The character

This is my initial character design sheet for the Christmas card. The first design I decided to throw away because I didn't think I wanted my character to be too young as young people would know what holiday it was. So I thought I wanted to make him an older, independent character who would have so much going on that he might not necessarily realise what point in the year it was. I t also allows me to incorporate the idea that consumers have Christmas forced upon them the second Halloween is over. Which I believe is one of the reasons  dislike Christmas. I amn't allowed to become excited about it in my own time. It is forced on me by advertising, Christmas specials in November, The German market in the centre of Edinburgh. It's inescapable! Erm sorry. Anyway that's why not him. At one point I was getting sick of trying to come up with a mature and independent character that appeared to be mildly dressed in a Halloween costume, so I decided to really go for it and Twinkie man was born. That was a sad day for me. The day my character looked the best dressed like a Twinkie. Next I thought maybe I should play around with a normal male, short back and sides appearance but with a twist on a Christmas jumper so I didn't have to work to hard on his shape. It just didn't feel right. So I thought maybe I should make him not give a shit but no that sent the wrong messade. Then finally I got it. He could be naturally orientated towards Halloween then he would appear just the right amount of Halloween although easily translatable to Christmas. Bingo!

So in developing my Christmas card. I decided I wanted some way to unify the entire cartoon from holiday to holiday but retain the shock of his realisation that in fact it is Christmas and not Halloween. I thought about doing the entire thing in just shades of blue, hence the blue shading above.

But it was pointed out to me that the shock of him walking into Christmas might be lost and I definitely don't want that. So then I thought two colours. Red and blue! It's so obvious now!
So here's where I went from there!

And basically I love it!

When Balls Go Bad - Development

Carrying on my development of the when balls go bad project. I began to design the tree's in my animation and also the way in which the colour bled from the orange.

My trees were influenced by Dr. Seuss's truffula trees.

and my decision to make the orange puddles appear more like paint splatters than just orange puddles comes from Sega's The Unfinished Swan.

Where the whole environment is revealed through paint splatters. I liked this concept and enjoy the idea of my vision slowly being revealed as the ball bounces through the scene.

In addition to using these ideas as references I also looked at this:

(Please not that since I used this as a reference [accessed 16/10/13] the video has been edited so it no longer shows the segment of the video I considered, apologies.) 

The latter part of this video, mime for a change, involves bubbles colouring in the town after all the colour is removed from it. This is another idea that influenced my decision making regarding the aesthetics of my animation. I decided that that crude a colouring method wasn't something I would strive for but rather strive for a more coherent seeping of colour.

I have decided to hand draw the background and motion of the ball then I will input it into Photoshop or after effects to add the layers of colour. I thought this would be symbolic of two aspects of modernism which I could then include in my defence of my project. The hand drawn part speaks of the truth to materials that modernist found valuable in there work as a hand drawn animation you can see exactly what was done, nothing's hidden. Then the digital application of the colour relates to modernist use of technology. As it allows me to play around with the speed at which I allow the colour to seep and also the vibrancy of the colour itself.

Lastly to aid in the construction of this animation (and because my brain is an organisational mess and needs all the help it can get) I created myself a little time table/ check list to follow through the completion of the project:

I separated the project out into movements, backgrounds and colour development, then proceeded to layer them over each other so I knew exactly what stage which part happens at. This way I should be able to track my progress and keep a close eye on my time across the remaining two weeks.

When Balls Go Bad 2

My next idea was that it could fall off a tree.

 This felt natural and like the orange would bounce better. It would drop from higher and allow me to do a lot more with the movement. So then I began to think about what it could do. I struggled with ideas for quite some time until I was looking through "The Dictionary of Imaginary Places" By Alberto Manguel and discovered an all white island. This concept intrigued me as I had already decided the orange's colour was important in this animation. I had already considered what the orange might do in an environment that suited it but now I was thinking about what it would do if it found itself in an environment that  didn't suit it.

I began thinking about how I could use the orange's colour to help me impact the environment or vies versa. I decided that having the orange change into something else could be an interesting concept and began to think about how the inhabitance of the island would act if suddenly faced with colour.

Using the idea of modernism and truth to materials. (which is already true of an orange.) I thought that the inhabitance could try to use the orange for many other things. Stop lights, paint or jewellery but the orange would always just be an orange. 

Then it occurred to me that this wasn't using any of the principles I was trying to show in this work. The ball would not actually bouncing or obviously effecting the environment. At a stretch I could say that it was a societal impact but that would really be pushing it. 

So moving on from that I began to think about a slightly more direct approach. I knew already that a simple black and white background would symbolise modernism as they removed a lot of ornamentation and decoration from their designs.

I developed an island that I thought might look like this. Then I thought to myself "You know that's quite sad" and from this my mind related this simple lifeless environment to the state of Europe at the birth of modernism. I thought I would then use the concept of utopia that the modernist strived for to inspire my animation. 

