visual narratives
visual narratives
WORKBOOK
WORKSHOP OUTCOMES
This workshop has been really useful in one, learning some of the principles of animation that I can use to make potential animations better, and two, simple techniques that I could use to elevate traditional illustrations and add some more interest to them.
Practice & Study
Throughout the notes on storytelling, stroyboarding, narrative building and character designing, I took to doing various studies of spaniels in the hope I would be able to draw Belle better, clothing and people studies for Pippas design, typical magical items to incorperate into the world and backgrounds. As well as studying a couple of animated short films to try help broaden my knowledge on what an independent animation looks like.
Yes i also like to work in like 3 different sketchbooks at one time, i dont know why. this is the first project that ive tried to just lean into it instead of restricting myself to the uni workbook and ive noticed that its definately helped me to create and study more. it makes it annoying to compile at the end but overall i think the fact that im studying more trumps like an exhtra hour of formatting at the end of the project.
NARRATIVE and visual DEVELOPMENT
The magic system development had started with me collecting a buch of works from Alphonse Mucha to assess and gather common techniques/visual design elements that were used in the Art Nouveau movement. However I felt dissatisfied with the first round of development and went looking for other visual inspiration disconnected from Art Nouveau. I found a tattoo design that appealed to me and tried to smoosh the two together and come out the end with an outcome that I found more preferable.
I definatley like the second round of development more, it’s less overtly Art Nouveau but I feel it still echos some of the visual motifs, as well as feeling a little mystical. I would like to develope it more, more active spell casting I imagine would incorperate the more fluid lines/vines that you see in most Nouveau illustrations, but I dont have the time to create more content without ignoring the animation, and that is my ultimate priority.
EnVIRONMENT AND CHARACTER STUDY, PRactice and refinement
Apparently my handwriting steadily goes downhill the further a project goes on, if you want to see my thoughts on certain design elements/the process relating to Pippa, please use my physical sketchbook to view them.
ANIMATION PROCESS
I’ll be using the program Procreate Dreams to animate the outcome for my project! It’s a very new program, only released in November 2023 so it’s still quite rough around the edges, however it is very compatible with Procreate (the drawing app I use) and that’s why I’ve chosen it.
In the Mismatched making of it suggests making the environment in a 3D software and using that to ensure you have accurate perspective and to make sure you can fully use the avalible space. I was intending to use unreal engine, booted it up, got very confused so I looked up a beginners tutorial. It was five hours long. I do not have that kind of time. So I have returned to trusty old minecraft to build my environment, screenshot and draw over.
COLOUR SCRIPT
1st colouring
2nd colouring
with ambient lighting
While I’m not rotoscoping, I do however need reference to base the movements of Pippa on, so I asked my mum to act out the small section that I’ve decided to focus my efforts into. I took screenshots at one second intervals to draw over rough arms, hands and object placement, before importing them over to Dreams to stitch them together.
all hail my mother for letting me boss her around <3
I wont be able to smoothly animate the entire movement sequence, so I’ll focus in on 2-3 seconds with the rest of it remaining as the 1 second frames, the entirety of the scene will be incredibly rough, with just little floating shapes to represent where the characters would roughly be.
YES I KNOW IT LOOKS GOOFY AS HELL WITH FLOATING CIRCLES BUT IT HELPS ME WITH THE PACING OK
Next was drawing over the rough movement draft, and adding Pippa and the meat chunks for Belle.
Adding colour was a headache to say the least. Didn’t realised up until this point, but Dreams doesn’t have to ability to select areas. -_- So I had to take the frames over into Procreate and colour each one. Porting the animation back over to Dreams the first time caused it to corrupt and loose a few frames so I had to redraw them, but eventually I got it over and edited the frames to be a little more consistent in the colouring.
ProJect
Proposal
Premise
Animated scene introducting Pippa and her spaniel companion, Belle.
Follows Pippa as she makes her morning cup of tea with magical means, feeds Belle, and is fondly roped into going on a walk with Belle’s pestering.
This animated introduction would lead into a comic or visual novel following Pippa, Belle and the narratives third character Kit. Focussing on themes of found family, fogiveness and redemption as well as technological and societal advancement.
Specifications
1:30 - 2 minuets
2D 12fps cel shaded animation
young adult target audience
8 backgrounds
Timeline to completion: 8-10 months
Sound
minimal voice acting (2-3 lines needed)
ambient background music and sound effects (premade or outscoured depending on budget)
Wider Purpose
If taken to a public forum, the purpose of this animation would be to spread awareness of the comic/vn and direct people to my work.
After that it could be used as trailer for a fundraising project to enable the production and publishing of the whole narrative.
Evaluation
At the beginning of this project I was torn between developing my narrative in either a comic/visual novel or animation. With the recommendation from Jayde I chose to do an animation to challenge myself. I’ve been introduced to the principles of animation, the workflow of creating an independent animation and several examples that have helped me to improve and elevate my quality of animation. Through researching writing resources I was also able to take an undeveloped concept from a previous project and expand it into a solid narrative to base my work and designs within. Unfortunately the timeframe of this project, along with the weeks I was ill has affected my outcome, but I have been able to create a solid enough foundation that I could take further.
My story writing and visual research helped me to elevate my work into a functioning narrative and organise the approach of making my animation into a structured and thought out pipeline. This allowed me to methodically work through the stages of the animation, and has created the foundation to complete it at a later date without the need for revisions or jumping back and forth between stages.
It was a challenge to create backgrounds and practice colouring, it’s something I continue to struggle with greatly but creating several backgrounds has made me more familiar with the process and removes some of the fear I have when approaching them. Working within Procreate Dreams was also challenging, I knew somewhat of its shortcomings when I chose it as my programme of choice, but it was slightly difficult to actually deal with those problems mid animation. It has however taught me how to animate between multiple programmes, as well as the importance of having multiple project backups.
I believe one of the biggest shortfalls of the final animation is the stilted movement. I animated the sequence second by second when I should have done it movement by movement. It would have allowed for a visually smoother and dynamic outcome. I'm also disappointed that I did not have the time to draw the animatic frames for the rest of the animation, but I do believe that the rough shapes movement that I have used in its place allows for the movement concepts to be communicated.
Overall I’m happy with how I have improved my animation and narrative writing skills through personal driven research, and while my proposal animation could be improved, I needed to make these mistakes so I could see them and then not repeat them. Hopefully.