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