From this I developed an idea where the ball would be the only coloured object around but as it bounced it would bring colour and life to its surroundings. 

I then prepared a storyboard to help me visualise my ideas and began working.

Bouncy Bouncy - The Third Ball

For my third and final ball, I chose to make it an orange. I made this decision because I thought it would be a bit different to other balls. It's made of all natural materials that will bruise and sustain damage as it impacts the ground. Like the bouncy ball I spent a few days observing the way it bounced.

I wanted it to start of very round and then as it bounced I wanted it to leak and sustain damage and become a bit misshapen. Having watched it bounce I noticed that when dropped from a low height it hardly bounced but when dropped from a higher height it bounced and it would make more sense in terms of the damage the orange would receive if it was dropped from higher.

Next I turned my attention to the design of the orange itself. I knew it had to communicate as an orange easily so I knew black and white was probably not going to cut it... BUT I tried it anyway!

This one looks more like a potato or the moon and not an orange.

This one was better but I wasn't sure it said orange quite yet. So I got thinking how are oranges normally represented by people? and the most obvious one I could think of was the Good Food logo:

It's fairly straight forward although always rather obvious it's an orange. This combined with looking at my actual orange produced these orange ideas:

I liked the idea of an increased number of dots from my original design and colouring it all orange instead of just adding a little orange definitely, well, said orange. I decided that the spot the stalk had been removed from was more of a star shape than a circle and finally it doesn't look right brown. Which landed me with the orange on the bottom left. Horay! But I was concerned it looked too much like a tomato with the shape of the base of the stalk. So I did a quick side by side.

And luckily it didn't, in fact, a tomato done to the same effect barley resembles a  tomato and my orange looks perfectly orang-y by comparison.

Now, the orange juice. I tried out three possibilities for the orange juice. Firstly not colouring it in at all, which was too much of a contrast with the orange to be orange juice, then all coloured orange, which I believed was too much orange then, third time's the charm, I brought the colour in from the edges, leaving a shine at the top of the orange juice. This hinted that it was orange juice enough to understand and wasn't to distracting from the main object in the sequence: the orange.

Then all there was left to do was ensure I was keeping the rotation constant which I did by making it move clockwise so I wouldn't forget which way it was rolling.

I am happy with the finished sequence however if I was to do it again I would like to make the rotation faster as I think it would move faster than it currently does but non the less I am pleased!

Bouncy bouncy - The second ball

So I then began developing the bouncy ball idea. I began by deciding how I thought the ball would move.

In addition to using this footage, from a project at the Utah State University where they dropped 20,000 bouncy balls from a helicopter, I also spent several days bouncing a bouncy ball of any surface I could find. (Resulting in a number of occasions where I found myself crawling around the studio floor in an attempt to find it.) In the end I realised it would bounce higher and closer together than a regular rubber ball.

I next turned my attention to it's appearance. I knew I had to make it different in appearance to the rubber ball. Having examined my own bouncy ball and a few others. I realised they are typically marbled. 

              

However after several attempts to make it appear marbled it just looked scribbly and beaten up instead of the desired marbled effect. I also tried colouring the ball in a pure almost luminous colour however that didn't aid to distinguish it from any other ball. In the end I decided I would just make it smaller and allow it's actions speak instead.

Then I thought about how to make it move. In my initial idea I wanted the bouncy ball to bounce of the edges of the screen, which is commonly used to demonstrate the fast paced, erratic movement of a bouncy ball, so I began looking at how the ball reacted when it impacted something. I couldn't decide if I thought it would still move in arcs or if because it was not allowed to complete it's arc if it would move in more straight lines. 

And after a talk with Jared, I decided to scrap this idea almost totally and just make the ball bounce in a straight line across the screen. And the final thing looks like this-

In the end I am very pleased with this, I feel it's simplicity gets the job done and having learnt from the first ball it has a much more measured stretch and squish.

Bouncy Bouncy Part 2 - Ideas

The next stage to bouncy bouncy was to pick two materials that would significantly alter the trajectory of the bounce. When I started to investigate my options my first thought was what constitutes a significant change. I decided that a good change would be if it bounced lower or higher. Firstly I looked at lower.

I decided that heavier objects such as metal ball-bearings or solid plastics would bounce much lower so would lighter objects without much substance such as balls of paper or hairballs. I also decided wood wouldn't bounce much but I believe it would have bounced a bit more than these materials based on the kind of wood. 

 Then I began to think about other possibilities aside from weight such as gravitational pull, a different bounce trajectory and natural objects.

I liked the idea of the moon impacting in the ground however I felt that it didn't meet the expectations set in the project brief. It didn't bounce, it just hit the ground at great speed. I considered a pom pom because when I dropped one it very often bounced backwards. Which I thought was a clever idea but if that was the only difference then I wasn't demonstrating any skill. Finally I decided I liked the idea of the orange as there was a lot I could play about with. 

In addition I decided I liked the bouncy ball idea as it would bounce much higher and closer together than an ordinary bouncy ball.