At the start of this year, I'm not very confident with my work. I really don't see myself working at a professional level, and I feel I haven't really found my personal style or touch yet. I hope looking at these different artists will help me to develop a maturity and style within my work, so we will see if that happens.
I have decided to have sections of my research, as I feel it would be all over the place otherwise. I will be having sections for character design, environment design, colour and storyboards. I will be including both my art books as well as artists, illustrators and films that inspire me as well.
Character Design Research
I will start with character design. This is perhaps the most crucial part of designing for an animation, as you're creating the personalities and 'actors' for your story. They will be the main distributors of the story, and so it's very important to get them looking right.
I'm going to start with, 'The Art of Brave'[6]. These sketches of the main character, Merida, really spoke to me as they were all so rough and flowing, and that's something I find really hard to do. I always find I want to make my drawings perfect first time and don't enjoy looking at my sketches. I'll usually just draw something and continue until I finish it, instead of letting my pencil strokes speak about my work for me.
I also really liked how they were all so subtly different. If the face shape, nose positioning or eye shape changes at all, it completely changes her character and personality. That's something I will try to mimic when creating my characters.
These images are slightly more finished, but they still have that feeling of flow and weight. That is definitely something I will try and achieve with my images. I will really need to work on my gesture drawing to get better with bodies.
This page also really shows how having different artists working on an animation's concept art helps to create such diversity. Every artist has their own style and medium to bring to the table. As me and Fumio looked through these books, we realised I wouldn't only be trying to make concept art, I would also be the art director as well. All these artists have an art director to send their work to and get feedback on, whereas I will have to be my own art director. That will be an interesting challenge, but it's definitely something I'm keen to have a go with. As we discussed, Fumio did say I had quite a discerning eye for details and can deconstruct images well, which is kind of what an art director's job is. This has made me think perhaps my end goal in terms of a career may be as an art director, but we will have to see.
This page is a completely different take on Merida. This artist has used pencils to give the images really dense texture, which I really enjoy. He is so sure in his design and it really shows such a great amount of personality in the images. Her face, although very simple, really shows what she's feeling and her body language shows how she's not ladylike, but a tomboy. She enjoys fighting and archery and being free to do what she wants, and this is really shown here in these sketches.
These pencil sketches are by the same artist as the previous image. I love the way silhouette has been used to give all the characters different personalities even just by looking at their shapes. Some are stocky and square, others slender and curved, and others are angular and harsh. It gives much more personality to the different characters, so you almost know what type of person they are just by looking at them.
Again, the silhouettes are such an integral part of creating characters. Some are tall, others are short, and most of them have draped clothing to show off their body shape and some form of armour which makes sure you know they're supposed to be protecting their kingdom. It's interesting to see how facial hair is used as well, as it really does give each of them a whole new look.
Here is some concept sketches for King Fergus. I love the different emotions and head positions at the bottom, showing how he would look from different angles. I would like to do something similar with my work.
So after looking at that book, I looked at, 'The Art of Wreck-It Ralph'[7], as I wanted to see how character design worked with something completely different.
The styles and types of character in this film are completely different to the last one. They are so much more colourful and unrealistic, and they had much more freedom with silhouette and even what species each character was. They didn't have to be constrained by a story or a place, because they were pretty much inventing everything, compared to the previous book that needed to be kept within the realm of realism to make it feasible.
They went through many different types of character for Ralph, from folklore to inanimate objects, and had many different artists working on him to try and find the perfect design. This gave them so much inspiration and they spent a lot of time on the concept stages of this film, because everything had to be made from scratch.
Ralph had to look mean and scary, but also like a klutz who is really clumsy and doesn't know his own strength. So they had him quite a hulking character with big arms and hands, and they wanted him to be both angry looking but could also look soft.
For Fix-It Felix, they wanted him to be almost the complete opposite of Ralph. They wanted him to be small and rounded, and to look friendly. They looked into the history of video games and wanted to incorporate what they found the hero of a game would look like.
Again, it's interesting to see how the different face shapes and facial positioning can really change the look of a character. I really enjoy seeing how the character evolves through trial and error. This makes me feel better about how my own work will evolve.
