503 Finished Animatic Transmedia Element

Well here it is, my finished 503 trans media artefact. I tried to divide the workload of the project into an almost half and half, with all of the research and development as well as the artist studies and finished digital pictures into one half of it and the other being using all of the work I had done up to that point as the animatic half of it. This way I thought that I could explore them both almost at the same point whilst still keeping them sort of separate enough to count them as a trans media element. I think I did this rather well, the way I have converted my 503 project from one media to another was to use all of the still images that I had created in the 503 self directed side of the module and making them move and animate and tell a completely different story than the still images alone with no contextualisation do. In fact the still images tell almost no story at all by themselves and with just simple basic movements and and a little contextualisation the images seem to come to life, keep in mind of corse some of the fundimentals of film making to keep the piece interesting to the audience and visually stimulating.

It wasnt really very hard to come up with the trans media element of my project as from the start I knew I wanted to do a moving image sequence of the images I create during the project, I knew that I wanted to use After Effects more than I already had done as I find it to be a very versatile piece of software. The hard part for me was probably getting the initial workload of images done to start with, there would have been more dynamic story telling scenes in the piece if I had realised just how much work could be done in the time that we had, but am generally happy overall at how it all turned out in the end.

I guess the main aspect of the trans media of my project would be the simple change from stills to moving sequence, I liked exploring just how much you can do to a piece of video by just using a simple sound or a different kind of transition here and there, it is kind of like still images in a way where simple changes can effect the entire theme of a piece but with video it just seems to be much more noticeable.

The other form of trans media I was thinking about during the project was to try moving a little bit into 3D I thought that any character or piece of scenery from my images could easily be turned 3D and that would open a lot more possibilities to what could be done or told about the project then. I ended up sticking with the animatic as that was a suitable workload for me in the end but will probably try branching out it to all areas when looking at trans media aspects of a project again. A thought that I have only at the end of the project when there is not enough time left to do it would be to draw aspects of my world in a different type of drawing style, this would open possibilities to the characters being part of a kids show if the characters were cartoony and friendly looking enough, maybe be part of an IOS game if they were to be made pixelated and un detailed looking, and also part of 2D games or even magazines and book, the possibilities for making any characters trans media are endless but in the end I did choose going with an animatic which was I think just the right thing for me workload wise and it did challenge my skills artistically a good but not too much amount.

Battlescene Picture

This was one of the pictures I did that I was most happy with, I tried new methods of digital painting when I did this piece which are both very time efficient and easy to do when I knew how. I liked how the tonal value of the image stays nicely together and the only real changes are the differences in grey values. The image was done to be the last or near the end of the animatic composition, a kind of go out with a bang idea. I tried to finish with a good picture and start with a good picture, this is what we were told to do when presenting work and I thought it would work in a short animatic too which I think it did. Anyway probably my favourite picture of the module, enjoy!

Aaand Two More Landscape/Character Pictures

The pictures here are showing the city and characters that may appear in the city, the colours as well as the style of both pictures are made to be slightly similar. The reason for this is that from the start I knew that I wanted the guards or the authority in the city to be similar looking to the architecture of the buildings they protect, I would say that I have effectively implemented the styles together as they do look as if they are part of the same sort of concept. 

The above picture for me was another learning process as I used until now foreign concepts of drawing to me, I turned out really well but think that I need to work on my colouring a little bit more as it seems a bit lacking. Another thing I am getting better at is the perspective and distance in pictures, the bottom picture shows that by the character having his sword right up to the viewers perspective with a sort of dominating threatening kind of look which is another aspect I am getting better at which is dynamic posing.

In both pictures especially the top one I can say that I am getting happier with the way I work, but there is always room for improvement.

Character Designs Page 2

This was the last but by far the most fun character sheet to create, I did this using the thin lines trick I had learnt previously and found that more details and intricacy lead to a more interesting final composition. The reference images were a big part of what I think made this piece stand out and work, I took reference from related content and pictures like what I would like to be able to create. 

With this last design I had a simple description that I needed to bring out as much as possible, I think I could have done way more on the side of detail and time on this piece, I was a little pushed for time when on this 6th character and think I have learned to maybe bite off as much as I can chew next time. I did try a different approach to this concept than the others as I didnt create a line art step before moving on to the colours and shading, this is probably what made it look a little under detailed and out of contrast but I think it gets the point across enough for an initial concept art character design.

