This post is to demo straight my development of my portfolio for my professional practice:
For my portfolio I am using the Adobe Portfolio to put it together. I started the process by uploading the projects that I have created this year, Bubble and Squeak and Famous Women of Hull. These uploads were divided into two project category’s each for my projects that I have created this year. Unfortunately due to Famous Women of Hull been an interactive Flash file that utilises Action Script 3, I am unable to upload this onto my portfolio because of Flash not been supported by many softwares anymore, so I have placed my silent recording of the animation onto my portfolio to display that I can create an interactive animation. The Portfolio was also given several pages that will eventually act as links to websites that are useful for this path I am going down such as Twitter, Deviantart, my blog etc.
The image above to to show what I have put together so far for my famous women of Hull Project in my portfolio. I have also added a link to this blog that is related to that project, so that if I have a potential client that is interested in this project, they can have a closer look at how I work and what I produce during the main stages of a project. I have uploaded the chapter still that I created for this animation with several of my prototypes to also help display how they affected the animation.
The Bubble and Squeak page in my portfolio has the complete version of Bubble and Squeak but it doesn’t have all of my recordings that I did to create the final project due to them been lots of different recording that aren’t necessary to be placed in my Portfolio.
Unfortunately due to several unforeseen events I was not able to get my Women of the World Animation for WOW at Hull. These events led to my project been delayed and me having to correct and fix several glitches that had occurred in the prototype animation. These glitches varied from my book animation for no reason constantly changing to white for no reason and no matter how many times I changed to colour of the book back to the desired and chosen colour scheme the book would revert back to the white colour. Eventually I managed to get the book to stay the original chosen colour scheme. Other problem that were involved with this project were also minor such as the Bumblebee suddenly become detached from it’s wings and moving a few frames ahead instead of the two frames sticking together. So I had to go back to main frames that were centred around this glitch in Flash and manually correct it, which while doesn’t seem to take long the process can be quite tiring and does take a long time because of Flashes settings. Due to the some of the mentioned occurrences that have happened my project has been pushed back leading to me missing the Women of the World event. I can make up for this by not only finding a new client some where in Hull since it is the City of Culture this year but I can also make more tweaks to the project to make it look more professional and correct anymore mistakes that have happened before I show it to said client.
This blog post is to show my first few design ideas that I had for the development of squeak in attempt to make him more mouse like in the process.
As you can see the first few drawings in the image above do show that I am starting to get the general understanding of how the anatomy of the mouse works, mainly at this moment how the head works more than anything else, which can be seen in the image above in the bottom left corner. The rest of the body work isn’t the best in these attempts, a few do actually look like they are starting to take on the appearance of an actual mouse.
These next two images focus more on the main body of the mouse and how their work when they move. As you can see my first drawing on the left goes back to more of the original design than my current attempts. This was slightly irritating due to the fact that I had spent ages trying to develop away from the original idea and now in one attempt I had redrawn the original design. The second design is the most successful design out of the two, the body is positioned correctly and both the head, arms and legs are equally proportioned making this drawing of Squeaks look more like a proper mouse, which makes me happy and draws in the target audience.
In the next image I attempted to recreate these attempt with the first few sketches in the image above the first one been the best out of the lot, the head was done perfectly as were the arms and the feet. Making this sketch of a mouse seem like it was the most successful, the main reason why this occurred was that I focused more on drawing shapes to help me correctly shape the mouse with the proportioning. The second drawing was an attempt without me drawing any shapes to help start the proportioning and while it came out looking somewhat decently there was a huge difference between the previous sketch and the current one. The other two drawings were absolutely awful compared to the other sketches their was no shapes to help I tried to create appearance of the mouse just from the top of my head and as you can see it worked some what but the ending result was that they didn’t look very appealing to the eye.
These last drawings were more focused on making the character appearing more animated or Tom and Jerry like and while some of them look like they were actual animated character the other drawings look nothing like a proper mouse more liek a demon of some sorts.
Here is the fifth prototype of the Ass and the Driver:
This is next Prototype version of the Ass and his Driver and again I will now compare it against my aim/intentions that I stated at the beginning of the project:
The aim for this animation project is to develop a Fictional Animation that successfully shows the chosen Aesop’s Fable, clearly and effectively to the target audience. This is to make sure that the tale and the lesson that is within, is easy to identify and understand. The Animation will also utilize correct, effective and suitable sound effects for this animation, that do not offend the audience and are either my own or are Royalty Free in Nature.
As you can see this version of the Aesop Fable, The Ass and His Driver is displayed clearly to the target audience with the animation style I have produced although it does come across childish it still portrays the point of the story. Unfortunately the downfall with this prototype is that, while it does show the entire tale to the target audience like I wanted, it doesn’t give time for the target audience to read or understand the story because the font with the information isn’t around long enough to be read completely. But the motion of the characters does also help tell this tale, I will need to fix the font and make it last longer on the screen to give the target audience time to read the information and understand both the story and the lesson more effectively. In order to do this I will also need to expand the amount of time for each of the necessary motions of the characters, this will also increase the effectiveness and how clear the tale is actually displayed to the target audience. There are no sound effects yet for this animation but I have already looked into to some sound effects for this animation, see my other post further down.
Now I need to find a suitable client, so that I can discuss the possibility for my work to be presented to the public.
The suitable location I chosen to present my work to the public is:
Beverley Art Gallery/Treasure House/Library:
While this location is a combination of historical, art and literature it still is an excellent choice for presenting my animated project to the Public. I have chosen this because the library has a large section that is dedicated to Children, so due to the fact that my project is an animation that focus on a audience of a young age this is the best possible choice for this.
