Capitan Benezuela Animation

Converting Capitan Benezuela into an animation is complete (for now) and ready for coursework submissions. Feedback from my peers has been very positive and like the comic it evokes a similar response, a good giggle then a "I wanna know what happens next!" Im relieved it has been received well.

There are a couple of wee issues that I will be attending to this week. The first is the fact that there are a couple of timing issues. The animation lingers on the third shot a bit too long, the sound cuts off very abruptly at the end of the piece and I have just noticed there is overlap of camera flashes on El Capitan when there is the close up of his chest. These will be taken care of before the final presentation and exhibition.

The animation has been successful in conveying the narrative and tone of the comic which was the main goal of the project; to explore the relationship between the mediums of sequential art and animation as well as the affordances between them.

Producing this part of the project has been really useful as far as putting that all in to context. There are clear advantages and disadvantages to both types of visual storytelling. 

For example, in the comic pages the viewer is able to pause and explore the art at their leisure as they read where as in the animation they are not. So in the case of the "Mucho Gusto" moment the comic gives the viewer a chance to get a better look at the crowd and notice the White Skull observing. In the animation however, this degree of control is taken from the viewer, relying on the animator to make it more obvious before cutting into the close ups at the end. I feel in this case I could have been handled more effectively. BUT in the animation the viewer is given voice acting for the dialogue, sound effects for atmosphere and the scenes can be given the illusion of life through degrees of movement within the panels.
Overall I feel the animation has been successful in translating the sequential art into animation but if I were to do it again I would make some changes to the process. The comic and animation would be planned out in tandem in order to get the best results in the end products. This was not possible this time around as this direction to take the project did not present itself until later on in the year.
Now time for submissions work submissions, not wrestling.

Business Cards

With the Graduate Exhibition coming up for the end of 4th year at Abertay. For this we need to produce business cards to put out with our displays.

The first features the first painting I produced at the beginning of the project. This Spartan/Spawn design was received well by lecturers and my peers so that seemed like a good fit.
The second was produced last year as part of a series of animal portraits I was doing, a few of which were used in my Creative Research project when researching visual art styles. I chose this one as I feel that it is one of my strongest paintings that I have produced at Abertay.
Before sending these to print I will need to include a link to my online portfolio.
The third features the cover art from the Capitan Benezuela preview comic.... Just seemed to make sense XD
A final decision will be made and they will be printed in preparation for the Exhibition.

Exhibition Display Layout

For our end of year exhibition I will be hanging development for the main characters of the comic, El Capitan and the White Skull. I have compiled various elements of their designs on to boards for hanging.

The comic cover will be printed A3, the pages will be printed on A4 then trimmed down and the development boards will be printed on A3 then also trimmed.
Before getting these printed I will take measurements of the wall I have been assigned, resize everything accordingly in Photoshop then get it sent to the printers.
The rest of my portfolio submission will be uploaded to the interface we have attatched to our displays.

Animation Update.

The animation has been completed, voices have been recorded and the animation itself has been re-timed based on the new dialogue. Final sound effects are being put together with the help of Mr McCarter and all going according to plan (as things ALWAYS do.......) we should be good to go for submissions....... hopefully ; )

Animation Crew

The Crew has been assembled, their roles have been sorted and contracts have been signed in blood.

Juan has been roped in to provide the voice of the narrator in the animation. After all, he is Venezuelan so who better to tell the story?

One of my peers, Mr Andrew McCabe has also offered his voice acting skills and will be providing the voice for Brucito (The ring announcer).

Willy McCarter, one of Abertay's (most awsomest) audio students has kindly said that he will help to produce the audio for the animation.

I will be providing the voices for El Gigante and Capitan Benezuela.

Each of them will be rewarded with various animal based edible goodness (probably steaks). Good thing I worked as a chef for my timer prior to coming to Uni.

Animation Direction

Now the comic is now being transformed into a Limited Animation, to keep myself right I needed to create some kind of storyboard. For this the sequence of pages have been used to create this.

The directions are subject to change. When it is put together in After Effects there might be parts that work better other ways, we will see....