Character Designs Page 1

Here are the finished character sheet designs that I have done for three of the characters, I have finished the Thief Assassin character that Brad asked me to do. I am very happy with this design as I managed to get the variations in there relatively easy and successfully and feel that there is a real sense of variation in the three different designs at the top. I have added the process that I used to get to the finished product to show a little more of how I develop my work. 

One thing I had overlooked until this point is the presentation of the character sheets, these would do for simple blog post presentations but for presenting these designs on a website featuring artwork on the internet then a more refined version of a character sheet would be more appropriate. I will probably be doing this at some point over the summer as I have not uploaded them for the DA community to critique yet.

For this next character design, which is based on the character concept that Joel gave me, I enjoyed creating the character as I have done things similar to this before, the colours that I used I think were appropriate and brought out the right details and things I wanted the viewer to see. The pose I think is what I am most happy with in this design as it says a lot about the character before the details even come in to play. Overall I am happy with the picture but again think it needs to be presented on a nicer finalised character sheet to really make it shine.

This last character design is the character that Jess asked me to, she made the description and backstory for him as well as his name and thought of the colours of the clothes he would wear. I think I could have done a little better with this piece if I had spent more time on it, I think it was a good learning process as I have solidified in my mind the fact that I prefer to and create better drawings from artwork i start with thinner line drawings, this piece has helped me to learn as an artist and so am happy with it.

Another Two Landscape Pictures

Here are another two landscape picture that I have worked on over the course of this module, I initially intended for them to be just concept art images that I would use to create further developed sketches of with the characters being able to interact with and move around in, however the amount of time taken to draw this amount of concept art took long enough and as I think I have mentioned before with more time I could have developed more in depth illustrations on top of these initial placement shots and environments.

The below image only took an hour and 20 and is one of the last things I think I drew as part of this project. I am happy with the improvment in speed when creating these compositions as I have gotten a lot faster during this module than I even have all year. Anyway this is more the sort of thing I meant to be including in the story driven animatic because it has more of a close up personal touch to it but in the end I settled for what I had (which I was still fairly happy with) and did what I could with it. 

A Few Initial Sketches

So this was one of the first sketches I did in photoshop when I was first thinking about what the story of my project could be about, I did all of these even before I asked people or even thought of asking people what the character they want designing would be. This actually ended up informing my work a lot in the sense that the style of the armour is very unique and I ended up sticking with it when developing more of the cityscape sketches and the guard commander designs. 

Here I refined the character a little because I liked it so much, I tried to put him in more of a context and contrast as I thought it would be a little more interesting. I tried a grey dull kind of background to bring out the gold and colours in the knights armour. 

Here are two sketches I did very early on in the project and didnt develop any further as I went with other options. The crystal formation might have been a good picture to further develop and also the creature concept, I will be doing more of both of these in the summer and see what I can create with what I have left over from this project.

Two Of My Landscape Pictures

A quick sketch I did for the 503 project followed by the final developed piece which I have used in my transmedia animatic sequence. I like how easy it is to see the transition from the first one to the second one. I also tried to keep the colour range in the entire piece very similar as it helps to just keep the overall feel of the piece related to the colour I have used, for example the browns and dark yellows keep the composition looking very earthy and uninhabited which is the kind of look I was going for.

I also tried to keep the layers as organised as possible because I knew that I would be using them for the transmedia aspect of the module and would need to animate the different parts of the image individually and this can be very confusing to do if all of the layers are unorganised and mixed up with all the different layers overlapping and effecting each other.

Second 4 Character Sketches

 My brother was the one who decided the details of this character, he always likes to play as the assassin thief types in games and asked me to design a character that wears specific clothes and explained his personality and morals as well as the characters fighting styles and weapons, all of this gave me a good bases for designing the character and I think that the designs turned out so well because of the description I was given beforehand as well as the fact that I had many references to work from.

 The prisoner character was thought of by my friend pete who wrote the description in a narrative context, since pete writes books the description of the character was very dynamic and atmospheric and made me picture the environment and backstories of the character rather than the actual look of him. I do like how the character turned out but think I should have worked in my traditional greyscale colouring before adding the end colours as with the finished version of this character I only used colours to create the finished designs.

