Evaluation (open project)

for the past, 6-8 weeks i have been working on a project which was all to do with fantasy, an open project. it was called an open project we could do anything we wanted ( that we learnt about the past year) and use it to create something that revolves around fantasy ( you could only pick what you wanted to do if your work was up to date) for my project i created a 23 second animation of an elf girl singing a song in the Hylian language ( the language from legend of zelda), i wanted the animation to contain not only fantasy characters, but to also have a holy feel to it, which is what the song added, also having a song in a different made up language ( by the game creators)(i think it's made up..) makes it even more fantasy like in my opinion.

the animation starts with the girl opening her eyes while the wind blows her hair softly, it soon zooms out as she begins to sing and put her hands into a preying position, the camera angle changes, and she extends one of her hands outwards, again the camera angle changes, this time to a full body shot, where you can see all of her clothing, she is still singing with one hand stretched out, and near the end, colour begins to fade in. it's only black and white to start with but i thought adding alot of colour would make it alot more complicated for me.

for most of my time i was creating designs, not only for the animation, but for everything else, because before i decided on making an animation, i thought it would be best to come up with sketches and ideas for all the different things in which i could have used to work on (e.g. 3D model, 3D game environment, 2d game etc etc) this way i would have a good idea and knowledge on all the things, that way i wouldn't really have a hard time deciding on what i wanted to do when it came down to actually creating the main piece of the project. after i finally decided to do a 2D animation ( as i dislike 3d i did 2d)  i worked mainly on the character design and what they would be doing, i came up with 3 different stories, and finally decided on this one, as i like the idea of making my character sing a song in another language, i also then decided on 3 different songs, but i picked the goddesses song from the legend of zelda game skyward sword as it was the most interesting to me. it was hard trying to get the mouth movements good enough for the song, but i did my best and got it decent enough.


i think overall for the animation, it went pretty well, it did take a while for me to do it, and i did have a few mistakes here and there, but i think it went great, it turned out how i wanted and the lip syncing is decent enough, i would have liked to add more detail but that would have taken alot more time and i may not have been able to do much design work if that was the case, also the frame rate for the animation is quite low, which is disappointing, however this is something in which i can improve one if i were to ever create an animation again in the future, over all though for a second time animation, i think the frame rate is good enough.





for design work, i did quite alot of designing for all the different areas, but i also did quite alot for the over all animation, especially when it came to designing the outfit for the character, that was the main part as you could basically only see the character, i didn't give the animation a setting as i liked it more plain and black and white, but at the end it reveals the elf standing on a grey large stone which appears to be in a cloudless blue sky, so that's possibly the only scenery for the animation. so i didn't do any main planning for the scenery for the animation as i didn't really want any.

 the design work took almost all of my time, I'm surprised i even got the animation done, due to some of the detail i put into the design work, but at least i was able to use 3 different medias, which were: traditional, digital, and copic markers, i got the idea of digital from a recent artist i was researching about ( you can find it in my artist research) finding certain artists to research about wasn't easy as alot of them didn't catch my eye, howe
ver the ones i found did, it was only 2, but 2 is enough for the inspiration i got off of them.

overall i think this project was great, it was a good idea to let us do what ever we wanted with the idea of fantasy because that means our minds can wonder into all sorts of directions, because fantasy is a genre where anything is possible, which makes this project fun and interesting, probably one of my favoured projects within the lot.

NOTE (open project)

any research that has to be done for this project, even me introducing this project has been placed into the folder with all my drawings and plannings! you will not find them on blogger, the only thing you'll find is the research of 2 different artists i did,  ( i had only one at first but i re uploaded it with another artist included) and the evaluation of this project. thank you!

researching artists ( open project)(RE-UPLOAD)

for my project i am in need to research different artists, and their art styles, over the 6 weeks i have been given an open project where i can do what ever i like as long as it is fantasy related, and so researching different artists can give me some ideas on things i can use or even the different medias i can use or even the styles. 
after looking at some artists and their different styles of work, the one that catches my eye the most, and the one that interests me the most is the artist known as: georgia o'keeffe. for her types of art she would paint/ draw close up of blossoms, present them close up to make it seem as if they were being seen through a magnifying lens, i believe this is so such detail could be seen and the colours which hide which usually can't be seen when passing by, when when looking up close, the beauty of it is shown, and art is created.

born:  November 15th 1887
died: march 6th 1986
from: America

has a "feminine nature" to her paintings
"mother of American modernism"

her specific style/ field in the art industry is mainly paint/oil and charcoal
in 1915, she started her career with drawing charcoal drawings, of, of course, close up blossoms, this is something in which she enjoyed creating, especially when they got put onto show.
her work were given the words "pure" "fine" "sincere" etc.