Limited Animation

Limited Animation: Bridging the Gap.

Limited animation is a process or method which can be employed to make animations that do not rely on redrawing entire frames, instead animating elements within images to give the impression of life.

The original intention for this style of animation was to form a method of animation that could emulate the cinematic experience of a traditional animated feature without the heavy production costs. Animation studios also commented on the comparison of cost; “Look, every time I move my arm, it costs the Cartoon Network forty-two bucks! (evil laugh) Look, look!” (moves his arm back and forth repeatedly) “42, 84, 126.” (Space Ghost: Coast to Coast).

Limited animation has been used to great effect in anime, the stylised Japanese animation form. Isaac Kerlow described use of Limited Animation in anime as an “abundance of motion holds; embellishment of static scenes with wind effects; minimal animation of facial expressions on static bodies; camera POVs [point of views] with extreme perspectives; looped character animation cycles over looped background motion” (Kerlow, 2009).

Limited animation has become a popular vehicle through which computer games companies convey their narratives. One early example of this can be seen during the “CODEC” conversations between Snake and his superiors in Konami’s “Metal Gear” game series. Konami also used limited animation to create elaborate motion comic style cut scenes in their PSP additions to the series “Metal Gear Solid: Portible Ops” and “Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker”. These were produced by illustrator Ashley Wood who’s art style is reminiscent of the series long running concept artist Yoji Shinkawa. 

MGS Peace Walker Cutscene 1

Blizzard employed Limited animation with great success when producing promotional material for “World of Warcraft: The Mists of Pandaria”. Blizzard’s story and illustration teams wanted to tell the story of the last Emperor of Pandaria in an engaging and fresh way. When asked why the Burdens of Shao Hao was not a fully animated feature Doug Gregory explains: “It was a stylistic necessity of the project. And that limitation actually made it wonderful, because it gives you the -- you just have these brackets at the very beginning -- we're not the cinematics department.” The "storybook" aesthetic that was achieved through this en devour really is something to behold.
The six part feature was well received by players of World of Warcraft, readers of the series lore as well as by many who have never played the games. I myself have not played any Warcraft based games since Warcraft 3 but this animated series not only made me very interested in the lore but also opened my eyes to the capabilities of this medium.

Burdens of Shao Hao 1 - Doubt (3D until 3:12)

Blizzard took this further, using these techniques to introduce expansions to their universe in "The Warlords of Draenor".

Warlords of Draenor - Kargath (3D until 1:27).

As seen in both of the above examples, limited animation is incredibly flexible when it comes to art styles. Even the most detailed and expressive styles can be brought to life with a consistency that would require tremendous resources to achieve were they to be done traditionally.
In 3D animation the issue of consistency may be overcome but this may require costly investment to develop the technology to achieve the required aesthetic.

Final Pages

The Final pages of the comic are finalised, spell checked, spanish spell checked and checked again for a giggle...... And then checked AGAIN because the first time I uploaded it there was a spelling mistake and then again because someone else noticed another one. Overall I am satisfied with the end result and it has been recieved well by peers.

There were a few bits and pieces that have been tweaked with the art whether it was simply mistakes, things i had not realised until the pages were all seen together (like putting El Capitan's sleeved arm on the right side on page 2) or adjusting panel composition to accommodate dialogue and narration.
I think that overall the pages have been a success as far as introducing Capitan Benezuela and setting the tone for the series but like everything there are things that I would like to add to finish it such as illustrating the fight between El Capitan and El Gigante then why the White Skull is in attendance.
The art and script have been well received by Juan and our peers, many having a wee laugh as they read through it and wanting to know what happens next.

Cover

The cover is a recreation of the second time Sketched El Capitan many moons ago (must try to find it).

Process Example

Using the renders shown in the previous post the page layouts were created following the script. When these were finalised the characters were sketched in ready for painting. 

While painting this page I wasn't happy with the way the page was flowing. It felt very cluttered on the middle/left area between panel 2 and 3. By swapping page 2 and 3 and moving El Gigante in panel 1 this issue was resolved. Panel 1 now has a more dynamic feel while providing more space for dialogue. El Capitan breaking out of panel 2's border is now more apparent and overall the dialogue outlined in the script os not affected.
There is still a bit of work to do on the pages in general, such as in panel 4 the eyes need to be fixed then narration and speech will be added.

