Qwertee Monster Trio Designs 1

I wanted to try adding some shapes first to keep the sihouettes black, but deciding how much of each character should be seen was hard - they each take up a lot of space, so some overlapping might be needed.

I tried overlapping coloured silhouettes of them without shapes which I think works better, but looks kind of messy with all the random little black shapes around their designs. The colours are the main ones that the characters are associated with - using them will make the characters of the design much more obvious to anyone familiar with the show.

Separating them was much more effective, although I will have to make sure that the design isn't too long on the T-shirt. Width wise it isn't much of the problem, and I think that you can see a decent amount of each character within the boxes.

I tried changing the yellow to a blue, one of Sanji's other colours, but it doesn't quite work; yellow looks much better with red and green, so I'll probably be going back to that soon.

AA: Cake Stand/Market Stall

One of the things to stay consistent throughout the animation, at least from what Cara has storyboarded so far, is the cake stand/stall that Johnny finds himself walking past. The animation will cycle through a few different time periods - Ancient Egyptions, Middle Ages, and Industrial Revolution. We don't want these settings to seem kind of random and disjointed from the rest of the animation, so I was thinking that if we have a solid object, as well as the character always present in the shot, then it should all be a lot more coherent.

Rebecca already suggested ideas for a cake stand this week which would work great as the solid object - pretty much every culture in the world has some kind of market/stalls, so it wouldn't be too hard to make this work for our different time periods. This will also make it easier to show off different desserts from then that won't be included in the narration adding a bit more fact and making the visuals even more interesting. I think that this is going to be great fun to design, so I think I might consider the structure of the stand first of all, and then begin designing the cakes/props separately before putting them all together - my cake/dessert research from earlier on in the project should come in very handy for that.

I created a Pinterest board with a few different cake stands and market stalls to use as reference, but I think I will wait a little bit until Cara and Rebecca have added to it just so that I can make sure we all have the same kind of idea for it, or in case they thought of something else. Since we are working so closely together, I feel like making sure that they completely agree or get a lot of input is important. I trust their sense of design, since I know that they have always paid a lot of attention to pre-production in past projects so my designs should benefit a lot more from their ideas as well as mine.

AA: How Sugar Affects the Brain

How Sugar Affects the Brain is an interesting documentary that gets its point across well. At first I thought it might just be another motion graphic type of documentary that has you reading most of the information yourself, but I soon found out that isn't the cast. Text is used in conjunction with imagery that changes constantly, keeping it new and interesting. A lot of the text is mostly labels, which helps to explain the illustrations and doesn't take your concentration away from the narrator's voice, which is younger and slightly more interesting than other narration voices I have heard in documentaries.

The style of the animation itself is quite bright and still somewhat graphic-y, with what little detail they have standing out a lot. The images are easy to read and nice to look at, without looking too much like it is for a childrens' animation. Occasionally it switches to bits of 3D animation for different points which helps to change the subjects and stop you from getting bored.

I still think that at times there is probably a bit too much going on in the animation - especially if you watch the video without sound, in some parts everything happens a little too fast to follow, and too fast to figure out what the point was in the first place. It works well with the narration, but is another documentary that requires you to focus, which means it may not be as suitable for children. Some of the subject matter too implies that is is aimed at more of an adult audience, with mentions of drugs and sex.

This documentary is different to a lot of others I have seen, and that keeps it interesting. It is informative about things that are actually useful and that the viewer can actually use such as the section on dopamine and how eating the same thing often lowers the amount of dopamine that you produce while eating it.

The visual style of it is also one of my favorite parts. and if I do need to create props or food separately then this is a good video to take influence from for creating images that are simple yet interesting. This animation again is showing that you shouldn't have too much going on in the background while the narrator speaks, so I will mention that to Cara when she creates the storyboards.

AA: Nickelodeon Fat Files - Fast Food

One of the documentaries that we looked at for our projects was 'Nickelodeon Fat Files - Fast Food'. It was produced for children and shown in breaks between cartoons on Nickelodeon in 2002 to give children information about fast food and to promote healthy eating. In our animation, we want to aim it at the same age range, around 6-11, so I think that this is a good short to take influence from.

