Video progress

I've been doing more work on my video and i just added my favourite animation so far. Its the one where the face is ripped off and i love it.
I've been using more of after effects features today, the alien scene was just one big image so i did it as a repeated image and then used after effects to guide the view along different parts of the image.
The animation has become very jumpy and i think this is because i normally work in 12 frames a second but i opted for 24 frames because it made it easier to move things to fit to the music .

I think if i was to do this all again i'd use a much more regularly heated music so that it makes the whole animation process simpler.

Video so far today:

promo up to blood and gore from Rowena Sharp on Vimeo.

I've not done a moving one in a while now so i think for the next line (while kicking ass) i'm going to make a simple moving one.
It will be some ones butt, being kicked, and then it falls off.

Video So Far

I've been working on the video and i've kind of just been running on steam just doing as much as i can each day. I'm trying not to think about time planning this because i know that its a lot of work and if i plan it out it might not look like there is time. So instead I'm opting to work just as though i have a deadline verity soon and hope that makes my video be done quicker.

I set a colour scheme for the video because theres a lot of images flashing by and i think it just makes it less busy if they all follow the same simple scheme.
I've also been mixing between doing animation which is just the same image repeated and ones where there is actual movement. I really enjoy doing the movement ones but obviously they are taking too long at times. I had to sacrifice my desk one into a simpler image. I was going to have arms slamming down on the desk but the transition and bend of the elbow was just confusing me. So i made the table, the arms and the pencil as three separate repeated images and used after effects to piece them together.

This is my video so far.



promo vid midpoint test from Rowena Sharp on Vimeo.

More Comics

I added more comics to my comics section. I feel like it should be more substantial because it is what i want to do. I want to be a comic maker. So i want my site to show that it is a strength in my practice.

I found my old Porkchop comic and I felt this really deserved a place because it is one of my favourites and i think most successful in humour. Also its in a really simple loose style that i like and think is synonymous with biographical comic making and i want to show that that is something i do.

Advertising on Facebook

There was just an option to make a little video advertising your page on Facebook. It was really good because it was simple to make and just let me pick from some of my pictures to put in it.
Also it let you choose the music that went with it, i chose something up beat and happy so that it would give a welcoming feel to my video.

Link is here>>>> Facebook advert 

My site

I'm using Wix to make my site as it seems the most simple one to use. I'm not amazing with technology so i needed something straight forward to use. I used an animation company template but since then i've changed it a lot and made it mine.

I put my promo video on the front page. This will be replaced with the proper one once it is done

I had a photo of myself on the site because i like it when there is a personal touch, and since m illustration name is silly i think its good to point out that there is a person behind it. 

I think i'm going to delete this contact bit, i put my details down so that they can message me personally. But i remember it being said that these contact forms make it all seem impersonal.

More personality for the front of my gallery

I split my gallery into lots of subsections. Some were obvious and different media and format; the prints, comics, poetry and animation sections. I made the insect and plant section just because it is something i draw a lot and i feel it's quite distinctive in my work so i think it deserves to be show cased separately. 

It's actually limited what i can put on the site as recently i transferred a large amount of files of work onto my laptop which then inexplicably deleted them. But i salvaged what i could

This is the phone view. I've been making sure that this is up to parr as well because i want it to work on both platforms easily. As people are using phones to access internet more and more. 

Pattern Making for my site

I found out how to make a pattern and so i'm doing it so it can be put on my site. I'm trying to finish my website in the next couple of days because the applications for thought bubble are up and i want my site to be up before i apply. I feel this is my best shot at being picked.

this was my first rough sketch of what i wanted. I like putting myself in the images because i can draw myself and its the most successful character i have.

I included my favourite plants i draw, at first i chose colours that contrasted but not too many tones to avoid an overcrowded feel.

But i realised that once the pattern was repeated even the colour i had used could be too much so i decided to just keep it all one colour but just with different tones of it.

I considered a yellow background which did go with the greens of the image but once it was repeated it just felt like too much colour.

Here it is repeated. I've just put it on the sides of my site.

I kept it at the sides because i think it helps frame the site and draws the eye in.

