Animating Anning

For the body language life drawing class I originally started drawing the characters too realistic so instead I decided to turn them more into illustrations so it was easier to understand what was happening in the picture using purely body language and some background 'hints'. For example in this first drawing you see a woman holding a paint can and paint brush, with her arms open ready to accept praise (or in this case, criticism). By her facial expressions you can tell she's unsure of the response and looks quite tired. Her fee are pointing to wards the two men, an open gesture similar to her arms. One of the men looks like his thinking of something to say with his confused expression, his legs crossed- a closed of position and almost looks defensive. On the other hand, the other man looks quite angry and disappointed, his arms crossed- a very negative gesture. His feet are pointing outwards as he's not ready to talk.  This drawing at the bus stop is my least ...

My first silhouette is done fully out of charcoal. Its of a women with long hair posing with her hand next to her face, looking back at this drawing I think I could chose a better position for the woman to be standing in as it looks just like a blob of black.  My second silhouette is of a man sitting down with his legs bent and hand touching his face. This is my favourite silhouette out of all of the drawings, mainly because if how simple it is and the use of sharpie to colour in the silhouette. Also I like how I have accentuated the ears of the man and his hair. It exaggerates the drawing making it easier to understand the concept.  I next took out parts of this next silhouette so you'd be able to understand the difference between the arms, body and the face. Although because I used charcoal for this drawing it looks messy and not clean enough.  So, I decided to use posca pens to outline the hands and even the shoes this time and it looks very effective....

Finishing my animation i encountered a few issues. The original animation's video was corrupted and I had to use a lower quality version.  Although the quality is very low, the animation still shows the 12 rules of animation effectively. Also, I added some sound effects. Including seagull noises, a dog barking, footsteps and Mary Anning's footsteps. Adding sound effects created more believability in the animation. It seems like Anning is walking on the beach ready to find some fossils. This animation has a calming nature to it.

The left photo shows the original drawing I did of the fossil depot and as you can instantly tell is the perspective looks a little off. The reason I originally drew it like this was to match the original source photo of what Anning's Fossil Depot looks like, for example here it is shown below.  I wanted the drawing look similar with the depot being on the corner, however, it doesn't look very effective or like the original. So, I recreated the last drawing so that the perspective isn't as strange. It definitely looks a lot better and less uneasy to look at. I change the background colour from black to white mainly because it looked too gloomy.  Here is the new drawing on it's own; This drawing is definitely nicer to look at. its very simple but you can tell that it's Mary Anning standing in front of her new house and depot for fossils. In the front window is the ichthyosaur fossil she is most proud of finding.  Here's what the drawings all look lik...

For the lift the flaps and pullouts, I wanted the fossils to be bright colours so I chose pink, green and blue acrylic to paint a block colour. Then, I outline the paint with with black and white POSCA pen so that they would stand out just as much as the main ichthyosaur fossil.  I also left some room where I could add information on the flaps, however, In the pull out designs it was hard to find a big enough area where I could add type. If I was to do this again, I would make the folded format wider this is because as the ichthyosaur got bigger there was less room for the fossil prints to go. So, I had to make some of the pullouts thinner.  Overall, this folded format is definitely a high quality design for a children's book and with added information could be something children would find themselves enjoying learning facts. Children could even use it as a poster on their wall, which also could make it easier to interact with. 

To paint my ichthyosaur fossil across the folded format I first used a sharpie to outline the shape. Then I painted a grey acrylic colour in between and added highlights and cracks in the fossil with POSCA pens. The pens really allowed the fossil to stand out and become very vivid.  Here are some sections of the folded format;  I then added the foam prints of different fossils on the pages. Because I had limited lino I decided the foam was the second best option, however most of the prints didn't have the same effect as what lino and ink would look like and is a downfall in my final piece.