Despite the somewhat serious matter, it is still light hearted and entertaining, especially with the puns and food humor in it that I particularly enjoy. Humor can also help children learn stuff easier, since cold, hard facts aren't quite as interesting to children as jokes are. The style is reminiscent of Hanna-Barbera style animations, something that most people have probably seen at some point in their life, so this make it looks less like some boring, informative thing that you have to watch and makes the documentary feel much more consistent with the other animation on the channel - it is just another fun cartoon to watch that happens to be full of useful facts.

The narration is another thing that keeps it interesting; the very American announcer kind of voice fits in again with other cartoons, and stops the information from being dull. If the information was text based, children would not bother to read it, so using audio makes them much more likely to listen and absorb it. The voice also has a sense of fun (unlike a lot of the more information heavy videos you might hear at schools for this age group) and makes the whole animation feel even more lively.

These have been very effective ways of getting the message across; the show is fun, interesting, and isn't too in-your-face about giving you information. I feel like so far this is very relevant to our project, and will probably be influencing our work more than some of the other documentaries we have looked at. The style of narration is definitely something that we want to look at, and the humor  and aesthetic style gives us a few more things to think about when it comes to the script and look of the show.

WeTransfer: Early Designs

I found the designs slightly tricky at first, not least because I don't tend to change what I wear too often - what I am wearing now is not too far from what I wore years ago, so would this continue in the next ten years? I feel like it would, but I let myself try a few more different things for these designs just to see. They are all very rough and loose - considering we will probably be doing cleaned up versions for the flipbook proposal later, I feel like it is pointless doing these too pretty and detailed yet - we just need the concepts for now.

These are much more what I tend to wear already, as something to start with, although I haven't yet had the hair or shoes of the third one, but that is the direction I seem to be going in so I added them for now.

The next is using a few more bits of other fashion styles, like more shoulder pads/leather jackets, and detailed socks/tights. The shoes are still large, although I have experimented with a few different heights.

The first isn't really something I could see myself wearing, or at least not all together. My shoes have been getting bigger every time I buy them, so the boots are a possibility and something I might look at in later designs. Lots of layer will still probably be a key point in what I wear in the future, so that is something that I need to keep going with in these designs.

These are a lot further from what I would usually wear, and I'm sill not sure if myself would change to something more like this, but it is more options to consider.

My designs so far have helped me think about what my fashion sense will be like even if none of these feel spot on; big shoes and layer are definitely important for me, and though the hairstyles could change a lot in ten years time, I feel like the longer/more natural styles are what I would go with since they are easier to manage and I see myself [hopefully] being very busy in ten years time with work and games and everything else. These are the things that I will concentrate on in any further designs.

AA: Il Complesso di Adipo

https://www.behance.net/gallery/4962143/Il-complesso-di-Adipo

 Il Complesso di Adipo is a documentary on obesity by Alice Cappo, Elena Conchetto and Fabio Carrera. The documentary, as implied by the title, is in a different language, but I still find it understandable enough through the animation, so I feel like it is likely to be quite effective to an audience who can actually understand it.

Most of the information is given out through text; it is big enough to read clearly, with a font that stops it from looking too boring. It stays on long enough to read, without disrupting the flow of the animation. The animation while the text is shown is largely background animation, keeping your eyes from wandering too much but also making the video stay interesting.

The audio throughout is pretty upbeat and repetitive, again stopping it from being boring but not distracting you from the actual animation. It almost reminds me of game music, with a lot of the simple walking through the scenes animation reminding me of  a platformer game - something that definitely doesn't scream 'mindlessly ingest all of this boring information'.

The visual style is fun, without too much detail clogging it up. A lot of the animation is very fluid, and all of the scenes read clearly. I feel like the style is suitable for a wider range of audiences; this could keep even adults' attention, as opposed to just children, even though I think at least part of the information is referring to children (although it is important for parents to know these statistics and health facts too).

