Because this was the third brief I chose for Responsive, I wanted to do a lot more experimenting with character design. This is something that I don't do a lot of because I don't think i'm very good at it, and I wanted to use responsive as a chance to improve and also do something different. From what I had brainstormed, I began to draw characters I thought could work for a 'loop animation'. I thought about twins, big sister and little sisters, to animals and toys. I really likes the idea of having mischief in my loop and I also liked the idea of having the little toys that get smaller as you open them up. I was still unsure of what characters I wanted to develop, so I went and added some colour to my designs, and had another think.
Again, I really liked the three toys, but I wasn't sure how I was going to animate them and I was leaning more towards the big sister/little sister companionship. I had also found out that you could rig characters in After Effects and because I really enjoyed rigging in Maya, I thought perhaps I could have a go at this new learning experience as I wanted to really push myself. I knew this would be a risk because I was trying something new for a competition brief, but I really did love the technical aspects in Maya so I want to find out if doing them in After Effects is just as satisfying.
Therefore I stuck with my instincts and went with the big sister/little sister characters. I was able to develop these really well, and I improved them a lot from my original drawings. I really like how illustration-like they look whilst also being digital. I made each body part on separate layers however, as to rig characters in After Effects, I learnt that you need to have every body part that you want to move on a different layer. This way, when you import the whole .psd (Photoshop) file into After Effects you can keep the layers independent from each other, allowing you to rig them.
I named each layer appropriately however, making sure that the left arm and right arm were easily distinguishable with 'R' and 'L' at the beginning of each layer name so that I wouldn't get confused like I did sometimes in the previous module. By doing these steps, I was able to think about what parts of the body I really wanted to move, and what were not very important. For example I didn't need to have the shoulder separate to the whole arm, as I could just create a 'bone' for it instead, saving time and layer space.
Since i had my characters designed, before I want to rig them I went ahead and made a quick storyboard of the narrative that I wanted to create. I kept it relatively short, just enough for me to follow and last for 6 seconds. I also wanted to see who would be taking what from who. I also carefully considered how I was going to make the animation 'loop'. Because that is what this brief is all about I really struggled with finding short ideas that would have a never ending loop but I came up with two. The first was to have the starting frame as an image in a photo album and then it starts to move as the person remembers it, and to make that loop would be through page turning. However the second idea I had was to do a pan of a city scape/town scape and then once it reaches the ice cream shop, the animation of the sisters will play and then the pan comes back and it repeats itself! I thought this would look much more appealing so I decided that was the one I will be going for!
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