Second blog post of the day is a new 'achievement' xD Today marked our final hand-in and therefore, the completion of the year :D
It's gone really, really quickly, but has been a very enjoyable one c: I've learned a lot, made a lot of friends and I can't wait to get stuck into next year and work on my own stuff in the summer c: (I have two small group projects planned, one 2D game project with my friend Danny and a CGI, cut-scene like, short with my friend Tristan, from Plymouth University, Watch this space c:)
Below is my showreel, showing some of my best motion studies work for this semester c: along with a little bit of life drawing :3
I'm very happy with what I have achieved this year, but think I've stayed in my comfort zone, a little more than I'd have liked to (particularly with the dragons and lack of human animation). My intention is to take Post production next year and work a lot on CGI, 3D animation, as it is something very out of my comfort zone a little bit, but still something I'm really interested in and enjoy doing c: I also intend to do a lot more life drawing, to try and improve on my human anatomy skills :3
But yes! I'll be updating this blog regularly still, over the summer, so you'll still be hearing from me ^_^
Then next year, I have the pleasure of living with 6 other animators and an English Literature student :D Should be great fun ^_^
Until next year!
~Char out!
Friday 31 May 2013
The Group Project - A much needed update
Heya everyone :D It's been a few days of working solidly, since I last updated, so here's the rundown of what's been going on c:
Yesterday, as a group we had to present the group project we've been working on for the last two months, I think we presented pretty well and we were able to finish the film on time, which is always a massive plus! c:
For anyone interested, below is our final group film c: I was going to spend time blogging more about the production stages of the film, like I have been doing, but due to deadlines and being short on time, I haven't yet. I'll talk about my role in the film, later in this blog post and update you guys on our production logging, as a lot has changed since the last time I talked to you guys about it o:
I'm actually really pleased with the outcome of the final film and I think everyone in our group worked really hard to achieve it :D My main role in this project was as a 2D animator, working on the interview scenes c: As seen in my 'An insight into the group project' post, we had a production log. Since then, we have had many discussions and feedback sessions and a lot has changed. Our final production log is below.
With many of the original scenes deleted and a lot of re-organisation in terms of animators. Katie and Beverly switched with me, to work on the chibi style of the flashback scene together, whilst I was put to work, exclusively on the interview scene. Below is the work I produced for this project, that made it into the final cut. I really enjoyed this task as it was very far out of my comfort zone, working with human animation isn't something I'm used to doing, and I really enjoyed working on it :D
Our reasons for cutting so many scenes that were previously present in our animatic, was mostly due to feedback from our lecturers. We regularly had meetings with Kathy, so she got to know our project quite well, then occasionally we'd have the odd meeting with Ann to discuss where we were going with the project, theory wise and to work on our presentation skills. When the project was still in its animatic stages, we were able to get some helpful feedback off Derek, who really liked our animatic and gave us several pointers in ways to improve it. However, the final decision for changing our work was after a screening with Andy. He mentioned that our scenes seemed to be quite fast paced compared to the audio clip we were working from, which gave way to a much slower mood. He said it'd be good for us to cut out some of these more 'busy' shots and focus more on extending just a few of them, to better fit in time with the audio. We all agreed with this and decided to lengthen what was previously the 'surfers' scene and the 'wave claw' scene into a longer sequence, keeping it all as one shot. I felt this fit the audio much better than what we previously had and I'm glad we had that session with Andy and were able to make those adjustments.
We decided to go for a non-serious, slapstick-like approach to our project, taking inspiration from things like Charlie Chaplin, Chuck Jones’s animations, Ren and Stimpy, Felix the Cat and a variety of other places. This was quite a risky thing to have done, considering how serious our audio clip with, I spent quite a lot of time researching genre conventions of slapstick comedy and we all made sure that in the ‘flashback’ scenes, the animation was loose and the expressions were exaggerated, to achieve this effect. I was a little worried about how well we’d make this work, but overall, I think it worked really well, and coupled with Georgi’s music, giving it serious undertones, I think it makes quite an atmospheric, whilst still fun, scene.
Overall, I really, really enjoyed working on the group project, I think we all worked well as a team and it helped us get a better feel of what it'd be like, in industry, to have different roles and go from a starting idea to a finished product c:
Yesterday, as a group we had to present the group project we've been working on for the last two months, I think we presented pretty well and we were able to finish the film on time, which is always a massive plus! c:
For anyone interested, below is our final group film c: I was going to spend time blogging more about the production stages of the film, like I have been doing, but due to deadlines and being short on time, I haven't yet. I'll talk about my role in the film, later in this blog post and update you guys on our production logging, as a lot has changed since the last time I talked to you guys about it o:
I'm actually really pleased with the outcome of the final film and I think everyone in our group worked really hard to achieve it :D My main role in this project was as a 2D animator, working on the interview scenes c: As seen in my 'An insight into the group project' post, we had a production log. Since then, we have had many discussions and feedback sessions and a lot has changed. Our final production log is below.
