Week 5 – Making my self portrait

BRIEF:

Make a 5 second “self portrait” animation using after effects with 24fps, 1920×1080 px set up.

<> It needs a change of narrative rather than just a moving image. (Different beginning and ending)

<> Needs colour, texture, composition, repetition and rhythm

I decided to work on something more physical this time, rather than making something experimental like my stop motion. This is so that I have a grasp on how to make proper character animation as well. I was quite inspired by “Bluey” ‘s stylistic choices in character design, and thus my sketching process begins.

So far, I wanted to keep working on the cherry that I made – since I love how I sculpted that. To go off of that, I decided to create a rat. To link this to the brief, I’d consider myself to have a rat like personality, where I sniff any food that I eat, and hoarding items that interests me. When picturing the sequence, I interpreted a lot of swirls, or (the motion of it) since at times I feel like I’m just riding on the waves of confusion and life, whilst cruising on it to guide me to where I’m supposed to go (in a way). Although I pictured making a washing machine element, depending on time restraints and timing, I would further cut down elements when I need to.

Bluey’s Character design mini analysis:

Image taken from thumbnail of the Official Bluey Youtube channel “It’s Summer Time! | Bluey”

Focusing more on the character designs, they use all three main shape languages, but forms them in a way where the characters looks blocky, but still soft and round through the rounded corners.

Most of the shapes within the character don’t have an outline – and the outlines outside the main figures differentiates the character out of the background in a non-distracting way using a darker value to the colour of it’s shape.

I noticed that they used around 4 colours (which has very calm changes of hues and contrasts using analogous and split complimentary colours)

I think that I would like to implement the colour palette and shape language into my work to create a visually appealing and overall connected and well put sequence. However, since I would prefer a textured outline or more blocked out shapes, I wouldn’t concern myself with outlines for now.

Work In Progress:

Making the main shapes and dissecting the body (so that the mouth can open)

At the first stage, I mainly focused on making the puppets and the timing of each main keyframes. Because I can go back on the frames and elements later onwards, getting the main actions done was my main priority. I tried to keep the main colour palette as simple as possible – using only 4 colours with a semi quadratic colour scheme. I chose these colours mainly since I want to evoke moody ambience, with some suspense for the rat, and also to just have the rat and the cherry pop out of the background further to be focused upon. The negative dark blue space also makes it feel like they are floating in the abyss and space.

First draft of video:

During the time of animating this, I thought that this by itself could be passable. However after a second look, the rat felt quite stiff and creepy.

Animating tiny elements of the rat:

I went in and accentuated secondary actions of the ears moving so that it gives and illusion of the rat moving into frame rather than zooming out. I also added some sniffing from the rat for them to interact with the object further.

This was me figuring out media encoder to start exporting my work:

Second draft of the video:

For now, I was quite satisfied with the motions, and look forward to Monday’s workshop on adding further texture. I’m also planning to ask my tutors about their opinions as well.