Here is a lot of different designs for Vanellope Von Schweetz, the little girl who everyone thinks is a glitch in the game but is really being forced out by the evil Turbo, who was posing at King Candy. She is supposed to be a princess, only everyone has forgotten that because of Turbo locking away everyone's memories of her and they bully her, not allowing her to race because she has a special ability to zoom forwards which they take as being a glitch, and they don't want kids playing the game complaining about it and having their game turned off.
Most of the girls who race look very similar, but they all have very distinct clothing and hairstyles. Vanellope's clothing and hair was really played around with here, and she even turned different colours to try and make sure she looked different to the other characters. I really like all the different versions of her hair and clothing and it really does give her so many different personalities. I will try and take that into my own characters.
After looking at 'Wreck-It Ralph', I decided to look at the book, 'The Art of Big Hero 6'[8], as again, the style of the film and the location is completely different, and so it would give me a much more diverse look into character design.
On this page, I liked the idea of having one set character base and then just adding different clothing on top. I thought that was a really interesting idea, and will hopefully do something similar myself.
I love the diversity of the different character designs here. How these are all supposed to be the same girl, but are all completely different. They all have a similar feel though, a sweet girl who is a bit dorky and has a bit of sass. I like how they have all been able to portray that but in such different ways.
I love the colour choices and silhouettes here. These characters never made it into the film, but I think they're possibly the most interesting character designs. I really liked the geisha references and how their weight is distributed. They look solid and like they're really there, which is really difficult. I wish they had made it as fully formed characters, but perhaps they will appear in a sequel.
So after looking at these books, I will look at illustrators of whom inspire me with their styles.
First up is possibly my biggest inspiration, Julia Sarda[9]. Her work has inspired me for a few years now and I absolutely adore her use of colour, texture and pattern.
Here is some work she did for, 'Mary Poppins'[10]. I love her way of colouring and creating depth in her characters. I really need to work on that myself, and I think her work is similar to what I aim to achieve with mine.
Her use of colour and the way she creates personality with clothing and body language really does inspire me to try and get a feel like this in my work.
Her work is deceptively simple. It takes a lot of time and effort to make an image look traditional in a digital medium.
I love how she makes even simple fabric look so alive with different colours and gradients. I want to translate something like this when I make my own images.
Julia did a version of 'The Secret Garden'[5] herself, and I really enjoy the way she created the characters. Having read it, I love the way she showed the evolution of the characters and how they go from being the sickly children from the start to being much healthier and happier by the end. Her characters all have very distinct looks, which is really important.
After Julia Sarda, I looked at an illustrator called Rebecca Green[11].
She actually does her work traditionally, and then edits the work on Photoshop to make sure everything is how she wants it. I love the little imperfections that causes and how it gives the work such a lovely tactile feel.
Her use of pencil textures and watercolour works so well, and I really do like this selective colour look. I may look into that at some point and see if I like the way that looks.
I also like how she creates depth within her images with different layers of foreground, middle ground and background. I find that very difficult to do, so I'm going to try and incorporate that into my work.
This is a coloured piece by Rebecca. I really love her use of colour and texture, it gives such a great feel to her images. If I could produce anything like this by the end of the module, I would be really happy.
I think one of the things I will mostly struggle with is possibly colour combinations and how to lay down colours and have them marry together. I find that very hard to do at the moment, so hopefully this will help.
Finally, I will look at Cory Loftis[12] who is an artist who works with Disney.
I wanted to look at Cory because he does completely different work to everyone else I have looked at. He worked on the film, 'Zootopia'[13], and so a lot of his work involves animals. I really liked how he created such anthropomorphic characters and gave their faces and body language such interesting shapes. I love the way he uses parts of the animal and gives them a simplified look so he can really get personality into them.
I really enjoy his combinations of colour as well, and how he makes such interesting pattern and texture choices. You can tell the different textures would be really complimentary when this character goes into production and gets made into a sculpted model.
Here, the characters seem somehow more animalistic and are more fluid and feline, which really helps to show their character. The tigers are dancers for the antelope's singing show, so they have that dancer quality. They hulk over the antelope as well, showing her as being more feminine but also she has power, as her stance shows her as being powerful.
