Animation Project: Characters (Overview and Research)

The group was not interested in creating a 3D modelled character. We were more interested in 2D characters which we felt would be easier to animate. However we were at the same time interested in using 3D Space. What this would mean for a 2D character is that it would appear as a 2D cardboard cutout standing up in a 3D set. We thought this would work and moved on.

Date 13 March 2014

I first came up with a character to fit the story board. I wanted a character that was a little out of place in a laundromat. I thought a respectable older character would fit this description. If he looked like he had money it would be likely he would own his own washing machine, and being a little older might make him appear more reserved and embarrassed when the expected things weren't happening. I created a draft character as seen below.

After this first exercise the character development was handed onto YoonSoo.

Date 4 April 2014

In order to develop the sample illustration of the character. I have conducted on research about 2D Animation characters then I have realized that I need to use some aspects of Cut-Out animation. Even though our goal is creating Pixilation animation, Cut-out animating skill is prerequisite aspect for the project because clear movement is necessary for the project so we chose to draw the body of the character separately.

To do this, I firstly began collecting the characters which was produced by animators of South Park.

Inspired drawing of the character

South park also emulated the concepts of Cut-out animation, though they had only used computer graphics which is exactly same as our direction.

These images are good examples that I can adopt into our project. as you can see from the images, the characters have three different parts of arms and legs. this means those characters will have more detailed movement than the characters in South Part.

Our characters will also have different types of body part such as eyes, mouths and hands so we can change it anytime whenever we want to do.

Cut-out animation for fluent movement

What is Cut-out animation?

Cut-out animation is one of the oldest and simplest animation techniques and has many forms and variations. Essentially, Cut-out animation involves producing animations using 2-D characters, props and scenes cut from materials, such as paper, card or fabric. Animators divide characters into smaller segments, piece together the individual cut-out shapes and move them in small steps, taking a picture – with a film camera capable of taking single pictures – at each step, to create the illusion of movement
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(http://smallbusiness.chron.com/cutout-animation-26573.html)

Making Characters

1. Draw Image by hand

2. Scan it by Scanner

3. Re-Draw it with Photoshop CC

Body part Drawing

Photoshop CC Editing

1. Click around the image

2. Click "Path" and click "Fill the path"

3. choose a colour

4. store leg part in a layer

I have used "Pen tool" to create the characters. what i needed to do was just click the mouse on the image. after that i filled a colour on each of characters and body parts. These images will be stored in different layers

How to make gesture?

Giving gestures to the character is important to our project. as we all know our project will not contain any verbal sound so their action and emotion will tell you the story.

Our characters will have many different types of body parts. every single body parts are stored in different layers so we can simply drag those layers onto the character whenever we need it.