Idle sprites - from concept to pixel art

Although I know that having made fully rendered graphics for the entire game (ie choosing a resolution and drawing it all) would have been slightly more within my comfort zone, I was determined to for once, make an entire project on pixel art. After comming along with some of the main characters' concept art  that mainly where made as promotional art I started making the conversion into in-game graphics.

I knew I was going to make big sprites and stay away from 8 or 16 bit graphics as I wanted to portraid a nice amount of detail. 

The first character I wanted was obviously the main character Kamea, which pretty much has been used as a reference for the rest of the level. Because she's meant to be quite short, all the other characters would normally feel quite tall, therefore I had to think of a way for the sprites to look approachable (with some exceptions). 

From the concept art, Kamea kept quite a lot of features. Same happen with the nymphs Alba And Kera, but in the case of Teles and Azmer it was a total remake from the original concept image, mainly to fit the scene.

I've already talked about the animation for Kamea. She was clearly the most challenging one due to having motion. The rest of the characters only have an idle animation. I was literally make a breathing 2 frame animation, but challenged myself to a bit of extra motion, and managed to get something a bit more exciting in 6 frames for each character:

Alba and Kera

Azmer

 Edric

 Teles

. 

Must admit that pixel art animation is not easy, but I enjoyed animating Teles and the nymphs the most. 

I want to try more flames and liquids next time! :)

Sprite Animation

I've done some work before related to animation in games, yet it always amazes me how hard it is to get it to look right, specially when there are several quick actions the player must make. In this case I'm lucky that the level doesn't feature any complicated mechanics as this keeps the animations to the minimal, giving me more time to work on them and get some fluid movement.

At this point in time I'm already behind, therefore I don't have the luxury of animating every single aspect of the game, yet Kamea is obviously the character that will have most of my attention.

Ryan agreed from the beginning to help me out by comming out with some rough animations which I could the draw over and fit the sprite. This is the walking cycle he came up with:

Knowing tthe amount of work he's got with his own project, I didn't feel like asking him for any corrections or any othe cycles, therefore I opted to adventure myself on the animation process.

No matter how much I looked for video reference I couldn't find something that I felt right so I had to make my own reference (which will never see the daylight ever). 

The idle idea didn't require reference at all as it was just a simple breathing movement, eye blinking, ear moving and perhaps a bit of exaggeration on the movement of the hair, mainly to accentuate the idle animation.

The runnin was a challenge as it was a 10 frame animation with all different frames. The character is not fully on side view as I keep this cartoony feeling of 'always looking at the camera' and that made the refencing a bit difficult. I managed with the front arm to give a bit of depth feeling, but I failed to do the same with the hair. I was quite pleased with the outcome for this running cycle as I tend to always get it weird looking, specially when it's a run that loops endlessly.

For the jump and fall I thought about making a proper animation that included a bit of anticipation, but no matter how I wanted it to fit it in, it will always look weird as the fluidity of the character in play doesn't include that small pause needed. At the end I decided to stick with only two frames for the jump (because of the determined hight that she can jump) and 3 for the fall (in case the player falls from a higher place).

Hopefully I'll have enough time to fit in a climbing animation, other wise I'll have to re adapt the level with some platforms instead of climbing ropes. 

As for the rest of the NPCs I'll only stick with a very very VERY basic idle, just to make them stick out as interactive characters, but if I have more time to before the Game Republics student showreel then I'll probably add some extra frames.

Starting to get 'pixely'

Today I decided to start giving it a go to what the in-game sprite artwork is going to look like, before I carry on making complicated NPCs full of detail and colour.
Obviously I wanted to test Keara first as is the main character and she will have pretty much most of the animations.
This is just a quick test of her with a pixel line, although the final sprite will feel less linebase and the pixels more blended. The hight I'm happy with is 167px aprox., mainly because the animation of the hair might vary the over all hight.
Also today I spoke to Ryan and the process of the animation will begin. He will be helping me to get a rough animation mainly for the running/jogging animation. I couldn't resist to make a quick test for the idle, which clearly needs a lot of work, but I think is a progress overall. The main movement will happen on the hair, second by the dress. Luckily the hair won't have as much detail as in the full rendered version, as hair is not one of my strong points to draw. Later on I'll start making some test with the colours applied on pixels.

