Category: Animation Studio

Since the previous post, my group and I decided on music for our animation:

I have also looked at the lecture given by Sarah regarding secondary action, and decided I wanted to practice and also plan out some of the secondary action I have for my own section of the animation:

Don’t get me wrong, It’s super rough but I’m really happy with the way this turned out.

Tomorrow I plan on meeting and speaking with the group and then starting to draw up the backgrounds I want to use for the full animation.

 

(Capybara is smol inside joke from last animation class – Ciara animated a puddle turning into a capybara n it was v funny so I made him the crest of the school.)

All image references can be found on my Pinterest board.

All audio can be found on Freesound.

This week, our homework was to create an animatic for our section of scenes within our final animation project. Before I started, I made sure to update my existing storyboard; I removed the scene that included a walk cycle, and replaced it with more context to where the smoke is coming from at the start – the idea being that it is floating through the separation between the two rooms in the floor.

Storyboard Timelapse.

I then began working on the animatic itself – I basically blew up all of the images within the storyboard put them in sequence to start, which was a very rough draft with very rough animations and it gave me more of an idea of how I wanted each scene to transition:

Upon review I decided that there were too many fade in and fade outs: looking back on this now, I think I probably could still do with one between Hyacinth sitting reading on the big book in the wide shot, and her up on her feet casting the spell. I’m not 100% sure on this though, so I’ll ask about it on Thursday. I was also going to have Jinx move a bit more, with a twitching ear as well as him looking up towards Hyacinth working on her spell, however I felt that this was too distracting overall, and decided to leave it with him glancing up at her — something that will probably go unnoticed, however I want him to have a small part in this sequence so I changed it.

This is the finished animatic:

Final Animatic – Timelapse.

This was such a joy to work on, it was a little tedious at points and I still don’t know how I’m going to communicate the camera moving around to the right with Hyacinth turning to read her book next to the crystal ball, but I still had so much fun with this. It’s made me really excited to continue, and I think I will spend the remainder of the week working on the backgrounds I’m going to need for my animation. All of the sound effects that I used for this animatic are linked above in Freesound.

We also had some discussions about what background music we might use – this was my contribution:

Caity — 11/12/2021

Music suggestion one.

What do you guys think of this as music? Super simple but I think it still kinda has the right atmosphere? And the length of the piece is pretty great…. Very limited editing?

[1:50 PM]
Music suggestion two.

I also really like this ’cause I think it has a lot of variation of fast and slow paced music, with different ambiences (playful to relaxed etc.) which we could utilize in our animation as there are differences in paces – we have the bustle of the canteen, to the chaos of a potions class gone wrong, to the soft atmosphere of a quiet library for studying and spell cast – then back to a more playful part for the dorms and the mishap of a misplaced fire spell, etc. etc. etc. you can see where i’m going.

[1:51 PM]
Music suggestion three.

Thought this also did the same thing as the last tune

Homework and Class Activities

All of the references used can be found on my Pinterest Board.

Edit: My crappy flour sack was really annoying me, especially since I could see that I hadn’t fully practiced using key frames before moving in with in-between frames – so I decided to rewatch Alec’s video on animating the jump and follow it more closely this time. I tried to give different little (very subtle) spins on mine, such as how I stretched out the body and moved the little ears, but it’s pretty close really. I’m so happy with this, actually having the time to sit and concentrate on the guide provided – without worrying about a looming presentation deadline – has made such a difference!

This week, we were concentrating on story boards inside and out of class. We were also tasked with creating animations both in and out of class; animation homework was to animate a flour sack jumping, specifically focussing on the anticipation of the action:

Honestly, I think I could have done this better — our World of Animation presentation was due this week, and I spent a lot of time not only writing, refining and recording my section of the presentation, I also spent a lot of time editing our full presentation for my group. As a result, I didn’t have quite as much time to make sure this was a good piece — If I were to do it again (which I think I might, once I get some time after presentation submission) I would squish down the flour sack’s full body at the start rather than just pushing the top section of the flour sack down at the start. I would also make the actual drawings more consistent.

The animation in class this week was a lot of fun:

I decided to draw a Murloc saying “heheh” and “murgl” then running at the ‘camera’. Honestly I’m so happy with this — I know it’s obviously rough and not phenomenally well drawn but it made me laugh a lot whilst I was making it, and I can’t really believe that I animated something that is pretty readable and understandable in silhouette and in action (Even if you don’t know what a Murloc is, you can hopefully see that it’s a fish creature appearing out of a puddle.) I feel like this was my first day doing some form of actual animation with some sort of story or an implication of a story. Yeah — anyway, I’m pretty buzzed this was so much fun.

We were also asked to do a storyboard in class today:

Flour Sack – Timelapse.

You can see from the timelapse of this storyboard that I changed the last shot – Alec made a great observation that it was quite hard to read with the bubble in front of the mage’s face (and this is still probably the case in board number five, I would change this going back), so I switched it up completely and brought the camera back as the notes call for a full shot – which I hadn’t noticed originally – and by pulling it out I think that the scene reads much more clearly. I had a lot of fun with this activity too – todays class was good!