So I visited the Library to see if I could get my work displayed their in the child section, I was unfortunately told that I would have to ask a member of staff who worked in the Art Gallery and Treasure House to see if I could have my work displayed in the library. Once I spoke with the member of staff who I was refereed to apparently she couldn’t help me but I could possibly get the work displayed if I talked with the Curator of the Museum, Dr Gerardine Mulcahy-Parker .
Unfortunately she wasn’t in and I was told that the only possible way to get in contact with her was to email her, so I was given the email address to get in contact with Dr Mulcahy-Parker. So later I wrote up an email questioning if I could display my work in the public within the library.
There are various ways of displaying art to the public from the classical museums to massive art conventions. All presenting a wide range of art styles and artist that are either current or are among history, for example modern artist such as Banksy or Quentin Blake or Classic Artists such as Leonardo Divinci, each present differently.
Museums/Art Galleries/Exhibits:
These are the most common methods of presenting the work of various artists to the public. The type of art depends on the actual museum, art Gallery or Exhibit because each one is set up differently not only in appearance wise but also what sort of art they display.
Beverley Art Galley/Library:
While Beverley Art Galley/Library is in deed quite small, it still displays a wide range of Art pieces from original works dating back to the Georgian period or Photo Graphs from the World War Two Era. Each one of these piece while not as famous as works such as Van Gogh still has it’s own place in the gallery to be displayed to the public and still draws quite a crowd for Beverley especially when some of the very old exhibits are brought out from storage for the certain events that involve Beverley such as the Music festival. While this is one of the most basic forms for getting ones work out to the public for viewing and opinions, it might be the best bet for one of my own projects later on, since it gets quite a lot of public attention and interest.
Provided by Apollo Lighting
The exhibits here are also animated or are actual short documentaries that are used to explain some of the more historical details that couldn’t exactly be watered down on the simple name tag that you usually find in a exhibit.
The Internet:
While not necessary completely public, it is still a form that shows of various art styles and techniques to the public that is used by a lot of industries even ones that aren’t necessarily involved with Art or Animation. For Example:
Youtube:
While it isn’t always a conventional method of showing of the work that artist have created to the public, it still is a means of getting the work out their to the public to be criticized, evaluated, studied and appreciated by them. What I mean by this is that many artist actually show their work off on this site, be it a animated collage of photos, showing there work or an actual animation that it either quite long or short, a music piece or video composed by them in order to gather the opinions of those that view them so that they can improve themselves or their work in the future.
Youtube is also used to advertise as well, what this means is that well there are video or images with various music and flashy fonts placed on youtube to catch the attention of the intended target audience. The types of advertisement for this can vary be it for a art gallery or a museum, or a TV series/film or video game this pubic internet software is used to get the attention of the target audience easily by presenting clips from these things to draw them in. Here are some examples:
This clip is from ever growing popular animated series Steven Universe by Rebecca Suger. The is named the Steven Universe Into Deep Special, this was used by Rebecca Suger to announce to the shows fans that the new season of Steven Universe is coming to cartoon network soon. The way the clip is presented is that various moments from the new season that don’t give too much a way are placed within clip to draw up dramatic tension within the target audience.
The same can be said for the Captain America: Civil War trailer they have used various clips from the film to advertise it to the public, but unlike the previous chosen clip which draws the attention of the target audience with a wide range of clips from different episodes of a season, a film clip/advert will use clips only from the film which will be heavily edited both with sound and footage/animation in order to show the target audience what they want either footage to draw the audience into the film or not enough so they don’t spoil the film. This type of advertisement or displaying of art can be found on television as well.
Conventions:
Now often when you hear the word conventions, most people think conventions such as comic-con, while this is a convention it is not the only type of convention that you get, there are several different kinds just like museums have their own variations but a majority of conventions are often involved with art each with it’s own way to display them.
Comic-Con:
A Massive Convention that deals with comics, films and animations that have a wide range of genres from Space Opera e.g. Star Wars to Super Heroes e.g. Marvel and D.C. Comics. Although this convention is often called a comic convention due to the fact that a majority of the stalls there are for the comic industry and maybe a few of those aspects from the comic have been turned into or are been turned into TV shows. Although often you will find a wide range of artists who have managed to book a booth at convention to show their art of to the public and look for potential buyers or employers in the future.
This image was supplied by Overmind on Overmental.com
While this is an excellent place to put my animated project, I myself am pretty sure that my work doesn’t reach that sort of callibur yet like the rest of the artists there and while i may say it hasn’t reached that standard yet it doesn’t mean that I don’t think it hasn’t improved over the last year or so. This sort of thing isn’t the best for displaying my work yet either due to the fact that these sort of convention happen in major cities like London or San Diego which I am neither close to and the fact that my work in it’s current state most likey wouldn’t earn a place and it is very expensive to book a booth.
As you can see since the last post that I have attempted to work on the anatomy of the human face. There admit-ally is a lot of attempts at the parts of the human face some better then others mainly the eyes but out of all the features of the human face the nose seems to be developing a lot better then the other features. The nose still needs a lot more work though, they are still a bit small or too big with over proportioned segments of the nose,s o I will need to work on that. The final image proves that I have somewhat improved since I have tried a new method that requires drawing several circles and other shapes to make up the face before going over certain segments to highlight the features that want to be seen.
amtanimator 