Pixel Art

According to Wikipedia:

   Pixel Art is a form of digital art, created though the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old (or relatively limited) computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobila phone games are mostly pixel art. 

Image filters (such as blurring or alpha-blending) or tools with automatic anti-aliasing are considered not valid tools for pixel art, as suck tools calculate new pixel values automatically, contrasting with the precise manual arrangement of pixel associated with pixel art. 

 Don't know if anyone notice before, but the current logo of my blog is made by pixel art. I'm not very experienced in making it, but I certainly have a big crush on people who know how to work on it. 

Sadly for me, there aren't many people out there that specialise in this form of graphics, and with technology evolving, even in mobile devices, I can see my fandom staying in memories of some of my favourite games like Final Fantasy advance or KH: Chains of memories. 

As a working process I must admit it requires a lot of dedication, as it requires a perfect idea of what you want to do and apply it in detail, pixel level detail. 

Most of this pixel art video games use an isometric view or parallel projection usually working on a 45°/30° ratio meaning that it's not a "true" isometric, but it had to be done like this due to the limitations of raster graphics that 8 and 16 bit games had. Now a days all of this can be corrected by using anti-aliasing. 

A complicated aspect I found when working on this style is that you have to have a extremely clear idea of the size of the final image. Because the work is done on pixels, the chances of stretching the image without getting weird looking or distortions are very low, so it does have a really high level of planing. 

The fact that people are using this style less and less every day doesn't take off the credit of some magnificent recent work some people have done. I hope I can manage to fit a future project where I can work with this technique and demonstrate that even with  an "old fashion" way of working the possibilities are and a good aesthetic of a game/animation can be achieved. 

Longway North

Sasha, a young Russian aristocratic girl at the end of the 19th century, dreams of the Great North and languishes over Oloukine, her grandfather, a renowned scientist and Arctic explorer, who has not returned  from his last expedition to conquer the North Pole.
He transmitted his vocation to Sasha which is far from satisfying her parents as they have already arranged for their daughter to marry.
She revolts against this destiny, glees and is resolved to going to join Oloukine a long way north. 

Video made by Sacrebleu Productions, a studio that started on 1999 in Paris, France.
My knowledge of french is almost none, so it's hard for me to understand their website, but something I did understand is that this animated film was presented to the Cartoon Movie festival in Lyon 7- 9 of march 2012.

Do I have power

Do I Have Power (2011) from Carlos De Carvalho on Vimeo.

Found this stunnin music video made for the Timber Timber song 'Do I Have Power' that was created by Carlos de Carvalho.
I wish I had found it when I was working on the 2d animation 'Isolation', but now that I'm doing some 3d this kind of work gives me ideas for other kind of twist I can give to CG styles. This also reminds me of the importance of keeping a constant art style and the possibilities that can occur when you explore and mix some tools and medias.

Check Carlos' website to see more of his work.

Isolation - Final animation

Finally and after a long day of editing, we manage to put it all together.
I'm pretty proud of what we manage to achieve in such a short time, so here it is:

At the end we found some little details that probably we'll end up fixing just for the sake of finishing the project properly, but for now this is our final version.
Also, last minute, but me and Ryan decided to submit it for the British Student Film Festival since the dead line was on the same day we completed the video we had to run and send it. Hopefully it gets on time.

So, what do you think?

DYE Fantasy

While most of the animations these days are focused on an underage audience (except some parts of japanese animation) I like to see that there are some people out there interested on bringing it to a more mature audience. The animation itself it's gorgeous and despite the mild gore it can content, I think the value of the idea, the colours and the very well textured composition makes this animation worth watching.

Just mind the blood...
       

DYE "Fantasy" Official Video by JEREMIE PERIN from TIGERSUSHI on Vimeo.

