ANIMATION PRODUCTION – STUDIO GUIDED PROJECT (PART1)

UncategorizedLeave a Comment on ANIMATION PRODUCTION – STUDIO GUIDED PROJECT (PART1)

Week 1

Our first week back after a Christmas break, I stepped into the 2d team and got to work. Named 3½ Girls inc. we begun by setting out a plan for the week.

Taking it slow, we realised that each one of us was into concept and story. With such a small group, we had the luxury of being able to allow each one of us to have our say, this early on. So we set off for the week to come up with some ideas and create desired moodboards for our style and ideas.

Trialing out a program called Miro we worked there to build moodboards. It was a good place for us to convey thoughts and ideas for what we were thinking.

Week 2

Week 2 was the design week. We sat down on Monday and chose the narrative that we wanted to tell.

We decided to go with Tish’s idea that was about misinformation on the web. It ended up being the most concise idea that had a simple achievable story and could bring a lot of visually interesting ideas to the table.

The next thing to do was to put the narrative into script form so that we could work from it. I took this on and got it out of the way.

As the group was a smaller team and the interest in concept work was a unanimous desire, we all spent the time designing characters for our story. As the narratives main detail was about water we thought it would be nice to make the characters plant based.

I moodboarded out my ideas and got to work.

As I was unhappy with how my characters looked in the digital space I picked up pencil and paper and did it that way. Truthfully I need to practice more digitally as this will be an issue down the line.

Week 3

We had to showcase our project to Rachel via presentation. Mainly it was to relay our designs, ideas and what our pipeline was going forward.

LINK TO PRESENTATION

Sitting down together we drew the storyboard out on a whiteboard, getting a good sense of our shared ideas. It was helpful to get ideas flowing, see where we all were in terms of head space with the project and  get the Pre-Production phase rolling.

Once the initial storyboard idea was made, the next phase was to clean this all up. Wanting to learn new software the next stage was to draw all this in Toon Boom’s Storyboard 20. A lot like Harmony which I used primarily in the first semester, it wasn’t too difficult to navigate but the new features were great to learn and work with when it came to Storyboarding. I made sure to watch the Toon Boom tutorials on YouTube to get a good sense of the software.

 

WEEK 4

Next up was the Animatic for the following weeks meeting with Rachel. Once the group were happy with the Storyboards, Shannon passed over the sound effects and I built the audio bed for the storyboard to run underneath it.

I also presented the storyboards in their storyboard form.

WEEK 5

The week began with a production meeting to touch base with Rachel and fill her in on where our project is. With the animatic shown and the beginning of our design work presented we took on the notes that were passed onto us.

Animatic wise, it was a little unclear and could be made more interesting with a little tweaks. It was feeling lack luster and not really showcasing the gravity of the whole world taking on the weight of this lie. A second draft was done.

 

 

 

 

 

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN – Research Project Blog

UncategorizedLeave a Comment on EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN – Research Project Blog

INITIAL THOUGHT PROCESS

While looking through the Codex I realised that the most interesting aspects were stuff related to the inhabitants of this world. The weird wacky creatures and contraptions were cool but at the end of the day, it was the inhabitants and how they were living amongst this perceived ‘madness’ that caught my eye. Two things caught my eyes, the Human Dressed as a Fish and the Man dressed like a road. The idea of camouflage being used by humanity and how the extreme biome they are surround by influencs the design of these peoples worlds.

DESIGN

SKIN

My desire is to replacate the aspects of physical paper and realistic textures into a digital format.

A technique I want to use is making textures in Photoshop and then importing them into Toon Boom as texture brushes. (https://learn.toonboom.com/modules/introduction-to-animation2/topic/adding-a-texture-colour-swatch2)

WICKER BASKET

Initially the idea for the Wicker Fish Apparel they wore was going to be a 3d model. Possibly made by myself or in Blendr. It became clear though that it was going to be a lot of work and learning when there was so much 2D drawing that needed to be done for the rest of the project. The idea was scrapped.

Instead I am going to go with a collage and texture made creation. Using free textures and self made textures to create the case around him.