Presentation 4 (I might have missed 3 a bit).

This week was time for our 4th progress presentation. Based on feedback from lecturers I am not going forward with the idea of transmuting text from literature. Instead I will be taking the final Capitan Benezuela comic pages and turning them into a limited animation sequence.
This will not only allow me to explore the difference between how the medium of comic books and animation each convey their narratives but also allow me to begin to look into this method of animation that has become popular in the computer games industry (more on that later).
In previous animation projects I have used Adobe Flash, this program and I simply don't get on and it's usually a horrendous experience trying to get work completed. This time I have been directed toward Adobe After Effects and though I have not touched the program before at first look it seems pretty intimidating. After an hour or so playing with the features I am pretty much sold. Hopefully this time it will be different.

Componato De Luche Libre

While painting up the pages I have noticed that there is nothing on the ring canvas.

Like some of the elements of El Capitan and White Skull's costumes the logo will be laid in the ring as well as on one of the screens as Brucito is announcing the match.

Page Layouts

 These are the page layouts I will be moving forward with. The boxes represent the main characters' placement within the scene and will serve as reference for perspective as well as a rough guide for values.

These have been reviewed by some of my peers and though it's pretty abstract at times, make sense when read in tandem with the script.

Panel Renders

Using the 3D model of the arena, block outs for the panels have been rendered in Maya. These will all be cropped, compiled and arranged to produce the base page layouts.

These will serve mostly as guides rather than final compositions. Adjustment will most likely be made to overall compositions of each panel, for example; the top middle panel will be tweaked to make the character more imposing as well as give more room for dialogue within the shot.

Arena Blockout

As part of the production process of the preview issue I will be using a blockout of the arena. This will aid in speeding up production as complex perspective will not need to be drafted up by hand as well as establish light sources.

The set will all be painted over to get rid of the "3D model" look before assing characters, screen displays as well as any other features I may find that crop up. This was a process that was utilised recently in the Alien MMA Fighter Character Design Challenge and proved to be effective however these pages will be far more polished.

Capitan Benezuela Intro Script

The scene from the comic featuring Capitan Benezuela, El Gigante and the ring announcer is complete and over the next 2-3 weeks I will be producing the pages that will make up this part of the story. I am giving myself extra time to produce these pages in case of any unforeseen challenges that may occur during the production process.
This will serve as a bit of a test run for the production process of the pages, highlighting any issues that may arise.
As I am doing this Juan and I will be working on a script for the other part of the comic I am going to make. At present we are leaning towards the idea of an "issue 0" which would serve as a taster for readers, giving them the opportunity to see what the story is prior to release. This is a practice used by comic companies such as Top Cow Productions to introduce their new IP's to their audience.
When carrying this out I will be trying a method similar to Iain McCaig's process which he outlines in his Gnomon Workshop feature, "Visual Storytelling with Iain McCaig" which involves sketching up story beats in order to build the story up.

Test Run Support Characters

The script for the test run on Capitan Benezuela is complete, checked by my partner in crime (Juan) and ready to go.
As part of getting ready to move forward with the test run I needed to design 2 of the support characters which will aid in introducing El Capitan.

The first of these is El Gigante. This character was to be a towering 7 foot 2, 380 pound muscle bound wrestler (steroids, TRT, he's on the lot, JUICED!!!) inspired by the larger than life wrestlers of the WWE and their famous rants.

The second of these characters is the Ring Announcer. Being a big fan of MMA and the UFC I could only think of one man who we wanted to influence the design of the character, the best in the business, Mr Bruce Buffer......

......or at least.... his long lost latino, 5 foot 2 tall cousin.

I will do a quick 3D blockout of the arena as this proved most useful when carrying out the alien MMA fighter task (this can be seen here: Alien MMA Fighter Task).

As these are support characters for this particular scene The design process hasnt been as in depth as with El Capitan and The White Skull, however there is enough information here for me to move forward.