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Project Evaluation

The purpose of Parvus Ruya was to create animated landscapes. The created animated landscapes would be used to for two main functions the first being aimed at video game designers who are in charge of creating the environment of a level and world, the animated landscape would give them more insight on how the animals and creatures envisioned to move within the video game world would interact with their surroundings. The second purpose being aimed at people who buy and play video games, the project will allow them to see their favourite game environments concept art with animated elements such as creatures walking around the field and the tress, to give them a window to look out of into their favourite worlds.

In order to create the animated landscape, I had first created and drew the main background landscape without adding the elements that would be animated. Elements such as the flowing leaf vines of the willow tree and the willow tree itself swaying with the wind. Once the main landscape was done, I saved the landscape as a single image and imported it into a new canvas. Once it was placed within the new canvas, I set the image as a backdrop to make it appear whin each frame of the animation. This gave me the blessing of not having to redraw the landscape for each frame as well as constantly copy and pasting it to each frame. Once the image was set as the main backdrop, I drew the animated elements on within the sections they were intended to. The only major problem while working on this faze was animating the clouds to move west while the willow tress vines were blowing to the east, so I had to erase and redraw the clouds to move east.

I believe that the biggest success from this project lays within the animation of the moving creates that are seen moving within the landscape. The animations of the creates within my project are more fluid than the animation done for both the water in the lake and the clouds floating in the sky. The animations of both the clouds and water have a more static movement. I believe the problem for this maybe due to the usage of custom paint brushes that were used to make both the clouds and the small waves on the lake. I should have instead used the layer transform tool called warp to adjust the layers to make them move rather than re-drawing each cloud and wave light reflections for each frame, by transforming these layers I could have shaped their movement to be more natural than static.

In conclusion despite the minor mistakes that were made while working on certain aspects of the animated landscape, these mistakes were easily fixed although time consuming to. Learning how to draw digitally when compared to traditional ways was a struggle at first, but very quickly turned into an enjoyable activity. The outcome of this project has not yet fully been met, but was achieved by creating an animated mountain landscape.

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Animated water serpent swimming in the lake.

Due to the animations file size the quality of the video was reduced in-order to post it onto Tumbler.

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Animated birds flying across the lake.

Due to the animations file size the quality of the video was reduced in-order to post it onto Tumbler.

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Animated Water Serpent

I wanted the effect of the water serpents body to be going in and out of the water, so in order to do this I drew a circle body with no head in order to rotate it to give the effect that the water serpent is swimming and moving around in the water.

Due to the file size for this animation being too big i have reduced the quality of the animation to upload it onto Tumbler.

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Head Turn

In order to draw the water servants head turning from right to left i used a model of a seahorse and turned its head around slowly to crate this animation.

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Animated Bird Flying

Here is my attempt at animating a bird flying. I have currently only animated the bird flapping its wings. I’m happy with the movement of its wings and will move its body up and down when using it in my final draft for my landscape.

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Background Animation

This animation will be the basic animation that’s on constant repeat thought the whole project.

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Animated Willow Tree Vines

To create this I set the tree trunk of the willow tree a background layer. This allowed the tree to be in every frame without me needing to add it in myself. It also ensure that every frame is in front of the willow tree itself, making it easier for me to animate the willow tree vines.

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Cut Grass

This grass animation was cut from the project due to changes with the land that surrounds the lake. The land used to stretch over too cover a bottom left coroner of the background and the grass was meant too sway with the wind in front of the image, however due to the change of the area the grass looked unnatural and stood out.

