ARTIST COMPARISON

Jason Chan vs Daniel Kamarudin

 

I chose to compare these two artists because I feel like they have influenced my artwork the most and gave me the biggest ideas and inspiration for my FMP style.

Firstly, Jason Chan’s works are very neat and tidy, while Daniel’s are much rougher and less tidy. I think that they both have very distinct styles and they both work on a very professional level. They both have a big following count and have amazing and inspirational works.

Jason works in a very realistic format and his characters often give out a lot of emotion and energy. I have noticed that his paintings often are painted with dark values which give more space for dramatic lighting and energy light sources.

I feel that Daniel’s works are very similar in that matter since he focuses a lot on darker paintings and his backgrounds usually consist of lighter colours to make the characters stand out more- a trick that a lot of artists use to make the character the main attraction in their paintings. Daniel uses a painterly style that give his artworks a lot of edge and make them very attractive to the eye. I really like his painterly style because in some of his amazing works it looks like as if he painted them on a canvas, but in reality they were created digitally.

Since they paint realistically, they don’t use lines in their works and both of their art styles are quite complex and they have a lot of details in both of their artworks which I really admire.

 

I feel that Daniel’s painterly style and Jason’s movement in his art, have really pushed my ideas forward and gave me what I came up with this week for my FMP. I want to try and combine those two to create something amazing and something I will be proud of.

RESEARCH- LOL loading screens

My friend suggested for me to have a look at these loading screens for League of Legends since they’re literally what I wish to achieve for my FMP.

I find their movement incredible and I really want to push my artwork to be on a higher level to meet my own expectations. I want to create an amazing and fluent animation so I want to do a lot more experimenting and trying out different sketches for my final project.

 

Anthony Possobon– 

I have managed to find the artist that has created these amazing works. He uses After Effects to animate everything.

 

From the video, I have found out that he rigs his characters in After Effects. I will try and research ways on how to do so, so I can use it in my FMP.

RESEARCH- 2.5D animation

2.5D stands for two and a half dimensional. The images are made to look 3D where in fact, they are not. A lot of games were created in that perspective such as: street fighter, ori and the blind forest, and more.

 

PARALLAX SCROLLING: 

It’s a technique in computer graphics and web design, where background images move by the camera slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in a 2D scene.

 

 

 

I really love the effect it gives and the depth of the image. I think it’s really good for my idea and really pushes my skills forward. I wanted to do something really different for my project and I am glad I am taking on this idea.

2.5D animation EXPERIMENT

 

This is the finished product of the artwork I have been 2.5D animating using the “parallax” effect. I am very proud of the product since this is the first ever one I have created.

If I wanted to change anything, I would have liked to maybe add a smirk to his face to make his character look more cunning. I also would have liked to make the background look more realistic and move better with the camera movement.

I would like to have my finished FMP looking like this by the end. I am hoping to achieve this by finishing my artworks and then working hard on animating them just as I have animated this one.

EXPERIMENTATION

For this experiment I used one of Jason Chan’s amazing artwork. I wanted to try and experiment with 2.5D animating since I want to use it for my FMP. I felt that the best way to do that, was to actually try and animate a still image in After Effects. I felt a little more confident this time, since I already tried animating an image in the past and managed to do it after some research and self-motivation and self teaching myself some of the skills and techniques.

Firstly, you have to break the image into layers. Since I wanted to animate the hooded character, I started by selecting him the best I could and cutting and pasting him out and onto a new layer.

 

When I was satisfied with my selection I did the same to the other parts of the background that I wanted to animate, which in that case, was the foreground.

Because for the animation that I want to do I need a clear background of both those elements (character and foreground) I had to delete them both from the original background by selecting the character and foreground selection and pressing shift>backspace and filling in both those selections with the fill tool.

Once I did that, I was left with a clear background that needed to be tidied up manually (I selected some elements that were still visible after the character and went through the same process (shift>backspace and then ok).

I did the same with the foreground until I was satisfied.

 

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I then went into After Effects and opened a new project and opened the PSD file that I saved it as.

I dragged the image into the composition and started doing more research on how to make the background zoom in, since that was the final product I wanted to end up with.

I then added the layers that I edited out earlier in Photoshop (foreground as the first layer, then the character and then the background.)

This is when my friend Linus came and helped and showed me how the timeline works and how to use the scale and position effect to zoom in or twist/ turn the desired layer. You have to work backwards in it, so basically if you want to create a zoom, you have to click on the time in the timeline where you want your layer to stop zooming in at, zoom in at that time, click on the little clock in your layer to set it, go back to the beginning of your timeline and then resize the image to the starting position.

You do that to any effect you wish to achieve, except the actual animating part (puppet pin tool) where you have to pin the object you wish to animate and then in the timeline, you record the process.

Basically if you want to animate a pin, you move it in the direction you want to move it and then move the timeline line slightly and then keep repeating the pattern. The timeline should add a little dot to show that the movement has been recorded.

 

RESEARCH

After Effects videos that I watched to learn more about the process for my FMP. I have learn a little about the Parallax– it is the perspective and how you view different objects for example: when you’re in a moving car- the objects closer to you move much faster than the mountains that are much further away.

ARTIST RESEARCH- Rino Stefano Tagliafierro

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Rino Stefano Tagliafierro is an Italian artist that has brought many classical paintings to life using After Effects and photoshop. He is a director, art director and a video artist and has created many 2.5 creations for video-art, commercials, short films, fashion video, video mapping, video projections and video installations for exhibitions, museums and special events.

I decided to research him because I also wish to animate one of my paintings and I am hoping to do something very similar/ the same as to what he achieved.

 

To animate the paintings, he first uses Photoshop to edit the images and then imports them into After Effects to create his final product.

RESEARCH- CHARACTER IDLE ANIMATION

 

For my FMP, I want to animate my character as a possible idle animation GIF. I researched some Warframe idle animations because I really like how fluent they look.

Possibly, I’ll give my character some weapons/ magical power so that will also give off a nice effect. I don’t want to over-complicate my design/ FMP because I want to be able to make it looks really professional and on a high level, but given my nearly to none experience with 2.5D animating, I am not feeling too confident right now. Hopefully, that will change soon because I want to research more on after effects.

I was thinking of animating my character either in a complex manner or more of a simple style like in the first youtube video (them just standing and hardly moving). Of course, it will also depend on the character itself and their design and what animation style will work best with them.

RESEARCH- 2.5D animation

I have found out that what I actually want to do for my FMP is called 2.5D animation.

It’s basically a painting/ drawing/ photograph which is animated but is still 2D. An animation like that gives off an almost a 3D effect and is often used in commercials and games but can also be used for personal painting animations.

Some of the games created using a 2.5D perspective are: Little big planet, Ori and the Blind Forest, Street Fighter, Mortal Combat and many more.

I really love the bright and saturated colours in Ori and the Blind Forest. I especially love the glowing effects and the fantasy feeling the game gives. I feel like I could definitely use something similar in my final piece, like a glowing orb or something similar.