Our reasons for cutting so many scenes that were previously present in our animatic, was mostly due to feedback from our lecturers. We regularly had meetings with Kathy, so she got to know our project quite well, then occasionally we'd have the odd meeting with Ann to discuss where we were going with the project, theory wise and to work on our presentation skills. When the project was still in its animatic stages, we were able to get some helpful feedback off Derek, who really liked our animatic and gave us several pointers in ways to improve it. However, the final decision for changing our work was after a screening with Andy. He mentioned that our scenes seemed to be quite fast paced compared to the audio clip we were working from, which gave way to a much slower mood. He said it'd be good for us to cut out some of these more 'busy' shots and focus more on extending just a few of them, to better fit in time with the audio. We all agreed with this and decided to lengthen what was previously the 'surfers' scene and the 'wave claw' scene into a longer sequence, keeping it all as one shot. I felt this fit the audio much better than what we previously had and I'm glad we had that session with Andy and were able to make those adjustments.
We decided to go for a non-serious, slapstick-like approach to our project, taking inspiration from things like Charlie Chaplin, Chuck Jones’s animations, Ren and Stimpy, Felix the Cat and a variety of other places. This was quite a risky thing to have done, considering how serious our audio clip with, I spent quite a lot of time researching genre conventions of slapstick comedy and we all made sure that in the ‘flashback’ scenes, the animation was loose and the expressions were exaggerated, to achieve this effect. I was a little worried about how well we’d make this work, but overall, I think it worked really well, and coupled with Georgi’s music, giving it serious undertones, I think it makes quite an atmospheric, whilst still fun, scene.
Overall, I really, really enjoyed working on the group project, I think we all worked well as a team and it helped us get a better feel of what it'd be like, in industry, to have different roles and go from a starting idea to a finished product c:
Monday 27 May 2013
The Background Project c:
Another project we were set a few days ago was a background project :3
We were given the task to do create (either on paper or through a painting program), two animation backgrounds based on our storyboarding project (mine being Ranger Rick)
Below are both my interior and exterior, final backgrounds c:
My two main style influences for this project were Kekai Kotaki, Concept artist for Guild Wars 2 and Michel Gagne, one of my big animation inspirations :3
I loved the style of Kekai Kotaki's work, particularly how he used colours to portray depth in his art. Kekai's art was my main influence in both my final backgrounds. I really liked how this artist used brushes quite roughly, whilst still getting details into his paintings. I chose to use some of these brush techniques in my backgrounds and really liked how they turned out.
I looked at other Guild Wars 2 illustrators as well, that similarly used colours and depth in a beautiful way. The Guild Wars 2 concept art as a whole was one of my big inspirations during this project.
Gagne's work was another huge inspiration to me. I loved how his art was simple, yet had quite an atmosphere to them. I particularly liked how far close up parts in his work were made a lot darker than things in the distance. His art is very built up, layer wise, you can tell the depth of things however it looks quite graphicy which wasn't something I wanted from my backgrounds although I made sure to keep his work as an influence when representing things close up, lightening them as
they got further away. This technique really applied to my interior scene, where the colours of the further away trees changed to a lighter tone.
I think I was able to incorperate the style of both of them into my work alright, however, I think I could've worked a little harder on making Michel Gagne's style come out in the backgrounds, as it's hard to tell (particularly with the exterior background)
I really enjoyed the background project, it was enjoyable and got me doing something different, digital painting is quite rewarding and I'm pleased with the outcomes, particularly the interior shot :D
Sunday 26 May 2013
Deadline #1 Complete
Hey everyone c: Yesterday was the hand in date for half of the work for this semester, which was kind of scary, but a huge relief at the same time ^_^
I'm going to split my work into two posts, as I have both work from the 'Adaption' project in both 2D and 3D to talk about, but also very different work from the background project and for the sake of ease, using my labels, it'd be easier to do them both separately c:
In this post, I'll be talking about the Adaption project, a project in which we had to take a page or scene from a story book/game/comic and re-create this in Photoshop, putting everything onto layers, then perform a camera move through it in both Toon Boom Harmony and Autodesk Maya.
As promised, below is my checklist, showing what I have and haven't completed for first year c: My next deadline is Friday the 31st and then first year ends on the 14th June and we get our results back on the 27th June :D So I've got some very exciting and scary times coming up o-o
Updated Checklist -
In other news, Urashima Taro, the project I got to be a part of, a month or so ago has been officially completed and you can watch it below c:
Anyways, onto my adaption project c:
We were set the project producing a 'test shot', opening scene of a story book, game or comic. This had to be done using the program Toon Boom and had to show depth and some sort of 'background animation'.
