Character Designs & Animation Development.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been focusing on character development for my animation – the main character being Bilbo the Cat. Character design is something I’ve been interested in ever since my final project of Level 4, so this kind of development has been very prominent throughout my Level 5 projects. In my physical sketchbook the development of character is much more clearly illustrated – and you can visually see where stronger traits have been identified and weaker have been dropped. My final character design focuses on quite a small cat, big eyes and chubby limbs to help strengthen the characters appeal to the audience. I’ve had a lot of good feedback from peers & also from when I’ve updated my Facebook & instagram, so I know the final design is successful. I think the main thing is I’ve created a character that I really like & really want to animate – and hopefully the audience will too!

More recently I have been developing possible ideas for scenes to be included in my animation. Here is a quick stop frame animation I produced, experimenting with the manipulation of paper cut out layers and how these could be manipulated to convey movement.

Below is one of my tests with stop frame motion – using a potential character with Bilbo. It’s a brief scene, and is made up of around 80 frames, the quality isn’t amazing as I the camera I was using isn’t great quality – but will be borrowing a better model for producing my final stop frame animation. It’s quick a quick animating process. Once I figure out what bits I want to move and separate the components in order to animate, it’s a simple method of taking photos overtime you slightly move the model. Once I’ve finished taking photos, I simply compile the photos into a video format on photoshop – setting the rate of frame speed in order to produce a fluid animation.

I really like this style of animation, I think combining an old animation technique with my graphic-like illustration, helps makes a historic technique have a contemporary vibe. I’ve decided to progress further with stop frame motion animation, I really like the movement and mainly it’s a form of animation that will retain my illustrative style – something I think is key in my development throughout my level 5 experience.