ILLUSTRATION AND VISUAL NARRATIVE - PROJECT 2
ILLUSTRATION AND VISUAL NARRATIVE - PROJECT 2
May 11th (WEEK 7) - May 30th (WEEK 9)
NG VEYHAN (0349223) / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
ILLUSTRATION AND VISUAL NARRATIVE - PROJECT 2
PROJECT 2
Lectures
WEEK 7 / Introduction to Animating
This week we were introduced to the assignment throughout the class. We spent it analyzing various movie posters and studying how the text interacts with the visuals to make them more striking. Things such as contrast and composition were also emphasized as these subtle changes could largely alter the mood of the poster and how it was perceived.
WEEK 8 / Independent Learning Week
There was no lecture session this week as it was the Independent Learning Week, and we were left to finish up this project.
WEEK 9 / Review and Refining
Ms. Noranis was not present for class this week. However, Mr. Kannan helped review each of our posters and gave us ideas on how to improve. We were also instructed to watch the lecture Ms. Noranis had given in order to get a grasp of the next project.
Instruction
Practical
When trying to find inspiration for my gif, I was at the time heavily invested into the Devil May Cry series of games. With my memory of the events in the game still quite fresh, I decided to base the GIF on the game.
One particular scene that stuck out to me (and the majority of the community) was at the end of the third instalment of the franchise, where the main character, Dante, was seperated from his brother Vergil after an intense final battle. Cropping out that scene, I used the cutscene as a template.
(Fig 01, Extracting the scene, 21/5/2021)
After that was done, I began to redraw most of the elements in the scene in a vector format. The fact that the graphics was quite dated admittedly made the process quite simple.
When considering the methods to animate it, I wanted to streamline the process more. Referring to some light knowledge that I had in Live2D animating (due to its extensive use in avatar creation recently), I knew that instead of redrawing each frame, I could split each element into "bones" which can be moved around like an individual body part. Instead of redrawing each frame, I would just move each part as needed.
(Fig 02, Designing Dante's Body Model, 21/5/2021)
(Fig 03, Background and Water Animating, 23/5/2021)
That was about it for creating the first attempt, it wasn't much in the way of complexity, and frankly a bit lower in effort, might I add.
(Fig 04, First Attempt, 23/5/2021)
To be completely honest, I was utterly dissatisfied with how this came out. While I thought this concept could be executed a lot better, I felt that the smoothness was completely lackluster and the movements were absolutely natural.
Eventually, I went back to the drawing board. Starting from scratch, I looked for another scene that I could do better. What came to mind was near the climax of Devil May Cry 5, as the two brothers begin to clash in a battle of ideologies. Now with that scene to work on, I searched for images to be used in the composition.
(Fig 05, Setting Up Composition, 28/5/2021)
This time solely focusing on the character Vergil, I thought about how to convey the themes of power and determination that his character is associated with, and how to portray his cool, suave character which contrasts his hot-headed twin brother. I decided to add the following elements:
- A zoom-type effect to show power.
- The animation of his sword sheathing would need to be smooth to show elegance.
- A vignette to draw complete focus to his character.
I was still insistent to use the animating technique using "bones" rather than drawing frame by frame, especially in the case of the 2nd point presented above. Having deciding on the basic properties of the poster, I started working on vectorizing his various elements.
(Fig 06, Head Layer Vectorization, 28/5/2021)
Trying to vectorize his undercoat was kind of tricky. For a vector-based application, it was extremely cumbersome to draw repeated patterns, and since unconnected paths can't be merged, trying to duplicate each "pad" was quite the hassle.
(Fig 07, Undercoat Vectorizing, 28/5/2021)
(Fig 08, Complete Vector, 28/5/2021)
Considering the time I had left when redesigning the poster, I had to keep the background simple to a certain extent. In addition, a simpler background would also be less distracting to the viewer and make the title text more legible.
(Fig 09, Basic Background Shape, 28/5/2021)
Next was to create the title text, which was a simple trace of the title from the cover of the game. I used a similar colour to the background for the text, because what I had in mind was to make it more visible when Vergil draws his sword, and less so when he sheathes it.
(Fig 10, Title Text Trace, 28/5/2021)
(Fig 11, Final Test Composition, 28/5/2021)
Quite satisfied with the proportions of the composition, I booted up Adobe Premiere Pro as the preliminary animation tool. Quite unorthodox, but I was most comfortable using this application when looking to make animations with distortion, and other video editing applications.
Animating the arms and bodies was something I was quite used to and having each half of the arm as separate entities made things much easier. In addition to only the arm with the sword moving, I gave the head and other arm a very slight bob as, from prior personal projects, I knew that other parts of the body move ever so slightly when an action is taken.
(Fig 12, Arm Movement Animating, 28/5/2021)
(Fig 13, Lightning Generation, 28/5/2021)
By using the "Advanced Lightning" particle generator, the only few settings I had to tweak were the origin/direction of the lightning strike and its opacity. Keyframing each individual lightning strike and its properties was quite arduous. Then I added a glow when the sword was drawn, and I masked the blade as to not have the strong light blot out its silver colour.
I then added the title as a midground layer in the composition. In order to make the text pop out, I added a dark grey solid layer to create a darkening filter which would increase in opacity when the sword is drawn to make less contrast in the composition and focus on the subject and title. A white glow was also added behind the title to make it pop out even more.
(Fig 14, Text and Background Darkening, 28/5/2021)
Once that was done, I ported the composited video back into Premiere Pro for a final render pass. I added a vignette at the edges of the composition to further lend focus to the subject. I considered a slight fish-eye lens effect but it looked odd and decided against it. The zoom effect was also added here by just slightly scaling up the image.
(Fig 15, Vignette and Zoom, 28/5/2021)
The composition was now complete, now what was left was to export it. Since Premiere Pro didn't support the direct export of GIFs, I had instead had it exported as an image stack into a folder. A quick note is that everything done in the steps above was created and rendered at 1333x1000 px in order to account for the slight scaling up for the zoom effect. It was then scaled down to 800x600 px in the final render.
After importing the 420 frames into Photoshop I had it compiled into a 7 second GIF at 60fps. After trying to upload it to various image hosting sites, it was a bit large to be practically shared around, thus I rendered another copy at 30fps.
Final GIF
(Fig 16, A Brother's Motivation, 28/5/2021)
BACKLOG: "If that day our positions were switched, would our.... fates be different? Would I have your life, and you mine?"
Feedback
WEEK 7:
WEEK 8:
WEEK 9:
Reflections
WEEK 7: I was looking forward to the animation classes and the projects that it brings. Though it came rather unexpectedly by using Illustrator rather than Photoshop. I tried my hand at animating the first attempt at the poster this week and felt it was rather lacking. I would work on this again if given the chance.
WEEK 8: As it was the Independent Learning Week at the time, I kept myself busy with the works from other classes as I had already completed the first pass at this project. I paid not much mind in remaking this GIF at the time.
WEEK 9: After seeing the other students' work, I realized that the bar was set a lot higher than I thought. thus I made some time to recreate the GIF. This time around I utilized quite a large extent of my current knowledge to streamline the creation process, which gave me the most fun I've had with an assignment for a while. For a project which I managed to redo in a mere 5-6 hours, I was really happy with what came out as a result.
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