Advertising

I paid to make an advert on Facebook. It comes up and tells you when one of your posts is doing particularly well and offers you to advertise it. I did it for £3.

It was submitted to be checked and then it ran for one day.

It showed me this updates saying how well it was doing. I let it be shared with a lot of countries in Europe as well as Britain and America. I got quite a lot of likes from spain though. 

It showed me how much of my advertising budget was left as it was running. I think i will set one of these adverts going again once i've finished my big promotion video as that would be a better advertisement for my practice. 

Being a online person

So my main reason for making this video was to post on my social medias to encourage more people to follow my work. I want to increase my fan base and this seemed like a good fun way to do it.

I encouraged sharing so that the video would reach further than just the people who were already following my work.

The Video!

Big Ween Promo from Rowena Sharp on Vimeo.

My face

I drew a new version of my face because lately i've started abandoning drawing full eyes and opted for long dot eyes instead. 

I coloured using the usual flat brushes i always do but then for shade i used a brush with a glow like edge so it fades in nicely. I think i like have the shading in this brush because it makes the shadow look more natural and it softens the edges of the colours making it more aesthetically pleasing. 

This is one i cut out when i was doing the video analoguely. I put it on instagram and i just really liked this shot of it because the filter makes the paper look much more textures than it was. It looked like its on a deep textured paper that quite cottony. I like this because its actually on bog standard printer paper. 

Digital Attempt

I built up the base, at first in blue but then i think the pink contrast makes the image have a more fun and bouncy feel to it.

I'm enjoying how exact i can be with the measurements here, this is much more satisfying than doing it in analogue. This is one of those moments where digital triumphs over analogue, because it can be exact, whereas there is a certain fault percentage with analogue.

Blue circles all prepared for my face

this is me adjusting it in after effects, i added the music that is the start of a Darwin Deez song, i repeated it twice though so i have more time to play within for the video.

Photo time

The photos turned out grosser than i'd wanted. My camera was on the fritz while i attempted this so i ended up borrowing Paul's camera. The images are grainier than i would like and i feel like i moved some of the parts accidentally giving it a bumpier effect. I wanted it to run smoother. Also the colour quality of the paper i chose was not coming through in photo which was annoying me because i spent quite a long time in the library shop holding different colours of paper together. 

So at this point i decided i would make it digitally, not sure why i didn't think of this first as it would work a lot smoother and it meant that i could use photoshop layers to make sure it was in the exact same spot for each image.

Coloured plants

These are the coloured in ones. I ended up putting a border around them because at first they didn't and I printed them out multiple to a page to save some print credit. But then i realised i couldn't cut them so that they all sat perfectly in the same section of the page, which is important for the whole animated element of it. Because if they aren't in the same spot on the page, when i take the photos they will jump up and down where they are. I want it to flow smoothly.

I've planned my set up and bought coloured paper. I have a rich yellow as the main background and then chose a sky blue and an intense pink to use for under the faces.

The plants

These are my finished plants. each one a different section of water disappears in ascending then descending order. I am going to colour them in the same colour scheme so that its easy on the eyes when they are flicking through to the music. because i think with it flicking past you won't be able to absorb the image if theres dramatic differences between each image. Like it'll be dizzying to look at.

Mini Promotion Video

So going on from my plan for my promo mini video I starts work on the centre images. I've been working with the static water sections lately and messing with the form of them. 

I decided that the water in each image should match to one same shape so that it can look a bit animated as different parts of the block is removed. I was all intense about it being correctly 3d so i was measuring out those lines that help you make things 3D. I did the one on the right wrong, it annoyed me greatly.

Then I managed to get these guys done but the 45 degree angle i think was just like too perfect a view of all sides and it made it seem unrealistic, which was really annoying to realise after i'd carefully measured four out. 

I tried circles to stack because there was less confusion in the angles that the things inside would go out at, because that square one above with the cactus in got really weird when i put the plant in. And the ones in my other work have been circles so i guess I'm sticking with what i know here. 

Once i did the plants in-between i decided that it would be sets of plants and sea life in the water and four sections of water with one disappearing with each image change.

