Initial Sketches From Ink Blobs:

 

With this project, we were to use the ink blobs as a starting platform of which to base our illustrations from, before creating a narrative based around 8 of those illustrations and animating them in the form of a gif. We were also to somehow incorporate text into the narrative. In this, I was inspired by this idea of a somewhat idiotic, narcissistic cat that came from the second ink blob, of which I based the entire narrative around. Using the cat as my centerpiece, I decided to tell the story of a post nuclear landscape, where radiation has caused the inhabitants of the world to transform into strange versions of themselves with the cat narrating and giving his somewhat snarky opinions on the inhabitants of the world. This was heavily inspired – both in terms of art style and narrative – by Adventure Time, a popular cartoon airing on Cartoon Network.

Having done basic animation and gifs before, I wanted to push my understanding of the technical aspects of animation in this project such as in how to move a character in a way that is believable. In this aspect, I believe that I have learnt a lot as I am now much more fluent in the techniques of creating animation in Photoshop. Rather than just trying to move a certain part of a character, I tried as much as possible to make my character more believable through engaging the whole body. In this, one of my favourite gifs would probably be the dancing turnip as I feel that it is one of the most fluid and believable ones in terms of animation.

With the text, I initially had some problems in figuring out how to incorporate it into the gifs without it seeming out of place. I eventually came up with the solution of adding text boxes and an avatar, very much in a style similar to what one would find in a video game. In doing this, I felt that not only did it solve my problem of how to incorporate text, but it also gave made the piece more engaging and gave context to the content of the gifs and made it almost seem like extracts from a video game. One of the most important things I considered while doing this project was the coherence of the world that the narrative is located in. I wanted each gif to feel like an extension of the same world rather than just random places that had no relation to each other. As such, with all except the first two of the gifs, I created a colour palette that I kept throughout which really helped to make the world believable.

Overall, I’m really happy with the outcome of this project as I think that the animations came out far better than I expected them to. Also, I feel that the theme of the content – cute with a side of snarky and creepy – is very much in my style and what I’m hopefully  looking to develop for further projects.