Once again, hello everyone! :D
It's not been long since I last blogged, but today was the final deadline date for a lot of our work that we've been doing since October :3 So yes, just a little bit of stress and I haven't slept properly in about 3 days, but everything is done now! Which is great :3 Relief, all of the relief!
For the sake of my blog labels and organization, I'll probably make this post a 'summing up' post and then go into more detail on my 3D work and sketchbook work at as later date.
Two of the things that were due today were my dreaded, cheesy, Ranger Rick storyboard animatic and a show reel, including all my 2D and 3D animation practice, as well as things I had done in my free time.
Below is my finished showreel, this includes pretty much almost all of my animation done in the last 4 months of University (or at least the ones I had to put in/the ones I'm happy with xD)
I will at some point explain more technical details in terms of the 3D stuff not yet on my blog (The lipsync, pushing, lifting and the walking animations and my personal ones that I haven't spoken about before)
Another thing that was set for hand in today was the Ranger Rick Animatic, that I had posted (cheesy) clips of, in an earlier blog post. Here is the completed animatic, I tried to make it a little more serious than before, toning down the music and such....I'd like to think it's a type of lovable cheesy now, rather than a facepalm, embarrassing cheesyness.
I was planning to add a few more inbetween frames to this animatic, but ended up running out of time in the end, I think it does pretty well at serving it's purpose, shot type wise though :3
But yeah, this is what I have been up to lately! You'll be seeing more Digital 2D work from me at some point or another as I have challenged one of my friends in second year to a 10 second animation battle next month xDD So I'll be putting a lot of effort into making something cool, frame by frame in paint tool SAI. I also have another MAP, to the song Iris, to complete, so yes, exciting things!
I shall see you in ze next blog post! Which will include some of the sketchbook work I have done for as recent project we were set, based on the work of Heindrich Kley :3
See you then!
Showing posts with label Paper Animation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paper Animation. Show all posts
Friday, 25 January 2013
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
A character take
Some more Paper Animation over here :D
This time we were asked to animate cubey reacting to something off screen by doing a cartoon take (as commonly seen in old cartoons, particularly the looney tunes)
I chose to have cubey react to a cake at the other end of the screen and to react to a never ending drop which was offscreen and placed just infront of the cake.
I thumbnailed and planned this first, all but the cake part at the end, which I added on because I thought it'd be a nice way to conclude the scene. When animating, I stuck to the principles of animation we were taught, as with the previous cubey animations. This took 77 frames to animate and I captured it using the line tester (Which unfortunately was having a few focussing problems when I captured with it, so my line test is not as crisp as my previous ones sadly D:)
So yush, my test is below
This time we were asked to animate cubey reacting to something off screen by doing a cartoon take (as commonly seen in old cartoons, particularly the looney tunes)
I chose to have cubey react to a cake at the other end of the screen and to react to a never ending drop which was offscreen and placed just infront of the cake.
I thumbnailed and planned this first, all but the cake part at the end, which I added on because I thought it'd be a nice way to conclude the scene. When animating, I stuck to the principles of animation we were taught, as with the previous cubey animations. This took 77 frames to animate and I captured it using the line tester (Which unfortunately was having a few focussing problems when I captured with it, so my line test is not as crisp as my previous ones sadly D:)
So yush, my test is below
Until next (very soon) blog post o-o;
-Char
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
It's been a week, have another blog post :3
First off, it's come to my attention that I've put absolutely no life drawing on this blog o-o Despite it being named, 'life drawing, ramblings, digital animation and much more' tonight will be my third life drawing session since being at university, so I feel I should get on that. I shall, as soon as I get my camera from back home, photograph what I've done and post it up here ^-^
Life drawing is something I need to practice a lot, as I don't feel very confident with drawing the human form yet (fine art and fine art specialisms at A level were quite a struggle for me) However, practice makes perfect and I've already seen improvement from just my first and second session here, so hopefully this upward curve will continue with my sessions.
