DVD covers

Its been a very long time since my last post, due to a lot of work and other irrelevant issues. However, the final "20-30" animation is finished. In the end I decided to go with the heavy box, the balloon and ice. I have been working on the DVD label and cover. I decided to use my character 'Sid' on the front cover and use other characters from my walk cycles and lip sync on the back. I also used the techniques i learned in Photoshop from the digital skills tutorials; such as giving shadows and erasing the corners to create rips and tears.  

I decided to keep the design quite simple, because i think that sometimes the design can become quite messy and complicated. A much more simple design can still be as effective.

Cat Character walk

This is my cat character line test. He has quite a simple walk, he will be interacting with a heavy box, a kite and ice. Hopefully it will all go according to plan!

Lip sync

Just thought i'd post my lip sync in vimeo, it might be better quality.

Character Plasticine Model

After Andys advice I decided to create a plasicine model of my character. I am a very visual person and it could help my when drawing the different angles of my character. I don't think I am great at creating sculptures but I had a go at it. It took a few hours and it came out looking quite like my character although its not perfect. The legs aren't great, but I was woried that if I took anymore plasticine away from the legs, it wouldn't support itself. I'm surprised that I actually got it to stand without any support. It has helped me to draw my character much more easily from diferent angles as it can be really frustrating trying to imagine it and then get it down on paper without any visual aid. As a result, I am quite pleased with my character sculpture.

Character Design

These are my designs for the 20 second animation we have to produce. The character must interact with three of the following:

- Boulder
- Heavy Box
- Ice
- Puddles
- Kite
- Balloon
- Football

It took me quite a while to think of what I wanted my character to interact with, but I think I know what I want to do. It is also important to mention that it is the quality of the animation and how the character interacts with the above that is important.

Here are some illustrations of my character I created in Photoshop:

I wanted to keep my design simple because adding detail would take much longer to complete the animation and it is the personality of the character and the animation that is important, not so much the design and the story.

Alien Walk

Just thought I would put my Alien walk cycle to some music, because although its not necessary - It's a change to silence.

Photoshop Alien Walk

Here is my Alien walk cycle created in Photoshop. It took me hours to complete and I think it has come out alright. I also tried to go one step further and try to make him walk across the page. However, because I have Photoshop elements - there is no animate button. I had to save it to the web for it to animate, which is really annoying. It didn't come out great but it is a start.