Metamorphus animation

Where I am now

Where I am now

When I first joined the Art & Design course at North Notts, I was still quite unsure what I wanted to do as a career, but I know I wanted it to be involved in the creative industry, to be able to work on something with other people that others would enjoy, like a movie, cartoon, animation, illustrations, a game, theatre makeup, fashion, painting etc. I've been inspired by everything I've seen and grown up with up to now like cartoons on TV, detailed animation movie projects, anime, horrors and thrillers, transformation, storylines, concept art, games, books full of a games or movies art etc.

Once I had been at college for a bit and told to look into the subject area I want to do, by now I had became set on doing just animations or game production, but when I looked into them further, I discovered there were more technical skills and practice included in game production, which I don't think I would enjoy, have the patience for or be good at it. So I looked into animation and  found that there was so many other things linked and included in the production of animation, character development, concept art, movement research and reference, backgrounds, voice acting, music, illustrations etc.
I focused on all the links of animation and asked myself what I would want to do and what I'm more suitable for, narrowing down again to things like animation, voice acting, music, illustration and concept art. Though I did drop the idea of voice acting but kept it as a backup idea, the same with making music on a software since I would like to try and develop a skill for it in the future, more skills more outlets.
Though at some point I completely dropped animation from my interest since I was struggling with animating with an animation software at home, becoming frustrated and since I didn't know certain commands I would do it the longer way or on photoshop. But once I got some help from a classmate with the animating software, I'm a lo more confident to take on animation and do animated work.

So at the moment I'm focusing on having skills of a freelance animator, but still be able to join a team or company for concept art and/or animation, though I would want to have other skills to do concept art, backgrounds, illustrations, special effects, maybe some editing and even some characters.


Where I would want to be

 In the future I would want to be in a stable position in life, have a career I'm happy with and good at, have more confidence in doing more things in life, to work in a team with people and have a strong small group of friends. Realistically, I would want to be living with friends or with a partner of mine in a nice cozy or/and spacious house or bungalow, cottage, flat, house with some/little land, while including having a gym room, a spare bedroom, having our own or a shared studio for our work with plenty or artwork all about, paintings, sculptures, plants, rugs etc.
Along with some animals, furry family additions to make it feel like an actual home to me since I believe animals are what makes a home, having animals such as 1 or 2 birds, 1 or 2 cats and a dog, also likely to have them as rescues, though this would all depend on the place, locate and financial situation.
My first dream job was to be working for Nasa, helping explore, even becoming an astronaut, but then I realised a much more achievable dream I had was to become an animator and/or concept artist. Personally, I can stay awake for a long time but cannot get up early without feeling horrible all day, so I would like to work from home for myself as a freelance concept artist/animator, but i feel like I would be more successful and comfortable in these job roles if I worked with/for a studio or company with other people, so I can at least socialise and not be byself all the time while working, and if that means having to get up early I would do it, though if I could, I would come in later such as starting at noon and finishing until the early hours the next day. I would want to do animations for whatever it may be asked for, music videos, short film, advert etc. Aswell as doing concept art and/or illustrations for games, movies, a cartoon, series etc.
I would like to have good relationships with co-workers and directors in my job

How would I get there

To get to where I want to get, I would out in all of my hard work and determination into my portfolio, build it up to become acceptable and better then it has been before to get into a university I want to go to. I would try to get into a course in university I want to do, mainly around animation, illustration and concept art, so overall animation and its production and work before to make it.
I would start putting my work on an online portfolio for companies, studios and people to see my work, I would also want to start selling my work online, this either being illustrations, paintings or for hours making concept art or animations, I would first advertise locally at first before spreading out a bit more.
I would then hope to meet lots of people on my course at university, get along and give criticism, then having a chance where we might suggest each other to other people. I would even like to get with a group form the university to form a little studio or go into a company/studio together, working on commissions and paid professional work. Throughout my time in university and all the way up to hopefully getting into a studio job, I would continue to do side work, illustrations and concepts to add to and improve my portfolio to hopefully get with an even more professional, good budgeted and even more well known company and team to work with.
With a career I want, I would hope I would be getting enough pay to be able to stably live in a nice apartment or small house, just as long as it's somewhere I can happily live with enough space to do work, though I would save up towards this since university and even now.





