Creative Response: Finished Animation

I have since decided on a question to end on, so I have been able to complete my animation; "Where do YOU think gaming will go?". I thought this was an appropriate way to end the animation, as it engages the audience - which is emphasized by the way the question has been visualised - and it is quite a broad question, allowing for the audience to think of many different aspects of gaming, which in turn could create a number of different views and debates.

After hours of searching I have also found a sound track that I find to be suitable. It is just fast enough to be entertaining without being too distracting, allowing for the audience to take in what the infographic is saying. It also has the tone I was looking for in a backing track, and makes the viewing experience more pleasant.

To edit the sound track, I initially made the start of the song and the animation line up, and I was going to trim the song down and make it fade out so it wasn't such an abrupt end. I didn't really like how it sounded, as it didn't sound like a natural time for the song to finish, so I tried lining up the end of the sound track with the end of my animation, to see whether I could make the start of the song sound natural instead. Luckily, there was an appropriate starting time near enough to where the animation began, so I made these line up, and simply extended the last frame of the animation so it cut out when the music did. I think the sound track now works very well and it greatly improves the piece overall, especially as some of the sounds compliment some transitions in the animation. 

Final Animation

Overall I'm very pleased with my animation, especially as it is my first ever info-graphic. It hasn't been the most interesting project I've ever worked on, but I certainly can see myself producing things in the future of a similar nature, as I have enjoyed creating the different components that I was going to need, and the finished product is very satisfying and professional. I feel that I have learnt a lot more about After Effects now, and I believe that I am much more efficient with it, though I would like to see what else I can do in terms of animating, and see whether I'd be able to make a more interesting piece.

I think my infographic accompanies my essay well. I like that it doesn't necessarily repeat what I've talked about it my essay, but it does shed light on a different area of gaming that I only mentioned briefly in my essay. It outlines how gaming has developed over the years, just like how my essay does this with gender representation.

Creative Response: First Draft

My infographic is very nearly complete, and I've only spent a couple of days on the production. Once I got into the swing of animating, I found that I was producing around 20 seconds a day, maybe ever more as the animation process itself isn't too difficult. I didn't do a great deal of planning other than the thumbnails I created based on my research plan and I have simply been animating each section as I go along, and moving onto the next section once I was happy with how it looked. If I was unhappy with it, I would simply move the text around, or try a different transition method. This didn't happen often as I would usually layout all of my text and components first before deciding upon what animation technique I was going to use. I found that this was a very efficient way of working as it meant that I was very rarely correcting mistakes. 

First Draft

I started of using a camera to move between the text, in case I wanted to have some of the text at different angles like I did at the end of my transition testing. I soon decided against this - though I did like how it looked in my test - as I didn't want the animation to be too complicated/dynamic as I thought this would make it harder to read. Instead I stuck to a selection of motions that I had previously experimented with, only this time around I tried to give the text some anticipation and secondary action when it was flying onto the screen and leaving it. I also tried to split up the different motions so that it wouldn't feel too repetitive and boring, which I think I have done quite well.

The only thing I am unsure of is how I am going to end my animation. The animation at the moment doesn't seem to end on anything significant, and I would like to have a question or a statement to end on so that there is a definitive end, rather than a cut-to-black. I want whatever I choose to make the viewer think about their own views on gaming, and how they think the gaming industry has or will change.

I also need to consider sound. I definitely think it needs a backing track of some kind, as a ~2 minute info-graphic seems to drag when you are sat watching in silence. I don't want anything to distracting though, so I am going to avoid anything with vocals, and instead shall look for something that is fairly uplifting and relatively upbeat.

Creative Response: Transition Testing

I think my testing went well and I particularly like how 'clean' the movement of the text looks. At times I think the text isn't on screen for long enough, but obviously I can consider this more closely when it comes to the production of my actual animation, and I can also change the speed at which the transitions happen depending on the message I'm trying to visualise. 

In this example I also experimented with camera movements as well as the transition of the text. I thought that the camera helped make some of the transitions a lot easier to create, and in some cases (i.e. at the end of my clip) a rotation of the camera and text made the info graphic more interesting. I also think that using a selection of different techniques like these will help to keep the animation entertaining. At first I was worried that using too many effects and transitions would make the piece seem over the top, but considering the rest of the composition is very basic (background and components), I think it is fine. 

