Inspirations and Viewing

21st September 2017

Inspirations and viewing

Inspector gadget

After looking over images from Inspector Gadget and my own animation, I realise that I've taken a lot more inspiration form the cartoon then I had thought. I'd looked at it because I did like the idea of concealing the antagonist's identity before the end and I thought Inspector Gadget did this really well with Dr Claw so I did it with my own character. Little did I know that they also even looked the same. I didn't remember what Dr Claw looked like when I went onto the create your own character site.

I also had trouble animating lava so I took to the internet to look for tips when I came across the gif above which helped with the layering and movement of the liquid, splashes and the flakes of ash and sparks flying around. What really helped me was the use of multiple layers for the lava and the fact that the layers are going in different directions and at different speeds.

I needed a setting for the antagonist in my animation too which is why I looked online for a good castle to use. As I'm not the greatest artist, I ended up tracing over some parts of the image but in a more cartoon-y style and used my own colour palette. I was worried about perhaps getting in trouble for copying an image so I decided to find one that was available for free use and even then I tried to change it to my own style, expanded on the image and changed the colours while still keeping the parts I liked (e.g. the clouds, pathway and the actual castle).

For the journey of my character cone, I decided to use a montage. Inspired by films like Ice age, El Dorado, Shrek and other animations using montages, I thought it was a good way to present a long and strenuous adventure/journey. You can also see, I've subconsciously taken some inspiration from Shrek's lava bridge scene.