Concept Artists I aspire to be like

John Sweeny - Worked on The last of Us and Uncharted, both rich and important in environment games

Sam "Samwise" Didiler - Detailed, shaded art, works for blizzard, blizzard artists overall are what I aspire to be

Steven Sugar - A lead background artist for Steven universe, a cartoonish but still beautiful and detailed work - http://stevensugar.tumblr.com/

Spiros Karkavelas - Art of Skah, great form in art, some messy others really detailed - http://artofskar.blogspot.co.uk/

Hidetaka Miyazaki - Incredibly detailed art, worked on Dark Souls series, overall dark, grim, scary

Yoji Shinkawa - Messy design but with great form, worked largely on metal gear solid games

Fumito Ueda - Art director and lead animator of the ICO team and game series

Pre-Paraphelite 'Prosperpine'

Propsperpine
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis is currently used and recognized as a transition of something, turning into something else. For example, a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, a tapole turning into a frog, though metamoprhosis can also be used and linked to evolution, how ape became man etc. But not all metamorphosis has to be evolutionary linked, it can be a bee turning into an acorn, a gun turning into a flower, a cat turning into heels etc














Origin of a poem by Latin poet Ovid, then into paintings








Actaeon was a hunter from Venice who had been hunting in the mountains while Diana, goddess of the hunt, moon and birthing, washed with her nymphs by a waterfall in the mouth of a cavern. Art had been carved into the rocks of the grotto, one of Diana's nymphs held her javaline, quiver, arrows and unstrung bow, others took off her sandals, another brushed her hair, others gathered water in jars and poured them over Diana's head shoulders. Actaeon stumbled into the grotto and spotted the naked nymphs, who then tried to hide and cover Diana but failed and she turned her back to Actaegon to hide her bare chest and glared at him with a look that could kill as she tried to reach for a weapon but none was nearby, only water.



So she scooped some up in her hand and dashed it at the hunter, cursing him as a rack of antlers burst from his head, his ears became, long and twisted, his neck legthened and narrowed, his hands became hooves, his arms and legs became long and slender. He escaped the cave, amazed at his lightness as he ran, before stopping by a body of water to see his reflection, he thought of either going back home or to live in the forest, but then his hounds had found him and chased him down and ripped him apart, unable to recognize their master as he called out for them to stop. Only when he was dead was when Diana was satisfied with her revenge.


https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/learn-about-art/ovids-metamorphoses



signiture vase is reflected in mirror and further in water, including the brightest white in the painting








Callisto was one of the goddess Diana's favourite nymphs, though when Callisto went to go hunting she was tricked by Jupiter who had disguised themselves as a perfect double of Diana and began to have relations with the nyph, though she did try to fight back. No longer a virgin, she had betrayed the goddess Diana, and by the time she was heavily pregnant and was to bath with Diana and the troop, she tried to make excuses before forceable being stripped.

Seeing the nymphs belly, Diana was outraged at Callisto, though when she gave birth to her son Arcas, her fury exploded and threw her to the ground and began to transform into a bear and was banished from Diana and her troop. When her son Arcas was 15, he had a passion for hunting but knew nothing about his mother but came across her as a bear, out of fear of the beast killing him, he rose his spear to plunge into the bear but was stopped by the fingertip of Jupiter who then carried them both in a whirlwind, reuniting them as they found themselves in space among the stars together as the great bear and the small bear constellations.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

A group of English painters poets, male and female, creating paintings all under one signature of PRB, initials of their brotherhood the 'Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood'. It was founded by 3 people in 1848 by:

• William Holman Hunt - Born on the 2nd of April 1827 and died on the 7th of September 1910 at the age of 83. His paintings were known for their great attention to detail, vivid colours and symbolism, the features being inspired by the writings of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, someone he later painted of and for, though during the session of the painting there was silence between them due to an argument earlier on about Millias having romantic affair with Ruskin's wife Effie Gray.

