For the second part of this unit, I plan on adding a practical element to the project. I plan to experiment with things that are related to my essay such as 3D modelling and 2D drawing/animating. I also thought that I could try merging the two to create a similar style to works such as the Spider-Verse films. I plan to use the Blender software to experiment with 3D model concepts and the Procreate software when it comes to creating the 2D concept art while replicating the style of my practitioners. The way I am going to experiment with this is I am going to use some of my own character designs as then I am also learning more instead of recreating my practitioner's existing concept art.
Before starting this however, I will refer back to my previous research while also finding more when needed, my further research will consist of looking more into my practitioners (The concept artists behind the Spider-Verse films) All of the sources used throughout this unit will be featured within the bibliography section of my website.
Below is a list of the tasks I plan to complete in order throughout this practical unit.
- Refer back to my previous research & establish target audience.
- Look deeper into my practitioners - looking at specific artists, looking into their social medias/ websites if they have them and looking online for further information and examples.
- Research 2D animation basics.
- Research 3D modelling & Blender basics.
- Create some concept art based on 2D research.
- Practice 2D animation basics - learn from tutorials and experiment.
- Experiment with the Blender software- learn from tutorials.
- Present work to the group and gain feedback.
- Evaluate work based on feedback and opinions.
Something that I did before starting the practical element to this unit was look more deeply into the work and the art style of my practitioners.
The sketches done to the right and below were created by the artist Jesús Alonso Iglesias who did work not only for the Spider-Verse films but also for the film 'Puss in Boots: The Last Wish' which was created in a very similar style to Spider-Verse which is why I felt that he would be a good concept artist to look into.
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Iglesais is known for his unique style and expressive comic art, the reason I have chosen him as one of my practitioners for the 2D concept side of things is because while I do have a lot of 2D drawing experience, I feel that there is much inspiration and learning to be found from looking at this artist's work. Things I believe I need to work on within my sketches and concepts are things such as expression, not just with faces but also with body language, as something I have struggled with the most throughout my journey as an illustrator is anatomy for different, more expressive poses. I also think it could be a good idea - like the above example - for me to experiment with drawing characters interacting with each other as I feel this is a necessary skill I would need to have to make my drawings and characters feel more natural.
Another artist I thought could be good to look into is Shiyoon Kim, who is quite a well known concept artist as he has worked on the art for many artistically striking Walt Disney films such as: Tangled, Big Hero 6, Wreck it Ralph and Zootropolis.
He is also known for his work designing the characters from Spider-Man : Into The Spider Verse. In my opinion this artists work is absolutely phenomenal which is why I wanted to study his art for this task. All of the films he has worked on for both Disney and Sony Pictures Animation have been beautiful to me and I would really like to develop my skills further towards this artists level. Below are some examples of Kim's work and some short analysis’ and observations to go with it.
Above, are some facial expression concepts Kim created for the character Miles Morales. As can be seen above this artist conveys expression and emotion extremely well in his art through exaggerating certain features. You can tell exactly what the character is feeling very easily just by looking at the drawings, which is crucial in these types of films due to them having a predominantly young audience. Kim has captured the character's likeness and personality extremely well in these drawings which is often a hard thing to do. This is all very important to me and I would like to eventually develop to a point where I can do this within my own work.
Above is the link to Shiyoon Kim's official website featuring his work for the films he's worked on and some of his personal work too.
As can be seen from the difference between the concept art and the character's final designs/models in the final production, concept art is crucial to the development of a good quality final character design.
as can be seen from Kim's drawings something he really utilises is shape. His use of different shapes for different characters so they all look completely unique.
The shapes he uses are very expressive
and convey personalities extremely
well because of the use of
codes and conventions.
A really good example of this technique can be found in his work for Big Hero 6, Raya and The Last Dragon and Zootropolis which can be found on the website link above.
JIN KIM
Another 2D artist I felt I could find some use looking into is Jin Kim who is also well known for working on the concept art for quite a lot of popular Disney films such as Moana, Frozen and Big Hero 6.
Below is a concept piece he created for the film Big Hero 6, as can be seen this is a more detailed piece than the typical concept character sketches but oftentimes having some of these is just as important as sketches and planning out what characters are going to appear like.
Something I have learned from looking at concept art in this part of my research is that it is also crucial that concepts and sketches of environments are created, characters are placed within those environments and shown interacting with them as this can show which colours and lighting work best with their designs.
I also learned that the reasons that many of the concepts I have featured in this part of my website are created in greyscale is because working in grayscale allows artists to concentrate on the fundamental elements of a concept, such as form, light, and shadow, without the distraction of colour. This helps in establishing a strong foundation for the design.
