Cut Out Animation Using After Effects

I was originally going to create my ident by using real-life stop motion cut out animation, however I also wanted to do something that would be time efficient and that I could work on from home. So, I decided that I was going to look at After Effects as the program I want to use to create my E4 ident. I don't have much experience with After Effects, however I am quite used to using key frames in Premiere Pro so I felt that I would be able to get a hang of it easily. I have started looking at online tutorials and ways to create realistic cut out animation digitally, and it seems quite simple and still looks believable. I think that I am going to use construction paper scans that I find online and then use them in Photoshop to cut out all of my different shapes needed. This way it will look like real materials instead of looking completely flat. Below are a few examples of cut out art that I liked and decided to look at for my own inspiration. These examples are extremely detailed, however it inspires me to think about the further possibilities I could create using this method and how complicated they can become with practice!

Composition in Animation

Composition is something that is important in any kind of art form and it's also something that can really effect the way that someone views your work so I wanted to look more into composition so that I could consider it more in my own work. I looked at a book called Layout and Composition for Animation by Ed Ghertner, which I found quite helpful as it's more specified than looking at a book that just explores composition as a whole. What I also really liked about this book was how illustrative it was and the examples shown were really helpful and easy to understand. Ghertner explains that using multiple horizons and vanishing points creates a more dynamic composition and a more interesting story and this is something I have been trying to consider more as sometime I create shots in storyboards that could be more interesting than they are. I also found from this book that if you are just starting out it's actually more useful for you to use a perspective grid as it allows you to position things exactly right. Below I have put a few screenshots of the books of pages I thought were quite interesting and helpful.

Sketches on Location

When going to my locations for environmental storytelling I did little sketches here and there of small details for practice and so that I could get a better feel for the places. I liked to draw the little details much better than a big collective drawing as I was able to capture more detail instead of focusing a lot on the perspective. I found it very useful when looking back through my sketches to look at these thumbnails as they told my things that my initial drawings might have missed. So, from this I have learnt that it's good if I am recording a place to do little sketches for better reference and in the future if I do this kind of thing again I think I will record even more thumbnails. I didn't record as many as I would have liked but at the time I didn't realise how important and useful they were. So, below are some of the little sketches I have pulled from my sketchbook, and even though they are quite rough I was still able to capture quite a lot of little details.

This is of the ceiling in the art gallery cafe and it was covered in hexagons so I have documented that clearly here.

This is a little drawing from the Nelson Mandela garden and even though I didn't capture the flowers in my larger drawings it was nice to have this little detail of what the flowers looked like at the time.

This was a detail found on one of the walls of the Leeds Art Gallery Cafe and by recording things like this it allows me to put more detail in later if I wish. For example, if I were to draw the location again for animation purposes I could include this on one of the walls even without it being on that specific wall in real life.

Finally, this last sketch I'm going to show is of a little door at the side of Leeds Civic Hall and I just liked the look of it. Again in animation I could use this door in my narrative even if I were to use a different environment.

Nelson Mandela Garden Digital Draw Up

For my last location this is my last digital draw up and I had quite a lot of fun with taking my drawings and making them digital and I feel like it's good practice if I wanted to use a real location in my animations. I feel that it's a good idea for the future to draw locations if I feel that I really like them, in the summer for example, and this will allow me to have inspiration for backgrounds in future projects. I really want to get into drawing digital backgrounds that almost look like they have been painted as I really like this style but I'm just starting off simple. So, for this location I liked it because of the really bright colours and the water, which is hard to replicate digitally  but I think the more I practice drawing things like water which I am not used to the more I will improve my practice. I think this was quite successful as a drawing though and below I have put the images I used as reference and my final drawing!

Leeds Art Gallery Cafe Digital Draw Up

So I decided to create a digital draw up for this location too and I feel like it went quite well even though my perspective was a little off in some parts of the drawing. I really enjoyed trying to capture the bright colourful tiles that drew me to choose this location and I much prefer my digital version of the cafe in comparison to my pen drawing. This is because it just has a nicer look to it and I feel like you could just imagine two characters sat at the table having a conversation in this piece. Below I have put the original drawing, a image I used for reference and the final digital draw up. Yay!
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Leeds Civic Hall - Digital Draw up!