Creative Response: Transition Research

I thought it would be best to carry out further research into the ways that text and components are animated in info graphics, to get a better understanding of how I want my own work to be animated. This way I can choose a couple of my favourite styles without having to create masses of tests which would be extremely time consuming.

Care to Click

Social Networks in Numbers

After Effects XYZ

Above are just a few of the animations that I looked at, but I soon found that the ways in which text was animated across different info graphics wasn't all too different. Instead they all seemed to use a handful of techniques. 

Diagram of Example Transitions

The above diagram shows the most common examples of transitions that I found whilst researching. The main techniques seem to include; The change of position of the word, rotation and scaling. These are either used on the sentence as a whole, individual words, or individual letters. I'm going to quickly try out a handful of these to see which I like and can animate the best, and also see if they work well together or whether it would be best to stick to just one technique. 

Creative Responsive: Refined Plan and Making a Start

As I had sufficient research, I was able to refine my plan and outline exactly the stats I was going to present in my infographic. When doing this I tried to select points that I thought would flow well from one another.

PLAN

Then:

- Introduction of: Gameboy, Super Nintendo, Playstation, Sega

- Massively male dominated (8 Male players for every 3 Female)

Now:

- UK Game industry worth £3.9 Billion 

*Did you know? Games sold more than music in 2014*

- New consoles: PS4, Xbox One, Wii U

- Mobile Gaming! (Refer to 'Device Graph' in research)

The Players: 

- Estimated 20 million people playing games in the UK

- Gender: 57% Male, 43% Female

- Times: Average of 8.9 hours a week

Esports:

- 135 Million viewers worldwide (2015)

- Watch on platforms such as Twitch and YouTube

Future?:

- $91.5 Billion projected gaming revenues

- Mobile gaming expected to grow by 51%

- Esports expected to grow to 145 million enthusiasts

- Potentially end on a question for the audience to ponder

I thought my plan had good structure and presented a good mixture of stats to show how gaming had grown since the 80s/90s, so I made a start on drawing some of my components, starting with the consoles that were released in the 90s.

Game Consoles - Gameboy, Playstation, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis

I'm really pleased with my consoles. I love the simplicity and how clean they look, as I used the pen tool to create the shapes that made up the consoles. This also means that I can resize the drawings easily if required and they won't become pixelated.

After Effects Tutorial

I wanted to quickly test how I could animate these components, so I searched on google for infographic tutorials. I found one that I quite liked the look of and wanted to see whether I'd be able to apply the technique to my own components.

Test One

I think I was able to follow the tutorial rather well, and think I have made a good first attempt at animating an infographic, but I'm not sure that this is going to be the style that I go for. Instead I'm going to continue testing different styles and transitions. I also have a lot of other things that I have to play with/consider, including the positioning and scale of the components and font, the background, whether I want to use 3D layers, etc.

Creative Response: Initial Plan and Research

Having spoke with Mike again about my idea, I now have a much better understanding of how I am going to structure my animation. I shall start by briefly mentioning what the gamer demographic was like in the 1980s, then move onto looking at statistics for today's demographic which will be the bulk of the animation. I shall end the animation with a brief look of what the future is looking like for gaming, or potentially pose a question to make my audience think of what the future holds.

In order to be able to progress from this point, I needed to carry out further research into gaming demographics. I already had some stats that I had found whilst researching for my essay but I needed to pad out my resources.

Initial Findings

Then:
- 1982 Arcade video game plaers 80% Male 20% Female
- 8 Male players for every 3 Female
- 1989 Variety stated women constituted for 3% of the gaming industry

Now:
- New consoles
- Mobile Gaming
- Esports
- (Tiga) 12% Females in UK in gaming industry
- Genres: Strategy and Casual most popular in 2014 (37.7% 24.8%)
- Uk Game industry worth over £3.9Bn (consumer spend 2014)
- Biggest Consumer market revenue streams in 2014 were digitial console and PC 
- Games sold more than video or music in 2014.