I've always been fascinated with his concept art too though, especially for Moana. It has been a wish of mine to be able to create art as beautiful as this since I was a kid.
As can be seen from above, similarly to what I said previously, it is important for concept art to feature a range of expressions, poses and angles as this captures and conveys the character's personality, likeness and their feelings/emotional journey. It can also be seen that here the artist has experimented with different hairstyles on the character as this is what concepts are all about! experimenting.
2D ANIMATION
After researching some 2D artists that I am inspired by, I decided it was time to move on to looking into some basic 2D animation exercises that many of these above artists and more used to get their animation skills to the level they are now.
Below are some tutorials and examples of useful exercises and some brief summaries on what they are used for.
The video above features a tutorial on the flour sack exercise which was used by many disney animators in the early days of 2D animation to practice things such as weight and movement and how the two work together to make a more realistic looking outcome. The video below on the left features examples of the flour sack exercise as well while also showing examples of the bouncing ball exercise and what you can do after to slowly develop your animation skills. The video to the right features the basics of understanding animation which will hopefully help me when I come to practice it for myself as a part of my practical.
After looking into various 2D concept artists that inspire and interest me and looking into the basics of 2D animation, I felt as if I had equipped myself well for that element of my practical and it was time to move on to looking more into 3D arists and software as I plan to attempt to use some 3D modelling software to learn how it is done. I also plan to look at some tutorials and guides about 3D software too. I plan on taking some of the examples above, of the 2D animation exercises and the concept art, for inspiration within my experimentation/final product on this unit.
3D MODELLING
For the 3D part of my project, because Blender is the software I can access, when it comes to practical experimenting, I decided to learn a bit about it. I feel that researching the software online and watching people use it can only contribute so much to my learning so after doing a bit of basic research I plan to actively use the software while watching tutorials.
THE BASICS OF BLENDER
Firstly, I did some research by watching some very basic tutorials of blender to get used to the idea of the software as I have absolutely no knowledge as to how to use these 3D interfaces prior to this project.
The reason I am doing this for the final part of this project is because I want to figure out and gain more of an appreciation of what goes into my favourite films.
As a result of my research, below is a sort of 'to do list' I have constructed to guide me while I am learning later on in the project.
1. Interface: Familiarize yourself with Blender's interface, including the 3D view, toolbar, and various panels.
2. Navigation: Use the middle mouse button to rotate, shift & middle mouse to pan, and scroll to zoom in the 3D view.
3. Mesh Objects: Create basic shapes like cubes, spheres, or planes to start modelling. Add them through the "Add" menu.
4. Edit Mode: Switch to Edit Mode to manipulate the vertices, edges, and faces of your objects. Select vertices with right-click.
The link and videos above feature the YouTube channel 'Blender Guru'. His videos have helped me get used to using the tools and sculpting in 3D modelling software as part of my practical, You will be able to find examples of me following this tutorial series and the results of this in the 'Experimentation & Final Outcomes' section further down the page.
For this practical experimentation part of my project I am focusing on learning new skills more than anything, and gaining a better understanding of the work that goes into the projects and films that inspire me the most.
For the first part of my practical work, I decided to try and replicate the style of the concept artists from the first part of my research. I illustrated some of my own characters in different poses and also created emotion reference sheets much like the ones I featured above.
This allowed me to better understand what goes into concept art and how much preparation is needed before a film starts production. It made me realise that 2D artists definitely do very much still have a place within the creative industry and are still very much needed and valued.
Below I will feature some examples of the work and experimentation I did.
EXPRESSIONS & CONEPT ART
The video on the left is a speed draw of my process creating an expression sheet in a similar style as my 2D practitioners I have written about in the above research section.
This process was probably the most within my comfort zone out of all of the parts to this practical section of my project which is why I decided to start with it. Although it was in my comfort zone, that is not to say I didn't learn anything.
This process allowed me to see that I am able to work in different styles and with different, more exaggerated expressions with my own characters which I have learned is a very useful skill to have as an illustrator/concept artist.
Much like my practitioners, for this part of my project I decided to work in grayscale as appose to colour so that when these concepts are viewed and created, the main focus is the character's expression and nothing else.
Below is the final result and an evaluation of how I think this part of my task went.
FINAL CONCEPT DRAWINGS
Overall, I really like the way that this final expression sheet looks and I feel that I am now much more comfortable with the fact I will be able to use this skill and knowledge in the future.
I gained feedback from many people who I showed these concepts to and the majority stated that they can tell that my work is inspired by the concept artists I looked into, they also said that my concepts look professional and like something you could find in an art book - much like the ones I sourced my research from.
