OUIL406 Gif Summary

On the whole this gif making experience has been a good experience. I was able to develop both my digital and animation techniques. However I did have a few difficulties within this project, especially towards the beginning of the brief where I found generating multiple characters to be very difficult and began to question my abilities as an illustrator. However after asking myself questions as to why I found creating multiple characters so difficult and how I could develop the best of the bad lot I created to make more interesting and better developed characters I began to get a strong work momentum back. Going on my pinterest and looking at different variants of charter design also helped me look at the way I was creating characters alongside the workshop we had on spontaneous character creating. Overall I feel that all my gif have strong points the Queen gifs use of expressions, the hyenas colouring and movement and the sun kings more complex animation. Being left to animate autonomously helped greatly as I was forced to organise myself alongside my work load, meaning I knew some days I had to stay in front of a commuter screen from 9-6 and I wouldn't complain about it. Personally for me the pressure allowed for my work ethic to be stronger than it has been on most parts of the course. Working out the importance of naming files, using coloured layers to co-ordinate became curtail towards the last gif. 

In summary this brief was more influential and important to my mentality and endurance as an illustrator as it force me to push myself more psychologically that technically. Having autonomy to work allowed me to questions my actions as an illustrator making me wonder if I really needed to spend 2 hours on Tetris or work. Which is something I am very grateful for this brief for. 

OUIL406 Shape

Phillip Dornbierer

 Though a lot of Phillips illustrations are purely shape I find myself charmed by the slight use of texture created with the dots within the illustrations as it creates a slight sense of depth towards the pictures. It shows a consideration for how to break the images by creating creases in clothes and body parts without really breaking up the illusion of pure shape within the piece. 

Composition and colour are somethings that are also well thought out within most of Philips illustrations. In the second illustration theres I a great use of light to create a secondary narrative through the slight trouser pants revealed by the flashlight of the running woman.

 The considered use of negative space and selective colour in the images I have chose shows not only a consideration for the lay out of the images but an awareness of how effective shape, colour, light and composition can be to creating narrative without the use of words.

OUIL406 Gif 3

It began with my love of ostentatious monarchies and ended with a gif of an imperial space alien/eldritch horror whose political beliefs lie heavily in the monarchical and aristocratic regime.  Lets have a look at how we got there.

Both the image below and above where the initial concepts for my character based of louis xiv (the sun king), slightly strange sunlike beings that blink weirdly. However it wasn't that exciting to me and I began to wonder if I could push the concept of a sun king to weirder and less humanoid places. back in the day kings were seen as gods; not mortals so why does my character have to look mortal????

Deciding that a multi eyed constantly smiling creature with slowly blinking alternate eyes so its always staring at you was the exact kind of character deeded in my repertoire. 

My final rugh out of my child. 

Working out how his eyes blinked took time as I didn't want to make it succinct I wanted you not to know which eye they'd blink with and be  slightly confused by the order. Also to get across the idea that the eyes were similar to a frog or lizard in a look of mucus esque slimy closing and opening I had to add more panels within the give to slow down the blinking.

I then finalised a colour scheme and a storyboard for how this would work however I didn't realise the amount of layers or animation slots I would need. However I learnt the importance of both colour grouping and naming your layers so that you are organised and don't cause unnecessary time delays. 

Overall i'm really happy with this give though I feel like the execution and clean up of the gif could have been better. This is my favourite gif I've done yet. 

OUIL406 Gif 2

My second Gif based itself off my initial idea to anthropomorphise a spotted hyena and create a anro-greaser type character who'd either be seen taking a drag of a cigarette or laughing.

I also looked at videos of hyenas laughing to get a good sense of how to animate it. however because the noise that is interpreted as laughter is more of a noise of high anxiety I made the decision to make the hyena laugh more human like so that it easily come across to the audience that the hyena is laughing.