From what I can tell, this could be an effective documentary, even bringing the viewer into it at the end with the 'Et tu?' This is important to get the viewer looking at it in a more subjective way, and think about their own life a lot more rather than just seeing it as something that happens to other people. The video stays interesting yet informative, and I feel like the messages within it could stick with a lot of the audience. The text based way of giving the information is probably less suitable for our animation and the younger audience, but the upbeat music and simple yet fun animation could definitely be looked at further when it comes to our project.

AA: Cake Shop Man Design 1

For the design of this character - especially since I wasn't too sure where exactly to start, I relied a lot on Facebook for instant feedback from my team so that I would make changes as soon as they were suggested instead of going off with an idea but having everyone else disagree. This is the first time I realised just how convenient using Facebook is for projects like this; the only thing that would have been better would be if they were present as I was drawing, but that wasn't possible. Still, the whole process went much faster than it would have done if we didn't use face book.

I had a few really rough sketches in my sketchbook of a few body shapes/styles from other CN shows but none of them felt right, which at least gave me a few to eliminate straight away. I ended up using a style a little closer to Motorcity's than anything else because it really made the limbs that much sharper, and adding to the angular effect that Cara and Rebecca wanted. Still, I struggled a little bit at first - I haven't really had to opportunity to design many adult or male characters for animation, since I hadn't really thought about designing for animation instead of illustration before this course. Still I feel like once I got to the second page of designs I got into it a lot more, especially as I started to figure out what sort of design I wanted to go for and which parts to exaggerate. 

After the comparison, I was a lot more confident with the shape - it is close enough to Johnny's design (the child) so that it works, but different enough to show his personality and, of course, age. I do actually like the design for his face/head, but not for this project - maybe if I was making more of a stuffy, rich older man character then I would use it, but this wasn't what we were going for with the cake guy. I feel like these designs helped to pin down his personality a little bit more as well, since so far most of our planning was on the plot/how to get this animation factual enough for the module, otherwise we would just go off on one with characters and narrative stuff.

It definitely helped having a few more sets of eyes to help me decide what amount of exaggeration was needed, and what bits may or may not be needed - this was one of the most fun design processes I've been a part of for a while, and it made me sad that there aren't more characters to design for this project, although I don't think I could have got things finished for the pitch if there were. I also feel like the designs develop very coherently - I feel like even without commentary you can tell why/how I have gone in which direction, which I think is a good thing. I do agree with the friendlier looking characters being better, even though he started off as a much crazier, eccentric guy, but this is probably better for the sort of audience that we has. Instead of being obsessed, this guy just really loves cakes.

The last thing we talked about was the chins - a lot of the differences are only very subtle, but I'm glad that we thought about it. The rounder chin does look even friendlier but considering the amount of angles on him, I think that squarer was the better choice, although the round chin and rounder jaw look interesting - I might consider using a design like that in another project down the line. I think that we have a very fun, friendly character here though, and he should be pretty simple to animate.

Finished design! Now for thinking about colour.

AA: Cake Shop Man Research

We did discuss our ideas for the cake/narrator guy in the animation, and we all seemed to have similar ideas but being able to collect and share visual research instantly really helped.

We have been using a lot of Pinterest for this project; I know exactly when someone has found something and I can view it straight away, instead of going off on one doing work and then seeing that they had completely different ideas; even if I am in charge of character/prop design, I want everyone to be completely happy with what we are animating, and I want to make sure that my stuff works with the story as well. The script has been written so I have a much better idea of the personalities of characters, but having that extra visual research is great.

A lot of our inital thoughts were to go with a very American sort of design - we want a typical, almost annoying American presenter sort of voice for the character, so the design has to work well with that. At the same time, it has to work with our child design, and we need to make sure that they still look like they are from the same show, so we have some Cartoon Network and other childrens' cartoon examples in there as well.

I also like how sharply dressed Professor Utonium (Powerpuff Girls) is; his design is definitely something that I will figure out while creating this character, since it could work well with the presenter kind of idea.

Fairly Odd Parents does well with some of their diverse body shapes which I would love to explore but we need to keep this design simple, especially if our animation ends up being a lot closer to 2 minutes. Still, I think that the show utilises shapes very well without over complicating things, and you can tell what the characters are like just from their designs, so this is a good thing to think about.

