Experimental Animation

We've had a project for a few weeks based on experimental animation :3 We don't have much of a brief for this project other than, 1. we have to animate to one of six, 40 second sound clips and 2. We cannot use a computer other than for post production purposes oh and 3. It has to actually be animated of course c:

We've been told to conduct experiments into different types of animation before actually animating the 40 seconds, so this is what I've been doing the last few days c: 

So anyways, what a cool project :D I've been having a whale of a time just experimenting with whatever I have lying around the place c: My digital camera is such a battery gobbler though >.< I've gone through like £6 worth of batteries and only done a few experiments so far ^-^; Should probably invest in some rechargeable ones or something 'cause I'm pretty sure the environment hates me right now...

BUT ANYWAYS ~

I started off in a small group, experimenting with a style of animation called Pixilation, this is, in basic terms, stop motion animation but using humans instead of puppets. Norman Mclaren's animation 'Neighbours' was a very popular example of this form of animation.
 I worked with a few others in my animation group to practice with pixilation animation and we came out with the two animations below.



and

 
 
This was actually SO much fun to do xDD I really, really enjoyed it, especially the table race :3 I think they both came out really well ^-^ and small animations done with a group of friends? what isn't to love? :D

okay, then I went home and practiced with some stuff around the flat :3 I bought a mini octopus tripod so I could set up wherever I wanted and have a stable workspace. I started out using plactercine and just playing about with shapes and ripples and such with that. Plastercine was something I really enjoyed working with ^_^ But I think a few more frames for this animation could've benefited it a lot, especially at the beginning. That and I found it really difficult to get my camera to be consistent, sometimes it'd flash, sometimes it wouldn't, sometimes it was out of focus and other times the frames were crisp and clear. I think if I do choose to work in plastercine as my final Experimental medium, I'll need to work on my camera a bit >.< But for a first try, I guess it wasn't bad c: 




My second, I used mostly myself and a ring I tend to wear. I experimented with pastel pens and giving the illusion that my ring was drawing :3 There's a slight jump in it unfortunately because my camera ran out of batteries half way though and I had to replace them, taking the camera off the tripod and changing the frame a bit D: I'm still pretty pleased with this though, and would love to work on a similar technique soon, when I have batteries xD



and finally, my latest one :D I bought a cheap whiteboard and messed around with morphing animation using it c: I actually really enjoyed this, but it ended up being quite painful on my wrist, seeing as the only way I could find to photograph it properly was when it was on a vertical surface :3 I think it'd be nice to use this as my final experimental animation, but I'd like to find a way to have it on a desk or something (similar to a line tester) if I was to animate 40 seconds worth of animation in this technique :3




But yes, that's pretty much all I had to say so far c: Ima continue experimenting with different techniques ^_^ One thing I'd quite like to try again would be animation using seeds and lentils, during A level art I had to do a project advertising a healthy fast food company and did it using lentils and such on a lightbox. Unfortunately though, this lightbox was A5 in size, so was difficult to work with and I had no idea what I was doing editing wise, so it isn't at a particular frame per second 'cause I imported everything at once an painstakingly resized every frame itself instead of importing frame selection >.< So yeah, a bit jumpy, but it was a pretty fun project c:



Interestingly, I'm still using the same camera for my current experimental stuff xD Hopefully the editing will be much better now I've learned how to do time saving stuffs though x__x

Oh and finally, just as a teeny update, even though it's not relevant to Experimental Animation c: I've been practicing with digital painting a bit more, and painted my cat this morning c:

I'm not such a fan of backgrounds yet though, so I did leave that a little plain >.< but yeshh, I worked from this picture

I'm quite pleased with it c: But I can see quite a few places where improvement can be made on it c: Especially on the front paws and the back :3 But ima leave it for now and get on with other things, like my group project and experimental ^_^

but yush, this is all for now :D I'll post some of my test shots for the Sea project at some point c: I'm currently working out the best ways to get them done in flash, because Flicker/Animation Boiling is driving me crazy right now :3 But I guess this is part of the learning process ^-^

Until next timeeee 

Working with Emotion

As usual with our Motion Studies sessions, we were given a task at the end of the week/two weeks, using LAV tests to portray something in our choice of either 3D or 2D animation. I decided to use 3D this week as I want to alternate between the two.