WATER

Keeping the idea of replicating paper textures, I think the idea of crepe paper and tissue paper for water is the way I want to go.

I think maybe creating a water loop with both crepe paper and possibly cotton wool would be in the same vein of what I am trying to achieve. I possibly could do it through the likes of Dragon frame as a stop motion project for the back ground.

Unfortunatly I had plans to draw it out as a way to work out the loop and timing but due to time restraints, I never made a move on this part of the project.

References

 

SWIMMING

It is very clear that these characters spent a great deal of time, swimming and living in the water. When I tried to figure out what type of technique they would do, it became clear that their fish disguise would be quite restricting and probably cause them to be subdued a little when they swam. The breast stroke was settled on because of its more limp orientated rather then twisting and swinging the body like the Front Crawl for instance.

Reference:

OUTPUTS

SWIMMING

The first test was an angled look down at the character doing the breast stroke, however it was evident that some of the nice animation that was underneath was going to get lost underneath the Fish shaped shell our character was in.

UNDER THE HOOD

The aim of my second animation was to give a more interesting view of the character, under the hood. How the smaller aspects of his costume and how he swam would move. At the moment, I have his head moving up for air. He wouldn’t do that as he has a snorkel and goggles however if all movement of the head is removed then he ends up looking stiff. A happy balance needs to be in place.

NOTE: While working away on the assignment, I shot myself in the foot and saved over a different aspect of this assignment with an older file. In turn I had to race back, do that work and it meant putting a halt on these next two aspects of the project.

SNORKLES AND GOGGLES

While flicking through the Codex, a number of different “how it works”-esque drawings caught my eye and in the same vein I wanted to make that a part of my project and showcase the intricacies of how the characters costume works.

 

 

 

 

 

The costume intricacies I wanted to do this with were the goggles and the snorkel that are built into the costume.

After talking with Alec it was made clear that the elbows wouldn’t be out as far and they would be more in line with his body and in a more simple arc.

Unfortunatly due to the debacale of saving over my other files, it never got finished in the end as I ran out of time.

 

GETTING INTO WATER

Getting into the water and how the person operates in its biome was something I dreamt up later on into the assignment.

Doing the storyboard, I wanted to have the character walk up the board and then dive into the water, head first.

As I worked away on the intial walk cycle, I saved over my files and realised I needed to go back and finish the work I had already done. This in turn meant that work on this piece ground to a halt and I ran out of time trying to finish it all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

RESEARCH LOOKED AT

TIMING FOR ANIMATION – DIGITAL PORTFOLIO

UncategorizedLeave a Comment on TIMING FOR ANIMATION – DIGITAL PORTFOLIO

FINAL THOUGHTS

As I look at it now, I’m proud of what I achieved in such a short period of time. I was perhaps a little ambitious while holding the knowledge that I would be away for 2weeks shooting a seperate personal project. Saying that though, although a lot of work is still yet to be achieved, when I look at what I got done,what I learnt and what I have tried to implement, I am happy.

Design wise, I am happy with some of the textures but I wonder does it take away from the animation itself? In turn I have made sure to export both uncoloured and coloured versions of it.

UNCOLOURED VERSION

In future, I have realised that more intricute shots need to be done first. There needs to be more of an understanding of what I am trying to achieve stylistic wise and mainly what I am capable of doing on my own with such a tight timeline.

TIMING FOR ANIMATION – REFLECTIVE BLOG

UncategorizedLeave a Comment on TIMING FOR ANIMATION – REFLECTIVE BLOG

THE SWORD

A young page named Jim, sits at the fire, cleaning a sword. He anxiously watches over his shoulder at a Knight, Sir Dim, who is tightening his gauntlets and getting more impatient beside him. Jim hands him a sword he has been cleaning, Dim looks at it and checks it. Realising it isn’t up to standard, he bonks him on the head with the flat of it. ‘It ain’t right, do it again’ before throwing it on the ground at his feet. Dim goes back to checking and fixing his armour. Jim picks up the sword and goes back to shining the sword, cautiously watching Dim.

