Weekly Review - 27 September

Over the summer, I drew a storyboard for my animation, which is going to be a version of Little Red Riding (original, I know). I did this so that, when it came time to do character design, I knew what I needed and what they needed to be. I did not finalise he character designs until after.

However, I realized that the story spent too long setting up, and would need to be changed. I have not yet finalized these changes, but I have decided to combine two of the characters, the wizard and the abbess, into one amalgamation. This is the only change to the cast made, so, this week, I started designing the characters.

My original character designs used a style that I realized it would be too hard to draw consistently, so I changed the style, into one that I felt, interestingly, mimicked the Bayeux Tapestry. I chose to do this because the main stylistic choice was to make the images look like they are on an illuminated manuscript, so mimicking the Bayeux Tapestry made them gel into the frames I chose better. However, since this style was unfamiliar to me, and I'd have to draw it consistently, I did some... Practice. (Disregard the Ellie on the side.)

I also, on the image above, did some practice in preparation for drawing the expressions sheet. I didn't feel the need to practice drawing the body, as the body did not change much at all between styles. This is easily visible in the expression sheet, as the expressions are all partially shown by body language, through medium shots.

I am rather proud of the body language on the expression sheet, but I kind of feel like the head changed sizes slightly. After the expression sheet, I drew the character turnarounds, using pencil lines drawn with a ruler to keep Red's head and various parts in proportion.

This week, I noticed that I had a frame of the storyboard badly measured, making it so the abbess had to put her hand on Red's shoulder instead of handing Red the basket. To remedy this, I took a photo to try to better measure it. However, I am not sure this quite worked, as the teacher kneeling to help me still had fully sized arms, which I feel likely threw off the pose slightly. I drew Red and the abbess over the photo so that I could properly see how it would translate.

Over the next week, I aim to finish the character sheet, developing my lacking skills with Illustrator, and strengthening my slight skill in Photoshop. You can see in my previous post, titled "Adventures In Photoshop", my earlier practice in Photoshop, especially textures.

Adventures in Photoshop

I may have slightly forgotten this blog existed, but hey-ho, the wind and the rain. Anyway, I've been practicing with using Photoshop. Last year had more of a focus on Illustrator, and before last year, I've never had access to actual Photoshop that I can use however I want.

These are the products of my experimentation.

This first one is inspired by the fact that, for college, I'm doing an animation based on Little Red Riding Hood, and also the fact that I read an awful lot of ghost stories last night. The parts I am most proud of are the Grandmother's dress, which is a combination of two textures which I feel came together to get the perfect feel for the kind of creepiness I was aiming to give her, and Red's face, which I feel turned out very cute. Some things I have a problem with are, firstly, the wolf, because he was supposed to be looking up at the Grandmother and that didn't work, and Red's cape, which I feel I could have used a different fabric texture.

This is art of a character from a poem called "The Highwayman". In the poem, the titular Highwayman is in love with the landlord's black-eyed daughter, Bess. This is a drawing of my interpretation of Bess, whom I'm realising now looks somewhat like Katara from Avatar: The Legend of Aang. Things I think went well in this piece would be Bess's hair, for how the shine turned out, her dress, because I'm very happy with how the texture worked out, and that I got shading under there, and lastly the background, because I like the way the diamond works with the background (Both of them are actually the same image!)

However, what I don't think worked in the picture of Bess is her makeup, especially the blush. It stands out too much, and I'm not sure blush could even achieve that colour on a complexion like Bess'. I also feel I may have made the whites of her eyes a touch too blue, by mistake.