Gerald and Doogle

Just came across an old animation-something I did years and years ago. Thought I might share it.

Back in the ancient days of 2004, when I was shorter, I did an animation workshop with the BBC. I was taught how to use a stop motion camera and shown the basics of animation then I was set lose to do what I wanted.
I decided to do a short about a couple of hamsters because their shape can be easily simplified and their general size would be in proportion with the environment we were in. I devised a script, created character deigns and then constructed them out of plasticine.

 The geek and the dude.

Then I animated it! Allow me to introduce Gerald and Doogle.

Gerald and Doogle



Ok so it's far from perfect but I was a wee person when I did this. Oh and I voiced Doogle (dude with the moe-hawk!)

Animation is dangerous

So my end-of-term holiday has begun...but I still want to animate.

I think I've grown oddly addicted. On my first day back home I went straight to my laptop and down loaded Maya. (And if you were wandering, no this wasn't an illegal down load-its just a thirty day trial.) Anyway I then proceeded to create an account on creativecrash.com and immediately set about searching for some interesting rigs.
That was when I discovered Nico, some awesome quadruped dude who I just had to have a crack at. His rigging was wonderfully intuitive but really complex. Take a look.

Sooo may lines! Scary huh?

I spent many hours on this guy. Last night I didn't stop until half one in the morning and today I forgot to eat. Animation is dangerous see? Only one with a will of titanium, a will so strong that they can tear themselves away from the screen or paper and pencil to go and grab a bite to eat should take on such a mighty task.

My will goes the other way. Meh. I don't care. It's fun.

Anyway I really enjoyed animating Nico. (I nic-named him Nicky.) Take a gander.

Nicky

I was able to practicece a quadruped walk and I know I've made some improvements since the monkey. This time there is a sense of weight in the feet and the corresponding fore limbs and hind limbs don't rise and lower at the same time. I noticed I made that mistake with the monkey. I'm not so happy with the little twirl at the end. I think perhaps it is a little ridged and not tight enough to convey his little burst of excitement...if you can identify that.
I learnt a couple of things while animating this little dude. The first would be that in order to make wider strides I should lower the body closer to the ground as this creates more flexibility in the knees. The other thing would be that imaginary creatures are great to animate because they are not taken from true life. You are not restricted by the limitations of a real life version of that creature and you are not forced to  mimic any idiosyncrasies that creature might have.

Well that's Nicky. I will be doing him again some time but right now there is an elephant rig that has caught my eye...

Oh and the blog lies. It never get the correct time of posting.

The Rat and the Monkey.

I finished my mini project! Yay!

It is a traditional hand drawn animation of a character I have given the most complex name-Rat.

Rat the Graceful One

Twenty four frames a second. As this is my first non assigned animation I'm rather pleased with it as a whole. There are a few things that could be improved such as lack of squash and stretch. It is there but I need to exaggerate it a little more so I'll keep this in mind for next time. Also when his chin collides with the ground he glares and grits his teeth but this is so brief that you can't really tell what kind of face he has pulled.

Also with a bit more spare time I re-animated the "maya monkey" but this time I chose to animate him as a monkey instead of making him walk upright as I had to do for an assignment. It's brief again but take a gander.

Not brilliant again but it has fluidity. I just need to improve on expressing distribution of weight through the feet.

Anyway thanks for reading.
That's all for now.

Drawing, drawing, drawing...

Well it's almost six in the morning and I've been up since about four. I don't actually know why. I just woke up and felt wide awake and that was that. I went to bed some point after midnight too. Oh well.


So drawing. If there is one thing an animator should probably be good at it should be drawing-especially if they want to do traditional animation. (Personally at the moment I'm enjoying all the animation medias-especially now Maya and I are getting along-so I'm keeping an open mind.) The more versatile you are the better and one of the most frequently animated things you come across are human. Unfortunately for me that's my week point probably because I spent the majority of my childhood drawing anything but human-my philosophy being that there were so many of them around that the idea of creating a drawing of another was just plane dull. I also thought that people were too boring to draw too as, as far I as I was aware, the adults spent their days in offices at computers while the younger half sat mesmerised in front of TV screens.

Anyway the result is obvious. My ability to draw human anatomy is shameful where as I will happily tackle anything else...

(Coloured pencil) And so my nerdy love for mechs (robots) is revealed.

 

(Biro) I'm sane. I promise.                                                                     (Pencil) Shoooooo!



(Water colour) A small rodent armed with a quiver and crossbow intended for human...of course...

This is a biro work in progress bellow. My reference source is beneath it.

Now this is where it all goes wrong.

See?
My human anatomy is just diabolical. This isn't an ok drawing. This is a terrible drawing so I'm going to have to practice drawing the human anatomy big time.
Also there's something rather unusual going on. If I attempt an ordinary life drawing this is the result but if I do an life drawing on negative space this is the result...

Now it's much more accurate. W-w-why is this? How can I create an outline that appears to resemble the human form much more closely than an actual line drawing?

