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! :)

Animating spaceship

Having the deadline upon me and having retarded issues with my health sure managed to get me quite behind on my schedule for the project.
As I mentioned before, the concept of my spaceship is an eye; the idea of a massive eye comming from the sky, looking at everyone and judging sure gets me the creeps, and this idea came from a while ago when I saw some pictures of the Helix Nebula also known as 'the eye of god'. Also my flatmate started watching a series called Fullmetal Alchemist and at some point towards the ending a creature summons god and he is represented as an eye behind a door of giant dimensions.

 

Now for the animation I wanted quick movements that will give a sign of desperation but also the idea of it scanning everything at an extreme speed.
I want sure of the textures when I thought of it; I had a concept of an abstract spaceship that would only resemble an eye, but at the same time hard to understand its purpose. I abandoned every spaceship concept I saw as inspiration as I wanted to make it something organic, so doors, windows and any ship-like feature was straight away ignored.

There is not shape more organic than a circle, so luckily most of the animation took place by rotating over a central pivot point, and by groping certain objects it became really easy to control individual spins and other movements.
Also to cause the effect of a pupil dilating I had to involve some scaling which gave the spaceship a bit of part on the silent narrative behind the shot; you can tell that it's looking around and also when it finds its target.

Hopefully the textures can be rebalanced in after effects to avoid looking so dump. Ill have to play a lot with transparencies and glow effects to achieve a decent effect.

Animating the alien

Having no time to keep working on the rig, I had to move on to the stage of animating the character to get things done on time. The rig had a lot of limitations and the weight　paint wasn't great either, but at least I knew what the limitations were so that I could work around them and get the best result as possible.

Having the idea of the character behaving like a lifeless entity became quite complicated and having the hair dynamics slowing down my laptop it was a matter of get rid of that idea as well. I opted for at least trying to get a sexy/innocent movement. Typing this on tumblr brought up loads of gifs looping walking cycles which makes it really easy to study.

Animation - Iron Heart

Very last minute after having finished all the props and having everything in place, me and Ryan decided to focus on the animation while Sophie was finishing the textures for the scene.
I took the task to animate the second part of the animation that can be broken down as:

-Tabitha finds Albus
-Gets close to him
-Notices the key next to him
-Winds him up with the key
-Albus "wakes up" scaring her
-he stands up looking intimidating
-He asks for a second and turns around
-Tabitha is curious of what he started to make
-he turns back with a flower like object offering it to her
-She gets happy and accepts the flower

Unfortunately my part of the animation didn't get to be worked on unity with different lights and camera effects because of time constrains, so I'll just put a play last direct from Maya just to give an idea of my work.

The animation isn't perfect, it was made with little time and also the characters had a lot of restrictions with their movements, but for what it is, I'm really proud of it :-)

Hydraulics

One of the important parts for Albus movements were the hydraulic pistons included in both legs and arm.
The idea is that despite his movements, for cartoonish as they might be, they needed to be constrained to each other at all time to keep this feeling of being a mechanic character. Matt gave me a good idea to aim constrain them one another and, on its own, it was working just fine. The problem came when I had to constrain those constrains to parts of geometry that where already bond to the rig.

I found this very useful video online that basically takes you through a good way of not only make functional pistons, but also how to "cheat" by making an infinite constrain between the master and slave parts of the hydraulic part.

Moving Alien

Having started our own project, I really didnt wanted to waste time on making a decen texture for the alien, so I apologise for it.
Also the unity file from which I worked to make a web version on the turntable of the alien went corrupted for some reason, and all I could do at the moment is to put a playblast of the small idle animation I made.
Bare in mind that I did this in matter of a few minutes during class and it was all because we wanted to try the scripting on Unity that would allow us to play different idles in a random way, just to show a variety of expressions of the character.

(I'm so sorry you had to watch this) I probably bring shame to the college by showing this, but I promise the animation for our own project will be of much better quality; this was only a quick test.