Anyways ~
Onto the main subject of this blog post :D This random paper animated cube guy :3
Two weeks ago, we were given the task of animating a cube character jumping from one spot to another and then reacting to something off screen. This character was not allowed to have any feet, fingers or features and this task was to test our ability to convey emotions in simple characters.
I did this task using animation paper and a line tester, much in the way I had done my two 2D ball animations.
I decided my reaction would be for my character to wave. This task also allowed me to practice some of the basic principles of animation we were taught. Over the course of the past couple of weeks, we have been taught some vital principles of animation and have been allowed to check these out through projects such as my heavy and light ball animation. We were taught about the persistance of vision, frame rates and so far have learned 6 of the main principles related to animation.
1. Timing
2. Mass/Weight/Resistance
3. Stretch and Squash (I talked about these three in my bouncing balls post)
and then
4. Anticipation
5. Overlap
6. Emotion
The three principles I will be practicing in this cube animation.
Anticipation is pretty self explanitory, making a character anticipate something, be this walking, jumping or anything else. We were taught never to animate anything from a static, standing position and always make a character anticipate the movement (aka making a character lean back a little before begining to walk forwards)
Overlap is pretty much the opposite of anticipation, making a character move over a finish point a little bit, then making it stop, instead of just putting it into a stopping position to begin with. This is used to help emphasise movement, something considered very important in animation.
Emotion is how a character shows body language, it was explained to us that it is difficult for audiences to empasise with a character that isn't being expressive with body language.
We were told about a technique called the 'sillohette technique' which is used to make sure your characters are being expressive enough, it involves removing colour from an animation in order to see whether you can still tell what is going on from the movement.
Finally, exageration is another way to show Emotion, animation is almost always exaggerated and larger than life asnd without it being this way, it'd be pretty plain and boring.
Anyway, now i've gotten that down, lets talk about what i've done for this task! :D
I actually attempted this task twice, just because my first try I was really, really not happy with. It looked fine when I was working with it on the light box, however, when it came to actually line testing it, it really didn't look right at speed. (I hadn't animated the jump high enough and it ended up just looking not very smooth)
My second attempt (rubbed out most frames and re-did the jump part) I am much more pleased with
You can see this one below
So yush :D Two animations showing a reaction to something off screen o-o I shall see you all in my next blog post :D
Life drawing is something I need to practice a lot, as I don't feel very confident with drawing the human form yet (fine art and fine art specialisms at A level were quite a struggle for me) However, practice makes perfect and I've already seen improvement from just my first and second session here, so hopefully this upward curve will continue with my sessions.
Anyways ~
Onto the main subject of this blog post :D This random paper animated cube guy :3
Two weeks ago, we were given the task of animating a cube character jumping from one spot to another and then reacting to something off screen. This character was not allowed to have any feet, fingers or features and this task was to test our ability to convey emotions in simple characters.
I did this task using animation paper and a line tester, much in the way I had done my two 2D ball animations.
I decided my reaction would be for my character to wave. This task also allowed me to practice some of the basic principles of animation we were taught. Over the course of the past couple of weeks, we have been taught some vital principles of animation and have been allowed to check these out through projects such as my heavy and light ball animation. We were taught about the persistance of vision, frame rates and so far have learned 6 of the main principles related to animation.
1. Timing
2. Mass/Weight/Resistance
3. Stretch and Squash (I talked about these three in my bouncing balls post)
and then
4. Anticipation
5. Overlap
6. Emotion
The three principles I will be practicing in this cube animation.
Anticipation is pretty self explanitory, making a character anticipate something, be this walking, jumping or anything else. We were taught never to animate anything from a static, standing position and always make a character anticipate the movement (aka making a character lean back a little before begining to walk forwards)
Overlap is pretty much the opposite of anticipation, making a character move over a finish point a little bit, then making it stop, instead of just putting it into a stopping position to begin with. This is used to help emphasise movement, something considered very important in animation.
Emotion is how a character shows body language, it was explained to us that it is difficult for audiences to empasise with a character that isn't being expressive with body language.
We were told about a technique called the 'sillohette technique' which is used to make sure your characters are being expressive enough, it involves removing colour from an animation in order to see whether you can still tell what is going on from the movement.
