Week 8 - Creating Assets

This week we have largely focused on creating assets that we can later use to animate in After Effects. I started out by looking at the concept images I have selected last week, as well as my storyboard, and drawing similar images in Procreate.

Colour Palette

In the end, I have decided to stick to my colour palette from the storyboard. I was on the fence whether I should do that as it means straying away from my source material, however, at the same time I believe that's exactly why it works so well. The original title sequence to Evangelion is very up beat and bright in colours, however, in my case I am trying to represent the darker subtext of the show, naturally meaning that a darker colour palette will complement the story I am trying to tell. After asking my classmates for opinions, they all agreed that my own colour scheme looks more interesting in that context. The subtext I wanted to tackle is the idea of apathy and God, and grey is a great colour to represent that. Gray is highly effective at crafting moody scenes, and that's exactly why I have decided to stay with it.

Final Side

The first asset that I've made was of the mech (Eva) from the side. After talking to my lecturer James, He advised me to make a 4k high quality drawing of the mech that I had in my story board. He advised me to make a full body drawing, however, after hours of sketching I gave up and decided to just draw a high quality face - drawing mechs is just too much for me, and I just wasn't satisfied with each sketch I've made. But going back to this final asset, I am highly satisfied with the quality and the outcome of the drawing, and I can't wait to experiment with it with the 3D camera in After Effects.

Final Front

One thing I took directly from my story board is the front of Eva's face. I was already highly satisfied with the version I used in my story board, however, since I drew the previous asset in 4k I've decided that I might as well make all of them in 4k. One thing I forgot to mention above is that I made sure all of my assets have transparent backgrounds, its hard to see it on the blog but trust me I didn't forget that one important detail! Additionally, I ended up using a "textured" look just like I have in my story board - in my opinion it just makes the drawing pop out more. And while we are still on this asset I just realised a minor error - I forgot the second stripe on Eva's horn. (So, future Julia remember to go back and correct it!)

Final Hands

I have also redrew these hands in 4k from the story board. This time I've made them bright to make it more show accurate as the angel awakening of Rei is fully white.

Final Eyes

One thing I have really looked forward to is redrawing the eye from my story board, however, I have strayed away from that idea (just slightly). As I was looking for more show accurate eyes that I can reference while drawing I have found a one particular shot from the anime that I really liked. I am now sure if I will end up using this asset in the end, however, it's here if I need it. One thing worth mentioning is that I have separated Eva and the eyes on different layers, so if I need to I can have Eva moving around the screen, or perhaps I can use the 3D tutorial from last week, and have the eyes appear first, move out of focus, to have Eva appearing on the screen.

Final Title

One, very iconic, thing that I've been avoiding up to this point, is the evangelion title shot. I have separated the title from the logo - what I'm thinking is that I can perhaps animate the pink logo at the back to have it move into place behind the title. Alternatively, I can have the logo fade in, following the title. Either way, that is still work in progress, and there is a lot of potential. For all of my assets I have made sure to keep everything in layers in case I want to animate separate parts of the assets I have created.

Animation Test - Frame by Frame

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGEM6U14IGc

In my story board, the title sequence starts with an eye blinking. Whilst making my asset of an eye, I have realised that the only way in which I can have an actual eye blink is to have it animated frame by frame.

The animation consists of 4 simple frames of the eye. I have extended the first frame to last longer, but I have mostly used 15 frames per second. The animation appears simple, and in theory it is, however this still took me 9 hours to animate... I am not complaining though, this was great practise for me and I am extremely happy with the outcome!

Final Full Body

Another cool asset of one of the angels from the show! I love how this asset turned out and I am excited to incorporate it into the final animation. I especially like the orb in the middle, I imagine a zoom out transition from the middle, slowly revealing the whole art.