Finally, we were tasked with drawing up the story board for our section of the team animation:

Magic Academy Storyboard – Timelapse.

I took far too much time over these, I think? I’m not sure – I thought that producing a storyboard was supposed to be a relatively quick process but I laboured over mine as usual, a habit I really think I need to break – talking to Sarah made me feel a little better, she suggested that storyboarding is actually quite a long process and I found that quite comforting. I am really happy with how these panels turned out anyway, I think that the story is clear and I’ve thought about how I want the camera shots to move and read. Sarah commented that there’s really no need to add the extra stress of a walk cycle in scene 6 after Hyacinth learns her spell, and therefore I will probably remove that scene and have the camera snap to her standing in the centre of the room starting to cast her spell.

Personal Work for Animation Studio – Magical Academia

As well as my homework, I did work on some other ideas for our world and the animation itself. I started just by sketching out some facial expressions for my characters Hyacinth and Jinx – unfortunately it doesn’t look as if I’m going to be able to use Jinx in this animation, but I will remember him in spirit! 🙁

Jinx Facial Expressions – Timelapse.

Hyacinth Facial Expressions – Timelapse.

I also did some designs for the school, trying to get an idea of it’s form and all of the shapes and components that contribute to it:

Magical Academia School Designs – Timelapse.

References used for this are: Reference one, reference two, reference three, reference four, reference five, reference six, reference seven. I had already come up with some designs for the castle, this was building off of some references and my previous design. I’m really happy with it – honestly, I wish it featured more in this form just so that I could draw it a little bigger, a little clearer.

Opening Scene Thumbnails – Timelapse.

References used for these compositions were: Reference one, reference two, reference three, reference four. The opening scene of our animation will simply be the camera zooming in on the school, with the trees in the foreground moving off to the side as if to make way for it. I volunteered to do the drawing for this scene as the group felt that I was quite strong with environments and buildings- I’m flattered (I’m not sure if that’s true, but I’m definitely flattered!) and happy to do it! 🙂

I wasn’t able to get quite as much work done this week – hopefully I’ll be able to get a bit more done for next week, as my presentation will be submitted!

In this weeks lecture, we were shown how to use Krita to animate, and we were asked to do some basic ball animations in class, paying particular attention to accelerating and decelerating the ball as if it were a roller coaster. Unfortunately I’m not able to upload the attempts I had in class, however when I got home I downloaded ‘Rough Animator’ for my iPad, recommended by Alec, and these were the couple of attempts I had just quickly trying to figure out the software on my own:

This was another attempt at a ball accelerating and decelerating on a path. I’m really pleased with how this one came out, I tried to really think about how the ball would interact with its path, and the pacing and timing.

This attempt was on my character, Hyacinth – I just wanted to see what it was like actually drawing in rough animator, so I made this quick animated doodle of Hyacinth falling asleep and promptly waking herself up. It was more of an attempt to find a brush I liked using for drawing but it was still fun to make this little doodle and bring her to life.  I feel a little apprehensive about using a software other than procreate for drawing and colouring, just because I am so used to my process on procreate and am able to achieve the results I like with ease. Going into Krita and Rough Animator is going to be a massive change and I’m worried that I may not be able to get the quality of drawing and colouring that I like in these programmes. However, after using both of them to animate in, I much prefer the methods of animation in these applications than in procreate. I’ll just have to forgive myself if this first animation project isn’t to my usual standards, and settle for this being a huge learning opportunity!

Homework this week was an introduction to timing and spacing, one of the twelve principles of animation. We were tasked with animating three kinds of balls (I chose a ping-pong ball, a bowling ball and a… squishy ball?).

The lecture showed us three balls animated in ones, twos and threes — I thought this was really useful, and to warm myself up I copied this just to see if I could do it – It was actually quite tough getting each ball animated in time with each other.

This was my attempt at a pingpong ball. I changed this a few times, my first attempt didn’t really have enough little bounces at the end as it exited the shot. Pingpong balls are really bouncy so I felt that the end bounce was important. I still wonder if this even really translates if I’m honest.

Next, I animated a bowling ball as my heavier object. This was pretty simple, there’s only about two to three  small bounces before the ball starts rolling because of its weight.

For the last one I just wanted to do a little slimy ball (?) – something that would splat when hitting the floor, kind of like Flubber. I just wanted to try and manipulate the shape a little, try and communicate that this isn’t a hard ball but rather a malleable substance.

I had a lot of difficulty sleeping this week, and I really felt it today whilst trying to concentrate on homework and lecture content; I couldn’t keep my attention on the chapter from the Survival Kit and struggled to read it in good time. I feel a little self-conscious about these attempts and I think that my inexperience with animation is really evident – all in all, I really don’t think they’re very good. However, I’m trying to keep positive – it can only get better from here!