The commander character was really just my own character that I had been thinking about as I made all of the other designs, I wrote a backstory to add to the character just as I have done with all of the others and think that the end designs turned out rather well as they fit in well with the theme of the city that he is the guard commander of (golden and spikey looking).

The last character I was asked to design was the witch character from my friend Emma, when she was describing the character to me I could tell that she had not done nearly as much roleplaying in games and imaginary universes as I have but I worked with it and rounded off the edges of the character that I think stuck out a bit. I wrote a lot about the character and would like to develop her further in the future as I didn't actually do any more sketches for this one like I did the others, nevertheless I think the concept of the character is a big part of the story and will be doing more on all of this in the future.

Initial 3 Character Sketches

The first page in my little sketchbook that I have been using to keep track of notes and things when I am out and dont have access to a computer to write on. I had to get a name for my world to be able to get more of a feel for it, as shown here I came up with quite a lot of names that I didnt use that are inspired by the names of other fantasy worlds in games today. I am happy with the name Tirinar as a world name and with it chosen I can start jumping into the more fun and detailed aspects of the world which I want to portray more of.

Yoel is the character that... Joel asked me to design, he gave me a simple concept of a pirate with specific types of clothes, which to be honest is the easiest way to design a character. It was fun doing this character as I have a good memory bank of pirate reference images and found it easy to draw from memory alone which is what this sketch is done from.

The second character that I have got down in my sketch book is Jesses character Avion, his description was written by Jess also which gave me even less work to do for the backstory which is good when I have got a lot to do anyway, the sketch for this one was tricky as I have not really seen people handle birds before and needed to get reference images for the pose after I just did this one from guesswork, the images I found were not as dynamic as I would have hoped either but in the end I think it will turn out okay.

Orse! Now Orse is a character that I didnt actually manage to get done, I have done 6 characters already and didnt have enough time for any more, the character didnt really fit into the narrative as much as I had hoped either, he would have been in if I had more time to work on this project but that wasnt the case. Also I found that without enough storytelling images to push the narrative then the audience wouldnt really understand the reason for a scruffy looking beggar to be in my animatic.











I also thought that I should mention the fact that all characters have their own little backstories, the reason for this is I was told by my tutors and several people that I should do this as it would give more of an insight into the characters and their motivation. I found it fun to make up the stories behind each character as I have not done this before and I liked how I thought about them and added little details I didnt even think I thought I knew about them. Anyway I really enjoyed writing about the characters and it is good practice to do in the future as it also informs what they will look like too which is a bonus to my concept art practise.

Primary Research

One thing that I had forgotten about but which I remember to be an important aspect of any work load when approaching something from the start is primary research, I had thought that we would have more time to do this module than the time we were actually given, I dont think it is a bad thing that we got less time than I had thought but that I think that I could have done a lot more work to a higher standard if we had have had more time as my specific module that I am working on could be explored more and expanded upon in more depth with more time. Anyway I took a few pictures and recored a few sound files which are now on a different 503 post as that is the sound engineering blog and this one is more about the importance of primary research and the pictures I took as reference for it.

So here are a few of the textures and colours I liked in the pictures I took on one of the first few days of the 503 module.

Sound Engineering Additional Thoughts

So here is the music that I was told about by Jess (big thank you for finding this awsome bit of music for me) which sounds really good when overlayed with my moving animatic, another thing is that it fits perfectly with my own piece and is a good base of reference for the sort of music that I would like to get as a royalty free version for finishing my piece off. I had to actually download final cut at home to add the sound to the animation, it is the latest version of the program so I had to learn in a very short amount of time how to use it to be able to properly finish my project on time but anyway that worked out okay since it is not far off some of the old versions of the program.



The music that I used is purely for the effect it has on the piece of work, I do not claim it to be mine at all and it is just a reference to music I would like to have and will work on getting in the future with more time and help composing.

503 Moodboard

So as with any project a good place to start would be a mood board, I had made this a little later into the project than I normally do and have also posted it a little later than I had intended to also but I think it shows a good amount of work that I would like my own work to be like and what I am trying to focus on in my project. The moodboard features artwork from amazing artist Kekai Kotaki and Xia Taptara, both of whom I find hugely inspirational.