not also did she do charcoal, but also normal canvas paintings which where also very popular, such as this painting for example, which is called "the white flower" it is a very beautiful flower with alot of detail, did you know that it is known that all her painting are created due to the things she would find lying around in her studio, this would include not only her famous blossoms but also, bones and also landscapes. with her art she would create a series of images which would probably create one image or a collection of one type of image, " Certain works of hers went on for decades, and produced 12 or more variations, of the same image she had created in earlier pieces of art." "she had created her work in a series, and with many of her pieces a series within a series,"

it is said that georgias work (the flower paintings) where "highly sexual" as the resembled the female form in a very erotic way, she claimed she was not afraid to try new forms, shapes, colours or anything as such, as long as her art has shown an image in which she wanted, she would be satisfied, whether the outcome is sexual and erotic, or not.
this piece of art is an example of one of her erotic female form flower paintings, just by looking at it you can see the resemblance of the female sex organ, this is what people meant when they labeled her art as erotic, she chooses to paint flowers in a way such as this to try and present the female form as maybe something beautiful and can be seen in many different shapes and forms.



another art form in which Georgia used was erotic photography, posing in such ways it would seem erotic, but I'm sure her intentions of such art where not to be seen in a pornographic way but it more of a female symbol art way, she shows and represents her female body as if to say that she is proud of being female and that her body is artistic and must be shown to the world, just like a males body, seeing as they come in different forms and shapes, they must be shown with pride, so that is probably what she was trying to do with this type of art style.

i couldn't use the idea of drawing sexual organs for my project, but i might possibly be able to use her colouring technique or possibly the media she uses when she creates her art, which would be helpful in my project as i have to use different medias, to show i am capable of working with not only a pencil.

another artist which catches my eye is a digital artist named natalie shau, her art revolves around everything weird and wonderful involving humans, her way of drawing them, making them seem like dolls or demons/ angels is showing us how her mind works in a way of her idea of fantasy and imagination.
Natalie Shau is mixed media artist and photographer based in Lithuania (Vilnius). She found interest in fashion and portrait photography as well as digital illustration and photo art.
Despite her personal work, Natalie also creates artwork and photography for musicians, theatre, fashion magazines, writers and advertisement.

i really like the art style in alot of her drawings, she gives them beautiful hair and giant eyes, with such a tiny face, something like this is the type of style i enjoy using when i draw. her drawings are very unique and you don't really see it alot, which is why i find it interesting and would love to know how she works and where she gets her insperation from.

from both of the artists you can see a huge different between them , is could be mainly due to the time in which they lived in, georgia, was born in the late 1800 so her view on the world was probably different then what it is now, her art is all to do with feminism, the art of women which should feel empowered not only by their body, but also their mind and soul, because women used to be looked down upon in those times, and so with her art is expressed feminism and power, but now you don't see alot of people degrading women, but natalie also draws women in a very unique way, almost fantasy like, she doesn't draw sexual organs like geogia, she draws women in a way she sees, which is weird and wonderful, which makes you see the huge different between art, 100 years ago, and art now, it's amazing.

digital art is the art i would most likely use when doing my project especially when working on an animation, i love 2d drawings and i love digital art, so i could possibly use natalie for help, getting ideas from her art would be quite easy as her way of drawing is extreamly interesting and i always love the idea of weird and wonderful, not only that but i love large eyes, beautiful hair and a pale complexion. she has become one of my new favorite artists.

of course her drawings are very detailed and i could never match up to this when doing an animation or any design work, but just using some little details from her images and even using the type of media (digital art) i can create some fantasy like drawings and frames for my work, as her work is very fantasy like to me, which is what my project is all about!.

evaluation (edu-tainment project)

this is the evaluation of my edutainment project, in this project I had to create an educational game for kids, containing content of my choice, however it had to link back to giving some sort of education to children. after 6 weeks of research, designing and actually creating something, I believe that this project it finally complete, I have shown my game to others and they believe adding more to it would make it better, however I believe it is fine as it is as it IS  short game, and there isn't a lot you can teach children about prime numbers, especially at an early age such as 7 years old, the more detailed information about prime numbers is given when you are at least doing A levels, so what I did seems to be fine for now.

