Europa Gangs rough assembly; first look at a new project.

Having done the creature collage project with students several times I was looking for a long term; just-for-the-fun-of-it, collage project of my own to dip into now and again.

scroll down for full pics

These are test pieces for a new stream of work based on the idea of designing sci-fi street gangs and placing them in real life surroundings. The origins of this go back to an idea I had in 2018 for squads of four soldiers, each with a different talent / theme. Then I saw the illustrations of Gerald Leung:

 [https://www.outregallery.com/collections/brackmetal] 

...about the same time as the release of Apex Legends and another viewing of Walter Hill's The Warriors. So I started to think of gangs and I started to think in threes and I started to think of themes. Caaaan you dig it?

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GxSwUcm_XE&feature=youtu.be

Gerald Leung: Brackmetal

Walter Hill's Warriors

Apex Legends; EA & Respawn Ent.

As I was about to take Animation students to Prague for a week exploring and drawing; I made some quick character assets to drop onto images of the graffiti that I knew was in Prague. As the first characters all had guns it seemed a bit less visually aggressive (and cliched) to have spray cans and cameras as their weapon of choice. 

More gangs are in the pipeline utilizing the cultures of skateboarding, tattooing, basketball, hustling, biking and surfing.

So these are the beginnings of the work; rough composites following on from the tests in Prague, with bits missing, fuzzy edges, etc.

Plague Doctor gang member on top of Fuchs 2; a venue on a bridge over the Vltava River. Looks disused but isn't.

Kabuto gang member, tram lines near Charles Bridge / River Vltara.

Old Town gang member with experimental aerosol cannon, Tesnov, Prague.

Old Town gang member; graffiti wall (not much graffiti in Old Town itself).

New Town gang member, Underpass near Vltara River.

Kabuto gang member, outside derelict canal building near Barton Road swing bridge, Manchester.

Sketching in Praha (Prague) 2019

A couple of sketches done while in Prague with Staffs Uni Animation & Games Animation students. Been a while...

Sketching the view from the Male Namesti fountain 1560

The Old Town Hall from across Old Town Square.

Anatomy of a Shot: 'Spirited Away'; Staging of the balcony meal and use of 'Ma!'

A big part of my teaching work is trying to get students to break down the animation, composition and timing of well known, and not so well known, performance animation from around the world. Whether it is a short cartoon, in-game or a feature film, you can learn so much from studying the work of others.

This post breaks down a shot to show the rhythm created by combining thoughtful staging, production design, strong key-frames and character performance. It uses the environment as a method of framing parts of the scene and also as a way to bring the characters together.

The example is Studio Ghibli's 2001 film 'Spirited Away', directed by Hayao Miyazaki.

The scene is a peaceful interaction between sen and Lin after a crazy day at the bath house.

Exterior Wide Establishing shot

Long shot

...Lin walks in carrying steamed buns...

Top railing follows rule of thirds

Lin's face framed by railings

Lighting & doorway also frame Lin

Sen is constricted into a corner of a frame...

However, Sen is now part of Lin's silhouette...a sign that they are growing closer together...

Lin passes food to Sen THROUGH the railings...

Rather than being a passive object throughout the scene the railings become an integral part of the performance from this point; the characters reaching through, rest arms on them and even dangling their legs through them.

This makes a visually mundane scene way more appealing and dynamic, without compromising the pace of the performance to accomplish this.

shows reaching out & a desire to give comfort.

As Sen joins in…

They strike new poses..

Ma! Lin is inclined towards Sen, Sen is more relaxed…

Miyazaki

‘…non-stop action … it's just busyness. but if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension.’

‘We have a word for that in Japanese. It's called ma. Emptiness.’

Sen now commands the negative space…The scene becomes hers again…

(This towel exists to fill this gap, not distracting)

Reverse angle, double lighting change and more Ma!

The lighting change here is particularly interesting as it puts the audience in the scene. As the lights go out behind us; our eyes adjust to the night scene and the view over the water becomes visible.

The rest of the scene plays out...

Scenes like this make my day!

Character Mash-up - Silhouettes, Mark Making and the power of blind ink-blot creation.

Epiphany; looking at a sketchbook belonging to Joanna Quinn and realising that every mark made on the paper was actually quite beautiful.

Joanna Quinn mark making.

Problem; how to get a room full of students to have that moment. Everyone hears the principles of character design; silhouettes, shape hierarchy, variance, reinforcement, negative space, forceful shapes (Mike Mattesi), etc. But the power of a good mark over a bad one can make a drawing powerful and lift it above the weaker ones; even if they are all using these principles.

The point of the following exercise was to give them marks; ink blots scanned into Photoshop, and have them create characters from them. That way they CANNOT draw flat, boring lines of regular thickness and NO energy. Dynamic marks are built into the workshop. Interesting marks >> interesting character.

Get this; when making several sheets of ink marks I found that I got much better results if I worked with my eyes shut and thought about the brush pressure.

Most of my workshops are designed to channel students towards creating characters that they would never consider creating, using shapes forms and marks that they have never used before.

Getting a creative out of their comfort zone is a major part of this job and success at that usually leads to a much stronger ideas. With an understanding of dynamic shapes and forms students will create much more visually dynamic characters.

Supremely satisfying moment with the mouse character above. One student wanted to bail out at the start and go home to draw the characters using a Cintiq. HaHaHa...no chance!

His resulting characters came as a massive (positive) surprise to him. I love moments like that! 

My own example to kick of the workshop.

It is important to remember as well that these workshops are for mixed classes of traditional animation, digital animation, stop motion and CGI games students. Some of the have a real resistance to 'arty' techniques so combining ink blots and Photoshop this way is a very effective technique to break down any walls of resistance.

The following weeks workshop allowed the class to detail each others designs using the principles of volumetric curves to create form.

  

 

  

  

  

  

  

Next up; animation for these silhouettes as well...