For this project, I chose to adapt one of my favourite story books as a child. A book by Karen Hayles named The Star that fell. The book is done in a water colour style which I really like and I tried my best to re-create this in Paint Tool Sai, before importing it into Photoshop and then Toon Boom for use as part of this project.
We had to focus this project on the environment, not the narrative of the story, so I chose my background animation to be a horned owl taking off, rather than the star falling to earth (as seen in the book) as I felt the star was more of a narrative choice than a background one, and there were owls later on in the story, so it wouldn't be out of place to do something like that c:
I created the opening of this animation using Toon Boom Harmony's perspective tool. This me to decide where each 2D piece was on a plain, giving the illusion that some parts of the scene were further away and some were nearer to the camera.
The 'background' animation had to be something that wasn't too intrusive, so in the left hand corner, I animated a tiny owl that fly's off the screen after a couple of seconds in order not to destroy the effect of the background. I'm quite pleased with the outcome, however, I think I could've spent a little longer working on it, as it's not very smooth and looks quite rough. I intend to spend more time over the holidays analysing the movements of animals like reptiles and birds in order to learn to animate them better (and humans, because as you can see from my Ident, my human animation needs a lot of work c:)
You can see my finished rendition of the Toon Boom Ident Below c:
For our second task it was required that we import this into Maya, model each piece of it and then perform a camera move through the scene. For starters, I really feel like this project helped me to improve my understanding of Maya, particularly in terms of projection mapping and using textures and I really enjoyed working on this piece, seeing how you can achieve different results with ‘2D style’ animation in 3D software packages.
The final product for this can be seen below c:
The other project we were given for our 'Design for Animation" module went by the name of "The Devil is in the damaged detail and required us to model and texture something we've seen outside of campus, with some form of detail on, in the programs Maya, Mudbox and Photoshop.
Overall, I am quite pleased with the outcome of
this piece, giving the limitations I set myself. However, I regret not choosing
to model something more adventurous. If I were to give this another shot, I’d
definitely work on UV unwrapping a cube and building a more 3D environment,
instead of just texturing one side of a plane, I’d begin texturing all the
sides of a cube, so it’d look better both in the 3D turnaround and as a whole.
I do feel this has helped me somewhat, when it comes to improving my skills in
Maya, even if I didn’t push myself as much as I could’ve
The final piece for this project is below :3
But yush :D I'll see you in the next post, where I'll be talking a little about my 2D backgrounds project and some of my influences and inspiration behind it ^_^
Until Next Time
~Char
I'm going to split my work into two posts, as I have both work from the 'Adaption' project in both 2D and 3D to talk about, but also very different work from the background project and for the sake of ease, using my labels, it'd be easier to do them both separately c:
In this post, I'll be talking about the Adaption project, a project in which we had to take a page or scene from a story book/game/comic and re-create this in Photoshop, putting everything onto layers, then perform a camera move through it in both Toon Boom Harmony and Autodesk Maya.
As promised, below is my checklist, showing what I have and haven't completed for first year c: My next deadline is Friday the 31st and then first year ends on the 14th June and we get our results back on the 27th June :D So I've got some very exciting and scary times coming up o-o
Updated Checklist -
- DGA130 Design for Animation Experimental - Handed In
- DGA130 Design for Animation 3D Modelling Project 24th May Academic Office time by 2pm
- DGA130 Design for Animation Background Project 24th May Academic Office time by 2pm + 12.00 hrs Online
- DGA140 Digital Animation Practice 2 Individual Adaptation Project (layout test shot) 24th May Academic Office time by 2pm + 23.55hrs Online
- DGA 120 Motion Studies Showreel 31st May 2pm in Academic Office + 23.55 hrs Online
- DGA 120 Motion Studies Portfolio 31st May 2pm in Academic Office + 17.00 hrs Online
- DGA130 Design for Animation Ident Project 31st May by 2pm in Academic Office + 23.55 hrs Online
- DGA140 Digital Animation Practice 2 Group Project (Sea Tales) 31st May Academic Office time by 2pm + Presentation on 30th May 2013
- DGA140 Digital Animation Practice 2 Blog 31/5/13 23.55 Online
In other news, Urashima Taro, the project I got to be a part of, a month or so ago has been officially completed and you can watch it below c:
Anyways, onto my adaption project c:
We were set the project producing a 'test shot', opening scene of a story book, game or comic. This had to be done using the program Toon Boom and had to show depth and some sort of 'background animation'.