My game (as said above) was to teach kids about prime numbers, which I believe is a very easy subject, yet it was quite difficult to try and think of questions to ask for such a topic, as there isn't a lot you could ask, so I believe that the 4 questions in which I included where enough for people to comprehend properly at what a prime number is, not only that but I did include an explanation of what a prime number is at the beginning and the end of the game, also subtle hints throughout the game, which corrects them if they get a previous question wrong etc. I also added a restart button and answers to the game to make it seem more like a game and people can keep replaying the game to know what exactly prime numbers are and so they know if they got all the answers right, there was meant to be a scoring system, however! Construct 2 messed up on me as I was working and so I had to restart my entire game, so it didn’t come out as great as it was before, and so the scoring system was also removed. A menu was added to make it seem more game like too.

I would say doing the designs for this project was quite a task as you had quite a lot to think about, such as the topic, what kind of designs are you going to use for the: text, back ground, characters (optional) etc., also creating 3 finalised ideas wasn’t such an easy thing either, trying to come up with the right design, topics and questions for each of the 3 finalised ideas was tricky, especially since they all had to be different and science and English are not my strongest subjects. For the research I mainly wrote about what I knew, I have played many educational games when I was younger so I know what a lot of them are like and what people do to make the educational games so popular with kids, which I think is to make it seem fun by adding cool characters, or bright colours everywhere, this kind of thing attracts the attention of children and it is all bright and colourful and reminds us of cartoons in a way, so it attracts attention.

Overall I believe the project was okay, it wasn’t my favourite, I do believe trying to create a game on construct 2 wasn’t the best thing, as I am not a fan of construct 2 due to the fact it’s not really easy to understand/ use and also it keeps breaking, (whether I just can’t use it/ I have bad luck, or the software is just terrible all together) I would not use it ever again it is just horrible, however I did manage to make a game in the end after a lot of struggling, and I seemed to get a lot of positive feedback about my game, which is a bonus!. The design work was okay, it did take me a while to decide on 3 final concepts and also finalizing my ideas into one major concept, which is initially the game I created.

Here is the feedback I got from my game, the questions are written in black and the answers are in the many different colours, each colour represents a different person who viewed/ played my game, this feedback is to help me later on in the future, for if I ever create another educational game (hopefully I don’t have to).

I had only asked very simple questions for my game but it did give me all the information I was looking for which was great, I mainly asked if the game was actually education( the whole point of the project is to ACTUALLY make a working EDUCATIONAL game, meaning it has to actually teach us something, which I achieved looking at the answers I also asked what aspects people liked the most, and it seemed that the design was very popular with people and the fact that people were able to answer each question, this means my game works fully without any problems, I then continued to ask if there was anything I could improve, the popular topic was to make the game longer, however as i stated earlier,  I don't think there are any more questions I can add to the game to make it longer as there is only so much you can do with such a topic. Also a score system was mentioned, last time I tried to put in a scoring system, it messed up, so I am hoping to avoid it for now. Next I continued to ask whether or not it was suitable for kids, those who tested my game seemed to think it was, seeing as there was nothing inappropriate in my game or no difficult/ long words, kids will be able to comprehend everything the game says.  I later asked if the design was okay for the game, whether it seemed like a suitable choice

research (edu-tainment project)

introduction: for this project i will be creating a 2d educational game in a software called construct 2, for the beginning like any other project, i have to perform research, for my research i will be looking at educational games and talking about them so i can get an insite of these games and see whether or not i can grab some information for each game/ each game i hear of, to create my game so that it educational but for for all. i think my game will be created for young kids, this will give me an advantage as i know the type of things young kids learn, and especially because i don't have to put any extra thought into thinking of A level questions.

eduxational games can usually teach kids/ people of the basic needs for life but also teaching them further in many subjects, such as math, english, science, R.E, history, geography, citizenship etc, these are all the basic topics, i won't go further into talking about business and graphics etc, as they are much more advanced. creating a game for young children can be difficult, because it all depends on their age to be able to know exactly what type of game to create, if it was for kids ages 1-4 it be something with learning to count or the letters of the alphabet, if it was for 5-9 it be more, learning how to spell certain words, and some mathmatical equations, but they still will not be difficult, they will probably be very easy additional problems, or even subtractions and possibly the 2x tables.
9-12 would be more for constructing sentences, 3-9x tables, and also studying science, in all 3 departments, biology, physics and chemistry.