The Backwater Gospel

Came across this video on tumblr the other day called "The Backwater Gospel" and so far I've seen it easily over 20 times. 

It just happens to be an incredible piece of animation part of The Animation Workshop in Denmark and not only the animation itself but the style that it has makes me drool every time I watch it. 

A well done animation that it's aimed not for kids it's probably something that you dont see a lot, specially with the quality that this posses. 

Feast your eyes: 

Amazing isn't it! 

Well I was really glad to find the making off, and seriously would love to do a project with this level of character and definition in style. 

On the video I'll put below you can see the way they worked in facial expressions and how little details become incredibly important, like the little "pen strokes" that come off the silhouettes of mostly everything. Props and scenery just works in a perfect harmony. 

This video has cause a massive impact on me...seriously. It is actually making me think that this could probably be the way I want to take my dissertation project or at least a personal project, but for now, enjoy the process of the making of The Backwater Gospel. 

Pandore

On the clouds of the mythic Mount Olympus, a young girl unleashes a dangerous monster from a mysterious box. Is he match for the little devil that set him free? 

A pretty cute and funny animation produced at GOBELINS, l'ecole de l'image in 2009. The closest style I can think of is Zelda wind waker, but never the less, I'm a big fan of this kind of animation. The texturing matches the style in a unique way and the whole cartoony way is really charming.
The monster in specific is the character that I believe had more work on, as his movements are really well done, it has a lot of personality and the design itself is fantastic.

Credits: Created, Directed and Animated by Meryl Franck, Elen Le Tannou, Nicolas Caffarel, Marion Stinghe, Benoit Guillaumot. Sound design by Vincent Hazard. Voice of monster by Das Panzer Benz, Girl Voice by Kaycie Chase. Music by Pascal Franck (Mathilde Alloubert on harpe, Isabelle Hebrard on flutes, Gae Ascal (mastering and remix). Sound Effects by Andre Fevre, Sound engineer Clement Naline.

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.

Jabberwocky - Game Cinematic

This was a game cinematic for the game Jabberwocky by Blur Studio. I found it by coincidence when I was looking for the famous Lewis Carroll's poem that appeared on trhough the Looking-Glass, and what Alice found there  (turns out the game was relate to it).

The animation seems stylised in a cartoonish way, and the colours are my main inspiration for my game scene.
I tend to find non realistic, but well made styles like this one really attractive since it gives you the freedom to be more creative in a fantasy world.

The design was made by Todd Harris and the animation supervisor, layout artist and animator for some scenes, Leo Santos. Unfortunately his is an unreleased game, which is a shame because I could see a lot of potential with this quality of work.

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.

Little & Large

Finally!
This is the final piece of my first 3D animation:  "Little & Large"
I'm really glad that I manage to get it done on time, since I had some technical issues on the way.
Loads of room for improvement, but I'm really happy with the outcome considering the amount of time I had to make it and the little knowledge I have of the software.
Also, I'm really thankful that my friend Adam Fergler, once again, accepted to work with me and made and awesome melody for it.

I'd love to have some feedback about it!!!   ... if I manage to get a better computer soon, I might come back to it and fix some of the little details that keep annoying me every time I see it.

oh! and just for the record...it is inspired on my actual working space (I just couldn't get to get aaaall the details)

E.T.A.

This is nice short animation called "E.T.A." made by Junkworks.
It has a really simple plot, but it is driven in a way that makes it outstanding in some way. No surprise it won the   Best animation award Break Point 2008 in Germany and the Best New talent award on the Aarhus Filmfestival 2008 in Denmark.
This shows you the power of only one Director (Henrik Bjerregaard), two modellers and animators (Soren Andersen and Michael la-Cour) and one music composer and editor (Rasmus Kudahl).
Space topics are definitely not part of my main interest, but when something is well done as this, I not only appreciate it, but I also enjoy it.

 

Growing up

Growing Up from Lucas Ridley on Vimeo.