CHARACTER

JIM

Our page Jim is a feeble character. I wanted him to be weary and kind of worried about the knight that stands close to him. He will be well dressed for warmth but I also want him to be a little worn and ragged.

His movements themselves will be constantly watching Sir Dim our knight and trying to get his work done as Dim gets more impatient.

DIM

An impatient Knight, he’s gruff and wicked and doesn’t help the temperament of Jim, our poor wee anxious page. His impatience conflicts with Jim’s anxious nature.

 

DESIGN ASPECTS

LOCATION

RUINS

My initial thought is to have it set in the ruins of a castle in a forest. It gives it a dynamic visual setting that can have both stone and nature, interlocked. It also sets a very ominous tone but silent if it needs to be. Maybe set at dusk or at night, it will allow shadows to really play a major part of it all.

The idea of mixed media, I thought maybe I would do the background in collage or maybe an oil or acrylic painted background? Maybe too ambitious.

JIM THE PAGE

I wanted the page, Jim, to be well dressed for warmth but I also want him to be a little worn and ragged as if to say he hasn’t been looked after but there is an ability to do so.

SIR DIM the KNIGHT

My initial thought was to have a knight clad in plate armour. It is shiny and reflective and allows a cracking looking pompous character who is lost in the grandeur of being a knight and the idea of himself to really be highlighted through that idea of immaculate armour. Having him really stand out around the more natural world around him showcases a disconnect.

Though I think it might be too close to Prince Charming in Shrek or the likes of Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones.

Instead of plate armour I might go with more Crusader armour. Notorious degenerates, I think a grizzled angry crusader will allow it to be more authentic. Less hammy or comical and more uncomfortable. It also allows more simplistic design to rule instead of having complex plate armour that I would have to work on and keep consistent throughout.

With the design nailed down and the knowledege that this was the first animation I would be trying to colour in and not just leave as line drawings, I wanted to try out a mixed media style and have paper textures on my animation to create the colour. A first draft done, through Toon Boom and Photoshop was undertook, in order to understand how this would work.

I realised though as it was static, how would it read with a moving character? I then took to animating a small twist of a characters body. Done through Harmony and then exported with Alpha layers, imported into Photoshop, filling in the texture there and then reimporting back into Harmony. It looked lovely but it was an absolute melee, workflow wise.

Querying with Sarah about this workflow, she showed that I can add in textures with Harmony. I had to make my own in Photoshop, import them as TIFF’s and then they can brushed on. (This is the way I am going to work instead. It is so much more sensible.) (Link: https://learn.toonboom.com/modules/introduction-to-animation2/topic/adding-a-texture-colour-swatch2)

WORKFLOW

ANIMATIC

As this project was a longer bit of animation that I haven’t taken on to do before, I wanted to have a storyboard which could be then turned into an animatic so that it would help me visualise and time out each shot and composition better. The idea was to implement good workflow practices at the start in order to help me further down the line.

Drawing out the storyboard on Toon Boom I then brought it into Adobe Premiere Pro. While doing the first draft I realised that it was too long and I had too many compositions. I cut, redrew and rearranged shots in order to make it meet the 20second criteria. and began timing out my shots, using timing charts.

TIMING CHARTS

One of the first good habits in terms of workflow I wanted to implement was the use of timing charts. If I was to be bouncing back and forth between both Harmony and Premiere Pro, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t wasting time when trying to hit audio cues.

I looked at a number of references but I went with NobleFrual Studio’s tutorial on them in the end as the one to work with.

I worked off of his legend for the timing charts and implemented it into my own project.

PRIORITISING

Intially I just dived into the first shot, started animating it and got the head down. Though as time went on I queried with Sarah and Michael and realised I was going to end up getting lost in shots that weren’t important and the more time consuming ones were going to end up over loading me at the end.

I then looked at the shots I wanted to show off with and flex the muscles with and went at them first. The main one I wanted to work on was my over the shoulder, looking up perspective.

It was a shot that was going to need a lot of twisting of shapes, work on flexibility and a bit of squashing and squeezing with smear frames. The idea was to have a fast swoosh past the camera at the beginning. All of it was on 1’s.

