Week 2
Day 1: I liked doing the turnaround drawing for Double D last week so for this week I did a multitude of character turnarounds varying in shapes and art styles. First I did Larry 3000 from Time Squad, since he's a robot he is made up of many geometric shapes unlike Double D. Geometric shapes can be difficult to keep consistent when you're changing perspective constantly but it came out very well in this test.
Day 2: Looked at a couple Japanese anime model sheets and I noticed a few differences. American characters tend to have 4 or 5 turning frames while the Japanese only have 3 or 4. But because they have fewer frames it isn't a smooth turnaround rather each frame tries to pack as much information about the character as possible. Now if I were an animator who didn't know anything about Misty I would notice that one frame has her bag, meaning that she is probably a traveler. Also, the way her legs and arms are positioned in each frame makes me feel like she is impatient but tries to act like she isn't based on her facial expression. I usually have a tough time drawing anime faces and the first frame didn't come out so well for me but the two others are pretty spot on. Also, they even gave more information on her bag in the model sheet showing that it's probably gonna be a big part of her character. Also her hand in frame two looks so goofy that I tried to fix it my version.
Day 3: Not a turnaround animation but still just as important! I was lucky enough to stumble upon the walk cycle for Pikachu while looking for his turnaround model sheet. I thought it would be interesting to see how I would fare in animating a quadrupedal animal running. This also let me experiment with timing a bit, normally my turnarounds are 0.2 seconds long for each frame but it felt too slow for this one so I used 0.1 seconds instead. If I put no delay it looked good but it looked like Pikachu was running for his life. I think this is one of my favorite studies that I did because of how smooth and consistent it is between each frame and I've seen Pikachu run so many times that I feel like I nailed it.
Day 4: After the Misty drawing, I was really interested in seeing what Jake the Dog from Adventures Time model sheet would look like since Jake can stretch into whatever he wants he should have a pretty crazy model sheet. It was pretty normal, I thought after I drew it out I would see something unique that I wouldn't see at first glance but it was pretty standard. The constant moving of the hands is a bit distracting.
Day 5: Wanted to go for something more creature-like, so I chose Patrick from SpongeBob. Patrick is pretty simple to draw but this still took me like an hour and a half to completely draw it out.
Day 6: Okay so this was a bit interesting, I wanted to see what a model sheet from an old Disney or Looney Tunes cartoon would look like and it was vastly different. It is similar to Misty in that it is not supposed to be a smooth turnaround but rather each pose is supposed to tell you something about to character while also showing you how he looks from all angles. I had to slow this one down, as well as the Misty one, to a 0.5-second delay just so that I had enough time to take in the information that I was seeing. But the model sheet for Bugs was a lot more descriptive as in it showed the simple shapes used to draw Bugs, how many heads each pose is, as well as all the facial expressions which are usually put on a different sheet.
Day 7: I really need help learning digital art.
REFLECTION:
I looked through so many model sheets this week from American cartoons, Japanese anime, animated films, and different time periods with characters that had varied in geometry and simplicity. It was hard to tell at times which model sheets were fan-made and which were officially used on the show but I think everything I used for this week was official. I tried digital art again and it really shows that I need to either find a way to use an iPad as a display or learn how to use a tablet. It's interesting how different every model sheet is structured between all these shows and what they want the animators to get right, their personality or their appearance. This was a huge learning experience for what goes into a character's design and I can't wait to use it in my own project.