Below is the old draft for the landscape

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Making Custom Brushes

Procreate allows its users to customize the existing brushes that come along side with the app itself however it also allows its users to make their own brush. The attached video taught me how to create my own custom brushes for, following this tutorial I was able to make a tree brush as well as leaf brush.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-d_opmtVoE

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Digital Mountains

These two videos are the ones I tend to look at the most when trying to draw and colour a mountain range for an landscape. Though these videos I have learnt that mountains that are closer to the image should appear be shaded in more brown, earthy rock tones and mountains that are further away and taller should be coloured and shaded in more blue and grey tones to show them as rocky and cold areas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYbEj-qmajY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icUCD0wWLx8

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Reading Material

Giger's Alien - 1998 – H.R. Giger https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigers-Alien-H-R-Giger/dp/185286219X

 Dream Worlds - Hans P. Bacher https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Dream_Worlds.html?id=JTqlr9O8rQ8C&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

 Blood, Sweat, and Pixels - Jason Schreier https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Blood-Sweat-and-Pixels-Audiobook/B075KG1SBW?ipRedirectOverride=true&source_code=M2M30DFT1Bk13004272002HN&gclid=Cj0KCQiA3NX_BRDQARIsALA3fIKH0TAOKX74uKZGqY-YBfrZ2YsieV98XI1iFXaPE9XdKvAkHsZyySwaAql9EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

 Richard Williams animation masterclass presents the animator's survival kit animated https://www.amazon.co.uk/Animators-Survival-Kit-Richard-Williams/dp/0571238343/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=52721305883&dchild=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA3NX_BRDQARIsALA3fIJOWMHAJ7HJpkdOGNRDDGcUEWnaD35YslpLoQs8Nc6XAbuVoXZ1wMYaAq__EALw_wcB&hvadid=259084117091&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1006886&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=4073954041455385952&hvtargid=kwd-298574355722&hydadcr=10354_1789256&keywords=the+animator%27s+survival+kit&qid=1609925847&sr=8-1&tag=googhydr-21

 The Art of Pixar: 25th Anniversary - Amid Amidi, John Lasseter https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Art_of_Pixar_25th_Anniversary/1EHNCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

 Amid Amidi, John Lasseter - Preston Blair  https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Advanced_animation/kvIQAwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

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Logo

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Resources

iPad Pro – The product will be drawn and animated on the iPad by using a product called Procreate that allows its users to both draw digital art and create frame by frame animation. Once the drawings are complete, they will be exported to be fully put together on adobe animate.

Apple pen – This is what would be used to draw with on the iPad, it is a digital drawing pencil that was specifically designed to be used on the iPad and will be needed to draw in Procreate.

Procreate – a software on the iPad that allows its users to create drawings, illustrations, and animations. This is the software that will be used to draw and animate the projects animated landscapes.

Desktop PC – The desktop pc will be used to run the needed software to be able to finish the project

Adobe creative software – The adobe software will be used to put together the frame by frame drawings that were created on the iPad on procreate.

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Trey Ratcliff

Trey Ratcliff is an American photographer and sometimes uploads animated photography. His work can be seen as what I want to accomplish with my animated landscapes and how I want some of them to move and be animated.

https://www.instagram.com/treyratcliff/?hl=en

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Seerlight

Seerlight is Instagram page run by Ronald Kuang who is a illustrator and animator who uploads their gif styled art work onto Instagram, their posts are tend to be accompanied by music that play alongside the live wallpapers.

https://www.instagram.com/seerlight/?hl=en

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Cultural Context

What existing products are similar to this one? This project is similar to the animated backgrounds of that is sometimes used for the music genre Lo-Fi, Lo-Fi is an instrumental music piece that is tend to be used to set a scene and for ambiance. Some of these music tracks have an animated background accompanied within it, these backgrounds are usually added to further set the mood. These animations tend to be a short animation ruffly 30 seconds that is put on a loop, for example the most popular example of this would be “Lofi Hip Hop radio – Beats to Relax/Study to” this YouTube video is a constant live stream that live streams Lo-fi music constantly, within the video is a short, animated loop of a young girl that is writing in a book while listing to music. The animated features of this video is the youn girl writing in and flipping the pages of her book, her head turning, googly eyes on her headphones and her cats tail swaying from side to side.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qap5aO4i9A