Questionnaire For Industry Report;

While putting together a questionnaire for the emails, I developed several questions that would cover several different aspects of a 2D Character Animator's career; from their own personal experiences and motivations to the software companies would mostly employ and how best to to develop my own showreel.

Final Questions;

How did you get into the animation industry?

What are the day-to-day situations you are faced with?

What motivates you in your career?

What can be considered the most enjoyable aspect of this career?

What Skills are valuable as 2D Character Animator?

What are the pros and cons of your career?

What skills should I develop to have a better chance in the Industry?

In terms of a showreel, what should a 2D Character Animator present in their own showreel?

What software is primarily used to animate 2D characters?

Was this software hard to learn and where there any technical difficulties while using it?

What part of 2D Character Animation can be considered the most difficult part?

Is there any other software that you use for Character Animation, such as in-house software?

What are the pros and cons of such software?

Final Animation - Peter McVerry Project

The final version of the animation.

Group Assignment and Software - Peter McVerry Project

Having my own animation chosen, I was placed in the role of director. With my group, we deligated the workload among us. I would mainly focus on post-production; compositing the finished sections of animation and finally edit the project together. I would also do the text animation in the meantime. The others would focus on the other sections of the project; Tamara would focus on the concept art side of the animation, designing the visual assets and animating them. Deirdre would animate the animation of the house, working with the effects needed to make it work.

Software

Originally I was looking at doing the animation traditionally; using stop-motion to achieve the effect I was looking at first. We quickly realsied that we would not have enough time to do such a complex style and instead descided to do it all digitally.

Showcase Presentation - Peter McVerry Project

Showcase Presentation - Peter McVerry Project

A represnetive from the Trust had come in to see our process and also to see if anything needed to be changed from the original. I prepared a showcase of the assets we had currently made, though they had not be composited together just yet. Aishling, the representative, like what we had done so far, however she encouraged us to add additional animations on the rightside of the house and to maybe also add an opening as the animation began to suddenly.

 (A showcase of the current assets.)

December Animatic Presentation

Animatic Presentation

Having taken the advice give to me during the last presentation, I changed various parts of the story to allow it to flow easier. The key difference was the opening, where the mother is calling up the babysitting helpline and grows annoyed with her child. The original saw the child throw it's pacifier at the mother, blinding her and causing her to press the wrong button. One opening that was suggested was the mother holds the child and he vomits on her, causing her to follow the same course of action and would jump straight to the zombie entering as the mother hand him the child and rushes out the door still covered in the vomit. Though it is funny, this  scene would have simply thrown off the pacing of the rest of the animation. However, I did change the scene so that the mother is in the kitchen as the child cries at the table, not wanting to eat his dinner. The child throws the hot food at the mother and thus burns her, making her unable to see.

Character design references;

The character design for the zombie changed numerous times, going from a traditional ghoul-like creature to overly bizarre creatures such as a monster with just a mouth.

(Early concept art of the zombie.)

I started to look at the work of Jamie Hewlett, a comic artist known for Tank Girl and his part in creating the fictional characters for the Gorillaz, designs that I looked into.

(Images done by Jamie Hewlett, characters of the Gorilliaz.)

The characters that embody the real-life members of the band have an angular style, similar to the style i wish to develop in my own animation. The characters resemble rather ghoulish creatures in their design that I wanted to try.

(The most recent designs for the zombie)

Background References

(Taken from Pinterest; an early reference for the house)

(References for the bedroom environment)

(Reference for the kitchen layout; I may incorporate a change in composition similar to the bottom one)

Text Style Tests - Peter McVerry Project

Text Style Tests - Peter McVerry Project

In Adobe Affects, I started by testing the text animation where I physically drew it with the pen tools, adding the texture over it and alpha-channeling so it appeared within the writing. After that I tested the animation with pre-generated text, applying the texture the same way and testing out the trucking animation tools.