Initial Plans slide of my FMP

1. Initial Plans
William Anderson

2. Initial Reaction
• I am very excited to begin my FMP as I have been creating my own original work over the course of
the last few years. This mainly consisted of character sheets, but as of last Christmas I began to
incorporate short animations. I am deeply passionate about completing this project to a high
standard, as not only is it animation, an area of which I am focusing in, but also based around my
own work. Because of this, I have had plenty of experience drawing these characters, putting deep
thought into their designs regarding both the shapes used, colours and clothes- wear.
• Thanks to the experience I have gained throughout the year, I feel confident that my written work
for this project will be sufficient enough as to not lower my grade. I will make sure to spend extra
time on each area of my pro-forma, creating an organised layout for my work beforehand to ensure
that I don’t miss out any important details whilst simultaneously allowing the pages to have a less
cluttered aesthetic.
• Furthermore, I will make sure that I have all the necessary equipment and software that I will
require to create my animation. This will include setting up my drawing tablet on the college
computers before I begin my production there. However, I will also dedicate parts of my free time
to creating additional frames for my animation, allowing for an increase in quality. This will leave
less pressure on me to finish work at college and will also allow me to spend more time on my
written work, ensuring it is of higher quality as previously mentioned.
• I am fully aware of who I can talk to at college if I have any issues in creating my project. Because of
this and everything mentioned above, I am looking forward to creating my animation and feel
secure in the feeling that I can overcome whatever obstacles may present themselves.

3. Initial Reaction – What will I make?
• I am fully aware of what I want my project to be – a 2D animation created digitally via my drawing tablet
and a piece of animation software (Adobe Photoshop). My animation will be an opening to a show based
around a story of my own creation. As previously mentioned, I have create different products based
around said story, meaning I have plenty of experience in projecting the world and its characters.
• Whilst I have previously created some animations for this story, most of my experience lies in still
drawings. This means that I will need to spend extra time practicing even more different animations to
ensure my final piece is of good quality. However, because of my experience in drawing still images, I have
greatly improves my skills in line-work as well as colouring/shading. I can incorporate these into my
animations, even if I do need to drop the quality of the drawings a bit to allow for smoother animation.
• On top of my animation, I will create accompanying media to support the main product. This will include
box art, concept art and character sheets. The concept art will include both characters as well as settings,
building and objects.
• Expanding on the animations that I previously created in my free-time are the animations I made for my
previous college work. Although these were video-game based animations, they greatly helped me
improve on my animation skills as well as my knowledge of Adobe Photoshop. Thanks to this, I can focus
on creating quality animation instead of having to learn how Photoshop works. Furthermore, the fact that
the animations were based around games allowed me to experiment with differently shaped creatures
and thus a vast array of animations. In my previous project this included a floating pig head boss enemy
which attacked the player by slamming and swiping with its fists. This in conjunction with animating my
playable character, who was a human, allowed me to greatly improve my skills in animating completely
different movements.
• Because of everything mentioned above, I feel confident that I can create a quality piece of work as long
as I put the time and effort it, which I definitely plan to do.

4. Features of my Project Mind Map

5. Mind Map - Movements

6. Mind Map - Colours

7. Mind Map - Themes

8. Mind Map - Character Desings

9. Mind Map - Backgrounds

10. Pre-proposal

11. Skills Audit

12. Process of animating
Step One:
Using a blue brush, create a skeleton sketch for each frame of this portion of
my animation. This will give me a rough outline of what I want the animation
to look like.
Step Two:
Draw the outline for each frame using a black brush, Initially sketch, then
proceed to go over said sketch with a thicker brush to create smoother and
more defined outlines.
Step Three:
Add the base colour to the drawings using a different layer below the outline
layer but above the blue sketch layer. This will prevents the colour from
covering the black outline.
Step Four:
Using a faded brush, add shading to the colour layer. Ensure that the shading is
based on a consistent light source. Additionally, add shine onto the drawing
where required e.g. eyes.

13. Mood Board - Background

14. Mood Board - Background

15. Mood Board- background Analysis
This blue is used consistently for
colouring the sky in order to keep it
consistent between shots
Mixed colours of different hues are
blended together to create vibrant
backgrounds for when characters
are shown off. These colours change
for each character, with smooth
transitions between them either
through gradual colour change or
from the character covering the
screen for a short duration allowing
for a quick change that doesn’t
appear to be abrupt.
Background images will include features of a metropolis. Whilst this will
mainly consist of buildings, there will also be natural constructs e.g.
mountains in certain shots. Brighter colours will be used in the city
settings to match the rest of the animation’s colour scheme.
Furthermore, the mix of modern and traditional buildings will allow me
to incorporate mixed aesthetics into my work.

16. Mood Board – Background Analysis
Throughout my background mood board a recurring theme is
that the colours found are very vivid. Furthermore, these colours
are found on the buildings, providing strong contrast with the
darker backgrounds. This is similar to the colour scheme I used
for my videogame animation project, meaning I already have
experience creating animations in this style. I feel that by
incorporating this into my own work I can add more meaning to
my backgrounds by having them reflect certain ascepts of my
story whilst simultaneously being aesthetically appealing. One
thing I will have to make sure of is that the backgrounds do not
take attention away from the primary motif of each piece of
animation.