• John Everett Millais -

• Dante Gabriel Rossetti -

Then later they were joined by 4 more men and 2 more women:

• William Michael Rossetti -

• James Collinson -

• Frederic George Stephens -

• Thomas Woolner -

• Marie Spartali Stillman -

• Ford Madox Brown -

They believed the poses and elegent composition had became a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art, hence the name Pre-Raphaelite
They signed their pices of works, paintings not with their initials,but with the movements, PRB

Dystopia & Utopia Animation 3

I had worked on the stop motions with my classmate Marcin since we're both interested in animation and animation can be done alot better and quicker with more than one person. Having already done 2 previous stop motion animations, we were told to develop our ideas further, to 'throw it up in the air' and experiment with our work and ideas. We discussed ideas for what media we were going to do this in, stop motion like the times before with clay or paper cutouts, but then we discussed the idea of doing a computer animation, a simple version of animating. By this it means drawing main scenes and shots, movement but only slightly, a cut down and slightly choppy looking animation/movement, most of the movements would be done in editing.

We both wanted to do something different with animating and move on from stop motion, to then do something digitally since we both had home experience with animating on PC/Mac.
With this in mind we did some research online into some animations that we had already seen or find. We wanted to find good examples we could use for research, so we looked for ones that had a simple style to them and with choppy movement or mostly made up of still frames since this is what we planned to do since a fully animated animation would take too long.

The first animation is a parody of How to Train Your Dragon 2, containing spoilers, I've used this as part of my research because of the style of animation. The style has very simple line work, colouring and shading with a choppy, still and low framed animation style while having a cool, interesting and understandable look and motion to it, along with ok audio over it which sounds a little low in quality, but it still works with the animation.

The second video is another parody animation, with spoilers, based on a fantasy, 8 bit based game known for its multiple endings depending on choices the player made. This video is a parody and prods fun at one of the endings, boiling the complicated, serious like story into a loud, comedic and dramatic cartoon. The style of the overall animation is mainly still frames, only a few scenes having scenes after each other to look like movement, but also having frames where the audience imagines the movement even with the choppy style of the animation. This kind of style in the animation is the kind of thing that we were wanting to do.

The third video is another parody, undertale based animation, I've seen the idea that's involved in the animation has been redone and reused a few times with different themes, though the voice acting isn't the original. Like the previous ones, we liked the look of this animation and used it as research and reference, though it consists of pretty much still frames, kind of like a storyboard kind of style with sketchy like linework. Though even with its style and look, it's still able to put across a small sketch of a story and entertainment.

Starter illustrations of characters and some pose practice
examples

To start production for the animation, we started by doing a small scrap script that lists the theme, where the animation would be set, the technology involved, what will happen in the story etc. We both gave ideas and worked on writing a kind of list/intro of how we wanted to have this animation and what would happen in it.

The concepts for the characters, trying to make them look
different from each other with different styles and
personalities

Once we had done this we then moved on to making some illustrations and concept art and drawings for the animation, this included the buildings and monuments in the city that's in the story, the kinds of people, fashion, gadgets, the environment, theme colours, expressions, hairstyles, some body positions etc.


We both worked on making characters to determine how we wanted the main characters to look as well as background/civillian characters that would be in the animation aswell. We tried to range their looks as best we could for the kind of animation we would be doing, which doesn't require too much detail or diversity of characters for it, having different facial structure, eyes and hair. Inspiration for the concept characters was mainly from mainstream looks, alternative, clebreties, game and show characters etc.

Photos of references we used to make better drawings of
shoes, clothing, poses etc.

Character design, experiemtning with expressions, facial
structure, fashion, drawing from different angles.

My classmate Marcin worked on the main theme of the world, the buildings, fashion and some people, getting the main theme down without too much research. The theme colours being of aquas. blues and or greens as a highlight against the main colours of greys and silvers. The fashion mainly consisted with tracksuits, bodysuits and sportswear kind of fashion, being clean, furturistic, almost metallic looking, comfortable and agile kind of clothing.