Another thing that I thought would be great to look at is Robert Valley's designs for Disney XD's Motorcity. Again, the use a lot of simple shapes - probably even simpler than some of Fairly Odd's at times. A few recent comments about the cake shop man have been that he should be tall, and possibly very angular, which is why I think that these characters are good to look at - exaggerating things like the height and angles is something that Valley does very well, although there are still characters the use a lot of curves shapes and work great, so there are a variety of shapes to look at in case I really want to go crazy. I do only have a limited amount of time before the pitch though, and I can change the designs afterwards but I want something solid to present for it so I might stick to more angles etc for now - depending on what works with the child design.

AA: Child Design 2 (Colour)

I had a lot of people liking the design for the child as he was already, but I thought at least a bit more development couldn't hurt.

I feel like a hat would be very awkward with the size of the hair on the character - which it was once I tried it, but I also felt like changing the hair size wouldn't work, considering how big the head was and I really liked the head to body ratio, so I decided to leave the hat. Cara especially liked the hair, so I felt it was better to leave it in. I do think that the extra flick I added worked very well, and makes the kid look even cuter. Plus, children, especially left to their own devices, are probably going to get themselves a little more scruffy/messy and I feel like the newer hair design reflects this more - I doubt most of the kids watching would have perfectly shaped hair. The smaller glasses makes the design look a little too old, I feel - those sort of thin glasses that are thick rimmed are seen more on teenagers and young adults than on children, so that was a no. The bigger glasses looked great on him, and I feel like it makes him look a little more real than just having the tiny eyes do. All of the feedback I got for the glasses was extremely positive, so I was happy to move on with the design. I liked the images on the top, but I wasn't sure at this point if the extra detail there was necessary - choosing the right colours would be enough so I left it for now.

Choosing brighter colours works well for our audience - it keeps things interesting, and would make the character stand out. I already really liked the ginger character, but someone pointed out that with the glasses, the character kind of looks like Chuckie from Rugrats. Chuckie is adorable, but I would like to avoid comparisons with other characters if possible.

I then thought about our cake theme, and how the character could fit with that a lot more. There is probably going to be a decent amount of pink in some of the scenes, at least as far as I can tell from our ideas, so the blue hair would be a nice contrast and set him a little bit more apart from the cake and sweet stuff, since he represents the audience and isn't the one giving the information on cake. I tried a lot of softer colours, because the whole animation could look good in pastel,considering the subject, but none of these really stood out for me.

I went back to a few more normal colours for a while - again,I really love the colour combination on the ginger character but I really don't think that he would look good with the other settings/characters that we want to use. This made me sure that I wanted to carry on with more blues/pinks/ colours that either complimented/contrasted with the rest of the animation, so I went back to the pinks and blues.

Varying the shades and saturation helped a lot, and there are a few designs here that I do like. My favorite however, and the favorite of most people I have asked so far is the blue hair, and white/pink top. I added a few stars from earlier designs just to make them more interesting and I think that they really work, so I think that we're pretty much settles on that design now.

Qwertee Monster Trio Research

My third and probably final Qwertee design will feature 3 of the main characters of One Piece, known collectively as 'The Monster Trio'. I'll probably do some designs from another fandom at a later date, but my Qwertee profile will have consistent designs that all relate together which can sometimes helps if someone has only found one of your designs. I also love the designs and silhouettes of the characters, so I'm happy focusing on them for now.

Monkey D. Luffy, the main character, has a lot of interesting poses and fighting moves, but they aren't always all readable as a silhouette, and lot aren't the sort of pose that really fit too well in group images. I feel like the first or third image might work a lot better if I'm doing a design of the trio.

Roronoa Zoro has some great poses - the only problem could, again, be fitting some of the more important parts of the images in. I'm not 100% sure about his katana completely fitting into some of the images, but as long as the main movement/pose is visible, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Sanji has a lot of clear, interesting sihouettes, but again they take up a lot of space. I think that having both feet showing isn't necessary though - I think a lot of his silhouettes should be easy enough to see from the position of his body, but we will see when I start testing them out.

