City Sketchbook Best Examples

These are some key moments of my city sketchbook, I used a range of different mediums e.g. pencil colours to pastels.

First, I created a title page when I made a collage of different things that I have collected from/around the city, e.g. travelling tickets.

This is meant to use negative space, the scene is a building, the white being the building and black being outside and windows. I then added coloured trees to contrast. I used watercolours here.

These are sketches of birds I saw around Manchester, I used a sharpie.

While waiting at a tram station I sketched this scene, it is a street performer playing a guitar in the mid ground and there was two businessmen in the foreground talking, then in the background people continued on.

This was a boat just outside Media City, it looked to be some kind of tour boat as it had many chairs on the roof.

This is the inside of Manchester Royal Eye Hospital, this is the seating area. I used only pencil but I think that helps with the feeling when sat there for hours, it makes it seem dull and static.

I did this picture as it a sight that everyone has seen, the lit up sign of McDonald in the dark. The recognisable arches which nearly everyone knows.

This is from a picture of a street lamp behind a tree, I used oil pastels to create this and I think it is my favourite drawing out of the sketchbook

This is from a picture that I took at a tram station early in the morning, the light was just starting to come, changing the sky from black to a light blue in the distance, again I used oil pastels.

City Brief Outcome and Exhibition

When we were given the brief of the city my initial thoughts were what? The city is a massive topic, there are many things we could have focused on. There was also the question of how, how would we present, the availability to explore a new area and techniques we haven’t used before. I joined a group that wanted to make a 2D animation of the city, a slideshow of areas around the city. To start with this brief we assigned roles, I was given the role of an animator as I have had previous experience animating in 2D but to push myself I worked in Toon Boom Harmony as I haven’t had experience with it but knew it was industry standard application. Once we had an outline of the story and what was going to happen, I felt confident that we could produce a suitable animation. We knew that we needed two characters so I made concepts of them, using feedback from peers and others in the group to decide on colour schemes. We wanted the characters to be in two different styles, one is my own style which is a more realistic and the other being more cartoon-like. When I had my character- dubbed ‘Lizzy’- I refined the other character designed by another member of the group. After the characters where designed I started practicing with Toon Boom, creating walk cycles which I then used the walk cycle to create a first draft animatic of the animation. As soon as it was finished and reviewed by the group I continued, adding in-betweens and cleaning up the sketches so that I could colour them later. After clean-up was completed, I used palettes from the character concepts to colour the animation, adding a green background so that we could then use After Effects to add the background images scrolling in the backdrop. I felt confident at first but as the deadline got closer I started to feel stressed, there were delays which made starting the animation later than I wanted, making it more of a challenge to finish an animation on time.  I feel that when assigning the group roles, we did it well, roles were quickly assigned based on our own skill sets so that we could manage the work. We knew each other’s skills so we could distribute work and know who was managing what. At one point, there was some confusion but it was handled Another challenge was learning Toon Boom, I found it hard to start but once I had a general idea and continued to work with it I found myself learning new tricks and ways to animate. Overall, it was a good experience in both working in a group and learning and using new techniques.

During this brief we mainly used workshop skill the green screen, it was very useful for placing the background on the animation.

I wasn’t present for the City Brief exhibition as I was moving house, but I was told that feedback given by a lecturer liked that we had ambition and that we have shown to really push ourselves by throwing ourselves in the deep end. This is our finished animation. There several things I would change if I had more times, I would change the background scrolling pace so that it matched with the walking speed. Another thing I would change it the volume of the sound effects, they are too loud and drown out the voice over. I would also add a visual rain effect to clearly show that it is raining.

Full Colour City Animation

I have finished my part of the city brief, I have completed the animation and colouring of the animation.

I will now hand over this video to my group, where they will add the final things. The backgrounds and the sound effects. The background will be done in After Effects using the ‘keying’ effect to add them into the green screen. Then animate it to be scrolling in the background on the animation. They could also put in the sound effects in the timeline. The one other thing that needs to be done is the rain, there is a rain effect in After Effect as well so I expect that will be used

Statement of Intent

I sent my SOI to the lecturer to have it reviewed, I received the feedback today. I have been green lighted to go ahead and proceed with my plans, the only thing that needs altering it my grammar but overall I can continue forward with research.

City Animation Update

I have now completed a sketched version for our group city animation, I plan to now clean up the animation and add colour, we are then going to add the audio and backgrounds using after effects on Monday and Tuesday which gives us time then to make any alterations before the hand in on Thursday.

Space Environment 3D Model

As a experiment I started creating an model of the interior space concept that I did previously, I used the floor plan to help with this. I used form board, a craft knife and masking tape to create this. First, I outlined the floor plan on the foam board, using the form board to build up the shape. I properly will not be continuing this due to lack of time.

Space Environment Z Rotation

We used after effects again to pan around the space environment that i did, we learnt how to do the z rotation that makes the camera appear to be moving around the space. I managed to create this illusion and made the layers of the background move closer on the z axis.

I would have made this more pronounced however I realized an error I had made during the painting of the background. I didn’t do the whole planets so that after a certain point the planet would cut off where it should continue.