For this 11 Second Club the site gave us some audio of what sounds like a lightning strike and the voice of a woman.
Through my interpretation and imagination I animated a woman crashing down in a lightning strike on some wooden boxes. The context is that she is a superhuman with lightning based powers and by her exclaiming "jesus" I liked to express that she is clearly not fully in control of her powers. Because of this she came crashing through a building roof and onto some boxes.
I didn't quite get this fully lined out but the movements are clear and I love making flashy special effects.
Wednesday 9 May 2018
Example of various parts of my animation done before completed animation:
Lichman as he enters the scene
Scared girl who is cornered
Shining Lady revealing her huge muscular body
Death Blitz's magical transformation
Death Blitz shooting thug in the face with love bullet
For this collaboration I teamed up with Natalia Llamas and Grace Qin for the D&AD brief for animating a female character from Beano.
At first we each made our own interpretations of a female character we decided to animate.
As shown below I made a design of Minnie the Minx previous to this decision but we decided that we'd prefer to animate Ivy the Terrible.
As shown also below I made various designs for my interpretation of Ivy.
This is the final design Natalia made we decided to choose for Ivy the Terrible, the two last designs:
Storyboarding by Natalia:
It shows the mischievous Ivy trying to get a cookie only to be sent flying into the fridge.
However, the force of the impact was enough to make a cookie fall from above ending the animation with her catching and biting into the cookie.
Below is are fully coloured versions of Ivy made by Grace using Natalia's version of Ivy:
I worked mostly on the animated video, majority of the animating and colouring is done by me.
Natalia worked on the background, assets and audio.
Grace helped out finish off part of the animation.
For this project me and my collaborative partner, Bash Ridha, decided to animate this storyboard I made out of other various stories. We picked this one in particular because we liked the comedic value of Santa accidentally knocking out a random person with one of the presents he is delivering.
It first shows Santa flying over houses before he looks shocked as he notices a present fall out of his sleigh. You see the present fall down before it hits the unsuspecting girl on the head, knocking her out.
We established the character designs and their colour schemes before we started animating one character each.
I was in charge with animating Santa in his sleigh. Due to time schedule we had to change the storyboard a bit and get rid the of the present falling.
Instead we show the girl being knocked out first with the present. The camera then goes up to reveal Santa who realises he dropped that present.
Above is the moodboard used to inspire the design for my unconventional anti hero character below, 'Death Blitz'.
I enjoy the contrast between his muscular stereotypical "badass guy" appearance with the magical dress, which would normally only be worn by a young girl. This will add a comical aspect to the scene when the bad guys react with astonishment to this bizarre looking hero, who then mercilessly beats them up.
The comedy contrasts with the serious side of the character, someone not to be made fun of or messed with but to be taken seriously.
As shown there are various existing designs to help me with this.
Side and Front view of 'Death Blitz'
Puri Puri Prisoner, from the series One Punch Man, is my main inspiration.
He is a huge muscular man who undergoes a magical like transformation similar to that of magical girl characters like the classic 'Sailor Moon':
However, Puri Puri Prisoner's "transformation" is actually just him flexing his muscles so hard that all his clothes are ripped off! *laughing*
Puri Puri Prisoner is openly homosexual, telling people that his ex-boyfriend made the jumper he wears (emblazoned with a large pink heart) and that he is in prison for chasing after "beautiful men".
He projects an image of flamboyance yet with huge strength, posing elegantly before unleashing a brutish attack of physical strength. It provides for a comical character that fans of the series love.
This is something I would like to incorporate into my character as it's bizarre and stands out from conventional heroes.
I decided to call my character 'Death Blitz' to reference anti-heroes like 'Deadpool' or 'Deathstroke'. Like them, I imagine 'Death Blitz' to have their brutal sense of morality and justice. It also reflects upon how my character will be shown to mercilessly beat up criminals with no regard for their lives. Hence, he will be blitzing them with lethal attacks.
Despite their questionable morality, anti-heroes provide something fresh to the conventional 'morally right' hero of justice.