Well I'm done ranting. I'm just going to have to practice like crazy...and devour the little chocolate Christmas tree I got in my advent calendar this morning. Oh yes I am so very cool. Te, he, he.

Backgrounds

Hello my dears! I've just had a whole bottle of coca-cola so I am hyped up and energized! Oh yeah!

Anyway the story is I had to create two coloured backgrounds and a pencil layout from a story board I had put together. The story board was based on an section of script from Night Rider and was set in the dessert so I had to research Night Rider and the setting. Drawing inspiration from this I began my work by jotting down ideas in my sketchbook. This work then progressed onto final pieces.

Here be my work!

Exterior Pencil Layout

The scanner was a little bit dodgy. Any water colour work somehow ended up looking like it was something that had been done on photoshop.

Pencil Layout

This was an A2 image. I wanted to draw attention to the mid-ground (slightly to the right) and I did this by placing the rock formations in such a way that they practically boarder the space in the center and by then placing the plant bang in the central foreground, slightly to the left. This is actually to delude the audience as they would be more likely to expect something to enter mid-ground to the right when actually a large vehicle storms in, large wheel right in front of the screen, practically ripping the plant from its routs and disappears with a flurry of sand to the right.


Exterior Shot

This really isn't my exact colouration. The scanner was going for the photoshop look again.

Exterior Background

(I found a different scanner for this one.) This is the last shot within the scene. The main character is seen driving off towards a city in the distance. I don't particularly like shots with subjects dead in the center as they can look a little bland and oddly unnatural but I found if I was to place the walls of sandstone on either side of the city, when central, they were surprisingly complementary. I think this is because, in effect, this extends the silhouette outward. It is also neatly framed by the sandstone, the road and the sky combined, all of which draw you eyes straight to it.
I went for a monochromatic effect to give a sense of mood and to highlight the silhouette of the city on the horizon.
This was all done in water colour.


Interior Shot

This isn't the usual Trans-am. Unfortunately, in this script poor Kitt was installed in a trabant. Mwa, ha, haa! 

Interior Shot

Water colour again. The idea of this was to create the impression of a single light source...only the scanner sort of lit everything up so it doesn't really have that effect here. Oh scanner, how could you?! Despite my rant I still think this last background is kinda appalling anyway.

Anyway that's my background work. Tadaaaah!

Still Walking.

And so the walks continue.

My most recent assignment was to translate my own physical walk into a traditional and CGI animation. Check 'em out.

Traditional



CGI

I'm quite happy with the overall fluidity of both animations but I do feel that the motion of the CGI animation is a little static.
I noticed, when observing my own walk, that my raised foot passes very close to the ground and that I flick it up slightly before placing it back on the floor. (I do wander if this was partLy to compensate for the weight of the big gothic boots I was wearing.) My walk is also quite boyish for a girl too. For example I do not say my hips as much as someone might expect a girl would and I also take wide strides. All of these had to be exaggerated to create my walk animations.

Anyway that's that.
Feed back is always appreciated.

An Extra Bit of Animation

In my last blog I said I would try and do an extra bit of animation in my free time so I give you a walk cycle I did on Maya. I just wanted to experiment with the secondary animation really. Anyway take a peak.


I managed to incorporate the bounce I didn't manage to achive with the monkey but it's not perfect. Any feedback would be great.

Anyway next I'll have to animate my own walk next. I'm really looking forward to it but I know I'm going to have to pay attention to every little detail.

...I really want to do more to my own project too.
...this animation is getting really adictive...

Oh it's so awful I don't want to write about it!

So the walk cycles continue.

Once my hand drawn walk cycle was finished I then had to animate a CGI monkey walking. The idea was to not make it walk like a monkey but to simply create a neutral walk but I still had to consider elements like the tail and the extra long arms. And it is terrible. I really didn't want to put this up on the Internet, for all to see, but if I want to pass my degree I have to.

Front view


Back view

Yes ok the hips and shoulders twist in opposition but there is no believable sense of weight. Another problem; the feet slide forward a little when they pivot. Another would be that that although there is movement in the wrists and elbows it is so subtle that the arms seem rigid and lifeless. Over all it is a very static performance. The only thing I think looks any good would be the secondary animation in the tail and I feel that to looks a little rigid too.
Originally I had planed to keep his arms tucked in at his sides and make them bounce a little with his head as he padded along to make them look lose and relaxed. This changed because the moment I animated his chest to rotate in the opposite direction of his hips the bounce would have clashed with the left and right swing of his shoulders.
Next time I think if I was to lessen the swing of the hips I could make the rotation of his chest much more subtle and then I could make the arms and head bounce much more.

If I get some spare time (I've already begun on my own project) I will give it a go and upload it if it's successful.

Do the Walk!

It's going to be a short one again.

My latest hand drawn animation assignment was to do a neutral walk cycle so here it is.



I'm rather happy with this one. I went straight through with no inbetween business. I tend to find setting frames and then doing inbetweens rather disjointed while if I go straight through I can some how feel the movement of the animation itself within my own body. It always seems more fluent and natural too.

