Bernard's Main Face Expressions ready for Flash!

 

I have drawn all these birds in flash. The reason for this is because this way i can easily change the wings, beak, eyes and anything else that needs to move easily. The way i have made these in Flash is by making them into a 'Graphics Symbol'. What this allows me to do is move the the bird as a hole but when i want to change his expressions i can click in the bird (graphic symbol) and change the past for different expressions. **See my video for more** I haven't done the feet and the hair yet but they will be done in the same what that the expressions have been made.

Drawing Bernard Wings!!

Bernard Opening Scene Mark 2!

 **I had manged to fix the quality but it wont upload**

When scrolling down the blog you may think that this animation is the same as the one i had done previously (below) however they are different. After looking at the animation i found it hard to watch. This was because of the position of the animation. I had released that the first attempt was only in the top third, meaning you had to move your eyes to focus on the animation. It also made it hard to look at the rest of the scene. So in this one what i have done is i have cut the bottom of the telegraph poles off and moved them down to make the stage more central making it easier to watch and gives me more room to play in. 

First Proper Draft of the Opening Scene!

For some reason the colours in this animation have gone very strange but i will try and sort this problem out. But as you can see there is a huge difference in the quality of the animation compared to my first/ practice attempt.  In this one i have added in the background (shown further down my blog in the quality this should be in). I then added in the text that i have created for the animation. using the same method as i used before, i was then able to quickly create this short clip. I also improved the movement in this animation as i have been watching lots of animation tutorials showing my all the short cuts and effects i can do to an animation to make them better. I think i am going to come back to this and change one or to thing after looking at it with a fresh mind. The main thing that i am going to change is the height of the telegraph poles. This is because at the moment the main story is going to be on these telegraph poles, but they only take around a third of the frame and is at the top. So if i bring it down to the middle third of the frame i think it will make the animation easier to watch and focus on what is actually happening. 

Text Coming into Opening Scene Practice!

Using Adobe 'Flash Professional' i have created a very simple opening to my animation. The reason i have done this before going straight into it is because i wanted to see show easy it was going to be and weather or not i was over estimation what i could actually do. So to represent the telegraph poles i had just put two wooden poles. After that i put in the wire and the text. After playing around i then found my self getting better and better with flash and it was also getting a lot faster. After no time i had created the initial bouncing of the text. I then decided to challenge my self even more and make it fly back into the air and come forward. I did this by copying the initial bouncing in and then inverting it backing it the same movement but backwards. I then removed frames in the time line to make it faster then the first bit to give it the effect that its been flung into the air.  

Focus Group!

To get an idea of what i should include in my animation i interviewed two of my class members to get there point of view. I asked them seven questions on topics such as the style of animation, the character and the themes. I had also given them some pictures that i had drawn of the characters to look at and give me there opinion on the characters so i could change them if necessary before animating them. 

I found the answer that they gave me very helpful. This is because they said i should aim it more at the younger aged audiences so i will now make the character more friendly, they also said to do the animation using animals and to keep it simple and not to complex for the younger ages. 

Background for the Open Scene!

Due to my inspiration from the animation 'The Birds' i have chosen to do my animation on telephone wires as they are easy to draw but when done properly give a really good look. I have chose to do simple colours and haven't gone into tones of detail with the colouring and drawing. I gave gone with the conventions of cartoon more then realistic animation as i am not very experienced in high quality animation and this is easy enough to do in the time that i have. 

Attempting to Draw the Female Bird!

So far out of all the drawing that i have done, this one is the one that has stumped me the most. For some reason i just can not get this drawing right. I have tried numerous different shapes for her body but none of them seem to work. I had come very close at one point to finding one that i liked, however after asking my peers if they liked it, the feedback that i got was they thought the bird looked very young and i'm going for a teenager. Another problem that i am having is weather to give her hair or not. I will keep on drawing female birds until i get one that suits all the girly girl stereotypes. 

Bernard's Emotions!

When drawing these characters in flash it can be really hard to get face expression right. So to help my self out i decided to draw these 6 different emotions. I chose these emotions because these are the faces i think he is most likely to use in the animation or at least the most common ones. To makie the emotion correct i got a few people to pull these face expressions and i took a pictureof the face expression and used that as my guid to drawing them on Bernard. Having these next to me when drawing these on the computer should help me massively improve the quality of the aniamtion.

Face Expression Examples!

A YouTube Clip from Draw with Jazza on Drawing Emotions!

Bernard the Bird Drawings!

To really help me out for when i animate him i decided to drawing him from 4 different angles, front, back, left and right. I then also drew them in the same angles but with his wings open. These drawing really helped me get a sense of the character because with these i can decide how he is going to move and act.

Drawing Shape Ideas for Bernard!

When looking at cartoon birds, i wanted to keep it pretty simple with the shapes. So what i did was i drew some simple shapes, big eyes, wings and beak on the shapes to create a bird. The more oval shaped bird was to similar to the Pixar animation 'The Birds' shape so i tried to avoid that, but it was the triangle shaped one next to that, that really caught my eye and i felt a connection the the bird. I then also drew him with his wings open just to get an idea of what i will look like.

Story Board Animatic!

Story Board!