Experimental Test Numero Uno

This test is for my experimental animation module. We have been given a choice of music, each track lasting 1 minute, which we have to create an animation for. Computers are NOT to be used except for putting it all together at the end. The animation needs to work well with the music and narrative is optional.

This first test I did is of ink. I soaked the paper in water and then applied the ink in various ways. Sometimes the ink's unpredictability played out in my favour, but other times it just looked a mess and eventually the paper got too wet and did that annoying thing where it all disintegrates and you get little bobbles everywhere. Maybe if I did it on a non porous surface it would work better. I liked the pink swirl and the black splashes that cover the screen towards the end, perhaps because they're quite dramatic movements. Also, at the end the wet black ink was so glossy it became reflective and my face and the camera become clearly visible in it. I thought this was quite a cool effect, but you would want something appropriate to reflect in it (so not my face) but that would be pretty difficult to do. 

I don't think I'll be using this in my animation as the ink was too hard to control and there wasn't anything in there that I was particularly impressed with. 

Punchiness...

The main piece of feedback I got from last semester's showreel was that my animations aren't punchy enough. I'm good with the slow actions, but when something fast happens I'm putting too many frames in and this makes the animation lose its spark. So I have, effectively, been creating unnecessary work for myself. So in light of this, I went back to my last animation, the emotions one, and changed the fast actions (the jumps and the twirl) onto ones instead of twos and deleted some frames so that it's speeded up. I think the twirl definitely works better speeded up, but the jump looks worse, but I think that's because I haven't made him stay in the air long enough when he reaches the climax of the jump, not because it shouldn't have been sped up.
The video below shows first the original slow action and then the speeded up one, so that you guys can compare for yourselves which works better.

Adaption Project

The Adaption Project involved choosing an illustrated book, game or image that had a distinctive visual style and adapting it into an animation background which contains secondary animation and a camera move. It's going to be created on Toonboom which I've never used before, but I'm quite excited to learn as it's what Disney use as well as The Simpsons. I chose the game Machinarium as I love the slightly dark, steam punk look it carries, with its inky line qualities and watercolour washes. 

                                                        Image from Machinarium

The next step was to design my own version and then separate it into layers on Photoshop so that when they're all placed in Toonboom it will give the illusion of depth and 3D and the camera can track in and look as though it's actually moving through space. So each layer had to fill the whole screen so that when the camera goes behind a layer there isn't just blank space. I added more layers than were in the original image as I wanted it to have more depth. I created my version by hand with pen and watercolour and then scanned it in.

    Outline of my background design 

Coloured version of my background

We then had to plan our secondary animation by producing an animation layout, which is basically where you give stage directions for what you want to happen in the shot. The next step will be to put all my layers in Toonboom, so expect an update on this project soon!

Animation layout

Puppets!!

Here is the result of 2 hours spent in an incredibly awesome stop motion workshop. I was working with Hannah and Rhys so we each got our own puppet to animate (mine was the short one on the right with the crazy hair). I'd never got to see a stop motion puppet up close before, as when I've done stop motion it's just been using characters I made out of plasticine, and I found it surprising how kind of solid they were, with some of the joints needing a fair amount of pressure to move them. This is definitely a challenging medium to work in, however there's just something really unique about stop motion that sets it apart from other animation styles and I definitely want to do more of it.

Life Drawing

We got a lot more longer poses in life drawing this week, which I found way better than the normal 1 minute poses we usually get.

Animating Emotions

This week's motion studies task was to have a character go from one emotion to its opposite emotion. I chose to go from sadness to happiness. 

We had to try and create a performance and were told we could either be over the top or subtle in the character's acting. I decided to go for a more subtle approach as my previous weight lift animation was fairly over the top.

Here's my LAV (the fancy new word we have for reference video):

I wanted to try out doing a sad walk as up until now I've only animated a 'vanilla' walk and WOW walks are hard!! I think I did pretty well on the first two steps, but then I thought it would be a good idea to emphasize the down position more (I'd noticed that in a sad walk there's very little up and down movement, but the biggest change is on the down position, so I thought, hey i might as well emphasize it!) and this didn't work out too well. It just looks a bit weird. I probably should have done more to emphasize the dragging of the feet, as this is probably the most defining characteristic of a sad walk. The sigh could've also used more frames to make it bigger and smoother.

Buuuuuuut I was really happy with how the jump and the twirl came out, as I have never turned a character round before and I was surprised I pulled it off! This was also the first time I've put facial features on a character. For the sad walk I drew the features on on a separate run, but this was difficult and more time consuming than just drawing it on when i drew each figure. The facial features definitely add a lot to the character though.

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