Anyway that all for today.

Bird Poop!

Yes that is my title. Bird poop.

Why? My next assignment shall demonstrate.


This time I had to animate a take so I did a double take. Basicly cubie spots a bird over head doing the inevitable then after a moment realises he should probably react so just scoots out the way. I'm reletively happy with the way this one went. I supose the only critisisum I could give would be that I need to leave a longer pause at the end as it just finishes rather abruptly, bairly giving you time to alow the action to sink in.

My last hand drawn animation was simlar to the double take as it involved my Cubie dude crouching fearfully in responce to a loud sound, timidly glancing over his sholder for a moment before leaping into the air with shock. The sphisical reaction was much more "cartoony" in nature and as he only made the single glance it is only a take. Take a lookie see.



So that's it for now.

Real to the Sureal

Ok so I've shown a lot of my animation work but very little of my drawings so I present you with last week's drawing asignment. Real to the Sureal. The task was to make obsevational drawings but give them a sureal twist. Take a peak.

Fear my suitcase! 

Look! It's a "shell phone!"

...You know like "cell phone"...

Ok that was a terible gag.

Maths is dangerous.

Due to my bad photography the image became slightly warped. "Curse you!"

 Anyway those are some of my drawings from last week. This week is draw what ever you want week. And I am so happy about it! I'll upload some of those drawings in my next blog. Oh and feed back on this stuff would be soooooo greatly appreciated.

So untill next time that's all folks.

Ball and Chain

S'up?

Today I just finished my ball and chain (or block and tackle) animation. Take a look. I don't know how fluid this will be as, when I viewed it, the animation did not play as smoothly as it did on maya.

Ball and Chain

The idea behind this exercise was to practice overlap and to create a realistic sence of weight. I think I've done an ok job. If I do this again though I would make it travle faster as I recon I glides a little too much. Te, he, he!

Oh yeah. I think I'm starting to like maya now. Sometimes its a bit stubbon but appart from those times, very responsive. Mabey we might become friends.

Anyway thats all for now. I might try an upload a few drawings next time.

More Animation

I give you my second post.

Right. Well first I had to animate Cubie again but he had to react to a sound and express some sort of emotion in responce. Take a gander.

Cubie's Reaction

Over all I'm rather pleased with this one as I feel that the motion is much more fluid compared to my last Cubie animation; he is not so cumbersom and his arms, not so ridgid. I was aiming to convey shock through his body language (doing those things that only an animated dude can do.)



CGI Time

Anyway next I had to animate a couple of bouncing balls. CGI this time though. One had to be charasmatic and the other, neutral.

Charasmatic Ball

As with Mr Cubie I had to portray some sort of emotion so I went for excitement and I felt the best way to express this would be to show a sudden burst of energy so I made this little guy go ping!

Neutral Ball

My honist opinion? Awful. Awfulawfulawful. It drops far too slowly then pings up into the air befor fliping over like a ninger. (hoiyyyyah!) I mean what kind of neutral, emotionless ball does that? The sence of weight has just completely disolved. I suposed the only bit that was any good was the landing at the end but even then it is a bit too abrupt. It kinda reminds me of those little poses you see those gymnasts make after a crazed flip...



Anyway untill my next post I will leave you with an old sketch of mine as my camra which I've been using to take pics of my assigned drawings seemes to have died.


Well that all folks.

The Animation Begins...

Hi and wellcome to my first blog.

Where to begin...er....ah! Well I've just begun my Digital Animation course and the first peice of course work I was set was to animate a bouncy ball and a bowling ball falling and hitting the ground. You can check them out bellow.


Bouncing Ball


Bowling Ball


I'm happy with the fluidity of the "bouncing ball" and I think their is a good sence of weight, especially when the ball reaches the top of its ark but its far from perfect. For starters I think I may have over emphasized the quash and stretch and the result is it looks a bit more like it is actually jumping rather than bouncing. Still I can refer to this if I find I have to make something jump in the future. "Yay!"

When it came to doing the bowling ball I made the squash and stretch much more subtle as too much would have made the ball appear softer. Also, as it is so hevy, it's bounce is very shallow.



A Bit of Drawing

Each week I get the opotunity to select a drawing task and I chose one named Les Miserables. The idea of the task is to draw fellow students of my course and exadurate their mood. As their emotions would be emphasized I choose to draw them in a cartoony fashion. I found to acheive this I would have to capture their likeness. There are a couple of examples bellow.

I never really liked having two people facing a simlar angle on one page but they were facing that way at the time. Ah well.


One More Peice of Animation

As this blog was abit late I've also got another peice of animation to add. This would be of a little dude I have deemed Cubie making a wee jump. (So my bouncing*cough*jumping*cough* ball came in useful after all!)

This task was about incorportaing anticipation and overlap as well as squash and stretch. I think I managed to achive the anticipation though I feel that perhaps I made Cubie a little cumbersome and the animation may be that little bit rigid towards the end.

Anyway thats all for now foaks.
Thanks for reading.

Oh and feed back is greatly appreciated.