Character Design - Expressions

 In this character design class, we looked at expressing emotion/ facial expression. We were first given the task to take two emotions and draw someone/something expressing that emotion. I was given 'Surprised' and 'Anxious'. These emotions are rather similar, so it was difficult for me to make it obvious that this character was feeling both of those emotions. I drew his eyebrows raised but also slightly turned up, to try and indicate that he was surprised, but also nervous/anxious. I also made sure his mouth was open but was downturned, and that his eyes were wide but slightly manic as if he has been surprised by something rather unpleasant.

 We were then asked to try and bring a still object to life using expressions and emotions. I was given a chair. At first, I drew a posh, fierce looking chair, a grumpy sofa chair, and a rather chipper armchair. I decided out of all of these, I preferred the posh chair, as I liked how I could work the facial features into the structure, rather than just draw eyes and a mouth straight onto the chair like I did with the sofa chair. 

I developed the snooty chair a little further by drawing some more emotions like surprised/shocked, disgusted, angry and judgemental. I imagine that she is a rather feisty chair that doesn't let just anyone sit on her, and is probably from a very fancy home.

Character Design - Body Language

These are some studies I drew of my classmates acting out various poses that showcased different kinds of body language. We acted out roles that portrayed different levels of status, such as a Boss firing their employee.

Character Design Concepts

I've cleaned up some of my earlier Ghost designs for when I put them into my production bible. These are developmental sketches of my Ghost character and her love interest. 

First Concept Drawings

Rough Early Concepts

Storyboard Thumbnail Sketches

Developing the early designs

Cleaned up Developed Designs

Life Drawing - Drawing Dan

 In this life drawing session the model was absent, so we got to draw out acting tutor Dan. I used coloured pencil for all of these drawings.

5-minute poses and studies

10-minute poses

10-15 minutes poses

20-minute pose

20-minute pose

Working From Realistic Reference - Tweaked Animation

Today I carried on tweaking my Charlie Chaplin animation. I had to look at the graph editor to clean up some of the jittery/ quick movements in the previous playblast I uploaded. I'm a little happier with how the animation is coming along, but I still need to wrap my head around the wrist movements in the reference video and the slightly awkward movements in my animation when the character is sliding down the pole.

Chaplin Tweaked Playblast from noah greenhalgh on Vimeo.

Working From Realistic Reference

We've moved on from weightlifting to Charlie Chaplin, and working from a realistic reference. Below is a playblast of some rough animation I did using MooM. I used a clip of Charlie Chaplin as reference. It needs a lot of tweaking and a few more in-between poses to sort out the jittery hands/wrists and the body movements when the character is sliding down the pole.

Charlie Chaplin Rough Animation Playblast from noah greenhalgh on Vimeo.

Cleaned Up Weightlifting Animation

This week I cleaned up my weightlifting animation. I had an issue with the hands last week, they looked very jittery due to adding too many key frames to try and fix the barbell moving in weird directions in MooM's Hand. I discovered that adding more and more key frames is not they way to go.... it actually just made things much worse. So, instead I deleted unnecessary key frames and then cleaned up the animation in the Graph Editor and parented the barbell to the right hand control. After cleaning up and tweaking the poses a little, I'm a lot happier with how the animation looks. Cleaned Up Weightlifting Animation from noah greenhalgh on Vimeo.