DYE "Fantasy" Official Video by JEREMIE PERIN Tigersushi and Excuse My French are pleased to present the new video for DyE's new single, Fantasy.
 Directed by animation wunderkind Jérémie Périn, the video tells the story of a group of highschool kids ready for teenage mischief. They break into the local swimming pool intending a session of innocent nightswimming, in an awkward climate of romance and apprehension. What happens next is for you to discover here.
Directed by Jérémie Périn Written by Laurent Sarfati & Jérémie Périn Artistic Direction by Mikael Robert Produced by Excuse My French / PH & Tigersushi Executive Producer : Constance Guillou Production Coordinator : Perrine Schwartz Commissioner : Jill Caytan  

Draw with me

This is one of my all time animations I've seen on DeviantArt.
It was made by Mikeinel, a digital artist from the Philippines, and a collaboration for the music with Daniel James (HybridTwo).
Mikeinel describes the video as as a story about a girl and a boy separated by an unbreakable glass, which sounds like a very simple concept, but the way he face this 'love' story was completely out of my expectations and I just cant get over the plot twist that exist in last few seconds of the animation.

Beautiful colour concept. Sort of surreal and artistic that fits the whole concept of a desert world where only the two of them exist.
The plot twist was a bit inspiration for the ending of 'Isolation'. A more psychopathic ending that enhances the desire/feeling of loneliness on your own mind.

Second Wind

One of my favorite videos on Vimeo is this short animation called 'Second Wind' as part of a project of Ian Worrel. It was a project on his final year at CalArts and the tools that he used where pencil and paper for the man and the cat line animation. It was coloured in photoshop, composited in after effects onto backgrounds constructed in photoshop out of various pieces of media (pen/ink, pencil, paint, photos).

Pretty impressive animation with a touching narrative that brings good memories of when most animations where hand drawn. Enjoy!

When working on the final editing for 'Isolation' I realised that there's loads of things we should have worked on. 

Things I notice is that probably the combination of having the backgrounds on a more artistic-looking with the simple front might be too contrasting. Probably playing more with textures would have been helpful.
Next project, I'll make sure to give the editing more time and dedication.

Isolation II

My responsibility for the animation this time was the scenario which is basically just the 'island' where the person is.
I thought it was an easy task to just do a few frames of the tree and some others for the grass, but my original plan was to do it in photoshop which didn't turn out as I expected:

The only type of animation I've done in the past were small gifts that didn't required much fluid movement, but I wanted to do it properly so I decided to drop it and give After Effects a try.
Thanks to some tutorials online and to the file that I had on photoshop already made it was just a matter of parenting and rotating to give it a great fluent move; and I say great because I almost cry when I saw how pretty it looked... Or probably it was just my excitement for seeing it moving.
Either way, after some tests, it was quite hard to get a realistic movement and because of the lack of time I had to leave it looking like a jellyfish:

For the grass it was the same process: drawing a few separate parts and parent them so that the rotation affects the children. It was easy up until the point where I had to duplicate for a ridiculous amount of copies, positioning them in front and behind the tree to give a more "3 dimensional" feeling and having to give them different timing to make it look more of natural random movement.

I'm quite happy with the outcome. I know there is lot of room for improvement, but we're running out of time. I'm pretty sure that the awesome animations that Ryan is doing for the character plus the beautiful backgrounds from Sophie will help a lot to distract people from noticing my mistakes (lol).
I hope the post production and editing doesn't end up being too complicated since Daryl and Tom are busy polishing the first poem.

Clouds

This was one of my inspirations that I found on the web. It was a final second year project of Sam Miller, a student of animation from the University of Hertfordshire in 2008.
I think the animation is beautiful and it has a really artistic touch on it. The fact that most of the backgrounds aren't as detailed as the main character gives the idea of it being a paint.
The concept is simple, but really original.
It really impressive how a small group of people can manage to make such an amazing project.
Also, not only is well animated, but I think it has really well planned shots and a positive editing.