At first it was going to be similar to the image above however I hadn't thought about the dimensions that would have to be used I cropped it down to the face as seen below due to the fact that as the hyena laughing was the main focus of this and trying to draw a full or 3/4 body would be a lot more time consuming and I had to be realistic and prioritise time over detail in some aspects of my brief.

The profile picture and layout for this was quite simple so I knew that the animation wasn't going to be as long as my 3rd gif.

Though doing it digitally I experimented with the idea at first for creating the gif entirely in shape with the use of the pen tool however knowing my own hatred for the pen tool and everything it stands for I decided against this. Its a pain and I'd just end up hurling it across the room.

The end result of this really pleases me, it feels like a monty pythonesque animation which I think works well with this piece.

OUIL406 Gif 1

 Development of my first Character

The Queen

Originally the character was based off Nicki Minaj's Pinkprint Album which represents an the end of a 12 year relationship and the reestablishing of Minaj's self as a single women. She uses the album to show extreme vulnerability to the trails she has had to face as well as admitting to her own flaws and streaks of violence. It is very easy to see in this album that Minaj still has mixed feelings about her ex this helped me to begin the foundations to develop a character who has the same vulnerability and volatility that Minaj shows within her album.  (The reason the character is a Queen is based on the multiple times Nicki Minaj refers to herself as the Queen of Rap)

Developing this character further and pushing away from basing them purely on Nicki Minaj songs I focused on the characteristic of the character being extremely volatile in their emotions. The Duchess and The Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland are two characters  which embody extreme volatility and self centred morals. I developed the 'Queen' to have a similar personality of irrational anger and a severe violence streak. 

At this point I was looking into maybe a series of gifs exploring her sudden hyper-violent  personality. However I want to look at some of my other characters too. 

Making of the Gif

Something I found really beneficial was the fact that using save for web allowed me to limit the colour palette pushing the gif to the most basic colour palettes before it comes unrecognisable. I have difficulty limiting my colours so this feature made me a bit more conscious of the colours I use when I'm colouring images. 

Evaluation of the Gif 

 This is not my favourite gif as it was my first time using digital as my sole media. When compressed for web the gradients in the background broke up and became less blended it's something that is good to know for other projects so that I'm more aware of the effects of transitioning gif from photoshop to the web may effect the image quality. The line quality within this piece is shoddy and something that I need to practice more on when using a digital tablet. The expressions came out well enough however it feels like there should be a few more frames to make the transition smoother, although if I did that then the dramatics of the gif might have been lost. Maybe it needed more time with bot figures eyes closed. 

After fiddling with the speed and amount of frames this altered version feels a lot smoother within it's transitions than the original. 

OUIL406 Initial Ideas

 I had some genuine difficulty with the first part of this task. I was frustrated how difficult I found it to create characters based off prompts especially since I've always seen the creation of characters as one of my stronger points. 

After the Crits of the work and out afternoon task alongside Jon Boam I realised i needed to take a step back from what I was trying to do and begin thinking of what I wanted to achieve at the ended of it. I got good feedback on my ability to draw women as a strength. 

 For this project with the ideas I'm going to play to my strengths when developing and generating ideas, going with what enthuses me. however I'll take more of a creative risk with media by maybe using entirely digital. So the first half of this project has pushed me idea wise but the second half pushes me media wise.

OUIL406 Gif Task

By Joe Todd-Stanton

This gif made digitally with custom brushes to create the aesthetic of a handcrafted character, which we see a lot of in his work. It reminds me of Ronald Searle work, which I saw at Leeds University gallery, the character feels very considered but the line work is very playful and instant. The gif is use to create humour, as it allows the wizards magic universe to only be seen for a second where as  the rest of the time he is unassuming. The quick change in drastic expressions also helps along the gif reemphasising that what the character is doing may be a bit cheeky. I like the way the gif tells you a lot about the character in a very simple way, the quick mood shift and quick transition of expression is something that gives the character a lot of personality without doing much.