This is just a really nice jelly fish, i like it.

Boom I HAVE MUSIC

So i added in a load of sound effects just so that there is an obvious action for me to do, also thats the kind of thing there is in the pickle and peanut video which was my main inspiration for this. I've ended up making it 40 seconds long rather than my planned 30 because i added a noise at the start to go alongside my logo coming up and then i put a cassette ejection noise at the end so that i can end my video by ejecting the 'tape'.

Final music mix from Rowena Sharp on Vimeo.


I feel way ready to start the animation now because i know exactly how long each part has to be. The music took way longer than i expected, originally i meant to have this finished by January but  never prioritised it and i think i was just assuming it would be relatively easy. It has not been. Music is hard. But i have created something that isn't awful so I'm counting this as a success.

Soon to come: Actual animation

sped up

Sped up test from Rowena Sharp on Vimeo.


I've added words but i ended up speeding up the track by about 15% because the low beats combined with slow beat were making it seem sad and grungy. The speed made it sound more bouncy.
The riff i made at home sounded weird on top of the music and didn't quite fit to the track. So i cut it up and used part of it to make an underlying chords part. It just goes between a C an F and a G and then the new riff takes the repeated part and uses a high G and F. I'm thinking of notes like colours at the moment, i try to use the same ones but i can use different octaves of the same note, like it works like shades of a colour = octaves of note.
Next i'm adding in some deeper voice parts to overlay over the 'big' words like the giant shark bit.

popping the headphone bubble

S i didn't realise til i got home and tried to play the track i uploaded on my laptop that i realised that the bass beat i ha happening in the background could not be played out of speakers. It had been working fine in my headphones but i didn't at any point actually take off my headphones to test the noise out from speakers. This is an issue because i want my promotion video to be easily accessible and if it is something that you need headphones in to listen to properly then its already excluding a large number of people.
I went back into audacity and edited the track. I figured the reason it wasn't playing out of speakers is that the frequency was too low for the speakers to replicate. I heightened the pitch as much as i could and that has made it audible on speakers but it developed a loud clicking noise when it hit part that was too deep again i think. I'm not massively sure of the reason, but i went on an explore of the effects and low and behold they have a 'click removal' tab. So i think i've sorted that part out now the next bit to worry about is the words and a riff on top.


music test 2 from Rowena Sharp on Vimeo.


I went home and re-recorded my voice, this time listening to the beat on headphones because my last recording was so incredibly out of time. It really showed m,y lack of tempo. I also made a simple riff on the keyboard when i got back. I used a light twinkly noise to contrast from the deep bass backing beat. I'm trying to think of the music in the same way i would an image. Keeping it simple and adding contrasting layers that compliment each other. But the simple part is key because i am not a music maker and i know this would have been an easier task to dole out to someone who is but i like the idea of doing it all myself too much.

I think i'm going to have the riff low in volume and working in the background, like the oreo advert where the main noise is the beat but there is soft piano giving the music a pitch and rhythm. Theres also some twinkly bells which i could look into using, but the bells act like a finishing touch so its not something I'm allowing myself to play with until the words and beat are completed to a suitable level.

Sick beats

So i've been working on the music for my promo video because without the music i don't know how long to make any of my animations so it takes priority over the other parts of this project. At the moment i've figured a backing track and I'll have to go home to re-record the words because my original recording doesn't match this beat.
Theres a bubble pop at the beginning and I think I'm going to have those dotted about within the song. Also the bass got quite deep and the overall is really low sounding so I am going to have a play around with using some synth chords and make it a bit more up beat sounding.


promo song check from Rowena Sharp on Vimeo.


The eat is kind of slow and i don't know if this will turn out how i expect but I'm having fun learning all the programme, I've just googled a bazillion things about using audacity today but I'm getting there. Once the voice is sorted on top i will finally have the timings and i can start making the animation and still leave the musical file open to add any silly sound effects i want along as the bare bones of it all stay the same. Its on a pretty regular 4 beat system so that it makes the frames for animation i do easy to figure out and they can all be the same frame rate, making it easier when it comes to putting this all together in after effects.