To take my drawings further I have created a digital version of Leeds Civic Hall and here it is below! I really enjoyed taking my drawing digital and I particularly liked getting to add the colours and shading more precisely and not drawn on location where my drawings weren't as good as I feel they could be. I'm planning on creating my two other locations digitally too just because I feel that it's good practice and I'm not used to drawing locations in Photoshop.

Here is a photograph I have been working from to form my digital representation as well as drawing from my original.

Original Drawing

Outlines before colour and tweaks.

Final Outcome!

Life Drawing Project

Our life drawing project has been really fun so far and I love the images I am gaining from doing it! I feel that life drawing is something that is going to help my drastically in my drawing as well as in my animation and I am definitely going to carry this on after this project is over. Not only is it really fun to do but you actually start to understand more about how the body rests, how it works against gravity and how people stand and lean their bodies in different ways. Below are a couple of my favourite drawings I have done so far. I think to push myself further I am going to start looking into drawing hands as this is one of my weaknesses in drawing and hopefully I will be able to draw hands properly in the future!!

Examples of Life Drawing and Animation

I thought it would be a good idea if I looked at relative examples of life drawing used for animation and where this is present. It was quite hard to find examples of this, probably because artists don't like to put out their work if it's just doodles and developmental work. 

I liked this example as it shows how you can use real life people to form your characters if you think they fit the role perfectly. Here you can see how Disney animators took a young girl and created the character of Alice from her. Below I have put more examples of how they have created action poses by making the model pose in different ways and simply drawing on top of the image to get a sense of how she moves and how her hair falls. Even though they have altered things like her waist size and overall proportions this is to still keep the aspect of it being an animation and not just a realistic animation of a girl.



Disney are mentioned a lot in my blog posts but that's only because they have so many good examples, so my next one is Disney again but instead it's looking at life drawing animals. Disney Studios also bring in the animals that they want the animators to draw up and get them to draw from life and this is so fun to look at because they go from drawing dogs to lions.



As you can see the photos I collected are all form the very early days of Disney and this just proves that to become a great animator you have to learn to draw from life and be able to observe everything around you whether it be human or animal.

Disney Does Life Drawing

Disney send all their animators to life drawing classes and have done since 1932 and this really shows as they have some of the best animators. "You can draw animation and gesture without life drawing, but life drawing skills give you proportion, structure, perspective, and a certain vitality through rhythmic gestures," - Karl Gnass. Disney run their sessions for around 2 hours and have the model pose for 5-10 minutes, which may seem quite short for a life drawing class but by doing it this way it allows for more animators to come in and out to catch different models during their short breaks. If you look at early examples of animation they are definitely not as fluid and natural as animations today and I feel that the more animators understand that life drawing is really helpful they better animations will become. Looking at how Disney construct their life drawing classes and interviews from top animators that hold the sessions has taught me that practicing life drawing helps to create more believable characters and instead of approaching animation where you have one great talent, instead approach as an artist.

Time to Draw! - The Animator's Survival Kit

So, in the Holy Bible of animation The Animator's Survival Kit it goes over some life drawing in the very beginning and I had read this a while back but remembered and wanted to include it in my blog. This book is very truthful in the way that it explains that life drawing is something that does take practice to be good and at the start you might feel like your skills and practice isn't as strong as you once thought. Richard Williams also explains that you have to do a lot of life drawing for it to even get you anywhere and as I said previously I am planning on doing lots while I still have the time on my hands. Milt Kahl is quoted in this book saying 'know the figure well enough so that you can concentrate on the particular person - on the difference - why this person is different from somebody else'. I really liked this quote because thinking about animation people move in all different kind of ways depending on their shape, size, personality and so on. So, this really points to learning to draw different kinds of people will allow you to make more varied characters. Finally, this book really inspires me because it doesn't just tell you to go an draw from life it explains that it's not easy but working hard at it can make you be a better animator overall. You may see others work to be better than yours but they might not even know the basics sometimes and are just skipping around the important stuff to show their talent. My favourite quote from this section would be 'don't try to develop a style. Ignore style. Just concentrate on drawing and style will occur'. Below are a few images from the book that I liked and particularly the last image.