- GameTrack estimate there are 20m people 6-64 playing games in the UK
- Average play time 8.9 hours per week
- Formats: 24% packaged games (11.2m), 22% app games (10.3m)and 21% online (10.2m)

- 57% Male, 43% Female, GameTrack 2015
- 55% Male, 45% Female Ukie 2014
- 71M people watch esports worldwide 2014

Projected:
- Gaming Revenues to reach $91.5 Billion (New Zoo)
- Mobile Gaming expected to grow 51% year over year in NA, 86% Asia

- Esports expected 145 Million enthusiasts by 2017

Resources
BigFishGames
Ukie
ESA
Kotaku

Creative Response: Infographic Research

I started my research by looking at static info graphics so I could focus on the design of the components and how the statistics can be presented differently. I've found that the colours used don't vary too much and are generally quite neutral and aren't harsh on the eyes by being too bright. 

Gaming is Good for You - Frugal Dad (snippets selected)

Gaming Info-graphics 

Infographic of Infographics

My next port of call was to look at how these elements could be animated. 

Travel Infographic - YoCreative

I really liked this info graphic by Yocreative. Though it's not exactly what I was looking for as it doesn't present data, I like the consistency of the animation. I think this is what I'm going to strive for with my own animation; A consistent animation that doesn't go overboard, instead uses simple imagery and movements to get a point across. 

The Infographics Show

The Infographics Show is a channel on YouTube that is dedicated to producing infographics. I chose to look at this one in particular because of how it tackled the data, but I shall be referring to their videos as a reference for how I could potentially animate my own. 

Creative Response: Proposed Idea

For a long time now I've wanted to experiment with making an info graphic, but have not yet had the opportunity to do so. My essay seems to have provided a good opportunity, and I could produce an animation that shows my statistical findings and what the gamer demographic is like today.

I already have a few stats that I have collected - which I have had to cut out of my essay because they're not 100% relevant, and I'm running out of words to talk about the more important parts of my essay - but in order for me to produce a substantial info-graphic I'm going to have to research further into today's demographic and what it looks like in numbers.

I shall also have to do some artist research and look at the different ways that stats can and have been presented, so I can apply some of these methods to my own production. I will also have to do more research on the different things I can do with After Effects to help animate and present different assets in my animation, as I only have a basic understanding of the programme at the moment and would love to learn more about it.

Creative Response to my Essay: Completed Character Turnaround

My final turnaround didn't actually take that much time to complete. I think my character model definitely helped me and sped up the drawing process, as I only had to line up my drawings with the template underneath and try to keep the proportions and dimensions of her clothes and hair consistent, Which I think I did a pretty good job at doing, especially as I was drawing from my imagination rather than an actual object. She seems to fluctuate slightly in size and shape, but it isn't really too noticeable, and similarly to my last turnaround I completed as part of my visual language project, I quite like that she isn't perfect. She seems more stylised this way. 

Character Turnaround in Fine Liner

As much as I liked my turnaround, I thought it would be much more successful if I added colour. Because I had the time to spare I went for it and added colour to my original frames using Photoshop. I'm glad I pushed myself to do this, as it is an improvement that I had never got around to doing with my other turn around projects. Not only this but I think the addition of colour just tops of the animation. The girl seems to be a lot less jumpy now that I have added colour, and it has just given it that finish that it needed. I shall have to try and push myself to add colour to future projects of this nature, as there definitely is a great improvement from my initial fine liner animation, and it looks more professional (in my opinion).

Added Colour to my Character Turnaround

Overall, I think I have been able to apply some of the knowledge I learnt whilst researching my essay very well, resulting in range of female characters that I feel are more representative of the average female form. I shall have to continue to look at the work I have produced for this project and apply it to future works, as creating more relatable characters, in my opinion, is very important.

Creative Response to my Essay: Designing a Character for my Turnaround

Now that my model turnaround was complete, I went ahead and designed a character that I was going to animate using this template.

Young Female Character Design

I made the character a little bit chubby, as most young children tend to be, although I think I did draw her legs a little bit too wide and her shoulders too broad. I will be able to edit this when I draw out my turnaround however, so I'm not too worried about this design. 

I think this is a nice design for a young girl, and is a lot less perfect than the girls that are portrayed in the animations I looked at in my essay. She has messy hair and her clothes are very "everyday". I gave her messy hair and designed her with sew on patches on her overalls to make her seem more adventurous and a bubbly, which I think I have been successful at doing so. I'm quite pleased with the design, even though her body does seem a little bit disproportional, so all that is left to do now is draw out my frames with this design. 