For this project, I chose to adapt one of my favourite story books as a child. A book by Karen Hayles named The Star that fell. The book is done in a water colour style which I really like and I tried my best to re-create this in Paint Tool Sai, before importing it into Photoshop and then Toon Boom for use as part of this project.We had to focus this project on the environment, not the narrative of the story, so I chose my background animation to be a horned owl taking off, rather than the star falling to earth (as seen in the book) as I felt the star was more of a narrative choice than a background one, and there were owls later on in the story, so it wouldn't be out of place to do something like that c:
I created the opening of this animation using Toon Boom Harmony's perspective tool. This me to decide where each 2D piece was on a plain, giving the illusion that some parts of the scene were further away and some were nearer to the camera. The 'background' animation had to be something that wasn't too intrusive, so in the left hand corner, I animated a tiny owl that fly's off the screen after a couple of seconds in order not to destroy the effect of the background. I'm quite pleased with the outcome, however, I think I could've spent a little longer working on it, as it's not very smooth and looks quite rough. I intend to spend more time over the holidays analysing the movements of animals like reptiles and birds in order to learn to animate them better (and humans, because as you can see from my Ident, my human animation needs a lot of work c:)
You can see my finished rendition of the Toon Boom Ident Below c:
For our second task it was required that we import this into Maya, model each piece of it and then perform a camera move through the scene. For starters, I really feel like this project helped me to improve my understanding of Maya, particularly in terms of projection mapping and using textures and I really enjoyed working on this piece, seeing how you can achieve different results with ‘2D style’ animation in 3D software packages.
This project
was one I struggled with at first, but quickly began to get the hang of, as I
imported more and more layers into the scene. The brief required that we give
some sort of 3D sustenance to the work, so after projection mapping my layer
onto a plain, getting my desired size and depth, I was able to build this up,
stretching it out and giving it much more of a 3D feel (This would later allow
me to give the Illusion of 3D when I performed my camera move)
I built the
scene up using a variety of plane, situated different distances apart, and I
used one image plane with the entire, completed background design projected on
it. This enabled me to gauge where certain things had to be placed in the
scene. I chose to leave the close up trees out of this scene as they caused a
lot of problems for me in terms of the camera move (and they were something I added
into the Toonboom scene as an after thought (they were not present in the book
I was referencing the image from). I think maybe, if I was ever to try and
re-do this project, I would work on finding more ways to incorporate these into
the scene as I feel if would make the camera movement a lot more interesting.
As for the
composition of the scene itself, I am quite pleased with how closely I matched
the 3D scene to its original toonboom counterpart. I did however, find some
parts of it very tricky to work with. When re-creating this, I found that the
‘hill’ or ‘ground’, which was previously of a good size to work with, became
very hard to manage in a 3D environment. Framing the scene for render and
positioning the camera in such a way that it showed all the parts of the scene
it should, without showing the Maya grid or background (breaking the illusion)
was also really tricky for me. I feel my scene could’ve looked a lot better and
the camera move could’ve been improved dramatically if the hill for this environment
was higher, allowing me to focus in more from the start.
Overall I am
quite pleased with the modelling for each piece of land/layer in this scene. I
think particularly the house, worked very well at keeping the ‘3D illusion’ and
that the camera angle wasn’t so bad, considering what I was going for. My
original idea was just to have the camera literally move in on the scene in
kind of a zoom motion, but after consideration, I decided this was a little bit
dull, for something I was making the effort to model into 3D and so I chose to
make the camera move a little more interesting. The final move was more of a
zoom and then a twist, showing the detail/3D effect I had on the house.
The only
real thing I’m very unhappy about in this scene was the background, sky and
stars. I think if anything was to break the ‘3D illusion’ on this scene it
would be those two parts as I found it incredibly hard to make them work
together in a way that didn’t make them seem flat. Putting the stars and
background on a separate plain made them seem as though they weren’t part of
the sky and were able to move around on their own. I felt this made the scene
seem rather cluttered and busy, however, attaching them both on the same plain
make them seem really static. For my final render, I chose to have them on the
same plane, as I felt this was the least confusing out of the two options I
had. I’m not sure if this was the best option to have taken, but I think it was
alright considering the options I had available to me.
To conclude,
I am reasonably happy with the final outcome of my 2D to 3D piece however,
there is always room for improvement. I feel I have significantly improved my
knowledge of Maya whilst working on this project and if I was to do a similar
thing again in the future I believe I would be able to pull it off with
slightly higher quality and standards due to what I have learned.
The final product for this can be seen below c:
The other project we were given for our 'Design for Animation" module went by the name of "The Devil is in the damaged detail and required us to model and texture something we've seen outside of campus, with some form of detail on, in the programs Maya, Mudbox and Photoshop.
It was
suggested that people on the course not so familiar with Maya should model a
wall or section of wall for this brief. I’m not very confident with Maya yet,
so I took up this challenge and went about photographing a wall with some
detail that I could work on modelling. The area we were modelling had to be off
campus and so I took my camera with me to some volunteering I was doing at a
community garden and photographed their shed. I think my photo’s for texturing
were pretty clear although I could’ve taken them when it was lighter, as the
area of wood I was photographing was in shadow and I feel this made it look
quite dull.