Drawing for Animation - Paul Wells

I decided to look in the library for any books that would help me with my life drawing project and allow me to pick up any tips or techniques to use. What I found by reading this book was that drawing from life was vital in animation if you wanted to get better and wanted your animations to feel more natural. Wells explains the way we learn to draw in quite a scientific way, and he explains that we struggle to learn perspective due to an argument between the right and left side of the brain. When drawing a person, a good tip I have learnt from the book is to not imagine how someone should look but instead draw with no assumptions or preconceptions. I am definitely going to remember this tip for my life drawing, as even after this project is over I really want to get into drawing my surroundings to get a better sense of the world. I have also learnt that the brain only needs limited time when getting down the vital information into a drawing, if you take longer it will start to include lots of other details. This book not only explores life drawing but so much more and it's really helpful in the way it explains things not just in a simple way but also gives definitions etc. So, relating back to animation learning how to draw from life will help in every aspect of my animations. I believe that before going and animating anything or any action, it's vital that I go and study this first and this could be the way someone stands or moves their arms and how the body flows. If I am able to draw from life I will be able to record this action and focus on how the negative space changes with each movement. I have put a few photos I took of the books below and I particularly like the diagram showing negative space and looking at the figure as an abstract shape instead of a person.

Ben Newman - Character Designer

Ben Newman is a character designer that I recently found on Animation World Network as featured and straight away I wanted to blog about him because I think his work is really cool! He uses  bold shapes and bright colours to form his funky characters and they have been described as 'bauhaus fuzzy felt'. As I researched more in Newman I found that he is heavily into illustration and this is something I have been looking at myself as I feel that even though I am into animation that research into illustration and the way they do things will be really beneficial to my own practice. I really liked Newman's work because it's so simple and playful and I love to use bright colours in my own work so his is very inspiring to look at! I have put some of his work below as an example but as you can see it's really pretty and I want to create some of my own work that is inspired by illustrations such as his. I also really like how his characters aren't just surrounded by a plain background and it's as if they are interacting with their surroundings. Next time I come to presenting my characters I think I will use this idea as it's a lot more fun and you get a much better sense of the kind of character they are.

Jake the Dog Character Development!

Jake the Dog is a really fun and wacky character so I wanted to look at initial sketches of his character just out of interest and I found some really fun images. As his character is a shape shifter there can be many, many versions of him so below I have put a few sketches done by Pendleton Ward himself!







I liked this one as Jake is drawn to be very big however his arms and feet have also gone quite bigger which is different in comparison to how he is shaped in the series even when he is large in size.

I have also managed to find some cool design sheets that help the animators stay on track when animating Jake the Dog. These are really great to look at as they are little aspects of Jake's character that can sometimes easily be forgotten or missed out but by having these sheets it allows for good continuity and less errors in your animations. This obviously works best when you have a team of animators that are all trying to produce the same scene and character.

Sketchbooks for Animation

I looked at 'Animation Sketchbooks' by Laura Heit and I found this book really interesting to look at just because sketchbooks are very personal and not everyone is willing to put theirs out there. So, in this book is showed lots of different examples of sketchbooks and gave me quite a lot of inspiration. Keeping a sketchbook is something I do, however I'm not very good at keeping it with me and always adding to it. Instead I usually forget about it and take photographs instead, but I feel like if I were to get more into carrying mine around it would be much more beneficial to develop my skills.

The image above I liked because they make use of mixed media and sometimes I feel that sketchbooks can be quite plain and boring with all pen or pencil work so possibly using mixed media in my own sketchbook will help bring it more to life. Here they have used a photograph and illustrated over it and I really like this idea.

Environmental Storytelling - Leeds Art Gallery Cafe

My final location! The Leeds Art Gallery Cafe. I wanted to draw this location as I have come here a few times passing through and I think this is a really beautiful building as a whole. I found this location quite hard to illustrate because of it's complicated wall designs and some I have been a little simpler than other drawings just because it was very time consuming to draw each individual tile and I feel like using the watercolour still captured the tiling on the walls without every little detail. Below are my drawing of this location!

I wanted to experiment a little with charcoal here so I decided to do one of my drawings like this but I turned out to not really like this one I think it looks a little dull. On the other hand, it was a good to try with this material to see how locations looked and if it was a good choice to do charcoal drawings to record locations quickly.

So, this was my last location and I think it was quite successful! I have definitely improved my perspectives when looking at my first location drawings and I really liked to use watercolour in this project. Although, I do think the more detailed drawings I have done in pen and pencil here are quite useful for the animation aspect where the little details would be important to know for the scene. I am happy this project is over because it was hard work drawing environments! Below are the images I took on location.