We got feedback for all of our first semester work last week too, so I'll talk about that a little here as well c:

Anyways, our task for this week was to animate a shot of a character changing emotions, we were told to exaggerate this by putting them at different ends of the spectrum (eg. Happy to Sad or Grumpy to Excited). We were told to perform this in person and film LAV tests to work from. Our whole class went through a 6 hour acting workshop a few weeks ago to help us with LAV tests and the performance we portray in our work. This workshop was actually really fun and ended with the whole class doing a half an hour improv bench scene :3 It really helped me a lot with a sense of exaggeration when it comes to walk cycles and character, ect c:

 

Above is my LAV test, I chose to go from sad, to happy, acting as though I'd spotted someone and was happy to see them. I think I still need to work on my acting quite a bit, because this is rather cheesy xD but it helped me with what I needed it to help me with c:

 

and below is my final animation ^-^ I used the Eleven rig for this once again. I don't think I did too badly, but I think more movement in her body would've been helpful and I feel that her movement, especially in the shoulders was rather robotic at times. I think loosening up my animation, especially in 3D is something I need to work on a lot. I plan to do at least half an hour of CG animation a day and I have purchased a set of col-erase, non-photo blue pencils from Ebay (like the ones we were given at the start of the year, but I ran out) as I feel my animation is a lot looser and free in 2D when using these to start out my animations. (Interestingly it's the same in flash o-o If I begin with a light blue sketch animation, when it comes to cleaning everything up, my animation seems a lot more loose and free).
 

So yeah o: My second motion studies animation c: I'm actually really enjoying this unit and working more from observation and hopefully this unit will be another thing that will help me improve my human anatomy/animation skills as I know this is something I need to work on quite a bit. We have another motion studies session tonight, so no doubt, we'll be given another task to work with.

 

On another note, we got our feedback for all first semester work last week ^_^ My main points were that I need to work on timing, and when working with tests, I need to stop trying to tell stories and focus more on the animation c: Luckily I passed all units in first semester, so I won't need to retake anything thus far, which is good news :D But yeah, I will work on my timing and hopefully be able to improve on all points made by the end of this semester c:

also, the Iris map is on 29/30 parts now, so one more part and it'll be completed and I can put it up :D Exciting stuff c: and I also have some experimental animation and some tests for the sea project to upload at some point ^-^

 

But yes, until next time ~

 

 

Personal Projects :3

I thought I'd update everyone on some of the personal projects I was working on and have been speaking about in previous blog posts but never actually put up xD

The Iris Multi Animator Project, which I talked about in my Moar Updatesssss post is done now, or at least the deadline was extended to March the 1st and there's still 3 parts missing, so the final animation isn't up yet unfortunately, but I'll make sure I post it here as soon it gets put up c:

My part is hereee



I decided to try and experiment with camera angles to make it more interesting and I really can't wait to see this whole thing done >w< I've seen some of the other parts people have posted and It's looking awesome :D I'd have liked to add some more shadows and stuff to it, seeing as the scene is back lit, long stretching shadows in front of her, onto the grass would've been nice. But with Uni deadlines and the MAP itself having a deadline, I couldn't really afford to put that time into it, when my degree matters a lot more. The back leg on the last frame is also bothering me xD but ima stop nitpicking this and leave it now. I actually really enjoyed experimenting with the camera angles as I think it makes the scene a lot more interesting and it's just nice to bring Saffie to life in this way, as she's something I've only really drawn on paper until recently.