17. Mood Board - Creators
Creator of ‘Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure’, Hirohiki Araki ‘s
artwork has heavily changed over the 30+ years the
series has being occuring. His later artwork has
heavily influenced my own, leading to my use of
smaller eyes and more defined facial features as well
as cross-hatch shading.
Alex Hirsch is an animation series director who is most
famous for his work at Disney. Unlike most people in the
animation industry, he went straight into directing his
own series instead of working on another. This was due to
impressing the higher ups at Disney with his portfolio,
which included work towards his show that he had
created himself. This influenced me to to actually create
projects centered around my own stories as a way of
practicing and refining them whilst simultaneously getting
my own work out into the world.

18. Mood Board Analysis - Creators
• This mood board is limited in the number of images due to there only being a
couple of creators that I take inspiration from. I instead substituted putting in
pointless images by adding text discussing why I am inspired by these people. I
made sure to include some images of the actual creations themselves to give a
visual representation of what features inspire me. For example, as mentioned on
the previous slide, the later art-style of Hirohiki Araki’s work has inspired my own
art. Furthermore, by looking over his artwork from beginning to present time and
seeing how he has improved, I feel inspired to keep on working to further improve
my own work.
• Instead of adding more images of the creators’ work to this page, I decided that it
would be a better fit for the art/animation mood board that I have created, which
is found on the following slide.

19. Mood Board – Art/Animation

20. Mood Board Analysis – Art/Animation
Colour theory greatly
influences the designs of my
characters, as I can utilise
different colours to
complement each-other or
contrast depending on the
character’s relationship with
others. Furthermore, they
can be used to give an insight
into the character’s
personality alongside the
types of clothes they wear
Real life images are used as references for my artwork. This means that although my art is 2D and
digital, the drawings connect to real life objects and creatures. Furthermore, it allows me to mix
different styles together into my drawings (e.g. different patterns on different clothes)
My art-style has been heavily
influenced by the long-running
series ‘Jojo’s Bizzare
Adventure’, specifically the
more recent parts 7 & 8. This
influence includes character
proportions, eyes, colouring,
clothing and cross-hatch
shading style. I also looked at
the animated adaptation so
that I could study the different
movements created and audio
used.
Due to learning to draw
people by practicing
drawing models, my
characters’ looks and
poses are heavily
influenced by them.

21. Mood Board Analysis – Art/Animation
• To organise this mood board I seperated the different images into groups based on
whether they were model references, clothing references, hand drawn art/animation or
colour related. By doing this, I am able to quickly find any inspiration I need from the
page.
• Something I noticed about the images in the clothing section is that all the clothes have
very distinct features and patterns. These make the clothes appear more unique, an
aspect that I can incorporate into my character designs to make them stand out more.
On the topic of character design, the model images I have all have a common theme of
using interesting poses. I can also use this idea in my work to further make the
characters stand out.
• I noticed that the images in the hand drawn art section incorporate both the interesting
poses found in the models section as well as the interesting clothing designs. This gives
proof that these can work in animation, and furthermore can give me an idea of how to
transition the real life images into my own art style. Additionally, the images show the
clothing being positioned on the person realistically, e.g. moving with the character’s
momentum. Furthermore, little features such as folds and crinkles on the clothing can
be shown, something that I can use in my own animations to give the character designs
a more realistic feeling.

22. Key Influences
The colour theory wheel has heavily influenced the designs of my characters, both in terms
of how the colours on one chracters complement eachother as well as the relationship
between the colours used for different characters. Furthermore, the meaning behind the
colours as also influened my art, as I purposely had them reflect the characters’
personaties. This will also be used for when I create the coloured background in my
character introductions, as these colours will need to reflect said characters whilst
providing clear contrast between it and the character’s colours.

23. Key Influences
• As previously mentioned, the artsyle of Hirohiki Araki has been a heavy
inspiration when developing my own art –style, and thus will have common
features with my own work e.g. cross-hatch shading. I have had previous
experience with animating whilst using this artstyle so I feel that I will be
able to create a good quality animation whilst maintaining it. Furthermore,
when creating posters, character sheets and other still images I will be able
to focus more on the quality of the art rather than the animation, meaning I
can add even more detail to the drawings.
• The use of adding folds, crinkles, marks and other details to the character’s
clothing has also influenced my art, which will allow me to give the
characters’ designs more realistic aspects. Additionally, the colour shading
used by Hirohiki Araki has helped me gain an idea of how to create
smoother transitions between darker and lighter colours, something which I
could do with pencil but always struggled to do with digital art until
recently. On top of shading, the use of beta (jet black) to create darker
areas is something that I have incorporated into my work, a feature which
again obtained by researching Araki’s artwork.

24. Key Influences
• The clothing styles that I have researched have
heavily influenced the clothing worn by my
characters. This includes the type of clothings,
the design on it, the colours and how the
material works in terms of having folds, crinkles,
etc.
• The main thing I need to keep in mind when
designing my character’s clothes is to not
directly copy an article of clothing, and instead
take inspiration from it.
• My clothing research also includes accessories
such as watches. These are smaller details that
can potentially be added to designs as a means
of further expressing a character’s personality.

25. Box-Art/Posters
• My box art and posters will be created digitally using my drawing tablet and Adobe
Photoshop. When creating these, I can use already existing posters as references
for posing my own characters. I can also create completely original templates for
my drawings.
• I will make sure to heavily research existing posters as the details on them can be
incorporated into my own work e.g. how the title is positioned.
• Similar to how I plan to create my animations, I will create my posters and box-art
in steps, beginning with a rough sketch of the piece’s design. Using my own
drawings for reference, I can add my characters to the image, using real posters
and box-art for inspiration.

26. Box Art/Posters Mind Map