Form and Shape (Week 2)

Week two within the animation studio was an introduction into how to draw form, shape and apply it within your work. Overall the themes of the lectures seemed to be revolving along the basics of animation and how to draw and I really appreciated this approach as it allows a smooth transition into university life. This transition can open up the world of animation and creating, to appear more simple and less overwhelming for someone like me. Who has drawn their entire life but is new within the career of animation, although I’ve admired it for many years.

We began the lesson of form and shape by again having a beginning drawing session of practicing how we held our pencils and how this influenced our simple forms of straight lines, curved lines, circles and the many shapes which can be found within most animations. Once we had become comfortable within the basic movements of our individual drawings styles, we were shown stripped back examples of how even the most complex characters can be made up of simple form, including lines of movements, circles, triangles, squares, rectangles, cylinders and how they can all be developed into a joint drawing of a character. The means of this lesson and something that was so intriguing and simple was that once you were explained the basics of the drawings composition, if you stripped back any drawing you can almost imagine how a number of shapes were morphed and pushed together to create drawings and bring many different features and styles.

Our first practice example of this and which helped me understand the concept which we were trying to learn, was to strip back a animated flour bag and create it using simple form and shape. The simple animation the ‘Flour Sack’ we drew was composed of a moving circle and rectangle, shifting together and combining a flour sack. This then helped in our tasks of practicing finding form and shape within characters we love from animations and how to incorporate all these findings and techniques into creating our own simple form and shape characters within Snail Dynasty. Within this picture is the examples of me combining different shapes, forms and how they would move to combine one. It was intriguing to document to combining of shapes into a flour sack or a simple blob and showed how a basic drawing can appear once you really show the movement within and strip back the complexity.

During the second half of our week two within the animation studio, just like the simple stripped back form and shape of our characters. We were set up within our groups again to strip back our own world ‘Snail Dynasty’ and get creative and explore just how our worlds were born, how the planet was born and why was it created. We were prompted to explore how the first life on our planet was born, created and how the first ancestors of our planet had came about, what they looked like and how their story and ways of living developed and influenced life within ‘Snail World’ today. These were all exciting questions to answer and it was really enjoyable to see how everyone’s idea of how life began, developed into the present and how they would view the snails design, language and overall cultural of their world. How the story of ‘Snail Dynasty’ began was that once a ‘Big Bang’ occurred within space a snail shelled planet was created, this was a lost planet looking for a light and had stumbled upon what was known as the ‘Sun’. The snail planet did not know this but was mesmerised by the gleaming ball and stayed with her for many years, within a cosmic dance until he perished and was created as the home to ‘Snail Dynasty’. How the makeup of the first creation to be born upon ‘Snail World’ was created, was unclear. We had imagined a slug like germ creature with simple features and who slimed across the rocky exterior of ‘Snail World’, this would then set up the first character and how the feud of snails versus slugs began.

For our homework and in order to help us create characters for our own world of snails, we were first entrusted to pick out three of our favourite characters from a animation and redraw them to show what shapes and forms they were made out of and to inspire us to view what characters can be created and how we could explore our ideas. The first animated character which I decided to explore was a character from a Nintendo game called, ‘Animal Crossing’. This game has always inspired me creatively with its cute and unique character designs, but also from a story and character development view, as Animal Crossing is essentially a world made up up all kinds of animals living within a village, with very human features and living styles. The village creatively is very wholesome and nature oriented and is developed around a human character who leaves home for the first time, to explore the world on their own, becoming a adult and meeting good friends along the way. I choose the main female character for this task and this would be the character I would personally play within the game. The form and shape of the characters body I had developed was with shapes including circles, cylinders and a triangle and it was quite fun documenting the progress of a bunch of shapes, slowly moving and morphing to form a human body. The head of the character was much more complex as there was less shape and more of a 2D flat design, however I again used a circle for the head and formed together composing characteristics such as more circles for her eyes, ears and a triangular nose, which was also a design that the original creator kept simple with a standard shape.

The next character I studied was a ‘Box Troll’ from the stop motion movie, ‘Box Trolls’ by Laika. This movie had always inspired me as it was a dark, quirky theme and included the inclusion of creatures and humans, within a dark and detailed claymation world. It has been always a dream of mine to create a claymation of this style, as I have been inspired by such amazing movies, styles and art which I admire and am influenced from. I had tasked myself with designing a ‘Box Troll’ character which is a character from the movie which gives it its name ‘Box Trolls’, a short synopsis of ‘Box Trolls’ is that a young, orphaned boy named Issac lives with the creatures of the city Boxtrolls under the town were he lives, the mayor of the city however despises the Boxtrolls and wants to banish them from the city. The story then goes onto telling the relationship between Issac and the box trolls and how he must save them. Giving the name of the ‘Box Trolls’ is fitting as they are based and the forms of their bodies are within cardboard boxes, so this means that the base of the creatures was easy to draw and assign a shape of a square. This means that for the head of the box troll I used a cylinder shape with circles for the eyes and nose and included some rectangles and circles for the limbs and joints of the Box Troll. This was a an easier example of form and shape and as I was developing my ideas and practicing more, I found it easier to create form and shape within a character and piece them together accurately.

My last practice of creating characters with form and shape simplified was a character named ‘Totoro’ from the ‘Studio Ghibli’ movies and in particular the animated movie ‘My Neighbour Totoro’. This movie is about two young girls who live with their father and who find a magical tree and forest like scenery within their neighbourhood, they then as they are exploring find a forest creature named ‘Totoro’ who is affectionate and energetic and who becomes the girls friend. This movie and the entire ‘Studio Ghibli’ franchise is why I first was ever intrigued by the world of an animation and exploring worlds and creating characters. They have been a childhood favourite of mine and as the main character, which is primarily made up of simple structures, I thought the character ‘Totoro’ would be a great example for form and shape. The entire base of this character is a circle, with another circle for his head. This was easy enough and then I morphed together details including his eyes, ears, hands and feet with shapes including triangles, cylinders and circles. I thought it was interesting to see how many characters when undeveloped, are made of much of the same form and just how many charter designs can be created with simple shape and some imagination.

After I had tested out my form and shape ability, it was time to begin in creating my own characters with simple shape and form and how I can use the inspiration from the characters I had just studied, for the type of designs I will create of my own. I created up to twelve designs all with different shapes and forms when combined and had all created them with the design inspiration of the first life upon ‘Snail World’. Within my design I used a lot of lone cylinder shapes and circles for a flexible body as slugs and snails already have a similar makeup and it is a form which also makes for a underdeveloped first generation creature, who will be moving very slowly and snake like with rolling and sliding body movements. I developed all of my ideas keeping in mind simple shape and form and creating characters within curved designs such as featureless creatures, bacteria and simple moving characters. I created the movement for my drawings after, blob like jello characters with no limbs and a pre-developed snail body with simple features and an exposed back for pre shell existence.

This is a second draft of my snail characters first generation, with the adding task of designing and simplifying them to form and shape.

This is a third draft of my snail characters first generation, with the adding task of designing and simplifying them to form and shape.

After all the designs for the first ever life amongst ‘Snail World’, I had narrowed it down to some final designs and after close view and trying to capture the theme and story of ‘Snail World’. I settled upon this first generation snail design, enlarged it and kept to the theme of representing the designed combined form and shape.

However looking back on my work, I realised that I could have created a way less detailed and progressed first century character for snail world, as this character looks very close to a current snail today and I could have choose a final drawing of a much more simple form.