I also decided to practice on some digital painting techniques. I got some feedback from some artists on Deviantart who told me that I need to work on my light sources and the expressions/emotion in my characters, as they felt my artwork was very bland. I took this advice and put it upon myself to do a picture every day for a week, to the lyrics of the song 'paper tigers' by Owl City. I wanted to work on both the feedback I had been given by them and also improve on my digital painting techniques. Trying to speed up the process, as it takes me hours upon hours currently to do one painting and I need to become more efficient when drawing and colouring for animation :3

With my first few drawings, I concentrated mainly on the lightsource. Giving all of these pieces quite a strong light source to work from :3 I used my character Saffie again for this (I should probably get practicing drawing humans again soon >.<)

 In this one, the light source was the fire, so blended lots of yellows into it, I wanted the style of painting to be quite soft, so I drew my line art in brown instead of black so that it wasn't so harsh against the colouring. I chose to do the background without using lines, to keep with the soft feel of it.

 Once again, another strong light source, this one from above. I think maybe I should've put a bit more shading underneath Saffie, in relation to the light source from above.

 I wanted to focus mainly on the emotion of this piece, so I left the background out of this. I also had a light source, in the form of a small candle.

 My final two lyrics pictures were both done without a specific light source, I'm no so fond of these ones, mostly because it was difficult to find where to put shadows in a diffused light space.

Before finishing the last one, I put some of the pieces together with the song I was working on, maybe at some point I'll have drawn out all of the lyrics, hey, it'd be good practice c: but I don't have any plans to work on it again until the summer 'cause other commitments ^-^

 

 But yushh owo Here is another update from me c: I have some more uni-related stuff to put up soon, but I thought I'd update with personal stuff first :3 I've been practicing drawing humans on a daily basis too, sketching daily to try and better learn human anatomy as it is something I struggle with >.< (quadrupeds y u so much easier to draw? xD)

But yess, until next timeeee ~

The Sea Project: An Introduction

With the new semester, we have started a new project, this time working in groups. Our task in groups is to all plan an animate one of 11 rescue interviews, recorded by a journalism student at our university. Each of these interviews is around 40 -60 seconds in length and explains rescue experiences whilst surfing.

I grouped up with the team I did Cinematography with (Katie, Beverly and Georgi) although unfortunately Chris was removed from this course, so we're one man down (he was going to be our 2D effects artist, so we'll have to make do without him)

Our group was given interview #5 and can be found below. We have around a month and a half for this project and it will be something we have to work on over easter. Our group has been meeting up twice a week to plan and come up with ideas for this, from conceptualisation to the final piece eventually. We are also working closely with our lecturer Kathy to ensure we are taking all the neccisary production steps. I think it'd be interesting to see how we function in a group when animation is involved and how we'll handle our roles and putting our ideas together to make a final piece. 

Week 1 -

Week 1 we spent mostly talking about possible idea's for our project. We talked about the style of the characters, possible programs we could use for the project along with other things, like possible shots. We decided to go away and each storyboard our visualisation for the project, roughly. Each frame on an A6 piece of paper. Our plan was to then, look at all our ideas together and decide which ones would work well together, trying to incorperate all of our plans into it somewhere.

Week 2 -

We met up once again at the library beanbag area and bluetacked all of our storyboard layouts to the walls. We looked at all of these and discussed which would work well together and which weren't so likely to work.

Above is the wall with all of our storyboards on (with gaps for the ones we chose). We layed out our chosen pieces on another wall and once we had all agreed on this, we gave them to Beverly to put them in our chosen style, in the form of a complete storyboard.

So far the project seems to be going alright. All of us will be conducting tests now, to see what works and what does not in terms of animation. From our discussions so far, the most likely course of action will be that our final piece will be a combination of frame by frame 2D in flash with CGI water and waves. You'll probably be seeing some tests from me soon :3

Also, whilst on the subject of the sea. For motion studies we were all given an assignment to animate The Sea using whatever medium we wished. Below is mine, animated using the water tool in Paint Tool Sai, done on different layers and then all saved seperately and pieced together in Sony Vegas.