colour: alot of educational games for young children intend to have bright ccolours, and alot of them, these games usually consist of the main primary colours (red, blue and yellow) and rarely the secondary colours, but they are still used. games for young kids need to be coloutful as it draw their attention to it because its bright and full of imagenation and fun, kids are drawn to this type of thing so this is what most educational games have these days

sound: educational games can sometimes have people talking in
the back ground, either giving information, talking through steps, or simply singing a song to make education more fun in the game. not only this but you can have music without vocals, so just some back ground music to go along with the game to make kids think of it as less boring and see it more in the entertaining side rather than the educational side, however seeing as it is an educational game they are still learning something while having fun and they probably wont notice due to the fact they are being distracted by the sound (maybe)

game types: there are different types of educational games, they can be used in different areas of media, educational games can be presented through board games, card games and also video games, people tend to say video games teach us violence, wrong, theyactually teach us many things even if you don't know it, and so thats why people decide to create educational games just to give that extra push into learning information.

extra: these types of educational games can be played by everyone: girls, boys, any race ( alot of educational games come with different languages for those who cannot speak or understand english, some educational games are used to learn english) sexuality doesn't even matter, however there is a problem when it comes to a sight or hearing disability, as some games are made so those who have certain disabilities cant play them, however there are special types of educational games which are made (these can even include the normal type) which can be used by those who have a disability, so really all educational games can be used by anyone, but of course, certain games have certain audiences, such as A levels, or gcse level, Btech, KS3, KS2, KS1, etc, you pick the one which is best suited to your needs.

(in order to get more knowledge upon educational games, i will be willing to test a few, maybe for different ages, so i can grasp the concept of them, what makes them perfect for certain ages, what it teaches people, how it teaches people, i also woulod like to see if i can use any ideas which i can obtain from playing educational games, and even i can probably give feedback on to how they could possibly improve on their game)

this is the first game i'll be reviewing, the point of this game is to shoot the rocket which holds the answer, to one of the UFO's above it, the UFO,s hold mathematical questions which relates to the answer on the rocket, you have to shoot the rocket to the ufo to the correct question which matches the answer, so in tbe picture, the rocket should be shout at the ufo which holds the "8+2" question, this looks like a good game for those who are atleast 3-8, as it holds very simple questions and gives very simple answers, there are very bold colours which i know, children love, the images look fun, the whole idea of space, rockets and UFO in cartoon form, relate to kids as the images are easy to comprehend, there is nothing too complicated about these images, they are colourful and big, so there is nothing which will make kids lose interest in this game, excet maybe the fact the answer for the questions seem too obvious, way too obvious, adding a small challenge to an education game, makes the learning all more worth while.

this is the second game i will be reviewing, this seems to be a game for those in the age range of 1-6, learning the basic knowledge of shapes and their side count, for this game, you have to sort the shapes into the correct pots which have been labelled (e.g. you'd put the square in the "4 sides" pot) its mainly the basic shapes and bright colours is what would attract the attention of young children, it is suited to their age as there is nothing complicated about this game at all, it is a basic sorting game, with bold simple images, and words which are learnt at a very early age,  this game is well suited for it's audience as it is simple yet help those learn to not only about shapes, but also to count in a way, if i where to give advice on how to improve this, it would be to add different colours rather than just one gradient scale of yellow to orange and then red,.

these two ganes have given me some information which i can use to create my educational game for young children, i have learnt about what type of colours to use, i also learnt that cartoon like/ digital drawings are best for these types of games are best, as they stand out more and are bold and bright which attracts the attention of children.

Evaluation ( animation project)

after many weeks of research, drawing and modeling i was finally able to complete both my 2D animation and my 3D animation, before i give my own evaluation on how things went i will be giving feedback given by others, so i can build upon what they said and take in what they said, so it can help me to improve in the future, i got a few comments on how my animations needed improvement, but mostly good comments, which seems good so far!

3D animation - The Audition.

first off, here is a screen shot of the scene of my 3D animation, it's nothing spectacular, as i just want my model to be seen as if he is at an audition for a movie. so the back ground is quite plane, however for this project, models doesn't matter, the only thing which matters is your animation.
for my animation i made the character hold papers in his hands and moves his head and arms, i made them as smooth as possible, so it doesn't look jittery and cheap/ tacky. for the audio track i had to animate my character to was: " one day, somebodys gonna need to make a stand, one day... somebodys gonna have to say enough!", i had to match the mouth to make it sync perfectly with the words which was a trouble for me as i got comments saying " the syncing was good at the beginning but quite fast at the end" "the animation was good, however the syncing needs work" i noticed they where probably on about the part from frames 200 - 250

the lips didn't match the voice, and so i shall keep this in mind in the future that i need to take extra care and put in more concentraition when syncing lips to a voice, probably slowing down the sound some way will probably help me in shaping the mouth properly and slower so i can get it properly in sync with the sound, other than that i think that was the only piece of critizism i got about my 3D animation, overall, i was told my face motion was good, i made it so it looked like he had emotion and that he was actually pulling faces to match what he was saying, also with the arms.



2D Animation - The Cookie.
for my 2d animation, making it not look tacky and cheap/ quickly made was my number one priority, i crated my 2D animation in a software called "paint tool sai" i find it alot easier than photoshop and gimp, i drew each and every frame differently so it obviously looks like the characters in the animation where moving, which actually wasn't so difficult, here is just a screen shot of one of the frames from my animation,  i got quite a few compliments for my 2D animation, such as: "lip syncing is good", " different camera angles" "constant art style" "good expressions" this has made me realized in what i did was actually good and i should probably keep along this path for when creating other animations, such as: i will ad alot of expressions to make it seem more real, i will keep with the constant look through out and i will also give different camera angles, i don't recall hearing people say whats wrong with it, how ever i believe if i do this again i should probably work more on the art style, every frame the characters begin to change slightly, and for a smooth animation, that cannot happen, here is an example of a before and after shot ( beginning frame - end frame of a scene)

<---before. not including the facial expressions, you can notice the hair has slightly changed its look as has the body, i have to make it so this doesn't happen next time.                                    after---->


so overall i think this project went really well, i did struggle at first, as i thought i wouldn't get everything done, but once i managed my time differently, my animations where completed in a flash, as well as all my researching and planning, i still think i can improve on my 3D animation as the lip syncing is mediocre. and there isn't much movement going on, however maybe if i also had a different soundtrack to work with, one that wasn't so bland and boring, my animation would have had more life to it i believe, for my 2D animation, it came out better than i had hoped, so i'm happy for that, over all my 2D animation is my best.

research into animation (animation project)

animation is a process where there are moving images or shapes, a continuous motion or illusion. of images which are all different to make whar this project will be about, which is animation. animations can be recorded on many different devices, even those which don't involve technology, these could be: a flip book,  motion picture film, or shown/ presented on digital media, such as: GIF, flash or video, to display ones such as this a computer, digital camera or projector can be used.

just like the GIF shown, animations are made of frames, depending on how many frames there are and how long each frame lasts for depends on the length of the animation and detail, such as this one is created of atleast 6-10 frames which play very fast to make the gif seem like a bouncing ball..

Animation creation methods include the traditional animation creation method and those involving stop motion animation of two and three-dimensional objects, such as paper cutouts, puppets and clay figures. Images are displayed in a rapid succession, usually 24, 25, or 30 frames per second..

Techniques 



Traditional 
traditional animation consists of photographs of hand drawn pictures, each pictures is used as one frame, and all the pictures are put together to make an animation., this can include as many pictures/ frames as desired but it will take a while to draw every little movement. depending on detail to create the illusion of movement
every picture is slightly different, so when put together it makes it seem the shape/ object is moving.
"drawings are traced or photocopied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels, which are filled in with paints in assigned colors or tones on the side opposite the line drawings. The completed character cels are photographed one-by-one against a painted background by a rostrum camera onto motion picture film ."

Stop motion animation
stop motion animation is basically manipulating real world objects, photographing them one frame at a time to create the illusion of movement. there are many different types of stop motion animation such as puppet:( obviously using stop motion puppet figures with an armature inside to keep them still and straight -- the pictures is showing an example of a puppet used in stop animation)
clay: ( uses figures made out of clay or any matierial like clay, some may contain a wire frame to keep them upstraight and still, for every frame the clay figures are modled in a way in which when playing all the frames back, it looks like a proper animation, using clay is probably really easy as it can be morphed into many different shapes -- this picture is showing a frame made completely out of clay)
cut out: (consists of cut out pieces of paper or material, cutting out many different shapes and forms, is apparently less time consuming than drawing everything.) these are just a few examples of stop motion animation.
 
Computer animation 
computer animation uses a variety of techniques of animation which are done digitally, some include, 2D, which mainly focuses on the image manipulation using basic 2D images, shapes and forms to create a simple or yet very complicated animation, kind of like cartoons you see some times, and then there is also 3D which is based around building a virtual world with objects and characters move and interact move them to your will, 3D can also make things look realistic to the viewer. (the picture is just showing an example of what 2D and 3D is)

there are many other types of animation such as mechanical  or sand animation or even pin screen, etc, but the ones i mentioned are probably the most well known or mostly used in the industries/ by people today and over the years.