I See Faces; Week 3 (GIFs Cont)

 

GIF in photoshop with layers//Final GIF

Building on from my first GIF I began developing some of my other storyboards into final GIFs. The above GIF was created in a similar way to the first one as I really liked the hand-rendered aesthetic to fit with the character, only this time I used acrylic paint as a base colour and repainted it as many times as necessary for the frames so that the colour provided some movement as well.

 

GIF in photoshop with layers//Final GIF

One of the characters I did think about developing further into a GIF was my smug window letting in cold air. I wanted to try out creating the images purely in photoshop, however found that the faces didn't actually work that well in conjunction with the window movement. I decided to drop this GIF as it wasn't working as well as I knew others would and the character wasn't one I felt overly fond of.

 

 (Left) Layers of fox//different body parts (Right) Layers of final GIF

GIF at 0.0 seconds between images and 0.1 seconds between images

GIF at 0.5 seconds between images and final GIF at 0.1 seconds

I was however determined to make a GIF through purely digital means that did work well as both a piece of short animation and character. My fox provided the means to achieve both of these things whilst also allowing me to attempt a more ambitious movement other than facial expression.

I found while constructing this GIF that timing is something valuable to be considered between frames. As much as I didn't want the leg movement to be too fast, I also didn't want it to be too slow as it made the GIF look laggy and sloppy. 

If I were to do this GIF again I'd add more movement in his body, tail and ears. I would also extend the amount of frames to allow for a smoother run of the background.

GIF in photoshop with layers//Final GIF

GIF in photoshop with layers//Final GIF

During the run of this brief we also had a monoprint induction. I went to the workshop with my characters in mind and thus resulted in the two above GIFs. I knew creating a GIF purely from the actual end results of monoprinting would be difficult so I kept the movement very simplistic just to play with the idea (as seen in top GIF). 

The textures created at monoprint were something I really liked however, and could be rather easily manipulated into a simplistic character design to move as a GIF. For the bottom GIF I mixed together the textured monoprint and digital drawing to result in a subtle but I feel effective character based GIF. I kept in mind the shift fox I'd drawn earlier and tried to imbed a little of him into this character. I added text as it was something I hadn't yet animated.

I also added in some movement in the digital brush strokes I used to colour in his shorts, as I felt it gave the GIF more overall balance

GIF in photoshop with layers//Final GIF

For my final GIF I wanted to try out some 3D papercuts like those of P.Rice. Positioning the character to sit up, stay in the same place and move the hand up and down while keeping the camera semi-steady did prove to be a little bit tricky, however for a first attempt I was pleased with the final result!