Then after finding out what he wanted out of it, he then slowly pulled back the sword to its original position.

The final shot, although possibily a ‘bus stop’ was one I wanted to pull back from our CU’s and get the whole action into. Like the shot before, smear frames, twisting of bodies and shapes as well as a walk cycle at the end was a way for me to show off to an extent what I had learnt in module 1.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Timing for Animation – Reflective Blog

UncategorizedLeave a Comment on Timing for Animation – Reflective Blog

With all of these exercises I must admit I didn’t do enough inbetweening. I wish I got more of them in but in reality I was trying to figure out keyframes and breakdowns. In all I lost sight of the deadline for this module and while getting lost in small little aspects of things and then bad time management, I feel a lot of the animations are lacking because of it. Timing is a little lost in some of them and different ways to work are being figured out.

Bouncing Ball

The bouncing ball was the first exercise I undertook. Unfortunately it was rushed and done from the confines of my own home with no access to advice or feedback. However it was done on paper and was kind of retro and therapeutic. It is funny to look at it now after 5 weeks of non stop animation and see what I would have tried to do different.

Pose to Pose

The Pose to Pose exercise was the one I learnt the most from in my opinion. Full of different actions, twisting and moving, it is the exercise I learnt the fundamentals of Toon Boom with. The animation itself, I have to look at and say that timing was a major factor that needed worked on. The concept of more frames equals faster and the less means slower, was something I missed I felt. “Shape not lines” was implemented and I think, although it still needs work, I am content with consistencies.

Walk Cycle

Run Cycle

There is a limp in both my walk and run cycle. Michael offered some advice at one stage, do the contact poses first. I think this would have helped with the limp or over extenuation.

Box

The box push was an exercise that I wanted to try and get turning, contraction and dynamic posing into. I am happy with the twisting and turning but I think a lot more inbetweening is needed to smooth it out and make it more fulfilled.

Sack

I am happy with a lot of aspects of this. I think conveying emotion is maybe a little lost behind the simple motions of the sack? Though this exercise is the one that thought me that I need to do mroe research and pre planning before diving straight into it. Diving straight in means that I need to over correct adn fix down the line, maybe as an editor with already shot scenes this is ok but as an animator pre production is key.

Basketball

Although incomplete in my eyes, I wish I had attempted Straight Ahead in earlier exercises as it created such a beautiful loose motion. Not sure about the arc as I think it moves maybe too slow and isn’t really curved enough but I am happy with the loose movement.

 

Timing for Animation Week 3 Assignment – WALK & RUN CYCLE

UncategorizedLeave a Comment on Timing for Animation Week 3 Assignment – WALK & RUN CYCLE

WALK CYCLE

While being given the brief for this assignment, I had thoughts of combining both the walk cycle and run cycle together to fill the criteria for both. The idea was to have my character walk along and when he realises the time he would begin to run. I had a chat with Michael however and he reminded me to keep it simple, there is a lot of work involved in timing it out so that both fit together. I would be adding another whole section to animate, where the character looks at his watch and then accelerates. Spelled out like that I decided it was madness altogether and took on the wisdom from Michael that if I wanted to do it, later on when I had time, to dive into it.

Timing it out, I made the character a long-legged man, striding it out as if he was urgently heading to work. I have his arm attached to his side as if he is holding something, I thought initially a newspaper but I think now it shall be a coat.

I wanted to have him twist his body as if he was loafing along in his stride. His right arm has a coat draped over his arm so really it was his left arm that was the main swinging action. However when I added the coat, I tried to give the coat a sense of swaying at the bottom. However as I watched it last minute, I have realised that it doesn’t sway enough. Instead of  just the bottom, it should have had 3/4 of the coat swaying.

While watching the loop of a walk cycle, I realised that it had a sort of limp. I had added inbetweens jest before each keyframe for the first 1/4 of the cycle and realised the last 3/4 of the cycle didn’t have them. After adding them, it didn’t help but it did create a beautiful fluid movement.