Fashion of the characters in the animation, made up of
sportswear and tracksuits with colour themes.

I worked on some people and fashion as well, though I looked up futuristic fashion online to get some ideas to add to the fashion of people in the animation. I came across some interesting images and examples of futuristic based fashion and clothing, though I didn't want to have something that was going to be complicated to draw and animate, as well as something that won't stick out too much with the overall fashion and designs Marcin had already done. I found similar designs that would've gone along well as an overall fashion and drew them on some design paper, the fashion of them either being big, loose or tight coats and jackets, though they were still going to be quite complicated to draw so we decided to stick to the designs Marcin had already done.

More fashion research done on graphic paper, trying out
different designs and colours from research.

I was also trying to figure out what the villian was going to be for the animation, though Marcin had the idea of making a pretty basic and obvious villian, being a kind of demon since the world is very spiritual based anyway. So with the idea of a demon in mind, I decided to make a good design for horns it would have instead of having the simple and overused style of goat or faun horns. So I researched into different horn shapes and sizes, animal horns and fantasy horns people had made, I then printed them off to then work from.
I used some scrap paper to try and get the right kind of horns to use and placement of them on a head, we wanted the demon villian to have two different sets of horns on it head, though it took many tries for me to get close to a design we were both happy with.
With the confirmed shape and size of the horns I then experimented with designs that would be in the horns to link better with the world, having dark, metallic looking horns with dark red lights.

Some of the horn designs for the villian.

Once I got a design I was happy to use I then went forward to design the demon, most of the ideas with how it would look was overall advertising of demons throughout media, movies, costumes etc. overtime. This resulted in the demon having a lanky, skinny body but still having some muscle and body mass, to look intimidating as possible, long nails, having a skinny face with skinny sharp edges and facial hair, lower body of ram legs etc.

Designs for the villian, first with the different sets of horns,
then onto the face and look of it before moving onto the body
and its size, shape and colour.

The fashion of the world is furturistic, clean, has theme colours of light grey and blues and greens, having tracksuits and sportswear kind of fashion. The environment is futuristic, advanced in technology, looking very clean, bright, green and nature friendly looking as well as being spiritual with having totems within the city on the streets, next to buildings etc. Marcin made multiple designs for buildings and structures to have included in the animation, this included trees and plantlife, buildings, stadiums, towers, sculptures, totems, light posts, satalights, signals, the paths and roads etc. Most of these would still have the main colour theme of blue/green/aqua colour.

Concept sheet for buildings and structures that we thought
about to put in the animation, listing designs and choosing
which ones to use.

Eventually we moved onto making the storyboard for the animation, working on it together. I did some of the basic line art, so did my classmate, the same with colouring and shading, but I did all of the small quick explanatory text underneath most of the storyboard panels.
We had our illustrations and concept art by us as we drew out the storyboard to keep themes, colours, shapes, backgrounds and characters accurate.

The story starts off with views of the city the story would be taking place, keeping a clean, futuristic look, spirit totems scattered through the city, having two different views before focusing onto the path that starts to shake and crack. Citizens start to panic as the sky starts to turn dark and see a giant demonic creature as it starts destorying buildings, this then catches the attention of two heros' in different places of the city, seeing the creature before running towards it.

We then put the attention to the female protagonist who is running towards the threat, she then uses a grappling hook device on her

Dystopia & Utopia Stop Motion Animation 1

Artist Research

During my trip to Manchester, I was told to go around the three museums that we would go to and find two pieces of artwork and then further research them and the artists. I took multiple photos of all the pieces of artwork I liked, found interesting and would look into further, and then later on I would go through them all and pick out two that stood out to me from the rest to research and look into.

The first piece that caught my eye was:
"Mrs A Scott-Elliot and Children" by Annie Louisa Swynnerton

The second piece of artwork I chose was a pre-raphilite painting:
John William Waterhouse

Dystopia & Utopia Stop Motion animation 2