WeTransfer: Collaborative Agreement

WeTransfer: Fashion Cycles

Laver's Law (1937) states that a trend doesn't look appealing until 50 years after it's time; 10 years after it is in fashion would be 'hideaous', and 20 years would be 'ridiculous' and so on. Whereas that may once have been true, the fashion industry has developed and moves so quickly now that this isn't as correct as it might have been on; fashions cycles have sped up, and we are seeing fashions from eras like the 80s become popular once again.

LAVER'S LAW 10 years before - indecent Five years before - shameless One year before - daring In fashion - smart One year after - dowdy 10 years after - hideous 20 years after - ridiculous 30 years after - amusing 50 years after - quaint 70 years after - charming 100 years after - romantic 150 years after - beautiful Source: Fashion-era.com

With how fast and how differently the industry moves now, is there much of a point of trying to predict it in the future or will we be completely surprised with how it will turn out? I'm not sure what the results will be, but I have never really been one to follow trends so even if, for example, 50s fashion was big again in 10 years I don't know if it would influence my fashions sense much. Still, it is an interesting thing to think about, and I will consider how that could affect my designs.

AA: Child Character Design

This is the part of the project that I have been looking forwards to - in fact, I've been waiting for this since the start of the year. I feel like first year was so focused on technical skills that I never had time to think properly about pre-production - both to learn it and do it, which is a shame because I have always been interested in character design. This project lets me finally concentrate on it and so far I am already enjoying it way more than the last year and a half of animation.

I started off by sketching a few really loose character shapes, taking a lot of inspiration from the CN designs I looked up previously. These are ones that would be much easier to animate - something that we need if this animation is going to be over double the length of anything we've done before, and it will make any clean up I have to do much, much easier.

I narrowed it down to one shape that would be easy to draw but still looks interesting enough. I used a few CN-esque eyes and a couple of other shapes just to see what sort of ones looked good and what proportions worked. I didn't want to get it too close to any other styles, although the character second from the left on the bottom row used a lot of features from Fairly Odd Parents that worked well.

I tried a few more shapes for eyes, and while a few worked, some didn't quite look friendly enough or the right age for our character; he would be between 7-12 as that is our age range, but at this point the writing has not been 100% finalised, and we are trying not to turn it too much into a narrative, because the three of us enjoy narrative based animation and ways of working much more, but if we can achieve a decent mix the that and documentary we will be happy. I wouldn't mind doing some more writing and ideas, but since we have to pitch relatively soon which also means getting the storyboards out soon as well, I want to get as much of the design done as possible, which means concentrating wholly on this and not the story. It doesn't work out too badly - since Rebecca's main role is on animation, she has the free time now to concentrate on the story herself, and I've always enjoyed her work, so I think we're in good hands. I can always go back and change/add to any designs if anything changes, but for now I think that I am on track with what we were aiming for.

From the above drawings, I got feedback from members of my team, staff and first years to see which parts of the characters worked best. Cara really liked the flicky hair, which I do agree with, and there was a lot of positivity for the very small, simple eyes. I was inclined to go for the more almost Disney style large pupil within the two almost semi-circle lines but after the development above, I do actually really like how the smaller eyes have worked, I got to the end design on that page and the support for it was extremely good, which I am happy about because that was my favorite design so far, and one that I could see working for the sort of show that we are making. Next I will focus on him, see what else I could do, if there's anything I could add, and start to consider colour.

AA: Recent Ideas

Notes from Today's session:

- Voice over - more interesting for a kids' audience.
- How to show different ways of cooking/making dessert
- History of desserts - starting with honey etc
- Horrible History takes on dessert
- Focus on history of cake? As it evolves/different countries?
-------> more of a family audience?
Ice cream -> ice cream cake?
Cake -> newer types of cake?
-------
Narration ' "hey you, do you know where cake comes from?" - cheesy, younger audience. 'Stupid narrator'?
Cartoon Network-esque. "Hey kid, you wanna know where cake comes from?"
Which cakes - a lot at the same time in history. Icons on a map [infographicesque] and quickass zoom in on them. End with kid already gone with cake but narrator still chatting on?
- Research into cake history
style - 1950s, lok opening etc

^Using the sort of narration perhaps from Avatar: Legend of Korra (Which then reminds me of the narration at the beginning of he Powerpuff Girls). Use this instead of a text based animation, maybe have a cheesier, overexaggerated voice?