So after looking at all these different artists and dissecting their work, I have found areas I would like to improve. I found I wanted to make my characters flow better and have being weight distribution, I wanted to try and get characters to evolve better by changing certain parts of their face, I want to make my gestures and silhouettes better, try different clothing designs and try different colouring and textural experiments to see what I like better. I am really excited for the future experiments I will do, and I'm now going to look at environment design.
Environment Design
Environment designing is possibly the second most important part of telling a story. It can tell your audience where it's set, what time period, what type of character you have in the setting and can give you a lot of extra information that character design can't provide. It's something I've not got my head around yet, and I feel I'm quite weak at, so it's definitely something I'd like to try and work on during this project.
These two images from, 'The Art of Brave'[6] and 'The Art of Big Hero 6'[8] show how the concept artists go to the areas of which their animations are supposed to be set, wherever possible, and try to take inspiration from there. They take lots of photos and sketch on location, trying to get a feel for the places they visit so they can translate that into the animation. This has given me the idea of perhaps going to the North York Moors, where 'The Secret Garden'[5] is set, and trying to get some inspiration from there. It would be amazing to really see the area and understand how it looks and feels, so I can put much more emotion and knowledge into my drawings.
You can see how the trip and location drawing helped their concept art for 'Brave', the colours and shapes are all very organic and natural, they have such a gorgeous sense of light and dark and they definitely make you feel like you're in the Scottish Highlands. I hope to see such an influence on my concept art when I go to the North York Moors and try to get inspiration from there.
As a complete contrast to the previous concept art, 'Big Hero 6' is set in a fictional place that's based on two real places merged together; San Fransokyo. So they took inspiration from both San Francisco and Tokyo to create their artwork. The result is quite a built up area, with both western and eastern influences on the architecture and the visible culture of the place. A big example of this is on the page with what is supposed to be the Golden Gate Bridge, which has the traditional curved eaves of Japanese and Asian architecture.
The lighting is also really interesting, and in most of these images the lighting is severe and contrasted, making it look more like a comic book. This is perhaps because the story is based off a comic book, and so it gives it more of a graphic novel feel.
Similarly to the previous books where they took photos on location, these pages from, 'The Art of Wreck-It Ralph'[7] show how they created the world they were going to animate using candy and other sweet foods and photographed them so they could have a physical representation of the areas they were going to draw. It can be really difficult to visualise a world that doesn't exist in real life, so them making a model really helped them to understand the limitations they had. It also really helped them understand how lighting would change certain candies and the texture of the cookies and frosting. They then drew from the models and their work seemed so much more genuine and not so contrived.
Here is some concept art post model, and as you can see the model really influenced the pictures. I find that to be incredibly interesting, but I'm not sure how that could really be useful for my particular project. Perhaps if the story I was doing was a bit more diverse, it would've been quite interesting to figure out something similar. Perhaps I can take this into my future projects and see how it helps them.
It's incredibly interesting to see how environment art is created, and how much forethought is provided to it. I'm sure it must be quite time consuming to do some of the things these artists do, but I'm definitely looking forward to putting my hours in and figuring out environments and perhaps most importantly of all, figuring out what particular style I would like to give it.
So for environment art, I really need to go to the place the book is set, take loads of photos and draw on location, and try to get some visual material together so I can create some really interesting and informed environments. I will try different styles and see what works best for me.
Colour and Lighting
So for this section, I want to really delve into how images are lit and how the artists create depth in their work. I want to try and replicate it and try to make my work have a similar feel.
Starting with the book, 'The Art of Frozen'[14], I really loved how atmosphere and a certain romantic feeling was created with these frames. I love how on the top picture, the warmth of the light from the windows contrasts with the colder colours outside. I feel that image would have very similar values in terms of dark and light, but he's created the contrast with the hues he has chosen rather than just adding more black or white to his colours.
I decided to check this out, and put the image in black and white to see what the values are.
