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.