André's comic Blog

Today in class, we were asked to plan primary research for our main project. Because my main project is about animation, I will need to ask questions to people about it. For this I have 2 Main Ideas: Interview Questionnaire For these, the questions would be similar, if not equal for both options. The questions will tell me information about what people think about the project I'm making. The questions need to have info about: People that like manga or not; What genre people like in animation; If they like robots. With this, I started to write down some questions: What style of animation do you like? When was the last time you've watch an animation? What is your favourite genre in animation? What's your favourite cartoon/Anime (if none you can say "I don't know") What type of characters you like? Something you don't like in animation. These questions will alow me to know what people would like out of an animation, and if they would like my animation or not....

During today's class, we discussed different artworks that changed the world. We had to think about how our project would in turn affect the world. What influence could your project have in the real world? When  I started my project, I wanted to take something from the Japanese culture and make it into anime. There I found out that they love Robots and there embrace AI. Most people in Europe or in America think that robots or AI can be dangerous. My project will teach people about AI. Most films or television series always make AI seem like a very bad thing for humans, and I wanted to change that.  On japan, people take robots as a good thing for their population. They think that a robot or an AI can do specific tasks that a human couldn't do. This sounds bad at first because people think that "Robots and AI will take over the world", but that's not true. Robots and AI can't have one thing that humans have, which is imagination.  This means that jobs that woul...

 For my first research about manga with robot character, I couldn't skip one of the most well know robot in the manga world, Astro Boy.  (Fandom, n.d.) Astro Boy, known in Japan as "Mighty Atom", is a character created by Osamu Tezuka and the main character of all the Astro Boy series. This character is very well known for being a robot able to express human expressions. (Fandom, n.d.) The character was conceived in 1952 and the themes that animation deals with are still relevant today (artificial intelligence, dangers related to technological evolution, among others). Astro Boy is also an animation that deals with serious themes, which are for children in an intelligent way. For example: addressing the issue of the death of a child by replacing a robot that does not grow.) (Swidlicka, n.d.) Tezuka was a fan of the early Disney films of animation in 2D, and he wanted to do something like that. The first sketches of his characters were with a similar Disney style on the th...

The drawing:

In order to be able to draw a character in the Japanese style, I considered it important to train how to make expressions on an anime character. For that, I went to see a website that gave me the knowledge to start doing some sketches of the character. The document that I saw was written by Gvaat (n.d.) work as a guide and was where I learned some important expressions for my character. This is the result of my work: As Gvaat (n.d.) says to be able to draw anime we have to have a lot of practice and we must memorize some facial features, so as not to run the risk of not losing the identity that could bring them closer to a Japanese drawing. We must work these facial features as a set, knowing how to combine eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, face and be able to show what the character is feeling: anger, sadness, happiness, confusion, among other emotions. According to this guide, we must work with elements such as The main facial features, The silhouette of the head, The camera view, The hie...

This development is focused on the character design and training if I can draw it or not. This is because I need to make sure that I can animate this character, and for that, I need to draw it multiple times. First I wanted to make my character have multiple roles as a robot. I thought of  "main jobs" for a robot and see if they would work. The first one (from the left) is the "Jet" mode. This mode would allow the character to fly on earth or on any planet with enough atmosphere. Here are some images I was inspired on: (The Times website, 2020) (Quora, 2018) The second one is for combat purposes. It has a rifle gun that is similar to a sniper and a blade. It also has extra armor so it can survive longer in shot. Here's the image that inspired me for the rifle: (New Atlas, 2014) The third one is for heavy lifting, related to construction purposes. And here are the images that made me to this drawing: (Istock image) (CAT, n.d.) And the last one is also related to ...

This week I had a tutorial with my tutor, where I signed off on my project. I can now start further researching and analyzing everything in more depth to develop my project.

During our second session of the week, we were asked to do a development exercise to help us examine and look closely into the final project that we will be creating this term. For this, I needed to do sketches of my work and study what I will be drawing for the next weeks.  I had a small plan about the sketches I wanted to make to see which ideas were better or not.  First sketch: With these drawings I realized that I could do some slight changes to the character and keep some from the original design:  - The character will be a female character. This change was that it was more suitable for the type of character she will be. She's delicate and agile and, because it's a robot, will follow all the orders from the humans. I also wanted to try a female character. - I saw that the design of the character worked and it would be perfect for an anime-type animation. - I tried to give her a normal chest like women do, but it didn't make much sense because she's a robot and it...

This semester I decided to think about the themes that could be part of my research, themes that would help me organize the path I want to take on my project. I started by doing research on the topic that I chose, which is very broad, to think about what I should focus on. As I have already outlined the ideas for my argument, now I have to think if it is appropriate and if the characters are in agreement with what is the anime. At this point, I wanted to think about some themes that are important to my project and I did the first research on them. I will have to research more about each of these themes and think about what can be really interesting and useful for me. I am aware that I still need to think about some themes, such as music/sound in the context of anime. The world of anime is something extraordinary and I know that I will not be able to know everything in such a short time about anime. But I will focus on what is main and suitable for my project. Built two interactive mur...