I began this
project by working with a plane in Maya, I tweaked the image I intended to use was a texture so that the wood planks were
straight and then assigned the photograph as a lambert material. I then worked on the 3D effect the area using
brushes and pulling or pushing in parts of the detail, for example, the darker
parts of the photograph (like inbetween planks) I pushed in and the lighter
parts (the planks themselves) I pulled out and empathised.
The final
result was a section of wall that looked like it was in 3D. I then applied a
simple camera move to this, to show it off from all angles.
The final piece for this project is below :3
But yush :D I'll see you in the next post, where I'll be talking a little about my 2D backgrounds project and some of my influences and inspiration behind it ^_^
Until Next Time
~Char
Monday 20 May 2013
Completed Ident Signing in c:
Yay, I finally have something to show you guys! c: There will be more very soon because my deadline is in 4 days, but until then, I thought I'd show you my completed ident and talk about some of my influences behind it ^_^
Okay, first off, here's the progression I made on my ident since my "Introducing the Falmouth University Ident Project" post a couple of weeks ago :3
I'm going to begin by talking a little bit about my style influences for this project. I plan to talk more about my animation inspirations in the summer at some point, but for now I'll just show the 4 pieces that influenced me the most with this project.
My two biggest inspirations for the longest time have been Toniko Pantoja's 'Crayon Dragon'
and Qing Han's 'Night Light'
You can pretty easily see the similarities between the two and I really loved the paint brush/colouring idea shown in both of these. I intend to produce some other animations in my free time at some point making use of similar ideas.
The other two inspirations were: Chelsea Gordon-Ratslaff, someone who has also been a massive inspiration to me. Her 2D animations are very, very expressive. I really wanted the characters I was animating to 'come to life' in terms of subtle eye movements and facial expressions and I feel I have achieved this to a degree, but nowhere near as much as I was aiming for.
Either way, it was her Portal 2 animation that was another big inspiring factor in my ident.
and finally, my fourth biggest inspiration whilst doing this project was Studio Catch's "Her Lions Jump"
I really loved how dynamic the lions movements and expressions were in this and how the two characters interacted with each other. I ended up changing my animation style, particularly with Saffie, a little to allow better expressions and eye movements as I felt my previous style was quite limiting.
I began by cleaning up, inbetweening and line-arting the animatic. Animating the human for this project was a particular challenge for me as before I came here, I only really practiced animating quadrupeds (and in MS Paint at that xD). I'm not really very pleased with the final animation of my human character as she seems a little static, hopefully fluidity of human animation is something I'll be able to practice and improve on in the coming months. I'm really pleased with my dragon animation though, it was really fun to put the subtle eye movements and expressions into her c:
I made sure I applied the basic principles of animation we had learned, into this animation, particularly stretch and squash and overlap c:
I then coloured the whole thing, making the paint on the end of the paintbrush green, so I could greenscreen chroma key it to include my experimental animation 'paint' when I imported it into Sony Vegas.
I worked on another green stage with white to create the 'Falmouth University Animation' part, green screening that and fitting it over the top. I then found some fitting royalty-free music to add to it and I had finished :D I'm actually quite pleased with the outcome of this animation, however I think the human animation really lets it down and is something I'll need to work on in the future c:
I played around with the timing a little bit on the final version also, as the timing of the paintbrush being thrown seemed a little out.
My final Ident is below c:
Okay, first off, here's the progression I made on my ident since my "Introducing the Falmouth University Ident Project" post a couple of weeks ago :3
I'm going to begin by talking a little bit about my style influences for this project. I plan to talk more about my animation inspirations in the summer at some point, but for now I'll just show the 4 pieces that influenced me the most with this project.
My two biggest inspirations for the longest time have been Toniko Pantoja's 'Crayon Dragon'
and Qing Han's 'Night Light'
You can pretty easily see the similarities between the two and I really loved the paint brush/colouring idea shown in both of these. I intend to produce some other animations in my free time at some point making use of similar ideas.
The other two inspirations were: Chelsea Gordon-Ratslaff, someone who has also been a massive inspiration to me. Her 2D animations are very, very expressive. I really wanted the characters I was animating to 'come to life' in terms of subtle eye movements and facial expressions and I feel I have achieved this to a degree, but nowhere near as much as I was aiming for.
Either way, it was her Portal 2 animation that was another big inspiring factor in my ident.
and finally, my fourth biggest inspiration whilst doing this project was Studio Catch's "Her Lions Jump"
I really loved how dynamic the lions movements and expressions were in this and how the two characters interacted with each other. I ended up changing my animation style, particularly with Saffie, a little to allow better expressions and eye movements as I felt my previous style was quite limiting.
