As part of the course’s Simulated Work Experience I was assigned to assisted Filipa, a second year who’s currently in pre-production on their final film. They showed me some of the work they’ve done so far up to where they are in pre-production and I was glad that I could actually help make something that’ll hopefully be used!
I was asked to look at character design for a male character, where the face had already been designed, but the rest of the figure had yet to be filled out. I did some research into the design philosophy Filipa is going for with the environments, to see if I could pull some relevant designs to draw inspirations from; I spent a good few hours at least just looking at resources (watching PowerPuff Girls counts as research here, I swear), before starting to make some sketches and notes for myself.
Within the limited time frame I managed to produce a few pieces to show, and I got some positive feedback regarding the designs. Honestly I’m not used to having my work be used by someone else, so the fact that they didn’t come firing back with a million different changes or suggestions was a bit of a shock!
Ultimately we decided to move forward with the first idea, which is kind of funny because the whole time I think I was worried about not making anything better than the first, so at least my instincts were right!
Character design was something I haven’t really explored too much before! So this was definitely kind of different for me. Typically if I have a character, it’s not all that well planned out (I tend to just make things up as I go along haha) which can have its benefits, but for pose-to-pose animation it’s been a challenge to maintain consitent characters. I do really like the looseness of doodle-esque characters iny my own work, but in respects to collaborating with someone having a baseline standard for what a specific character should look like is obviously very very useful.
I think having the session a few months ago with Bianca really helped cement that information for me, and a lot of the artists and animators I really admire also have strong character design fundamentals under their belts, so it’s something that I really want to keep applying myself to.
I did enjoy the experience itself, but felt a bit pressured for time because of how close to the deadlines this assignment began. I was also worried that maybe I was trampling on Filipa’s preconceived ideas for the character. For all I know she already had a plan and was just being polite giving me something to do! I think this just speaks to my general worries and anxieties of working under someone else, and whether my additions are actually part of their ultimate vision for their film. I guess this is something that varies from filmmaker to filmmaker. Usually I draw and animate for myself, and by myself, so it was quite different to have to go through this back and forth process just to get to this stage.
I think more than anything this has really taught me the importance of communication in projects. Even though my role is very small right now and I only have a small task, Filipa was very kind despite our conflicting schedules! I’m sure the second years are just glad to be getting any help at all, but I feel like I’d really like to be able to help more right now. It’s been interesting to see what some of the other students in the first year have been doing, compared to the tasks that I was given, and I’m glad I actually got to produce something even if it was a bit of a shortlived experience before this deadline! I’m definitely going to try and continue to help (providing the help is wanted) as I think it’ll be beneficial to my development as an animator, as well as beneficial to reducing Filipa’s workload.