This week was the individual 30 minute feedback session we would get for our animations so far. Alec was the one giving the feedback to me and said my animation is going well so far and the only adjustments he said to have for the animation was to have Echo peek out for longer so the audience can see the action more, and for Bob to have his head tilt a bit as he is swinging the trunk if I have time, as well as having the trunk itself to get bigger towards the top like it’s moving closer to the camera.
I told him about not having time to fix the background and desk just yet as I was finishing fleshing out the sketched animation and he took a screenshot of my background and went onto photoshop and showed me how my current floor would work when using one point perspective and for the plant he mentioned about how in the tool options the weight of the brush can be adjusted so the lines are more stable and smoother with the stabiliser tool as the base of the plant wasn’t a perfect curve. He also added that the horizon line can remain the same for now as that’s what I based my animation around so it’s easier if the one point perspective still revolves around that.
He mimicked an elephant’s trunk with his arm and said that his shoulder would also move even though his arm is moving independently to show that Bob’s head would rotate a bit as he swings and he used another example of his arm and hand where the closer it got to the camera the larger the hand became and the same can be said for the top of the trunk which was very useful.
I took his feedback and worked on updating the background and the desk and plant using the vanishing point tool in Krita to create a one point perspective to make everything consistent.
Regarding the new background, I implemented it into the sketch animation to see what that would look like compared to the sketch animation I showed Alec in my session. Both animations are shown below:
The difference between them is rather obvious to me now as the animation with the updated background, desk and plant looks like the floor and desk are getting smaller in the distance whereas the animation with the original background, desk and plant looks like the whole animation is taking place on a wall rather than give the illusion of distance with the perspective.
Once I updated the sketch animation to include the updated background, I started working on updating the animation itself to include the modifications Alec suggested where Echo peeks out from behind the desk for longer, Bob rotating his head a bit as he is swinging his trunk and the trunk itself getting bigger when it gets closer to the camera and hits it. This is the result of the modifications:
Now that I’m really satisfied with my animation I decided to get started on lineart, and it was a bit of a pain to get through honestly because of how precise the lines needed to be which were very tricky to get right, especially the eyes as I used a smaller brush size for them and for Bob in particular any out of place pixel or jagged line would be very noticeable due to how big his eyes are. The stabiliser tool became very handy for me as it helped me with drawing Bob’s large oval head in front of the camera and drawing his trunk as it helped keep my drawings consistent in closely following the sketch in each frame. The lineart for my animation is shown below:
I also made a small modification at the end where the static white noise gradually fades in rather than it being instantaneous, and I believe it adds to the overall impact of my animation by still having some motion involved even though Bob is no longer moving. Another thing I wanted to do this week but never had enough time to was to finally get the updated references for Echo and Bob done before I start colouring because I wanted to make sure the designs look better. I needed to fix Echo’s black colouring in some areas so it’s a lower tone than the lineart as they were the same tone originally and it meant the lineart wasn’t visible, and I also need a coloured reference for Bob since the reference I had been using for the animation had no colour in it and was essentially just lineart. I had no time to do it this week however because I had only finished the lineart on Monday night and the presentation on our animations is due on Thursday which we needed to work on, but I’ll work on the updated references once I get the presentation sorted.
In preparation for Week 12 of “Presentations & Assignment Submission Info” we were assigned the homework task of creating a presentation for our group animation including what we learned from doing our animations and what we would like to add or fix for the submission deadline on the 17th December.