I began by cleaning up, inbetweening and line-arting the animatic. Animating the human for this project was a particular challenge for me as before I came here, I only really practiced animating quadrupeds (and in MS Paint at that xD). I'm not really very pleased with the final animation of my human character as she seems a little static, hopefully fluidity of human animation is something I'll be able to practice and improve on in the coming months. I'm really pleased with my dragon animation though, it was really fun to put the subtle eye movements and expressions into her c:
I made sure I applied the basic principles of animation we had learned, into this animation, particularly stretch and squash and overlap c:
I then coloured the whole thing, making the paint on the end of the paintbrush green, so I could greenscreen chroma key it to include my experimental animation 'paint' when I imported it into Sony Vegas.
I worked on another green stage with white to create the 'Falmouth University Animation' part, green screening that and fitting it over the top. I then found some fitting royalty-free music to add to it and I had finished :D I'm actually quite pleased with the outcome of this animation, however I think the human animation really lets it down and is something I'll need to work on in the future c:
I played around with the timing a little bit on the final version also, as the timing of the paintbrush being thrown seemed a little out.
My final Ident is below c:
Friday 17 May 2013
Some more Life Drawing c:
Since I haven't put any up in a while, I figured I'd stick up some of my life drawing c:
These are drawings from two different sessions, one with a female model and one with a male, I feel like I've improved quite a bit since my last life drawing class, and I'm really pleased with this :D
I'll start off with my first session. This session was an hour and a half long and featured a female model.
and the second session, this was an optional 3 hour session that I attended, as I feel human anatomy is something I really, really need to work on and practice is the only way to improve. We had a male model this time.
10 Minute Pose
20 Minute Pose
30 Minute Pose
I think I'm improving slowly in the life drawing sector, but I know there is still a lot of things to work on and I'm far from being alright at it. Hopefully with more practice, the more sessions I go to, the better I'll get at it :D
-Char out ~
These are drawings from two different sessions, one with a female model and one with a male, I feel like I've improved quite a bit since my last life drawing class, and I'm really pleased with this :D
I'll start off with my first session. This session was an hour and a half long and featured a female model.
15 - 30 second poses
2 Minute Poses
5 Minute Poses
15 Minute Poses
and the second session, this was an optional 3 hour session that I attended, as I feel human anatomy is something I really, really need to work on and practice is the only way to improve. We had a male model this time.
15 Seconds - 1 Minute Sketches
2 Minute Pose
5 Minute Pose
I think I'm improving slowly in the life drawing sector, but I know there is still a lot of things to work on and I'm far from being alright at it. Hopefully with more practice, the more sessions I go to, the better I'll get at it :D
-Char out ~
Tuesday 14 May 2013
Stop Motion, Deadlines, Idents and more!
Heyo everyone :D
I know it's been a while since the last time I posted >.< So I figured I'd come here to update you on everything I've been up to these last week or so :D
Currently, deadlines are hitting down hard, with everything due in either on the 24th May or the 31st May.....So yeah, things have been rather stressful lately, but at the same time, very, very productive :D
First I'll fill you all in on what projects I'm actually in progress with, what is due and when it's due, I guess I could use this blog as kind of a check list for myself at the same time as showing everyone my work in progress and how I'm getting on with things.
My Checklist is as follows -
I know it's been a while since the last time I posted >.< So I figured I'd come here to update you on everything I've been up to these last week or so :D
Currently, deadlines are hitting down hard, with everything due in either on the 24th May or the 31st May.....So yeah, things have been rather stressful lately, but at the same time, very, very productive :D
First I'll fill you all in on what projects I'm actually in progress with, what is due and when it's due, I guess I could use this blog as kind of a check list for myself at the same time as showing everyone my work in progress and how I'm getting on with things.
My Checklist is as follows -
- DGA130 Design for Animation Experimental - Handed In
- DGA130 Design for Animation 3D Modelling Project 24th May Academic Office time by 2pm
- DGA130 Design for Animation Background Project 24th May Academic Office time by 2pm + 12.00 hrs Online
- DGA140 Digital Animation Practice 2 Individual Adaptation Project (layout test shot) 24th May Academic Office time by 2pm + 23.55hrs Online
- DGA 120 Motion Studies Showreel 31st May 2pm in Academic Office + 23.55 hrs Online
- DGA 120 Motion Studies Portfolio 31st May 2pm in Academic Office + 17.00 hrs Online
- DGA130 Design for Animation Ident Project 31st May by 2pm in Academic Office + 23.55 hrs Online
- DGA140 Digital Animation Practice 2 Group Project (Sea Tales) 31st May Academic Office time by 2pm + Presentation on 30th May 2013
- DGA140 Digital Animation Practice 2 Blog 31/5/13 23.55 Online
...So yes, quite the handful xD I'll probably be putting this list up on the bottom of my blog posts between now and the deadline, colouring the complete pieces purple and the handed in pieces green, just so I can let you guys know where I'm at with everything :3
Currently, I've not actually gotten to completion on any of the projects (except Experimental) as my current technique of managing my work has been to pick away at each project, each day (I'm near completion on both my ident and background projects and have picked away at everything else) Hopefully soon, I'll have the completed ident and both backgrounds to show you c:
Last week, I had a stop motion workshop with one of our lecturers that used to work on Bob the Builder. We got to use specifically made puppets for this, which was a pretty new and exciting experience c:
These puppets had chunky armatures in and it was our task to animate them all touching their toes. I was in a group with two others, Beverly and Katie from my group project :D We had a puppet each to animate touching their toes and coming back up. Each puppet was attached to our workspace by their feet, done using powerful magnets.
