Expressions Project

Initial character designs:

Favourite initial/developed character designs:

Storyboards:

Final Animatic:

Art style preview render

I intended the project to be 2D hand-drawn with digital colouring and CG backgrounds. The CG trees, bench, and bin are all royalty-free 3D models from www.turbosquid.com, but the rest I modelled myself. (In the final animation I would have re-modelled everything in more detail and replaced the royalty-free elements with my own models, but eventually I dropped the CG backgrounds altogether because I didn't have the time to recreate and animate them.)

Some peer feedback informed me that the setting was too dark, so I shifted it to daytime. I still wanted to keep a bit of a gloomy, scary atmosphere though, so I made sky grey and cloudy.

I am very proud of this project as my first big triumph in traditional hand-drawn animation, but if I had to improve upon it I would have drawn more frames to make it smoother, I would have done the monster in hand-drawn animation as well instead of puppet warp, I would have found an easier/quicker way to do the colouring, and I would have added lighting effects, just like my preview renders.

Expressions Project Anger research

Anger research

This painting by Vikki North shows an extremely well done solemn, resentful, grumpy anger. Not the kind that explodes, but the brooding kind that a person holds inside. This is defined with a relatively emotionless face, except there's a sturdy frown locked in place and the head is tilted forward enough for the eyebrows to cast a shadow on the eyes.

I found this, regarding certain symbols that convey anger. These usually hover above the head to exaggerate an emotion with cartoon-ish effects as well as facial expressions.

Looking to comic books for examples of angry expressions, I've found another example of the brooding look.

Again in the same comic book, I found an interesting example of an intimidating glare. The head is tilted at such an angle that its eyes and much of the face is cloaked in shadow. I think this is one of the best ways to make an angry face look intimidating.

Again in the same comic book, there is an intense shouting face. The eyes are scrunched up, I believe to make room for the wide mouth.

Some of my own sketches regarding anger and frowning.

Expressions Project Fear research

Fear research

An amazing picture by Dan Brereton, depicting pure panic and paranoia. I learned a lot from this image, especially in terms of how to draw a worried face, and how the hands will typically go to the head when stressed.

'The Scream', a very famous painting of a person having a nervous breakdown and screaming out. It's a very simplified image, but all the key elements are there. The wide eyes, the hands at the face, the mouth.

The emoticon for fear is another simplified image of a person screaming, but it's interesting to see how certain elements of the face have been translated into this art style. For example, the blue haze over the top of the head most likely indicates the colour draining from the face. The pure white eyes are a little hard to understand, but my gut tells me that the lack of pupils indicate a lack of consciousness, as if they are on the verge of fainting from shock.

I don't know who this image is by, but I found it here. I think I like this one the best, because it uses harsh lighting and shadow to heighten the sense of shock in the image. It uses a show of teeth like the image by Dan Brereton to really express the fear in the mouth shape, but it also uses the pure white eyes like the emoticon.

My resulting attempts to replicate certain art styles.