Exercise 1: Presentation On Our Group Animations
The presentations will be shown to everyone in class during the second blackboard call on Thursday. For our presentation I created a rough outline for what we could do in the presentation and assigned the order of who does what slides based on the order of the group animation. This rough outline is shown below:
Slide 1 – “Hybrid Animals Presentation by Timmy, Chloe and Rory”
Slide 2 – what is the main premise of our animation? (Hybrid animals trying to escape from a lab of scientists, with some scientists being good and helping the hybrids and an evil scientist doing unethical experiments on other scientists and animals, which the security CCTV footage shows)
Slide 3 – edit of the group’s animations for what we have so far
Slide 4 – (Timmy) show your part in the animation
Slide 5 – (Timmy) explain your process of working on your animation and what you’ve learned from working on it the past few weeks
For example (but not limited to):
Understanding time & patience needed to animate
Importance of pre-production for a clear plan in production
Communication across the team
Keeping character lines / details simple
Reference for animation posing / timing / personality
Slide 6 – (Timmy) explain areas you might want to add to or edit before the final submission on the 17th December
Slide 7 – (me) show my part in the animation
Slide 8 – (me) explain my process of working on my animation and what I’ve learned from working on it the past few weeks
For example (but not limited to):
Understanding time & patience needed to animate
Importance of pre-production for a clear plan in production
Communication across the team
Keeping character lines / details simple
Reference for animation posing / timing / personality
Slide 9 – (me) explain areas I might want to add to or edit before the final submission on the 17th December
Slide 10 – (Rory) show your part in the animation
Slide 11 – (Rory) explain your process of working on your animation and what you’ve learned from working on it the past few weeks
For example (but not limited to):
Understanding time & patience needed to animate
Importance of pre-production for a clear plan in production
Communication across the team
Keeping character lines / details simple
Reference for animation posing / timing / personality
Slide 12 – (Rory) explain areas you might want to add to or edit before the final submission on the 17th December
Slide 13 – “Thank You For Listening!”
I copy pasted the blackboard prompts into the rough outline so everyone knows what exactly we should include, and figured out that each person’s section on their own individual animations should be between 2 and 3 minutes maximum as the presentation needs to be less than 10 minutes. I also created a google slides document for us to work on for our own sections and I said I would do the slide on the story of our animation and edit the group animation together as well as my own section on my individual animation.
For my section, I created my own script for it. Slide 8 is for the animation process and what I’ve learned and slide 9 is for any additions or edits we want to include, both of which are shown below:
Slide 8 – “For my animation, I learned how long it takes to create only a few seconds of animation, and how difficult it is to get the character poses right and the lineart consistent, in particular the eyes as I used a smaller brush size for them so it’s harder to make them look right. I also learned the benefit of doing some of the animation sketches in different layers, for example the trunk, as I won’t be erasing any of the sketches of the head and ears as they are on different layers. The animatics, I also found out, don’t necessarily mean that no other changes can be made during the sketching stage as in the animation I included the hybrid animal peeking out from behind the desk before hiding again which wasn’t present in my animatic.
I also kept my character lines and details simple, while also being able to show distinguishing features to differentiate between the hybrids such as the elephant ears and trunk in one hybrid and the panda ears and axolotl gills and tail in the other hybrid in the animation. The run cycle in particular was quite a challenge to do as not only was it my first proper attempt at a run cycle, I had to have the hybrid perform other actions too such as moving her arms behind her as she runs and lowering her head and body to duck behind the desk. Fortunately I was able to use a reference for the run cycle, and I learned of the importance of labelling each leg as being “front” or “back” as it made things way easier when figuring out which leg would be in what position according to the run cycle reference. Another challenging thing was getting the perspective right as I had to keep on modifying the desk and background so they were in the right perspective, but I’m quite proud of how it turned out in the end. With regards to team communication, I’ll admit we could have done better outside of class time, but we did work out what we all needed to work on within the class time so there was still communication between us.”
Slide 9 – “Some things I definitely would like to add before the final submission would be the colour as I only have the lineart so far, as well as potentially adding sound effects of static for the end of my animation instead of only showing the static visually. I also need to do updated character references as with the Panda/Axolotl hybrid I noticed if I kept parts of her as solid black the lineart for those areas won’t be visible, so I need to adjust her design so the black is a lower tone than the lineart, and I don’t have a coloured reference for the Kangaroo/Elephant hybrid so I need to do those before adding colour to the hybrids in the animation.”
I also spent Tuesday working on my section in the google slides document and putting in the information I’m including in my slides and also recorded and edited my individual animation section. Today though I’m waiting on the other videos to be sent to me so I can hopefully edit them for tomorrow, or at the very least I can edit them together in the first blackboard call before the presentations are shown in the second blackboard call.
References Of The Week
The first image is a reference I used as an idea to base my updated background off of as it was the example Alec created when adding perspective to my original background in photoshop.
The video is a reference I used for how Bob’s trunk should behave in the animation as Alec used his arm as an example for how the trunk would get bigger closer to the camera and I based the trunk getting bigger in the animation on this video. There is no audio to the video, but the actions helped me understand how to animate Bob’s trunk.