My puppet was named Eimer and is the blonde one on the left hand side c: We used easing techniques, moving them small amounts at the beginning of the animation, then larger amounts as they sped up, before moving them gradually again as they reached the end. Eimer was tough to work with at first due to her hair, but we were given tips to 'mold' the clothing and hair before we started, so our thumbprints were already in the area's we were going to touching regularly when posing the armatures. This helped a lot and overall, I am quite pleased with the outcome of this test :D
Last week, I had a stop motion workshop with one of our lecturers that used to work on Bob the Builder. We got to use specifically made puppets for this, which was a pretty new and exciting experience c:
These puppets had chunky armatures in and it was our task to animate them all touching their toes. I was in a group with two others, Beverly and Katie from my group project :D We had a puppet each to animate touching their toes and coming back up. Each puppet was attached to our workspace by their feet, done using powerful magnets.
My puppet was named Eimer and is the blonde one on the left hand side c: We used easing techniques, moving them small amounts at the beginning of the animation, then larger amounts as they sped up, before moving them gradually again as they reached the end. Eimer was tough to work with at first due to her hair, but we were given tips to 'mold' the clothing and hair before we started, so our thumbprints were already in the area's we were going to touching regularly when posing the armatures. This helped a lot and overall, I am quite pleased with the outcome of this test :D
Friday 10 May 2013
Walks with performance
We were given the task a few weeks ago to create three different walk or run cycles, each expressing a particular mood or state of mind. A month or so ago, we were also given a 6 hour acting workshop, this was done to improve our performance, particularly in the area of exaggeration, something that would help us a lot when it comes to our animation.
We had a choice of 6 'states of mind' to work with. Late for work, Distracted (eg on phone or talking to someone), In a bad mood, In a good mood, Flirty female and Macho male. I chose the Good Mood, Bad mood and Late for work for mine.
I actually really enjoyed planning and working with the different moods for the walk cycles as it allowed me to think a lot more about how the character would react in these situations (making my happy walk very bouncy, with high knees and chin up and my bad mood walk more slouched over, low knees and head to the floor)
My final three walk cycles are below :3
Good Mood Walk -
The Good Mood walk was the first one I attempted, I'm quite happy with the overall outcome however, it seems to jump at several parts and it's pretty easy to tell when the animation loops. I wanted to portray the happiness of the character by putting it's chin up high and making more of a skipping motion with the legs, lifting them clean off the ground and I think I achieved this, although, it needs work in parts. When creating this, I wanted it to look as if the character was moving its head from side to side, however, I think it looks kind of like the eye is just bobbing up and down on its own instead of it looking as if it's the characters head itself that is moving.
Late for Work Run -
I am more pleased with my Late for work Run Cycle, this was the second one I attempted and I think it turned out quite well in comparason to my happy walk. There is less of an indication on this animation that it was a loop/cycle animation as there is not much of a jump there, like on the first. I'm actually really pleased with how the hair on the character came out and I worked quite hard on making this work the way I wanted it to. I think the only thing I'd consider working on on this one would be the beak of the character, as it seems to boil a little bit when moving.
Bad Mood Walk -
My Bad mood walk cycle was the final one I attempted, I think I have shown some improvement since the first walk cycle, however, I think I could've done a better job at tweening this one because the back leg seems to flick a little to quickly at one part. I think maybe the character comes up to high in certain parts too, making the walk seem less grumpy than I wanted it too.
But yes :3 Deadlines are fast upon me now, you'll be (hopefully) seeing many more updates about what I'm up to, soon ^_^ I'll be blogging a little less frequently than usual, because meeting the deadlines themselves are the most important things right now, but this blog is getting marked on the 31st of May, so I'll have all of my work up on it for then :D
Until next time! c:
We had a choice of 6 'states of mind' to work with. Late for work, Distracted (eg on phone or talking to someone), In a bad mood, In a good mood, Flirty female and Macho male. I chose the Good Mood, Bad mood and Late for work for mine.
