Today I continued working on laying out my character in Adobe Illustrator. On the side view version I added the eyes and I have to tweak some limbs because after rotating them to get an idea of how it would look when I animate I noticed it looked weird. I already fixed one leg and I have to do the rest. I also went ahead and put down the base of the start shape on the front view. Although, I will probably have to go back and fix those limbs too.

Today is my first day of creating my character in Adobe Illustrator. Since I will be animating this later on I have to make the limbs in a specific way so I can animate them smoothly later on. I started making my character on one file, and each body part on a separate later. After finishing a part I’ll copy it, paste it into a new separate file, and save it as a png for later. Today all I did the base of the star and I just started doing some shadows, highlights and the facial features. While doing the shadows I noticed that I have to make them in a certain way so that when I animate the limbs it stays in its place and so it doesn’t look awkward.

Today I started designing a character for the upcoming animation project and it took me a while. I wasn’t sure what I wanted make. Even though I made a character today, I’m not sure if I want to stick with it. My character is a star. It’s (her?) personality is positive and bright. For the side view I wanted to make the character just walking. For the front view I honestly don’t know what kind of movement it is, but it’s kind of like jumping jacks I guess.

Today I worked on animating a bird. I think it came out alright. I’m still getting used to it. I think the pupils need to be more fluid, it looks jumpy or choppy to me but I couldn’t really figure that out. That is something I want to improve on (making the movements more fluid).

Today I tried to animate a black cat, and I think it came out okay for my first try. It took me several minutes to fully get the hang of it but it worked out. Even though I followed the instructions, when I finished the animation I thought it looked too mechanical so I made some adjustments to the ease. I think it looks a little better but I think the tail is bothering me. When it first starts to move it looks choppy, I wish the initial movement was more fluid. But I think it came out okay, not many struggles besides that really.

Today I tried animating a red ball as an intro to animating. When following the steps it was pretty easy and I pretty much had no complications with anything. I just had to make the shape, the timeline, fill in the basic movements, and adjust the size and speed of the ball. It only took a few minutes for me. I’m looking forward to animating though, even though I haven’t done it in a while I like animating on the computer.

I finally completed my project today. I enjoyed the process but I did find myself stuck at some points. When I started the project I sketched my idea out on paper, took a photo of it, and I took it to Photoshop to crop the photo. After cropping, that’s when I started working on coloring it in Illustrator. At first I wasn’t sure if I wanted to color it normally (with color variations) or to do one color scheme. I ended up choosing to do one color scheme in purple and it took a while for me to get the colors right. And when I did settle on my general color, I still had some adjusting to do. Sometimes the colors looked off, but the biggest thing was the lack of contrast that made everything blend together (which I later fixed). I fixed it by making the darks darker and the lights lighter. The adjustment of the highlights from the sun also helped. I intended for my style to have detail, but not too much (simplistic or cartoon-ish?). At one point I thought about adding grass but I scratched that idea partly due to time limit and I wasn’t sure if it fit. I like it overall, but if I could go back I’d change the bush, and attempt to add grass in the foreground.

At first I wasn’t completely sure what to do with my project today but ended up altering it a bit. I mainly just adjusted the colors for more contrast because they began to blend together. I might have to do a couple more adjustments and finish that bush before I’m finally done though.

I didn’t do too much today. I just continued working on the silhouette leaves on the tree in the foreground to make in look fuller. I also added more highlights to the bush and I’m contemplating whether or not I should add some grass. I adjusted some colors too.

Today I continued working on highlights and shadows. I also took the feedback from last class and changed the saturation/hue of the trees in the middle ground. I’m not sure if it did much but I did it anyways.