Animation and Illustration

  Pixellation With the pixellation project, I filmed a fish tank to use as my moving background using a stop motion app on my phone. I then used Adobe Animate to draw over each layer of the frames.  Figuring out how to import the image sequence was the hardest part of this project. Adobe Animate helped me to complete my loop of a jellyfish.   I wanted a short loop so the jellyfish didn't travel very far, only swimming in a circle. I am not entirely pleased with the gif as my background could not be a seamless loop, the fish positioning make it obvious that the clip has an ending, but this is something that I cannot change.  I researched many videos of jellyfish movement to accurately illustrate their swimming method and I feel like I did a good job, however I would have liked to do a more detailed version if I had more time. 

 Walk Cycle For this walk cycle animation, I used the character prompts to create a florist who is late.  I first created a run cycle rather than walk as I thought it would fit the prompt of 'late' better than a walk, but then switched to a hurried-paced walk to better fit the goal of the project. I found that expressing emotion through the walk cycle was far more difficult rather than a simple idea of running to portray 'late'. I illustrated her arms to be tightly kept against her torso, leaning her forward to convey the sense of anxiety while walking.  I changed my original design for my character a few times to better suit not only her profession but to also portray the walk cycle clearly.  I also had trouble with drawing the legs - I constantly mixed up the directions they were meant to be facing and had to look back at the drawing frame-by-frame to find each mistake over and over. I decided to just shade the limbs furthest from the view to better determine the d...

 Water Sensitive Cambridge I chose to base my illustrations around the theme of 'Enhancing urban biodiversity by providing habitat for wildlife, and food for butterflies, bees and birds.  When learning about WSC, I found that the Rain Gardens used to prevent flooding were highly versatile - they could be used in homes as well as along pavements. I tried to express this in my drawings.  In each thumbnail I tried to relate to the chosen theme while also expressing the idea of preventing flooding - the main objective of Water Sensitive Cambridge.  The final sketch involves flowers used as umbrellas, a visual metaphor to show the benefits of a rain garden. The flowers keep the path clear for pedestrians, whereas the rain floods the surrounding not inhabiting flowers. For the illustration, I tried to keep close to the colour palette given from the client. I did not find the colour palette particularly aesthetically pleasing as there was not a lot of variety in shades of b...

  Puppet Project I chose my mother to base my character around. I used photographs from her life and positioned her to recreate the angles and feeling behind some of the photos.  ​ ​ My mother is very family-oriented and headstrong. She was raised on an Irish farm, the middle child in a family of 17.  Growing up on a farm conditioned my mother to be a hard worker, used to long day hours and an attitude of 'get on with it' in any situation. Her work ethic led her to create multiple successful businesses in hospitality as well as major success in real estate in several different countries.  One of these drawings is based on a photograph of my mother on the first day of her first business venture - opening a small Italian style cafe named 'Buon Appitito'.  The majority of these photos centre around family which is how I mostly associate my mum. She is always first to greet people and start up meaningful conversations no matter who is the recipient. She often gravit...

  Rotoscoping Group Experimental Animation For our rotoscoping project, we decided at first to have a theme of 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' as a way of including our limbs in the animation. We wanted to do more than a simple hand fight and so we decided to incorporate a video-game style of fight sequence.  We used a paper background and paper 'health bars' and cut them down to imitate our object losing health when they're defeated.  While shooting our sequence, the camera traveled quite far towards the end which is unfortunately unfixable in editing without cutting off our scene.  ​ When we completed shooting our sequence and it was time for editing, I had a difficult time with my group. I understand that group work comes with challenges, and I did my best to encourage participation. However, I had a particularly difficult time with the unresponsiveness of the group and received input from only one person, which made the entire editing process unevenly distributed and la...

  Experimental Animation 2D Group Experimental Animation  When paired with classmates Kirstie Brunning and Joe Davey, we decided to base our project around a caveman attempting to start a fire. ​ We searched through many different magazines to find appropriate textures and visuals that would suit our caveman and found multiple choices.  We started with a rock texture, but quickly decided against it. A wet otter's fur was then used for the clothing. We used smooth pebbles to mimic the colour of flesh and a rougher rock to represent dirty, muddy feet. To emphasize expression and personality in our mostly silent animation, we used thick eyebrows to act as our character's facial expressions, allowing simplicity to inform the audience on the context of the character's emotion. We also insisted upon our character's arms to be maneuverable in order to convey our story line in an easily follow-able manner. We used minuscule amounts of bluetac to achieve this and the results are...

I modeled a 3D low-poly bridge after London's Bridge. The metal suspension cables were difficult to sculpt, so I mirrored my object to finish the bridge quicker. I utilised extrusions for this build to model the spires and indentations of the London Bridge, these extra faces made the build more visually complex but much more difficult to texture. ​ UV unwrap was difficult as my object was quite complicated with many faces. Discovering how to cut and sew my object was very challenging but I managed to create a UV shell that was equal all around. I began doing this by hand individually, and after unwrapping the most difficult areas manually, I used automatic unwrap for the rest of the build and the result is very effective. I used a simple texture for the building and I made sure to make it as seamless as possible.  I tried to experiment with different textures but had a lot of difficulties with assigning a different texture to different faces, and the result was not clean nor aesthe...