I actually really enjoyed planning and working with the different moods for the walk cycles as it allowed me to think a lot more about how the character would react in these situations (making my happy walk very bouncy, with high knees and chin up and my bad mood walk more slouched over, low knees and head to the floor)
My final three walk cycles are below :3
Good Mood Walk -
The Good Mood walk was the first one I attempted, I'm quite happy with the overall outcome however, it seems to jump at several parts and it's pretty easy to tell when the animation loops. I wanted to portray the happiness of the character by putting it's chin up high and making more of a skipping motion with the legs, lifting them clean off the ground and I think I achieved this, although, it needs work in parts. When creating this, I wanted it to look as if the character was moving its head from side to side, however, I think it looks kind of like the eye is just bobbing up and down on its own instead of it looking as if it's the characters head itself that is moving.
Late for Work Run -
I am more pleased with my Late for work Run Cycle, this was the second one I attempted and I think it turned out quite well in comparason to my happy walk. There is less of an indication on this animation that it was a loop/cycle animation as there is not much of a jump there, like on the first. I'm actually really pleased with how the hair on the character came out and I worked quite hard on making this work the way I wanted it to. I think the only thing I'd consider working on on this one would be the beak of the character, as it seems to boil a little bit when moving.
Bad Mood Walk -
My Bad mood walk cycle was the final one I attempted, I think I have shown some improvement since the first walk cycle, however, I think I could've done a better job at tweening this one because the back leg seems to flick a little to quickly at one part. I think maybe the character comes up to high in certain parts too, making the walk seem less grumpy than I wanted it too.
But yes :3 Deadlines are fast upon me now, you'll be (hopefully) seeing many more updates about what I'm up to, soon ^_^ I'll be blogging a little less frequently than usual, because meeting the deadlines themselves are the most important things right now, but this blog is getting marked on the 31st of May, so I'll have all of my work up on it for then :D
Until next time! c:
Saturday 4 May 2013
Introducing the "Falmouth University Ident Project"
A week or two ago we were given the task of producing an 'Ident' for Falmouth University. This project is being supervised by Adam Aiken, who has worked in the advertising side of animation for years and will be able to be very helpful in terms of feedback for the project.
The brief for this project is pretty loose, something I really like about it :D
Idents tend to be ways of advertising, usually a television show. These are really commonly seen between ad breaks or after shows, particularly on channels like E4 (Estings) and on childrens channels such as Nickelodeon. These tend to be around 5 - 10 seconds long and serve as a fun way of reminding viewers what channel they are on :3 Most idents will have a short lead up and then display the logo for the channel. We have been asked to do the same, but with the Falmouth University logo c: (It's recently undergone a change, becoming Falmouth University rather than University College Falmouth and therefore the branding and logo's for it have changed, so we'll all be using the brand new logo in our idents)
I wanted to practice my character animation in this, particularly in terms of expressions. I also wanted to push myself, whilst sticking to things I know (due to the deadline time constraints leaving little time for experimentation) I have chosen to animate this project in Flash, as it is the program I currently feel most comfortable with and animate two characters, the first being my dragon character Saffie and the other one being a simplified human character of myself, similar to the one I used on my lifting animation, back at the start of my motion studies unit.
My animatic for this project can be seen below.
Our brief for this project has to include some kind of reference to our experimental animation, my way of including this will be through the blue 'paint' which will actually be parts of my blue plastercine from my experimental animation, since making this animatic, I have spoken to my lecturers who think it'd be a good idea to have the character catch the paint brush and then swipe it across the screen, to make the movement more dynamic. I will keep this in mind when producing my final piece.
I'll post more as I do it :3
Until Next Time -
~ Char
The brief for this project is pretty loose, something I really like about it :D
Idents tend to be ways of advertising, usually a television show. These are really commonly seen between ad breaks or after shows, particularly on channels like E4 (Estings) and on childrens channels such as Nickelodeon. These tend to be around 5 - 10 seconds long and serve as a fun way of reminding viewers what channel they are on :3 Most idents will have a short lead up and then display the logo for the channel. We have been asked to do the same, but with the Falmouth University logo c: (It's recently undergone a change, becoming Falmouth University rather than University College Falmouth and therefore the branding and logo's for it have changed, so we'll all be using the brand new logo in our idents)
I wanted to practice my character animation in this, particularly in terms of expressions. I also wanted to push myself, whilst sticking to things I know (due to the deadline time constraints leaving little time for experimentation) I have chosen to animate this project in Flash, as it is the program I currently feel most comfortable with and animate two characters, the first being my dragon character Saffie and the other one being a simplified human character of myself, similar to the one I used on my lifting animation, back at the start of my motion studies unit.
My animatic for this project can be seen below.
Our brief for this project has to include some kind of reference to our experimental animation, my way of including this will be through the blue 'paint' which will actually be parts of my blue plastercine from my experimental animation, since making this animatic, I have spoken to my lecturers who think it'd be a good idea to have the character catch the paint brush and then swipe it across the screen, to make the movement more dynamic. I will keep this in mind when producing my final piece.
I'll post more as I do it :3
Until Next Time -
~ Char
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