Anyway here it is. Simple but to the point.

PPP Guest Speaker 2 Tom Evans

The second guest speaker that relates to my area of practise is Tom Evans who was a student at LCA before moving on to getting a job in the industry after leaving. One of the most memorable things he said to us when he was presenting was that it took him 5-6 months of bombarding e-mails to companies before he landed his first job so now we understand a little more about what it is going to take to make it. The rest of the notes taken at the seminar are on the scanned in page below. 

Again a very useful talk from a practitioner and a useful insight into the vast unknown industry for us.

Susan Everett was another guest speaker that came in to talk to us all but she was a little bit more script writer and film maker related than the other two guest speakers. I liked the things she talked about and her personality, she seemed to have a lot of integrity too saying that she didnt sell out for the sake of money and instead did work that she enjoyed doing and not what earned her the most money. That is probably the kind of practitioner that I want to be, doing what I want to do and not working just for the money.

PPP Guest Speaker 1 Ant Ward

I enjoyed Ant Wards talk on his experience of the creative industry, I took a lot of notes about what he talked about and it was a good insight into what the industry is actually like and what we are to expect.
The biggest point I got from Ant was that contacts are super important, he said that if anyone was going out into the world to be a freelance practitioner then it is vital to have previously made some contacts to be able to have more of a chance of work opportunities and helpful contacts if needs be in the future.

The best part about the talk was afterwards when he came up to the studio and went around individually talking to students about any questions they had, I had a good talk with him about my own work and what he liked about it and what he thinks I should do. We discussed being a generalist or a specialist and he told me to keep going at what I am doing because there is natural talent there but also learn other things, I found this very helpful because it is my first bit of feedback from a true professional source and it gave me a bit of a morale boost about how I feel about my own work.

Here are some of Ant Wards contact details which I now follow as like he said contacts are everything and I will not hesitate to contact him in the future if I need to.

Overlooked aspects

As the title suggests I am going to write about a few little aspects in the 503 self directed project that I have until now not thought about or overlooked. The thing that I have been overlooking until now but that I know is always a major aspect in any video content is the sound, the sound in my video will not be anything special but it will need to compliment the pieces theme and add to the overall feel of the video, since I am not adding sound effects the main sound aspect I am looking for in the short 1 min animatic clip I am producing will be just a good sounding interesting audio track, I still have time to put it in but the issue will be finding the right sounding audio as overlaying it onto the actual animation will take about 2 mins.

The other big aspect I have not thought about until this late in the project has been the text font, I knew I would be having text between each scene shot but I never really thought about how the text might influence the way the reader/viewer thinks about it, I had a quick think about it and simply put the text had to be interesting, have the theme of the video, and have the right message. I just dived in and wrote a few things I thought might sound good read in my head between the shots, it sounded okay but I needed to teak them a little bit. After re writing the texts (something I will look for help with from fellow students in the future) I looked online for a font that would work in my piece, I thought 'Hey Game of Thrones is a bit like what I am doing' so I googled game of thrones text and boom, a load of forums discussing the text used and how to find it, I read through a few and saw that somebody had mentioned that it is a bit like the 'Charlemagne Std' font that comes as standard in photoshop and after effects. I have used this font and think that it has done its purpose fine and am happy with how it looks, I will be though looking at these little things more in the future because everything that is included in a piece of video or work adds or takes away from the piece so everything is important and good to understand.

A few test examples showing how the font can make a piece of text different.

My 503 End of Module Timetable

As our tutor Matt has told us time and time again that we need to manage our time better and try making timetables and sticking to them to improve our time management I thought that I would give it a try, from what I learned from the first year I have already really improved my time management when it comes to dividing workloads into manageable amounts but I thought anyway that I would give this a try as it may be useful to me. 

So like it says on the timetable today is the day before hand in and I am as it says on the timetable finishing up some of the remaining blogs I have not posted and ones that were not evaluated with writing. I have found this to be a useful practise as I have not had to worry at all about what I will be doing on what day because it had already all been planned out for me. I think I will be working in this way in the future, the hardest part about it was finding a fun way to do the time planning without being bored to death, I managed to screenshot my timetable and write on it in PS to keep it interesting and also useful.