Creative Response to my Essay: Creating a Turnaround

Because my character designs went well, I wanted to push myself and see if I'd be able to produce a turn around of a character. Rather than using my existing characters I wanted to design a young girl, as this was something I was yet to do. I thought it would be best to draw a template model turnaround, and use this as the base for my design, so I googled an existing human turnaround to use as a reference. As I wasn't able to find any children performing in a turnaround, I simply drew the body scaled down in each of my frames, which I think turned out to look fine. 

Example Turnaround I Used as a Reference

My Template Turnaround

Considering this is my first turnaround of a human, I think I've done well. Especially considering I had to improvise with my reference. Whilst I was drawing the frames, I also had my moodboard of representative female characters, so I could incorporate their body shape so I had a combination of the model in the example and a young, chubby animated character (Lilo, for example). 

Due to the success of this first attempt I can now go ahead and design a young female character and use these frames to create a turnaround for it. 

Creative Response to my Essay: Character Design

Here are the female characters I have been able to produce so far. Whilst I was designing my characters I made sure to refer back to my mood boards, as they picked out what features an "average girl" possessed. I have tried to incorporate a selection of these features in my designs.

The first female character is based very loosely on my own dress sense, consisting of an everyday outfit  of jeans and a jumper. I also made the girl tall and lanky as it is not often that tall girls are represented in animations. 

The next design is of a "female gamer", and not one who is large-breasted and plays video games to "impress guys". Instead she is a girl who genuinely enjoys playing the games. I also gave her a Legend of Zelda t-shirt to further enforce her love for video games. I wanted to design a female character that likes playing games, as it is still seen to be a "male's" hobby and it still shocks some members of society that females play video games, when in fact a good 49% of gamers are female. 

For the next two designs I chose to focus on a larger body shape, and have created both a white character and a darker skinned one. I chose to draw the characters in a dress and a skimpy jump suit as those who are more judgemental of body shape tend to frown on larger women showing skin. I also did this to try and enhance their curves.  

Creative Response to my Essay: Sketchbook Work

Before I got started with drawing, I thought it would be a good idea to mention some of the work I have been doing in my sketchbook. The sketchbook is mostly filled with drawings and doodles I have done on the train to pass the time, but a lot of them are relevant to the work I am doing now.

The first set is a selection of observational drawings I have done of people on the train. This could be an approach I continue to work with as I design my female characters, as you can't get much more "normal" than the general public. I could either do further observational sketches, or I could even just base characters around certain features that these people possess.

 Observational Drawings of Train Passengers

The next set of drawings are of characters that have been based on/inspired by myself and people that I know. Again, this could be another approach that I adapt with this response as I would be creating characters based on average people, ones that are more likely to be representative of females. Or again, I could simply draw from specific features they possess.

Characters Based on Myself

Sketches of my Sister, Maressa.

Character Based on my Friend, Ellen.

The last set of drawings that I have chosen to talk about focus on capturing different body shapes and sizes. This is something that I will definitely continue to do when I design my female characters as this is going to be an important part of my response. 

Doodles Considering Body Shape and Size

Creative Response to my Essay: Moodboards

Following my research into League of Legends, I conducted further research into female characters that more accurately represent the average female, and not a perfect girl with a stick-thin figure. I thought it would be best for me to create a moodboard of the range of characters that I researched/found, as I would be able to easily pick out the features of that character that make them more realistic or representative of females. I started with the characters from LoL that deviated from the usual "all boob" female, along with Merida from Brave whom I had looked at in great detail in my essay.

Female Character Moodboard

Lilo and Stitch in my opinion is another great example of  accurate female representation. Nani, Lilo's older sister, has a much more realistic body shape, as she has a bit of a belly and muscular thighs. Not only this, but she is a strong-willed character who tries her very best to raise Lilo on her own, which to me is widely overlooked and I think Nani deserves more praise and recognition than what she gets, especially considering that Lilo is far from being a perfect child. She throws tantrums and makes it hard for Nani to care for her. She also deviates from the average "girly-girl" as she doesn't like playing with dolls, and has a much more creative imagination which the other girls in her class tend to bully her for as they find her "weird". So not only is she a girl that doesn't fit in with the crowd, she also has a much more healthy body image, much like many characters in this animation.

