Animation, Process and Production 1 (28th September)

During our first Process and Production session we went right into designing and creating poses for our own caricatures, based upon our own selves.

The idea was to become less concerned with 'perfection' (or anything even closely resembling perfection) and focus more and getting the general impression of movement and form, so that our illustrations became more and more abstract with motion, yet still retaining their humanity and could still be recognised as ourselves.

It got to the point where, when making the smaller illustrations, it would take only upwards of 10-15 seconds to create a form with real life and movement, something I was personally shocked by when I realised how when you stripped away everything but the core character and an action you could make an image that conveyed so much more life and energy than a sketch that could take minutes or even hours.

This eventually lead into a Model Sheet drawing, which was as different from drawing quick poses as could be.

Here every proportion had to be carefully placed in a totally front facing shot, then emulated in a sister drawing that would be a totally side facing shot. Rather than being used to capture the mannerisms and nature of a character, like the previous exercise, but are rather there to show every detail a character has so that they may be replicated later, or turned into a 3D model.

The whole session was difficult at first, as letting go of perfection was a slow process, but the more I let the simplicity take over and just allowed the forms and movement to take shape on their own the more I saw the essences of movement appear on the page.

I still need to work more on Model Sheets, as trying to get proportions correct and have all the same character remain in the more more formal and refined image is difficult, but I know where I need to improve.