503 Character Requests

I asked a few people about what kind of characters they wanted designing so that it would give me the opportunity to be able to work to someone elses giudelines but whilst doing my own interpritations of them. I talked about wether this would be too much work to do and if my project should just be focused around the character design aspect of the project I am doing but I thought it would be a managable amount with all the characters as well as the backgrounds and transmedia animation at the end too. It is a little bit ambitious but I think it will be a doable amount if I keep on track of my time and make sure to stay organised and focused, as this is the only module in a while that I have felt has been completely free to do whatever I want in it so I think it id worth using the opportunity to do as much as I can while I can.

So on to who asked me to create what and how it relates to the already developed archetypes of characters in films and games.

Jess - Falcon Handler - The Threshold Guardian

Brad - Thief - The Hero

Andy - Beggar - The Wise Old Man or Sage

Joel - Pirate - The Trickster

Emma - Witch - The Devil or Satan

Pete - Prisoner - The Warrior

Me - Guard Commander - The Mentor

I think these are the closest archetype matches from the short list I have been referencing from Wikipedia, I could probably have found much more matching archetypes from the many lists of 100s of character types out there but I think on their most basic level then these are the matching types.

I will be shortly uploading the character sketches and short backgrounds that I have spent a little bit of time working on.

Initial Thoughts Notes and Feedback Notes

I just found a JPG of a PSD document that I wrote on the first day of really thinking about the 503 project, it just basically says what I thought about doing before actually writing the proposal form for the dropbox submission we had to do telling the tutors what project we were thinking of working on. I dont think I strayed from these initial notes as I knew exactly what I wanted to do in this project as opposed to normally having to really think about what I want to do in other projects.

These are the notes I took from our first feedback session from what people thought about how I am doing with the project and what I still need to do to be finished, I think I got some good feedback and advice but when I have got more work done I think I would get more efficient feedback to really round off what needs to be finished in my project. 

Artist Study 503 Scott Robertson Vehicles

I have posted about Scott Robertson before as I have attended one of his online webinars which was really interesting and useful to me as a student, but this post is about a specific video I recently watched from his Youtube channel which is a free tutorial, one of which Scott produces each week to help viewers and people in learning more about how he works and the digital painting process.



What I like in particular about this video is how he explains things in a way that anybody can understand, he seems like he really wants to help people to improve as opposed to other practitioners in the industry of digital artwork who just seem to want views and dont really explain things clearly enough for people who may not understand. Another thing about this video specifically is how he explains how quickly he did the picture and how he uses traditional media even though he is a veteran in this specific industry, he started with pen on paper and through this it explains to me that for an easy looking tutorial but which is a really good quality looking piece the trick is to have a solid understanding and foundation to the fundamentals of drawing, line art, perspective, and to have a real interest and passion for what it is that you do.

How this could inform my own work in the 503 module is the way that it has been drawn traditionally first and digitised later, I have been using this process throughout this module but not in the same kind of way, I think I will be trying the thinner and more precise lines which Scott uses when traditional drawing and seeing how it works out for me.

I will be keeping up to date with Scotts tutorial videos and will probably be buying some of the books and other forms of teaching he has worked on over the years as I really do think it is work it not just for self improvement but it will also from what I have seen be an interesting read.

Character Archetypes

I had a good idea while discussing my work with people who are doing similar projects which was to study more in depth the archetypes which most successful characters are based around. I remember looking at this topic a little bit at the start of the first year and finding it interesting, so I will see what else I can find out about archetypes and how important they are while researching my interest in this module.

The Archetype definition on Wikipedia.

Although archetypes can take on innumerable forms, there are a few particularly notable, recurring archetypal images.

The Child The Hero The Martyr The Sky Father The Great Mother The Wise Old Man or Sage The Wise Old Woman/Man

• The Damsel in distress
• The Trickster or Fox
• The Devil or Satan
• The Scarecrow
• The Mentor
• The Warrior
• The Threshold Guardian, a test to test the Hero

After researching and looking into what characters are important when and why, I have decided that I will compare the character designs I have been given to the character archetypes that are listed here and see how they compare. This may inform me as to if I need any more characters to push a narrative along or if it would make a good story. I will do this is another post including pictures to reference as well for better contrast.