Seasons

My current animation is about the four different seasons that take place during each year, the aim is to communicate the events that take place during these seasons and what effects they have on the environment. The main focus is on a tree which tells a short story of what going on in each scene. I personally chose to work with this concept because its relative to my everyday life and have a strong knowledge of what takes place during Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, the main reason for choosing this subject was to stay away from surreal, weird or sci-fi ideas which would possibly lead to a really dark story line. I my self like to tell stories which are real life related I personally am not interested Horror or Sci-fi movies or story lines, personally I find them really gruesome, wicked, twisted. Theses factors do not benefit me because I am an animator who likes to tell positive and funny stories, personally not a fan of killing or harm to anything living. The subject I have chosen is common so there is a lot to research about it.

 

Character Design

I have always been a fan of Studio Ghibli's work because of its difference to main stream anime all of the stories told by Studio Ghibli are never negative or sexually orientated, considering that the animations are made for children. The character follow anime style but aren't considered to be anime because how they are represented, they don't have a typical anime look of overly enlarged eyes and and triangular faces.

Ever since going to Japan I have developed a further interest in studio Ghibli methods and their character design, For this current project I have been taking inspiration from Hayao Miyazaki and his methods for designing a character because his characters are very detailed and colour because I want my character to look colourful and soft in representation, same as his. For my character design I have been studying his process to designing his characters and will do so for this entire project because it is helping me keep to a guide, making sure my characters look friendly, soft and round in shape.

My character design just below :

   

Developing concept booklet

The concept work is still currently being developed, but I have many sketches which have helped me develop an idea of what my scenery is going to look like for my animation, majority of my work is revolved around environmental design because seasons are mostly focused on the change of climate and environment. A tree is the main focus of my animation because of its significance to all four seasons, the tree alone changes its state to suite each season and this is a good indication into finding out what season is taking place in each scene. The change of the tree allows the view to build and understanding of what season is taking place and when, because its a factor which is apart of the everyday human life most people understand how the weather works and how they and others are effected in the process, they even understand what the environment looks like.

Link to Issue booklet below:

https://issuu.com/malachilawrence/docs/newbooklayout

Thought I have produced my concept art book, I have noticed some small details that will need changing when it comes to creating my final piece, found on one of my characters from a scene and also a tree. There are unnecessary lines on the characters face which could be questioned because it is not obvious as to what they are, feels like they are just placed on the character without reason and the tree it's self has a really wide bark which has not been considered as overly massive to some. The reason why I would change the size of the tree and the character is because I am trying to relate both the character and the tree to objects and people you would see in real life, so they need to be in proportion. That being said you do find really large or wide trees in other countries like e.g. Africa but I am trying to depict a scene from the United Kingdom and I personally do not see massive large wide trees my self.