University Final Major Project Part 1: Animal Studies

Some scans of drawings that I did over the summer that I hadn't got around to uploading until now. In order to come up with an original character design, I decided to create a hybrid of two animals. After much consideration, I decided to go with a lion an turtle combo, mainly because I liked the idea of a land based mammal being able to swim. 

To begin with, I studied each animal separately to begin with in order to understand their motion and movement. As my character is supposed to be a teenager, I studied lions that hadn't quite grown into adolescence yet. All of these images were drawn from original web-based pictures, but I think I managed to get varied poses for the lions and turtles.

After these studies, I started combining them together to make new animals. I was unsure about what theme to go with, but after designing the one on the top right, I wanted to emphasise the creatures speed. I then decided to reign in the creatures design in the final scan, and came up with the design on the top right.

I then decided to experiment with the final design in a variety of poses. I think I got the balance right between the lion and turtle design. My next phase will be designing the animal to be anthropomorphic. Check back for more news on my fmp later on.

'3 Weeks in October' University Project

Been back at Uni for about a month, now in my final year so I've got TONNES of work to do. For the first 3 weeks back we were required to create three separate animations based on Power of 9, Onomatopoeia and 25fps@staffs.

Power of 9 encompassed the 12 animation principles. I created this in Maya software to freshen myself up for future 3D projects. I didn't want to do anything too complex, so I made a simple sphere and cube shape. I like the rendering on this, I think it keeps with the simple tone of the film.

Onomatopoeia required us to create an animation based on a chosen list of 6 different words. Mine were flap, flutter, rustle, meow, snap and bubble. I tried to create this as a whole animation rather than just separate segments. Was quite fun just animating rather than having to think of a concept first. I'm gonna try working on this in my own time, so hopefully I'll have an updated video soon.

25fps@staffs was promotional material for Staffs Uni BA (Hons) Animation course which I'm currently studying. I worked with Tim Panter from my course on this one. As we both had strengths in illustration, we decided to create three birds that symbolise part of the branding. I drew out the yellow and pink birds and Tim drew out the blue bird. I then edited them together using Adobe After Effects. This is probably my favourite of the three, as it's one of the few animations I've done which I think is finished.

Enjoy the video: