FMP UAL ART + DESIGN
ASHTON PACION
@FERNANDA DIAS
TITLE:"Save me - Fan Animated Music Video - Witch Bunny"
DATE: SEP 7, 2020
MEDIUM/SOFTWARES: ANIMATED ON PHOTOSHOP
LINK: https://youtu.be/MHrxWKmzQkY
One of the artists I have decided to research is Fernanda Dias. Fernanda is an artist I have discovered on multiple platforms, mainly Instagram and YouTube. Fernanda creates stunning animations that she animates using the software Photoshop, she often animates her own original characters narrating simple shorts and stories. This animation that she created titled: “Save me - Fan Animated Music Video - Witch Bunny” is a 1:25 minute duration animated music video to the song “Save me - Bruno Martini” featuring her characters from her own series called “Witch bunny.” This animation features 2 of her original characters - A Male with black hair accompanied by a black cat, and a female with long twin tails who is accompanied by a white bunny. The music video gives off a mystical and magical like genre as there are depicted scenes where her characters are seen manipulating some sort of power. Something that really draws me in about her work is the fluidity of her animations. I find that the use of smear animations give her movement a lot more impact as well as make her work more visually compelling. Smear animations is something I may want to consider in my own work to achieve the same visual impact. Another thing I would like to imitate in my animations is the composing of lighting, you can see in this video that the effects of lighting really bring her work to life further enhancing the visuals and environment. The storytelling of this music video is something very similar to what I strive to achieve for my final major project.
This video is an animation I found on her Twitter/X account that she captioned “Lorena” which I assume is the name of the character in the video. The video presents a short animation of her original character displaying expressions of disbelief to irritation. This video's context is most likely a small animation test exhibiting her character reacting to some sort of scenario. I feel this animation really gives insight to the characters personality and antics and makes the viewer question what’s the reason behind her gestures, although the video displays her showing expressions of annoyance, the animation ends off with her rolling her eyes dismissively suggesting the tone was playful. This use of expression is what helps with storytelling tremendously as it portrays the mood of a scene and what the characters are feeling. This is one of the features I really like about her work as it is very expressive, both body language and expressions. This is something I aim to imitate in my work for my FMP.
TITLE: "Lorena - Witch Bunny"
DATE: OCT 12, 2023
MEDIUM/SOFTWARES: ANIMATED ON PHOTOSHOP
This is a short animation I found in her Twitter/X account that she captioned “Happy Easter” It features a simple animation with a blue bunny and a red dog. The two animals have a small interaction with each other with dogs sniffing the other out of curiosity. Both just naturally displaying animal antics. Something I particularly like about this animation is the lineart, I like the weight and thickness added to it. Something I had also noticed is that it's not consistent as the lines move a little bit in each frame. This is something I’ll most likely replicate in my FMP as I’m not particularly aiming for clean and smooth line art and frame consistency. Considering the given time frame, I do not want to produce something as fluid as Fernanda usually animates, especially with my limited skill level and understanding of animation.
TITLE: "Happy Easter!!"
DATE: APR 10, 2023
MEDIUM/SOFTWARES: ANIMATED ON PHOTOSHOP
CREATIVE RESPONSE
ROUGH ANIMATION
CLEANUP
COLOURING/ COMPOSING
FINAL RESULT!
ANIMATION PROCESS
IBIS PAINT X
When creating the rough animation for my response to Fernanda Dias, I used the "ibis Paint x" app to draw the frames. While working on the rough animation, I noticed that the movement looked a bit jerky, possibly due to my frequent use of the lasso tool and drag tool. To address this, I decided to focus later on refining the movement during the clean-up phase to achieve the smooth, fluid look that is exhibited in Fernanda's work. I worked at a rate of 16 frames per second for this short and simple animation.
When I brought the rough animation from Ibis Paint into Procreate Dreams, I created a new drawing track above the imported rough animation to work on the lineart. During this stage, I adjusted the timing of the frames and incorporated additional frames to add more motion to my animation. This was my second time using Procreate Dreams, and I discovered a couple of new techniques that helped me work more efficiently. For instance, I found it quicker to draw the lineart all together on one track instead of separate ones. Additionally, I extended frames that were the same instead of having multiple individual frames, which also sped up the process.
During the coloring and composing stage, I focused on using blending modes and clipping masks to enhance the visuals. I also utilized the action feature to add key frames, like when I made the character blush gradually by adjusting the opacity. Something I found that really helped me with colouring is colouring on the same layer as the lineart, Procreate has an inconvenient function where you can only fill in section on the same layer of lineart, this resulted in me having to draw lineart as a whole on the same layer, and duplicating the lineart track underneath in order to use the bucket tool, this time the bucket tool worked and I could actually use it without having to manualy colour things in. Another thing I found a bit inconvenient was that in order to fill a section with colour, you have to constantly drag a colour to fill in a section, I found this feature was a little more time consuming rather than procreate dreams just allowing a simpler method like tapping an area to fill it in.
CREATIVE RESPONSE EVALUATION
I'm satisfied with how my animation in response to Fernanda Dias turned out. I particularly admire Fernanda's expressive character animations, which inspired me to depict a character transitioning gradually between emotions in my creative response. Since Fernanda often features her original characters in her animations, I decided to incorporate one of my own. As this was not a loop animation, it required more frames to draw, resulting in a longer animation process, this made me consider that I had to use a simple artstyle and colouring style to reduce the time spent drawing and rendering frames. During this project, I also experimented with new coloring and rendering techniques, providing me with valuable experience in navigating and utilizing Procreate Dreams. While I didn't fully replicate the fluidity of Fernanda's work, I did strive to incorporate elements of her art style. Despite not perfectly imitating Fernanda's movement, I believe I have improved in animating motion and movement compared to how I originally could with my little experience. To enhance future responses, I would adjust the frame rate to improve pacing and extend individual frames in certain parts to maintain a more suitable pace throughout the animation.