Finally, exageration is another way to show Emotion, animation is almost always exaggerated and larger than life asnd without it being this way, it'd be pretty plain and boring.
Anyway, now i've gotten that down, lets talk about what i've done for this task! :D
I actually attempted this task twice, just because my first try I was really, really not happy with. It looked fine when I was working with it on the light box, however, when it came to actually line testing it, it really didn't look right at speed. (I hadn't animated the jump high enough and it ended up just looking not very smooth)
My second attempt (rubbed out most frames and re-did the jump part) I am much more pleased with
You can see this one below
So yush :D Two animations showing a reaction to something off screen o-o I shall see you all in my next blog post :D
Friday, 19 October 2012
A new task - Bouncing Ball Animations
New blog post, yush!
Okay, here goes! (I Still haven't decided on formal or informal, so you've got a kinda weird hybrid style I guess o-o)
Throughout the last two weeks we have been given a variety of tasks relating to making a ball bounce. The bouncing ball is a very good way to warm up with animation and helped me a lot when practicing timing. We were taught how to animate both on paper and on Autodesk's 3D software, Maya. I created both 'heavy' and 'light' ball animations using both these techniques.
Paper animation is typically done using a peg bar (a small strip of plastic which slots onto a light box, this has ridges in that fit onto paper, helping make sure you are keeping everything in the same place), Animation Paper (A thinner type of paper with holes punched along the bottom, to slot onto a peg bar), A light box (to help you see the drawing on the previous few pieces of paper) and finally a clutch pencil for drawing (a normal pencil could be used for this too, but I find a clutch pencil is more convinent due to there being no need to sharpen it).
After the main animation is done, using the peg bar and the animation paper on a light box, traditional animation needs to be captured before it can be made into a video. This can be done using a line tester (a camera suspended above a lit area) and a program to piece together the images captured. I used Stop Motion Pro for this process, playing both my animations at 25FPS and exporting them as a .WMV file.
As far as the animation itself goes, I found the light ball much easier to animate than the heavy ball. I enjoyed using the squash and stretch for the light ball and found that with the heavy ball (which would probably roll) it was incredibly difficult to maintain the shape of the ball (keeping it just an outline also) and make it seem like it was 'rolling' instead of just sliding along the floor. I think this task would've been much easier if I had some form of patterning on my heavy ball, such as a line around the middle or a star (I could show this rolling).
Below is my light, ball animation. I am quite pleased with the outcome of this one, I think I possibly however, may have used a little too much stretch and squash in some parts (particularly the opening fall of the ball as it is very noticable), could've done with giving it more of an arch on the first bounce and finally I think the last bounce went a little too much to the right, making my ball somewhat look like it had jumped itself, rather than it was reacting to physics.
Secondly my heavy ball, I am less pleased with this, mostly due to the 'rolling' as I mentioned above but I'm also not sure what has happened with the volume here (the ball seems to start off a little larger than it stretches in the first fall part). I'm not so sure about the physics of a heavy object and probably should've gone somewhere and watched things drop, so being honest, I'm not sure how well I have adheared to real life motion with this one, but I don't think it looks too out of place, so I'm going to hope I got this right xD
...annnnd this blog post has turned out to be crazy long o_O So I guess I'll post up and talk about my 3D stuff in a new post to avoid giving you all wall of text syndrome :3 So yee, until next post >:3
Okay, here goes! (I Still haven't decided on formal or informal, so you've got a kinda weird hybrid style I guess o-o)
Throughout the last two weeks we have been given a variety of tasks relating to making a ball bounce. The bouncing ball is a very good way to warm up with animation and helped me a lot when practicing timing. We were taught how to animate both on paper and on Autodesk's 3D software, Maya. I created both 'heavy' and 'light' ball animations using both these techniques.
Paper animation is typically done using a peg bar (a small strip of plastic which slots onto a light box, this has ridges in that fit onto paper, helping make sure you are keeping everything in the same place), Animation Paper (A thinner type of paper with holes punched along the bottom, to slot onto a peg bar), A light box (to help you see the drawing on the previous few pieces of paper) and finally a clutch pencil for drawing (a normal pencil could be used for this too, but I find a clutch pencil is more convinent due to there being no need to sharpen it).