Morality is a subjective concept, whether you adhere to the morals expected of you from society or follow your own set of morals. There is a difference between 'right and wrong' and 'good and bad'.
Right and wrong define what is expected of you within a society, e.g. murder is wrong.
On the other hand, good and bad are determined by one's own opinion, i.e. conscience.
But these concepts can go hand in hand, only when you are taught to believe right is good and wrong is bad, e.g. killing is both wrong and bad.
This is mentioned in this video at 2:51 when discussing Gon Freeces from 'Hunter X Hunter' and his perception of good and bad:
For my extended practise I wished to present my own variations of heroes who go against the usual stereotypes of conventional heroes. Therefore, they will be called 'The Unconventionals', referencing super hero titles like 'The Incredibles'.
To begin with I made the above mind map, listing what is considered to be a stereotypical hero, either male or female. This allowed me to identify conventional aspects of a hero and consider what I could do to challenge these. The aim is to widen the definition of what it means to be a hero. Aspects that I identified include appearance and how they behave morally. I also explored aspects of the 'anti-hero' because they are a subversion of the conventional hero.
Drafting out of hero designs:
Hero that looks evil
An old feeble man in appearance but is a strong hero
Development of evil looking hero,
giving him a kinder face to indicate his
nice personality while keeping him looking sinister
Another variation of an old person hero (old lady) and
concept of a muscular "cool" looking guy who transforms
into a flamboyant magical girl outfit.
This is to go against always having to make a male character look
"cool" and instead have him wear an outfit most stereotypical of a female character.
Concept look for flamboyant "cool" muscular guy
Concept designs for female hero focusing on the concept
that a female hero doesn't have to be a "perfect" sexual symbol for
the male gaze.
Here I am focusing on creating unique facial features in contrast to the type of body
stereotypical of conventional heroes like Wonder Woman.
Using facial features some may consider odd looking for a female hero.
Concept of how I imagine a conventional female hero body in contrast with unconventional facial features
I conclude that a comical approach is appropriate since these character concepts are ones that people are not familiar with in the context of heroes.
Is is not just appearance and abilities that truly makes a character a hero but their actions, e.g. saving people or self sacrifice.
The video below shows a scene from the anime series 'My Hero Academia', which follows the main character, Midoriya Izuku (aka Deku), and his entrance into U.A. High School for heroes. The series explores what it really means to be a hero in greater depth than I would expect from franchises like Marvel and DC.
In this particular scene, Deku and other examinees have to fight robots to score 'combat points'. Deku is too scared and timid to fight and it looks like he will fail the exam and not get onto the school's 'hero course'.
However, he reveals his powers and heroism when he attacks a robot worth zero combat points just to save a fellow examinee.
3:06 "Embody what it means to be a hero. Nothing is nobler then self sacrifice" - All Might.
Deku demonstrates the self sacrifice referred to in this quote since he becomes seriously injured when he uses his powers. Despite scoring zero combat points in the exam, the examiners conclude that they couldn't possibly let down a hero willing to risk his life for others and award him 'rescue points'. The examiners deliberately hadn't told the examinees that points could be scored for rescues as well as combat. This was because the exam wasn't just a test of their combat skills (as the students thought) but a test of their heroism as well.
My moodboards and images of existing characters (some are rather unconventional) which I used as inspiration:
These are the various designs I used as inspiration for my
concepts of facial features I designed above
The hero at the top, Puri Puri Prisoner (from One Punch Man), was my main
inspiration for my flamboyant "cool" male hero along with existing
male characters in magical girl looking outfits.
I also used the character in red on the left, Ban (from The Seven Deadly Sins anime),
as inspiration for the body type and cool looking appearance
Taking existing characters of heroes and villains who look evil in appearance.
I will use the heroes especially for my version of a evil looking hero
Existing old hero characters used as possible inspiration for my old hero character
Just thought this contrast was funny (it's both the same character)
I prefer her original appearance showing her as a creepy looking lady
who is more of a good character.
It's an appearance some may expect of a psychotic looking villain... she is a bit psychotic
Which, unfortunately, is a character trait she doesn't show a lot off later on in her series (HunterXHunter 2011)