RUN CYCLE

The run is an extension of the same character. Although the walk cycle had him holding his arm to his side to drape a coat over it, I decided to make it a more conventional run without any quirks, as I haven’t ever done a run cycle before.

While watching it back after an export, I realised that it looked as if he was floating along. It was almost as if he was bounding along in slow motion. Showing it to Michael he pointed out that if it isn’t on 1’s, it will look like that. I had only the keyframes in and this was creating a slow-motion effect that took the speed out of it. Bringing it back to about two frames per frame, immediately helped. (Note: Always do a run on 1’s.) Michael queried that the poses maybe weren’t as dynamic and exaggerated which when looking at it, I agree. Something to fix on my next run cycle.

Timing for Animation Week 5 Assignment – BASKETBALL THROW

UncategorizedLeave a Comment on Timing for Animation Week 5 Assignment – BASKETBALL THROW

This week we were given the exercise to showcase a basketball being thrown.  A showcase of animating complex body mechanics.

I wanted to make sure that this week, I implemented a good intial breakdown and research. I had got caught in the weeks before, racing ahead and losing sight of what I have been trying to do. As I looked at references, I realised that maybe it was best to implement a version of what Richard Williams talked about in The Survival Kit about Straight Ahead. Hoping it would give me a nice fluid animation of what I was trying to do, pulling from a reference, it seemed that keyframes would be easily worked out and then I can focus on the ball and the arc.

Truthfully I lost track of time on this excercise.  I lost sight of the deadline for the module and realised that Tuesday 31st of October wasn’t too far away. Eventually I ended up trying to break the back of the other animations in order to have a good foundation of work done. Rather then say, have two clean cut bits of work done, I put the keyframes in for this and got to work on the rest of them. However I did find that Straight Away created such a beautiful fluid movement, I think Pose to Pose & Straight Away being implemeneted together will be my next attempt.

 

Timing for Animation Week 4 Assignment – FLOUR SACK AND THE BOX PUSH

UncategorizedLeave a Comment on Timing for Animation Week 4 Assignment – FLOUR SACK AND THE BOX PUSH

Flour Sack

The flour sack exercise given to us this week is meant to bring the most mundane object from 1930s America to life. An old Disney exercise it seems, my initial thought was to make it move and give it action to undertake. I plotted out that it should hop across the page, stop at a point, pull out a knife and slice itself open. This gave it a story, a bit of my own exasperation with the assignment and also tried to fulfil the brief.

However giving it a bit more research after diving straight into it, I decided I wanted to add some emotion to my flour sack. Conveying emotion is what I want to learn to do so I have changed how the flour sack will be.

.

Now the flour sack takes a look at his situation before him, shows his dismay before finding courage and sacrificing himself for the greater cake and allowing his floury insides to fall into the bowl beneath him. As he does so, the mixer above him slowly wears thin and falls into the bowl after him.

I added a little mixer above the sack in order to create a sense of amxiety for the sack.

Box Push

The box push was the second exercise we had to undertake this week. A more difficult excersise to convey, it was to attempt  communicating weight and struggle through timing with performance. While sitting down to this exercise, was in a particularly guitar orientated hole and decided to instead of a conventuional box, have the character attempt to move a huge gutiar amp. That narratively was just to give it a flair, really what I wanted to test myself with is seeing if I can try and condense and extenuate the body and all its limps while trying to have a turn as well.

After doing my poses, I got down to working on the main part of this exercise, pushing the box with resistance. I thought the best way to show this was through sliding. An movable object against a unmoveable object is going to create sliding. Asthe character pushed more, his body needed to slip down as as his feet slide away from the amp.

A lot of focus was put on the shoulders. With the character having to get down low so much I wanted his leading action to be mostly in his shoudlers. The idea was that they would try and help showcase the twisting and turning of the character more efficently.

At the end of his triumphant push and moving of the box, the character needed to show some sort of relief after exercerting energy so I had him slump down and slouch against the box.