I wanted to stray away from Disney again a bit more, as I wanted to look at a wide range of characters, so began to look at Studio Ghibli. I had only ever watched Spirited Away, and it's only recently that I have watched his other animations. First of all, they are all visually stunning. Secondly, I love that the plots and the characters are so imaginative and different to most films I have seen. It was a nice change to the usual plots that I'm used to watching. I was particularly blown away by Howl's Moving Castle and I'll most likely rant on about how amazing it is at a later date, but at the moment I'm going to talk about Sophie. Sophie truly is an average girl and is depicted as being quite ordinary. She doesn't even see herself as being beautiful or attractive. She is instead quite plain but is very kind, polite and friendly. It also a good example of an animation where the old woman isn't drawn as an "old hag" and depicted as being ugly. Instead she simply gains a few pounds and a couple of wrinkles on her face.

Mei and Satsuki from My Neighbor Totoro are also great female characters. I particularly like that Satsuki isn't a typical girly-girl, instead she has short hair like a "tomboy" and has a lanky figure. Yes she is thin, but it isn't the typical hourglass figure that is usually favoured in animations. Then we have Mei. Similarly to Lilo, Mei is chubby and very adventurous. 

I then looked into Jamie Hewlett's character designs, in particular Tank Girl. I've always been a fan of Hewlett's art style/his works, so I'm quite surprised that I haven't come across this character before. This girl deviates massively from the common stereotypical look and personality that is often given to females, as she has next to no hair, face piercings, weapons, and generally looks aggressive. This character gave me the idea of looking into different stereotypes concerning personalities, such as goth and "nerd" etc, as not only will this give me a variety of different character designs, this will definitely be representative of a lot of different females. This could be a good route to go down, so I shall bare that idea in mind. 

Body Shape Moodboard

Having collected a good amount of research and accumulated a good idea of what representative female characters look like and what their features are, I figured it would be a good idea to begin drawing my own characters, drawing from my research and further examples if needs be. I gathered together a range of different body shapes and created a moodboard to aid my drawings.

Creative Response to my Essay: League of Legends

Whilst I was writing my essay, I found that Disney had created a variety of different characters which on the whole had considered to be sexist, as the females stereotypically relied on the male to save them. There are also mixed views on how representative the characters are of females, as most characters are given natural beauty and narrow waists. Generally the only exception to this are the evil antagonists, who were stereotypically portrayed as being ugly.

I wanted to take this opportunity to pick out further examples of characters that deviate from the "disney norm", and take from these examples to design a couple of my own characters that are more representative of females as a whole. This will include looking at different body forms, as well as race and physical appearance. If I go into more depth about the character's background and personality, I will consider their hobbies, interests, careers, etc, so that there is a wide range of characteristics and values that will hopefully be more representative of women now-a-days.

I'm going to stray away from Disney slightly, and look at more female characters alongside the ones I have already explored in my essay so I have a wider range of characters to draw from. I'm going to look briefly at League of Legends. I love the game and I think the character design is beautiful, but it has been criticised for being sexist. A lot of the female characters have been highly sexualised, most of which have been created with a skinny waist and being practically 90% breast, Sona being a great example of this.

Ahri (Top Left), Miss Fortune (Top Right) and Sona (Bottom)

Having said this, I personally think that there are a good variety of characters. Granted, a good percentage of the female champions in League are very breasty, but Riot Games have also explored a range of different sizes and body shapes and colours, resulting in a wide range of characters and personalities. To back this point up, Riot have recently released a new champion called Jinx who is very slim and flat chested. A lot of skin is on show, but she hasn't been sexualised, instead she is a fun, crazy and outgoing character. 

Jinx the Loose Cannon - Released Oct. 2013

Annie, Karma and Kayle are further examples that show diversity across the female characters in League, all of which I think are great designs. I can't quite put my finger on what I particularly like about the characters, but as a whole I like that no two champions are the same, and each have their own background story and "lore". I also like the attention the detail that there is in the splash art, and how the environment is also taken into consideration. 

Annie (Top Left), Karma (Top Right) and Kayle (Bottom)