Sea Test Shot

Ok so this little test shot of how I would animate the sea is an experiment with Smarties. It did not turn out the way I had planned in my head, which would have looked a lot better than what I ended up with. I forgot to put in the up and down motion of the waves and even though I did physically animate the smarties moving across it just looks like I've tweened it on the computer, which was not the look I was going for at all. I still think Smarties could work but I just need to improve my method.

Life Drawing

This week's selection:

How To Pick Up A Rock...

Our first task in our new motion studies module was to animate a character lifting up a heavy object. We were shown in class how the shape of the back is very important to describe the weight, as is the preparation the character does before they pick up the weight. I recorded myself picking up a heavy bag to use as reference material, showcasing my (incredible) acting skills...

I love doing this 2D animation and I improved as I went along in this project as I started to draw a lot more loosely as I went through it. I did have some issues though... I ran out of animation paper so ended up using regular paper about half way through, which was really annoying when I came to photograph all my drawings as I couldn't line them up on a peg bar... so the animation does flicker quit a bit, but I don't think it really matters. My character gets larger as the animation progresses and the rock gets smaller, so I really need to watch for consistency next time. The boils I used on some of my holds didn't work as I tried just moving the paper slightly rather than altering the drawing, but this just gave a kind of weird effect. The actual lifting part needs some more drawings to give it more pauses.  

Despite these things I'm pleased with this as I do think you can tell the rock is heavy and I was a bit worried about animating a more complex character than Cubey, but in some ways it was actually easier.

Anyways here is the finished animation!

Learning From The Masters...

This week we were asked to copy some animation backgrounds from this awesome blog: animationbackgrounds.blogspot.co.uk 

By drawing these out I realised just how much detail was put into these scenes, such as all the railings surrounding the houses in the distance in the street scene from 101 Dalmations. I enjoyed drawing the interiors more, especially the 101 Dalmations one, as I liked drawing in all the random items scattered about Roger's house.

101 Dalmations

 101 Dalmations

 Aladdin

 Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

The Black Couldron

Life Drawing

I went to both life drawing sessions today, which I found really helpful. We did some longer poses too, which I like as it gives me time to build up some tone. Some of my proportions are pretty terrible, mainly in the last image.... yehhhhhh not really to sure what happened with the head.....   

First Ever Showreel

After a very stressful last couple of weeks I have finished my showreel, ready for the dreaded assessment. All the animations I've done on this course are in there, backed by some mighty fine music. I'm not pleased with this as I was unable to get the picture quality any better so its all a bit pixelated and I ran out of time so didn't get to go back into all my Maya files and add in cameras and get fancy angles and camera movement going. Next time I'm definitely going to time manage better and produce a showreel that I'm actually happy with. It turned out better than I thought it would though, but then I did have very low expectations.

Kley Final Concept Pieces

So as I promised I've uploaded my three final concept drawings from the Kley project. I was trying to create different atmospheres in each image, which I think I've been successful in. But the spider one is not as terrifying as I would have liked, so it may have benefited from being watercolour and pen rather than merely pen, to get more dense areas of black into it. Some really high contrast lighting might have helped too.

Pirates Animatic

So here it finally is, my animatic, in all its glory! I had quite a lot of fun with the sound effects and I'm sure you'll love my awesome attempt at voice acting (this is sarcasm, just so you know) but overall I'm pleased. Next time I won't shade my drawings, or at least not with pen anyway, as it takes too long, so if I got rid of that aspect I would have time to do more drawings so that the animatic would flow better.

Kley Project

Hello there, these images are some of my sketchbook drawings from the Kley project, where the brief was to get up close and personal with plant life and draw things that you would normally tread on under foot. These drawings will then serve as reference for 3 concept drawings which I will upload here in due course, where tiny characters will be placed within the plant life, so that they are out of scale with their environments. 

More Constraints In Maya

Another exercise to show the use of constraints. I did this task much quicker than the block push as I'd learnt from the mistakes I made last time. I'm pleased with the way the character slides their fingers under the block to pick it up, as I think it looks quite natural, also the timing on when she drops the block is working nicely.
The panting she does after dropping the block looks quite weird, I don't think it's too clear what she's doing. The main thing I was trying to achieve with this was to make the block seem really heavy and I'm pretty sure it does...... so success!!