 

 

Timing for Animation Week 2 Assignment – POSE TO POSE

UncategorizedLeave a Comment on Timing for Animation Week 2 Assignment – POSE TO POSE

Pose to Pose began as scribbles and an assignment full of dread. Toon Boom stood before me, a completely new software to learn and understand. While not even beginning to open up the software, I became completely overwhelmed with the concept that I would probably have to know how to 2D rig, understand all of the workflows of animation and produce some sense of direction for the assignment by the end of the day. With my brain gripped by the panic of all of this, a break, some coffee and fresh air shook my mind free and I realised that this wasn’t possible. 2D rigging and a strong understanding of animation workflows weren’t something to learn in a manner of hours but something to focus on and learn as I went. For now, Pose to Pose needs to be understood and learned and this is something I could do by the end of the day. Frame by frame, slow and steady putting in the time by drawing it the way I know how and using Toon Boom allowed me to get a good understanding of the software. From there I could move forward.

The first thing to do was to get an idea together. I wanted to see if I could show a couple of different poses. I decided I wanted to have my character start on one knee, stand up tall, turn around and get scared before landing back on his feet ready to fight. 5 poses. A bit too many possibly but overshoot and correct. (Initially, I wanted to have him pick up a torch lit up with fire but Michael queried if maybe it was too much?) Instead, I went with a sword.

Quick scribbles in toon boom set a couple of the key poses before I grabbed a  drawing pad and smoothed out the keyframes more. (I got lost in the in-betweens but thankfully, once again Michael stepped in, raised some thoughts and set me back in the right direction.)

The second pass was to set the feet and add in the sword. When I had begun the in-betweens prematurely I realised that the feet weren’t set right and that some of the characters weren’t the same. It looked jumpy and From the wisdom of Richard Williams, “shapes are more important than lines.” Making sure the size and shape of my character are consistent was the aim of it.

Again while parousing The Animators Survival Guide I read about charts. They allow you to place where you think the in-betweens should line up, I set it for the hand while the character got up and set it for his jump back and land. (Note: circle ONLY the keyframes.)

 

As I watched my animation over time, the face and the hands, like the feet before I fixed them, would flick and sway in different sizes. They were inconsistent and the idea of ‘shapes over lines’ ran rampant in my mind and bugged me. After a second-year class with Aodhan on run cycles, he highlighted the importance of using references. My first thought was to get my hands into shape. Taking photos of my own hands as they held a very convenient mic stand beside my desk the keyframes of my pose to pose became my first target.

After getting my hands into realistic shape and how I would like them, I tackled the face. Using a layer below my main layer, I copied over the shape I wanted for him as he went along and I traced the shape it onto each keyframe. When the shape was constant, I moved the features of his face along a consistent line, creating that feeling of turning and adding emotion when needed.

Inbetweens came next, adding them on each side of the keyframes first. It was interesting to see it come together that way. (I did them in pink so I can see where they stand out but at the moment that is just so I can differentiate them)

I have realised that design qualities should be decided intially, it will allow me to understand what needs to be done. At the moment of writing this, I had designed a sword with a massive loop guard, which covers the characters hands. After putting so much work into the hands it feels a little rudundent just covering them up with this massive guard.

 

 

 

Timing for Animation Week 1 Assignment – BOUNCING BALL

UncategorizedLeave a Comment on Timing for Animation Week 1 Assignment – BOUNCING BALL

Our first assignment was the bouncing ball and excuse the ball pun, caught me on the hop. I didn’t have access to my drawing pad but thankfully I was able to tackle this assignment with a very appropriate ream of animation paper and a light box. Working out what I was doing before just diving feet first into it was called for. In my mind, I told myself not to overcomplicate the assignment, look at what it asks of me and remember what it is trying to do as a learning tool. Speed and timing were highlighted to me while looking at the notes and I thought to give the ball a number of arcs so I could have plenty of practice slowing the ball down as it bounces and make it look natural.

Stretch and squeeze was interesting to constantly be thinking of while drawing. How would the stretch and squeeze of the ball impact how speed was conveyed. Then coupling that with the amount of frames and how close they were together was cool. Now that was only a cylinder, so I won’t get too ahead of myself.

Skip to toolbar