As I thought, when the image is put into black and white, it's very flat and hasn't got nearly as much punch. This just shows how important colour choice is, and how colours can really provide such natural shading. This is perhaps derived from the Renaissance painting technique 'Cangiante'[15], where if a paint cannot go dark or light enough for the area, another hue was used to create the sense of depth. This is similar here, only it's a self-impressed limitation instead of being the limitation of the paints themselves.
The bottom image on that page is different though, as it would be much more contrasted. This produces more of a severe lighting situation.
The shading isn't nearly as romantic when this is viewed in black and white. It looks almost scary, as if the couple are having a fight. Perhaps this was to give the viewers a warning of what's to come, as Hans isn't who he says he is and he leaves Anna to die when her heart gets frozen. The area is beautiful though, which perhaps is there to provide relief from the severe lighting.
This is the colour script from, 'The Art of Brave'[6]. You can see how they produce different feels to the images just by changing the colour range. Blues are used for sad and scary parts, green is used for magic and evil, yellow is used for happiness and orange/red is used for conflict. These colours produce certain emotional responses from the audience. It helps to give the audience a feel for what the characters are feeling, as their emotions are seemingly projected onto the environment.
I would like to experiment with that myself and see how it changes my work.
Something I have also mentioned before is selective colour. Someone who is a master of colour is the director, Tim Burton. In all of his films, there is a distinct colour difference between different scenes, usually dependent on who is in the scene or what the scene represents.
I will be taking his film, 'Corpse Bride'[16], as an example. This is a scene of Victor and Victoria, who are being arranged to be married by their parents for wealth and status. They fall in love upon first sight, but Victor doesn't feel like he's ready for this commitment and is incredibly shy. So whenever Victor is in the world of the living, the colour palette is muted and almost grey scale, to represent his unhappiness and how everyone there is mundane and dull. He has no excitement there, just the monotony of everyday life.
Put that into the stark contrast of the world of the dead. The colours are garish and saturated, meaning they have more life after death. The dead characters of whom aren't skeletons are blue, and they have more colour to their overall world. This represents how much more excitement and life the dead have. It's a strange parallel, that the living seem dull and lifeless and the dead seem vibrant and lively, but it seems to represent their now lack of inhibitions and the way they can now be themselves without judgement.
It's really interesting to see this style, and I would like to perhaps investigate doing that myself somehow, perhaps by having a mostly grey scale style with the garden being full colour. That could be an engaging way of styling the concept art.
Storyboards
After looking at all the main visual components to an animation, I want to see how storyboards are made and how simplistic they are, as I tend to make things too perfect and spend way too much time on everything, which I have mentioned before. I always end up doing more than is necessary for the task, but I would like to be able to do some flowing and free storyboards.
This storyboard from the Wreck-It Ralph art book made me realise just how powerful digital art is. I had never really thought about it in this way, but being able to have certain backgrounds drawn simply and then drawing the characters on top, and zooming in and out on the scene, etc, but now it makes so much sense. Being able to just quickly create a storyboard would be helped immensely by this method.
These various storyboards from Brave showed me how the images don't even really need to look like the character, it just has to have the feel of their emotions. It doesn't have to be perfect and polished and look amazingly detailed, as long as it gets a feel for what they're saying or doing.
It also allows you to figure out camera angles and the way people interact with each other really quickly and easily without too much time invested into them. As well as camera angles, it can also help with lighting, which is something I definitely need to invest time into.
I will try my best to create some storyboards that have this method and see how it works.
Final List of Things to Work On
So after looking into all these different sources and building blocks of animation, I think I have created a list of bullet points that I definitely need to work on, and would like to improve during the course of this project. The list goes as follows:
- Overall character design and try to change how they look with different face shapes, facial features, etc
- Character flow and weight with their gestures, posture and silhouettes
- Clothing design and making sure they're accurate
- Getting better at environments, hopefully by going on location and building my visual library
- Colour and lighting experiments and trying out texture and different colour styles, such as selective colour and colour blocking
- Creating storyboards and trying to simplify my sketching style, so I don't add too much information and waste time
- Finding an overall 'style' and feeling comfortable with my work
I am hoping I will be able to touch on most of these points during this project. I may not be able to do them all justice, but I do want to try and investigate every avenue and come out of this project a better illustrator and having a better understanding of the life of a concept artist.
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