The sound goes along very well and the voice of the mother at the end it's just awesome.
This kind of animation may look simple, but I'm pretty sure now that it takes a LOT of effort to achieve something like this.
I really hope I manage to improve the quality of my work on the coming years.

Also, check out Sam's website! It's got really nice illustrations :)

Dust

Found this video online a while ago. The animation is extremely cute (BEWARE!) and well made. The texture it has resembles a watercolour technique very well achieved, but what catches my attention the most in this case is the narrative part which in some way relates to the animation we're making for the second poem.
I now notice the importance of the music and sound effects for a film/animation and even more for those without dialogue.
Anyway, I leave you this peace of beauty <3

Poussiere-Vic Chhun, Leyla Kaddoura, and Nicolas Ughen

Zombie lad

I found this animation on my Tumblr dashboard and thought I might share it here.
I like the concept and the whole idea seems original.
The expressions of the characters are very well achieved and it reminded me of my old times watching shows like Ren & Stimpy where the characters contained expressions more grotesque and obscure that probably puts the animation/cartoon outside the range of kids allowed programs.
I'd like to have a zombie myself ♥

My Bloody Lad - Dead Walter - WIZZprod° from WIZZprod° on Vimeo.

This is the concept art for the zombie :)

Reban - life in crystals

The animation that we had to make for this project was based on a flipnote and 20 frames.
To be honest, I underestimate this process; I thought it was going to be an easy job and that 2 second animation was nothing.
At first I had an ambitious plan in mind of having Reban standing there and while his crystals and expression changed the view/camera was going to spin around him from the front to the back and at the same time zooming out. When I actually tried to draw that I realize after 3 frames that I had no clue how to make that happen.
So after that, I had in mind to make a scene showing two guards and Reban jumping down in between of them and as he hits the ground he killed both of them. Once again, a scene too complicated for 20 frames.

At the end I decided to plan more properly and be a little bit less ambitious for my first animation, and since I was working on some images related to Reban's scape from the laboratory, I decided to focus most of my illustrations and this animation for this scene, so I came with this storyboard:

Basically he jumps down to a walkway that surrounds the massive tube he was in, then jumps up to the hand rail and finally breaks through the stain glass in front of him.
This is the final result:



At the end it was composed on photoshop at 12 fps, and it didn't came out too bad...
I did wasted loads of time doing details and trying to get the crystals to change shape as well, but since is such a small animation and is in black and white, those kind of details get a little bit lost.
Another big mistake I found much later on is that he's not suppose to have the hoddie at that point of the story, but ...I suppose that's not so important at this point.

Also, I'll try next time to get a reference for movements so that I can manage to capture a more realistic scent of movement.
Anyway, this was my first attempt and as such is got some special value for me ♥

Thought of you

While thinking and doing some storyboards for my flip book animation, I decided to look at some traditional style animations. Most of the works that I found where part of famous animations and really detailed final works.

Then I came across with this impressive artist called Ryan Woodward. Apparently ever since 1995 he's been doing commercial works for Hollywood mainly, but leaving aside of all the works he has done for Warner bros. or Walt Disney Studios, I'd like to focus on one of his most recent works part of the project Conté Animated which involves concepts of exploration of the human body, 2d animation (the illusion of life), contemporary dance and experimental processes for the better understanding of art.
Putting all this forms together to support a central idea of the complexities of intimate relationships.

What I found interesting is that rather than focusing of creating a narrative that communicates a define story, he decided to explore an individual experience unique and personal that goes straight to their own sensibilities.
Just have a look at the video and you'll see what I'm talking about:

Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

Impressive isn't it?
This short was a winner award of merit in Los Angeles Cinema Festival of Hollywood Fall 2010, The Indie Fest award winner, 2D or not 2D animation Festival Golden Pencil winner and many other nominations. No wonder... animation should also be applied to some other forms of art like this one does. Expand horizons.

I know that for my tendency at the moment to do things detailed and my 0 experience on animation, I wont be able to achieve anything close to this, BUT I do intend to work a lot more in a fluid way of work and a to improve my observational skills to a higher level.

Have a look at Ryan's Conté Animated website.