AA: Style Research

Since we are aiming this at a younger audience, and what to make it feel very fun and entertaining, I am looking at a lot of Cartoon Network-esque styles for inspiration. their bold lines and colours stand out a lot (which is also the sort of thing that helps merchandising wise, and since we are thinking about this with the potential to be a series, I think that making opportunities like that for ourselves is a good idea).

Fairlyodd Parents is one of the shows that I think of first when I think of Cartoon Network; it's style is very iconic, and allows for a lot of expression and movement. The faces use the same formulas for each character and doesn't offer so much variety, until you get to the older (and especially male characters), apart from when the Faries are being silly. The colours are very bright and interesting, and the lines are very thick and bold making it very appealing to a younger audience. With the body sizes and shapes for many of the characters, there isn't an overabundance of detail making them easier to watch.

Powerpuff Girls is another on of the most popular and influential styles from Cartoon Network. Their designs are extremely simplistic which makes them easy to read, especially as they have fairly small bodies that may be hard to decipher otherwise. Bright colours again help to make them stand out. Their body shapes also makes it very easy to map out the line of action and plan how the characters move.

The Grimm Adventures of Billy and Mandy use very good, different silhouettes which make them unique and  gives them a lot more personality; you can tell that Grimm will be a much more serious character from all of the sharper edges he has, and his taller, stretched out figure. Billy on the other hand is made from rounder more friendly shapes, showing that he is a harmless kid and the bubble one of the group. Again they simpler colours not only for their younger audience but to show the younger age of some of the characters as well.

Thinner, coloured lines doesn't subtract from the bright colours of the characters which emphasises their personalities and setting. The bodies are extremely simplified, putting more emphasis on the faces and accessories than the actual clothes themselves. There is decent variety in their face shapes which can't always be found with female characters of the same age in animation.

Great diversity and very good silhouettes. Upbeat, lively, full of colour - reflects the possibilities of imagination rather than the real world so much. There is a lot of variety in faces and shapes in this, which helps because the characters aren't limited by human shapes, sizes and proportions. They aren't even all real animals, so arguably the designs are limitless (when you don't think about network restrictions etc). That doesn't mean a design has to go crazy though - Bloo is one of the most simple characters on the network, but he was still one of the most popular with his naughty personality.

In Samurai Jack, there is much emphasis on shapes; the designs also feel softer with less lines which probably helps the show get away with more violence. Faces tend to be tackled in a different way to some of the other CN designs, which is in part because of the attention paid to other cultures. Detail within characters is much more subtle it helps to show the character's personality, but it isn't distracting - the main focus in Samurai Jack is the silhouettes, done especially well with the more villainous characters.

Sym-Bionic titan has a slightly more realistic style - compared to the above few designs, anyway. You can tell just from that that it is aimed at an older audience, with a lot more detail and thought for style and how people think about their 'image'. the colours are slightly more varied but still very bright, to make it friendly enough for any younger viewers watch it. It still keeps the thick lines, keeping it very bold and exciting.

Gravity Falls, from Disney XD uses a lot of the techniques from above but actually has a few more changing outfits for the characters, depending on what happens in the episode. These tend to be similar in shape and style to their usual clothes, and still reflect their character and personality very well, keeping them recognisable. The lines aren't thick enough to take away with the design - it seems that thicker lines work better for more extreme, compact designs; Gravity Falls has a lot of slightly more realistic proportions, even if the shapes themselves are very simplified,and they use thinner lines than many of the examples above.

These designs give me a lot to think about; I know that silhouettes and bright colours will be an important part of my design, but the amount of exaggeration depends on what exactly we decide our final story to be, and just how young an audience we are aimed at. These designs can also apply to the food, especially if we end up having any food as characters.