YR 1 ASSESSMENT WEEK 2, TASK 1 DIGITAL SKILLS - TOKYO PLASTIC

ARTIST RESEARCH

Tokyo Plastic

The first animation example created by Tokyo Plastic is called 'Little Fella' is about a dog that does random silly stuff, out of all the individual animations that are created for this character I chose the one where he gets struck by lighting and becomes a demon. I really like how there's a serious of the same animation all with a individual concept or them throughout, after finding this example I saw numerous animations of little fella that would also be an excellent example to annotate. I am interested to find out why Tokyo Plastic came up with each theme or story for each animation for little fella, for example if each one had a specific purpose but I think its a strong and very clever way to advertise a product, or promote an animation by creating a series just like a previous animation created for Fox radio station.

I love the style, it seems very over the top and exaggerates a lot about certain elements of detail; for example the character has an extremely large head, eyes and ears compared to the tiny legs and body. The use of 3D sculpting in the animation is excellent, the detail within the model is great as well as the texture. The use of lighting and atmosphere is superb when the creature is struck by lighting and starts to create suspense by morphing into this demon looking creature.

The second example created by Tokyo Plastic was created for Zune, I love this animation, although the concept seems pretty hard to understand and there isn't any information about the reason for the animation or what is is advertising/promoting but the animation consists of a creature that only has a mouth, after wondering if meets another creature that has plenty of eyes but no mouth, therefore it shares an eye allowing that space remaining to be used as a mouth. Essentially the whole animation is about sharing. I think the art style is great and the characters are quite cute, the mood and pace allows the atmosphere to stand out more but help collaborate with the animation by using lighting techniques and creating shadows, the noises and background sounds are high pitched sounds that help give he impression of the characters being cute, friendly and non aggressive.

As the website shows the original sketches of the creatures I would of presumed already that the character was created digitally in software such as Cinema 4D or Maya, the elements and characteristics of each creatures seem pretty basic to create, not many parts in the design of the character but that is why the atmosphere and mood within the animation is just as important.

The final example of Tokyo Plastic's work is an animation that as created as a commercial for Nike, the animation was made to raise awareness and promote Nike's latest footwear. What i find the most fascinating pat of this project that Tokyo Plastic took part in was that the animation wasn't the final goal, they went above and beyond with this brief and instead of just creating a commercial they used their animation and illustrations to create real models of the characters which then appeared in the stores. The animation itself is great, its comedic, it attracts your attention and doesn't bore you with information, they have cleverly involved the best and main aspects of their new running shoes throughout each stage of the animation, while the commercial itself is hilarious.

I think the production of this animation would be quite difficult compared to some o the previous i have researched; the 3D character and elements could possibly have been created in programs like Cinema 4D, Maya, 3Ds Max and then finalised within After Effects, as well as that the sounds and background music would have to be in sync with the animation in order for it to work successfully. The texturing on the charsets are exquisite, I think their goal was to make the character look and have elements that are as close to the original footwear as possible, the lighting throughout the animation shows the reflective parts and illuminates the textures throughout the commercial.