During week 11 we have been busy working on our animations. So far I have completed a portion of the running cycle for our main character. I have also added in the background and other background movements like the side character and the flashing screen. I have yet to add in the cyborg cat, I decided that I would add it in as soon as I had finished the running sequence. This is a clip of what I have so far:
We took a one-to-one tutorial this week for the tutors to help us out and answer any questions that we had. I talked to Aodhan and he have me some great feedback and advice for the bits of animation I had completed so far. This is the feedback he had sent to me:
Make his stop and turn more panicked and less casual. Fix the perspective on the left hand building, foreshorten the open apartment bit. Push the depth a bit more by making your skyscrapers lighter. Make him a little bit bigger as he comes towards the screen. Line thickness for your BG to help with depth. Thicker lines in FG.
With this information I took the time to edit and polish up anything I needed to work on. I started by redoing my background. I made sure I didn’t spend too much time on it, though I worked hard to fix my perspective and give it a more effective look. I used photoshop’s star tool to make perspective lines. I also took note to make the lines thicker in the foreground and thinner in the distant. As a result my background looks much better and still fits well with what I have already animated. I noticed this is a big improvement from my first few experiments with the background which I am pleased with. It takes a lot of practice to get the hang of perspectives.
I have also been working on the main character and his response to the danger coming towards him. I redid my sketch sequence (at the start of the video) to give a more panicked, sloppy running effect. this guided me to edit some of my frames to the new poses and therefore achieve a more engaging running sequence. Although I was liking how the running sequence was looking, it just wasn’t giving the right emotion that we were going for. this improvement will help the audience to understand what is going on and what emotion it is showing.