got the general idea across. So moving on fro...