After the main animation is done, using the peg bar and the animation paper on a light box, traditional animation needs to be captured before it can be made into a video. This can be done using a line tester (a camera suspended above a lit area) and a program to piece together the images captured. I used Stop Motion Pro for this process, playing both my animations at 25FPS and exporting them as a .WMV file.
As far as the animation itself goes, I found the light ball much easier to animate than the heavy ball. I enjoyed using the squash and stretch for the light ball and found that with the heavy ball (which would probably roll) it was incredibly difficult to maintain the shape of the ball (keeping it just an outline also) and make it seem like it was 'rolling' instead of just sliding along the floor. I think this task would've been much easier if I had some form of patterning on my heavy ball, such as a line around the middle or a star (I could show this rolling).
Below is my light, ball animation. I am quite pleased with the outcome of this one, I think I possibly however, may have used a little too much stretch and squash in some parts (particularly the opening fall of the ball as it is very noticable), could've done with giving it more of an arch on the first bounce and finally I think the last bounce went a little too much to the right, making my ball somewhat look like it had jumped itself, rather than it was reacting to physics.
Secondly my heavy ball, I am less pleased with this, mostly due to the 'rolling' as I mentioned above but I'm also not sure what has happened with the volume here (the ball seems to start off a little larger than it stretches in the first fall part). I'm not so sure about the physics of a heavy object and probably should've gone somewhere and watched things drop, so being honest, I'm not sure how well I have adheared to real life motion with this one, but I don't think it looks too out of place, so I'm going to hope I got this right xD
...annnnd this blog post has turned out to be crazy long o_O So I guess I'll post up and talk about my 3D stuff in a new post to avoid giving you all wall of text syndrome :3 So yee, until next post >:3
Monday, 15 October 2012
Starting out - A morphing animation
Char here, once again :D Being honest, I'm not quite sure how to set this blog out, should it be formal like my A2 media studies? or more familiar like my first post? Either way, I figured it'd be best to start logging the work I've been doing these past two weeks.
So, starting at the begining here. Our first set task was to create a second of a morphing animation, done traditionally on paper. This had to be 12 seconds long and was to be a continuation of animation done by the other members of our class (Alphabetically, AKA, the first person morphed one item into something else then the person behind them alphabetically would do the same until the whole class had created an animation consisting of many morphing objects and characters edited together.
The person before me alphabetically finished her animation with a Carrot. I chose to morph this carrot into a stag and then end with this stag morphing into a rabbit. I don't think my overall piece came out too badly however it wasn't particularly smooth, so I think I may have gotten a little ahead of myself considering how many frames (12) we were initially given to work with. My one second part of the animation can be seen on youtube, below -
Our lecturer edited everyone's pieces together in order, creating a 1 minute animation made by the whole class and below you can see the result! :D
I'll be posting here a lot more regularly now as we've been set quite a lot of tasks since this, especially on the drawing and maya front! :3 So until next time, I guess ~
So, starting at the begining here. Our first set task was to create a second of a morphing animation, done traditionally on paper. This had to be 12 seconds long and was to be a continuation of animation done by the other members of our class (Alphabetically, AKA, the first person morphed one item into something else then the person behind them alphabetically would do the same until the whole class had created an animation consisting of many morphing objects and characters edited together.
The person before me alphabetically finished her animation with a Carrot. I chose to morph this carrot into a stag and then end with this stag morphing into a rabbit. I don't think my overall piece came out too badly however it wasn't particularly smooth, so I think I may have gotten a little ahead of myself considering how many frames (12) we were initially given to work with. My one second part of the animation can be seen on youtube, below -
Our lecturer edited everyone's pieces together in order, creating a 1 minute animation made by the whole class and below you can see the result! :D
I'll be posting here a lot more regularly now as we've been set quite a lot of tasks since this, especially on the drawing and maya front! :3 So until next time, I guess ~
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