One of the things I like to look at is rather than following only mainstream work is following track of some other students from different universities around the world.
This time it was Lucas Ridley who caught my attention with his impressive animations that he made while  being in his student years at Vancouver Film School under the program of 3D animation and visual effects.

The one above, 'Growing up', seems to have a similar topic as ours for this project (Little and Large) which made it even better.
The animation it self, regardless of the amazing illumination and well done textures, is really fluent and vivid. There might be some tiny little mistakes on some parts, but being a student and achieving this quality is something really impressive.

Taking from this not only to put effort on my future animations it also encourages me to do more work with the post production of my projects.

Matryoshka texture

After finishing the main parts of the scene for the animation I wanted to start getting some textures just to start testing the looks of it. 

This is just a scene of the scene before importing the dolls into it, but after a bit I added more stuff and change the whole arrangement of it:

I know the scene is simple, specially because my original plan was to recreate my own desk, but then doing too many details might cause the scene to be too distracting of the actual subject and also really time consuming (which is something we all lack ). This picture below is more or less the final arrangement of the scene. Even scanned the posters and post-its from my walls. 

This picture below is trying some other textures, like some for the dolls that are done and also trying the bump on the book and desk. I hope that putting a scan of an actual manga I have in my room doesn't get me into trouble lol.  

Even now I'm struggling with defining the style for my animation. I think is one of my biggest mistakes from the begging because I didn't established a style to follow and now I hope it doesn't turn out too mixed since some of the textures are too cartoonish and the rest aiming more to realistic. 

I'll try my best to blend this with the illumination. 

What do you think so far? any suggestions? 

How to of how to train your dragon

How to train your dragon of Dream Works has recently entered my list of favourite animated films and recently I found in youtube this video that shows the behind the scenes:

Being in the process of animating my russian dolls made me think again of the amount of steps and hard work that need to be put on an animation, specially if it's one that's going to appear on the cinema.
Team work is what I got more from this video. It is obvious that doing everything on your own makes things easy since you have control of every aspect, but the level of skills is different for every process and that can affect the ending product of your final piece.
On studios such as DreamWorks it must be really important to get a really good team, experts on their own fields, but more important, a team that's on tune with what the project is all about. Style, graphics, movement, sound; everything has to be completely synchronised and that is something that I admire from studios like this one.

Alma

This is a beautiful animation called Alma, directed by Pixar's animator Rodrigo Blaas.
Having people from pixar working on it can probably give you an idea of the quality this piece of work has. The thing that caught my attention from it is not only the amazing graphics, but the way they adapted this well know style into a more spooky narrative. Something always bothered me is when my parents used to tell me that cartoons are only for kids, when there's actually a big potential to make other type of plots without having to necessarily rely on dark and realistic CG.

PlotThe film has no spoken dialogue, just lighthearted music playing throughout the background.
A young girl is walking down a snow-covered street of a small French town. She stumbles across a wall with names written in chalk on it. She adds her name, Alma, to the wall.
Opposite the wall is what appears to be a closed toy shop. The doll in the window looks like Alma, and she is fascinated by it. She looks away briefly, and when she looks back the doll has moved from the window to a table in the center of the shop. She finds the door is locked, and angrily leaves, but hears the door open as she walks away. She excitedly walks in and the door closes slightly; there is no one else in the store.
Alma stumbles upon a small boy doll riding a tricycle which has fallen over. She pick it up and places it on the floor upright, and it heads towards the door, but the door closes on its own. While the little boy continues to slam against the door, Alma sees that the doll has somehow moved up to the shelves. She climbs up the shelf and reaches for the doll's face. In an instant the doll's eyes move, and a quick flash of images, and suddenly the lens is through the glass eyes of a doll, sitting on a shelf in the shop. As the camera pans away, we see that Alma has become the doll and is looking around the store like all the other dolls, trapped and unable to move.
As the camera pans out, another doll appears in the window suggesting the appearance of the next victim.

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.