I See Faces: Incompleted Gifs

I had a fair few ideas for GIFs, one being meghan a knife wielding zombie killer and a merman jumping into the sea. 

I drew meghan during the first few weeks development and decided I wanted to bring her forward as it seemed like a nice GIF development to me. 

I really struggled bringing Meghan from paper to photoshop, my original character design was quite detailed and it was hard to get her body movements right. 
Eventually I gave up on my original character and redesigned her, keeping the idea that she was zombie killing in her dress a theme and keeping the original stickman designs to figure out how she would move. 

This is the final (unfinished) GIF of Meghan, I think i would have had to do a lot of frames to get her more fluid and that bringing in a second character would have been quite hard especially being as this was my first time creating a GIF. 

The thing I struggled most with was making her loop seamlessly, I think rather than drawing her digitally I should have gone back to basics and draw her out in pencil and scanned her in (as I did with Elizabeth). As that would have made her more consistant (rather than the small but distracting differences you can see below). 

If I could do this again, I would definetly spend more time in developing media's as I think it would have helped me rather than trying to do it all digitally, i think it was too much of a challenge at this point. The "into the woods" gif and "Elizabeth" worked so well because of the textures they had inserted into them and because I brought them into photoshop rather than creating them inside photoshop. 

I would like to come back to Meghan and develop her again when I have some spare time. 

The second gif came from the idea of my mermaid pages, I liked the idea of a Aqua hit man so I wanted to bring him forward as a GIF. However this didn't work out so well as I had to keep the character small to allow him to run across the screen and I couldn't put the detail in that I wanted. Other than that the way the figure moves is quite accurate so i was fairly pleased with that. He was also the first GIF i had made that was over 6 frames long, I also think he loops quite nicely. 

I See Faces: Final Gif: Fox catching a butterfly

This was my final GIF i made and the longest. I had a character in mind, so i just drew onto the template and moved it layer through layer. It ended up being 39 layers, which was quite a task. 

When I had finished, i didn't like that the fox didn't have a background and was just in the white square. So then i decided to add trees and grass but it looked too much so then I shortened it down to just the one tree and some grass. 

The hardest part was going through frame by frame to make sure the fox didn't have any of the background in him. If I had more time i think I would have tried to colour him in, but i think that would take quite a long time and I wanted him to be consistent. 

The first few times he was drawn I used a harsh brush but changing the brush softness was a turning point and it ended up being a quite playful GIF. 

Using a wacom tablet was really essential to this, I think it helped my work to be more fluid and drawn looking. 

I See Faces; Creating the woods

On monday I created a small print of trees and a moon. It was really lovely and immediately I knew I wanted to turn it into a gif. 

I traced over my print to get it onto the storyboard to piece together a very basic idea of how it would work. Once I got my head around it I then scanned in the actual print. 

I brought in the full print but after a while of playing around I decided I just wanted to take the square (although I really loved the emerald around it) just for convenience. 

After I pulled the square I then started editing onto the square, using the layers to show me the previous and to slowly create the frames. 

I changed different things as I went along, I struggled with the way the trees blew for quite a while. It was hard to make them look like they weren't shrivelling. I also had the problem of the clouds looping. After I had sorted through these I created a GIF i was proud of. 

I think the final turned out quite well, I liked how the mono print made it look more hand drawn as I am not too fond of the digital look. 

I See Faces: the creation of Elizabeth

Elizabeth is the first gif I have made so far. She's made mostly on photoshop but with a mono print background. 

I started by scanning in Elizabeth from a drawing I did in the boxes. When I was making these drawings I used tracing paper to get her placement boxes, so when I scanned it into photoshop Elizabeth was more or less in the right place. 

Once in photoshop i adjusted the levels so that the image was more black and I could use it as a base. I then started to colour it in. 

Before long I had finished and started thinking about the background. 

I decided to use my mono print from the early workshop as my background. 

I scanned in the red round cicle first because I wanted it to surround the character. once I had put it in, i realised I wanted even more background. 

I then copied in the blue moon and placed it in the background as well. After tweaking it for some time, the two lined up and formed the perfect back group for the character. 

I went back over the character with stamp tool to make sure all the white zones that could be fixed were fixed. The only thing I would change is the small black rim in the GIF that is a result of the blue red overlap. Otherwise I'm really pleased with how Elizabeth the tea drinker turned out. 

Illustrator: session one

Today we started with the basics of illustrator and started using shapes. 

I learnt how to do basic fills by using the 2 colour squares. 

We then looked into the strokes and how to manipulate them. 

Below: I used a pencil esque stroke line to go around my circle, then when I enlarged it's PT it gave off quite a nice shape. I was thinking I could use this for a coffee cup ring in the future.

I also played with basic lines and non basic on the rectangle to alter it's width around it. 

I created a star just to show how dashed lines can work. i don't particularly like it but it could be useful in the future. 

Window - workspace - reset essentials (to change the sidebar)

Space bar left and click (to drag)

Cmd 0 - to anything you worked on last. 

Shift click (perfect circle, shape)

Start point has to meet the end 

Alt (starts shape from the point 

Alt + shift (controls shape)

Cmd C / Cmd B = to create a copy

Alt and hold down = Create a copy

Pathfinder functions 

Miinus front - Whichever is on top will be what is taken away 

to fix this, object and arrange bring to front send to back etc. 

Above: Pathfinder window open. 

Purple box has had minus front applied to it

SB1: Line Drawn

We were given the task of drawing our subjects in just simple line, nothing too intense just capturing the basic elements.

I drew the same guy over 3 times, each time it became easier for me to forget about tone and to just focus on a silhouette. 

I used 3 different medias this time, I deliberately brought the charcoal to loosen up my work. 

 

I kept experimenting with medias and techniques such as not taking my pen off the page. 

It felt uncomfortable not shading or paying close attention to the face but more on the whole and I found it quite a difficult exercise.

I drew from pages in a haute couture book I found in the library that focused on punk clothing. 

It was hard for me to be excited about what I was drawing cause I really disliked all of the topics to choose from and I found haute couture was the only one where I felt I could improve on my human anatomy as well. It felt like it had more paths to go down if I needed too. 

My favourite media used in this exercise was ink, I found it flowed nicely and gave the picture a nicer edge.  I used tracing paper just to see what it would be like, I was going to keep overlaying it but after the first 2 I decided not too because it wasnt working like i thought it might. 

Overall I found the line task hard, not because it was hard to draw them but because it was hard not to focus on the details I wanted to focus on and to focus on a whole.