This feedback I really appreciated, however I do feel that there is obviously much more I'd like to work on in this area. I would like to work on making my character expressions more varied and also have my designs be more consistent every time I draw them. I would also like if I could work on drawing more varied angles on any future expression sheets I create.
Underneath, I have featured some other concepts I created while I had time, however I didn’t get to do as many as I would have liked because I wanted to move on to the more challenging aspects of my practical work such as the 2D animation practice and the 3D modelling practice.
2D ANIMATION PRACTICE
After doing the previous activity, I decided to venture further out of my comfort zone and practice some of the real basics of 2D animation. Below are the process speed draws of me creating the animation and learning as i go. It can be seen that I followed the research and tutorials I looked at using techniques such as squash and stretch and using spacing correctly according to animation physics.
Below are what I originally thought were the final results that I came out with however at this point in the creation I hadn't yet added the 'squash and stretch' I had previously learnt about in my tutorials.
BEFORE ADDING SQUASH AND STRETCH
( AND EXTRA EDITS )
FINAL BOUNCING BALL ANIMATION EXERCISE OUTCOME
( AFTER SQUASH AND STRETCH ETC. )
As can be seen from the before and after squash and stretch comparison, using this technique adds much more effect and interest to an animation of a moving object.
Overall, I really like how these animations came out as despite them being short and simple, I feel that just by utilising the techniques that the research and tutorials taught me, they came a long way since the 'before' videos featured above as I had since then played and experimented with things such as speed, squash and stretch and frame rate.
Another animation exercise I decided to try was the 'character head turn' which I will include below along with it's speed paint.
From doing these exercises, I have learned and gained more of an understanding of how In combination, principles such as these help animators create animations that are not only technically impressive but also emotionally resonant and captivating to the audience. By understanding and effectively utilizing frame rate, squash and stretch, and speed, animators can bring characters, objects and scenes to life in a way that engages viewers on a deeper level.
The animation I think probably came out the best out of all of them was the one of the ball bouncing across the screen. I am quite happy with the head turn animation despite it being unfinished as I feel as if it was going in a good direction however it definitely could be improved if I did things such as animate more frames and make the facial movements smoother as they move.
FINAL CHARACTER HEAD TURN ANIMATION
UNDERSTANDING 3D MODELLING
Above is just a video of me experimenting with tools in blender while following the tutorials I previously mentioned which helped me to go on to actually create something tangible in the software.
Throughout the next video (below) you will be able to see me starting to work on the actual donut shape based on the tutorials. I start by getting the base shape from the drop down menu and then go about moulding and misshaping the model so it looks more realistic as, like the tutorials say, no donut is shaped like the perfect looking default shape. At this point in the creation process, I felt familiarised with the software enough to be able to go in my own direction a bit more, so I wasn't following the tutorial exactly as I wanted my model to look more stylised in my own way rather than someone else's.
I feel that throughout this unit all together I have definitely learned when working with computers this element of creating the imperfections within things applies to a lot of parts of creating. I have found that my personal favourite creations and films etc. have that kind of flare to them. It is important to make things look more human for them to have personality and interest, if we left everything to computers things wouldn’t look right and they would end up quite unappealing. Despite many of my experiments appearing unfinished within this part of the unit I still feel that I completed everything that I had set out to do when writing the brief at the very beginning of this project and I am very proud of that, as I said briefly above. Of course though, I would have loved to go much further with my experiments and perhaps I could have managed my time better in order to possibly get a bit more done however I feel that it would be unfair to myself to try and learn all of these new concepts inside out in just weeks.
Something else I am proud of is my open minded approach to this project. I feel that many of my opinions and thoughts were challenged and adjusted throughout this project from when I wrote my essay to now, as while I do still agree with the points brought up in my essay, I now know more about what goes into the animated films I grew up on and still watch today so If I were to write that essay again, I would be able to do that but better as I now have more information and experience, which was exactly what I had hoped this unit would give me. I was also open minded in the sense I was willing to try and experiment with new things, going out of my comfort zone instead of sticking to something I knew well enough so I wouldn't be challenged.
I feel that while doing this practical element and the research for it, I was able to find out the answers to a lot of the questions I had considered at the beginning of writing my essay.
Underneath is the final result of the modelling I did in the video, as can be seen the model looks much more like an actual donut now
And below this is the start vs the end of modelling the icing of the donut.
After doing all of this, I felt as if by this point I had learned what I needed to learn in order to be satisfied with this part of my practical unit. I am overall very proud of myself for learning many new things while also refining my already existing skills on this journey and hope to develop on them more in the future.
One thing though I thought I'd want to try before finalising this unit was painting on my 3D model to give it some colour and life. I used the tutorial to help me and put down some base colours and there was my final product.