As an artist, there are multiple ways to express me. I always like the work of art that has a lot of thought to it and it clearly shows a good amount of work has been put in. Even if an artwork isn't appealing to me, I will respect the time worked off the piece. But when the artwork is not only lazy but also without any definitive meaning, then it doesn't achieve the minimum level to an artwork. Meet "The Comedian" by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. This piece of work is considered by the artist as a joke compared to many artworks, and he isn't wrong. This is a joke for many people that see this, but nothing else. It was reported that the artist said this work was up to $120,000. He has 3 of them, the 3rd going up to $150.000.  A reporter by the name of James Grebey (2019) said the following:  "On the one hand, the hundred-thousand-dollar banana duct-taped to a wall is Good. People always like to dismiss modern art as simplistic, often remarking, “I could m...

For my main project, I need to have some understanding of Japanese culture. This is because, by getting a better understanding of how Japanese people are, I can my animation very accurate. I will also go to touch on the Manga and Anime aspect, thus making part of their culture and it will be important to me. Japanese People: Japanese people seem to be very equal to each other. They are very homogenous compared to other populations in the world. This goes back to a time when Japan was isolated from other countries after WW2. A good example is Japanese workers have associated themselves with the company they work for a businessman will introduce himself as "Nissan no Takahashi-san" (I am Nissan's, Mr. Takahashi). By extension, we might get the idea that a Japanese person subordinates the self to the objectives of the society. (Inside Japan, n.d.) All of this to say that Japanese people, compared to most people from Europe and America, have a very big difference. Good exampl...

As in the previous semesters, he was asked to present SMART Objective for the project of this term. The moment when we decide our goals is important because it makes us reflect on the project as a whole and on what we intend to achieve within a realistic vision. In this way, I specify my SMART objectives: S- Specific What do I want to create? I want to do an animation that has the themes of Space and Robots together. The style of my drawing will have an Oriental way, more specifically from Japan, and I will be using the Manga style for my animation. The animation will be 12 fps and around 1-2 minutes. With that, I will also do some 3D scenes for posters with paper, cardboard, etc. The animation will have the story that I've told in my last post: https://andrecomicblog.blogspot.com/2021/04/tell-me-story.html All this will be a target to teens between 12-16, meaning that the animation, in general, is family-friendly but children can be confused about the complex story. Unlike the las...

In this blog post, I will be explaining the story of the animation I will be doing for this term. In my last post, I've talked about my main ideas for my animation, more specifically, I wanted to get my main character, who is a robot, to integrate three essential aspects: (i) Japanese culture; (ii) the space theme; (iii) the manga style. The animation will be 2D because on the one hand I've already got the 2D animation concept correctly and I'm familiar with it, on the other hand, using 3D software like blender has shown that my computer needs to have more space and power to render (and stop motion would be more time consuming and I don't want to risk it). Hybrid Project: or "ハイブリッドプロジェクト" A robot named 小さなうさぎ (Chīsana Usagi) has a mission ordered by humans to go to a specific planet to get a specific resource. To save enough space for the resources and for the robot to live, they had to go for a small spaceship. In his journey, he will carry his essentials to...

  For this project, I was presented with 3 main themes as in the last semester. In this term, the themes are: -Oriental surprise -Primitivism -Black In view of these three themes, and their presentation in class, I made a reflection on what I would like to work on. So, I chose Oriental Surprise, for several reasons: (i) it is a theme that is not similar to previous projects; (ii) the Black theme considers that it was similar to the term 2 projects (I refer to the animation "Pandemic life" that I made; (iii) I did not feel motivated to work with the Primitivism theme, because I did not identify with it. Important note: I will be changing my project from 3D to 2D due to the limitations of my computer. In the last little animation I did (self-portrait), there were 250 frames to render and the video had 24 fps, which makes the video around 8 seconds. My computer did not respond well to Blender's massive, high-quality frames and took too long, and was using more battery than ...

In the online class, we were asked for this Ice breaker to make a 3D portrait. For this, I decided to make a 3D model in Blender to test the program to see if it will work. My idea was to make me in my cartoon form but with a space suit. To do a 3D model, you need a reference for your character so it's easy to model from your drawings. For this, I made a drawing of my character with a front view and a side view for easy modeling.  The pose that this character is doing is called an A pose, this pose is used for modeling characters that you want to animate, the reason being to have less distortion on the body when bending any part of the body, for example, arms, legs. knees, shoulders, etc. I also decided to make my character low poly, to make the process quick, and to give the character an old-style, like old PS (PlayStation) characters. Because I was very new to the program, I followed a guy named Grant Abbitt that has good videos explaining how to do characters in a simple wa...