For this assignment we were required to use the program toon boom. We did small practise animations leading up to our assignment to get us familiar with the program, which I was grateful for due to never using the software. We also  had the option to animate in 2D or 3D with premade rigs. I enjoyed the aspect of creating characters to match the personality of the animated cycles so I opted for 2D.

I’m used to drawing on my ipad and found my workflow improving when using a screen tablet. I tested and downloaded the AstroPad software to turn my ipad into an improv screen tablet, which helped immensely with structuring my characters. This came with a few limitations and workarounds but I referenced the two videos below to help with set up and animating on toonboom.

Vanilla Walk:

The vanilla walk cycle was the first cycle I attempted to accomplish. A big point of reference for me during my run and walk cycles was the animators guidebook as it mapped out step by step poses that made forming my cycles an easier process. I also looked at video references to gain a better understanding of pacing my vanilla walk.

For basic poses:

Based off my references I practised a basic walk sequence while in class. This gave me a rough visual on how the poses corresponded to one another:

I found that having guidelines to keep my forms consistent between frames helped. I felt like my practise walk was a good starting point however I wanted to start from scratch to ensure I had a good foundation for my walk. I proceeded to use 5 poses on 2’s and added in-between’s to transition between main poses. As a walk is slower, concise movements adding in-betweens allowed the character to move slower and had a smoother outcome. I noted my frames so when it came to alternating between limbs I knew which drawings I needed to flip.  I added another guideline to follow the swing of the arm as I felt like the consistency still felt odd.

I had to go back and alter the proportions slightly before moving onto details as I felt the head and neck were too small. I drew a new head and copy and pasted this into a different layer and drew different guidelines to fit the characters new proportions. After fixing the base I felt happy to move onto my secondary/overlapping actions.

I struggled a bit with the process of the hair. I wanted to animate a feminine character walk with long flowing hair, however I found that it undone the action of the back arm. I had thought if I switched between animating the hair on 1’s and 2’s I could alter the hair in response to the characters movement, so the adjustment of the back arm lifted the hair off her back and have it fall back in place. My first pace for the hair turned out strange, I asked my peers their opinion on what I could fix and one suggested that the flick of the hair was too exaggerated compared to the speed in which her arm was moving. I adjusted this so the movement wasn’t as forced. I changed the lineart to red and blue to tell apart the base shape of the hair, and what parts I wanted to animate.

The next step was the add the rest of the details. I wanted to have a small shift in the characters expression so I had her blink between steps. I added a bounce to her skirt as it fell to match with the flowy nature of the hair. I cleaned up the lines and changed the line colour to finalize the animation. I felt with the time I had this animation it turned out ok, although looking back I would ensure I gained more feedback during class time as I see a lot of issues that needed to be fixed (her legs being too short, the fall of the skirt based on her fall distance etc.)

 

 

Walk with Personality – Confident:

For my walk with personality I wanted to depict a confident, smug character. Before delving into my animation I drafted some notes/looked at references to ensure I translated my personality effectively through chosen attributes. The below video was what mostly inspired my desire to have my character have a weapon rested on his shoulder as it looked like a fun character detail:

Looked at mixture of real footage, 3D and 2D to acquire a broad range of how this personality is conveyed through different animation forms:

 

 

Notes:

Process:

Alongside my video references I again used the animators guide to map out my poses. I animated on 2’s, made the main poses and added in-betweens so the characters movements wouldn’t appear stiff. I wanted his head to nod from side to side and poses to show him balancing his form to compensate for the weapon on his shoulder.  When I was content with the outcome I planned to reverse the poses to make the animation loop, however I ran into an issue when cycling back to the first pose; there was a strange head bob between the last frame cycling back to the first. I asked for feedback from Alec and he solved the issue, by limiting the frames at the end it resulted in a better transition.

 

 

I wanted my personality walk to be based off my tiefling barbarian from BG3 and intended to have a tail swish alongside his strides. All his details where animated on 2’s where I found it was better to customize the amount of frames for his tail based off his movement/angle of his body. There was a bit of trial and error with this movement as the tail seemed to whip around too fast when fill fulling the loop. I did a rough pass at what this would look like animated:

 

 

 

I asked my peers how the rough looked before moving on, the feedback being positive and I was confident enough to finalize and move onto cleaning up the sketches. I’m happy with how the cycle came out, the wide strides and swing of the arms clarifying the character’s confident nature. However if I had more time I would’ve liked to tweak the spacing of the character, his head turn looks stiff and I feel like he whips around too fast to meet the first pose. I would’ve added more frames for the head (1’s?) to ensure a better outcome.

 

Vanilla Run:

For my vanilla run cycle I wanted to capture a basic jog. I wanted to give another shot at animating a character with longer hair, as it’s faster movement I knew this would be a difficult procedure to not cause frantic motion with my hair animation. I gathered some references to better understand how this is carried out through others processes/media. I found moderndayjames videos really insightful when it came to this exercise as it made me more conscious of arcs and spacing to translate across the speed in which a character is moving.

Collection of anime runs with varying urgencies/speeds:

Notes:

Base reference:

Upon gathering references and doing a little bit of research I completed my first rough draft for my running animation. I asked for feedback and Aodhan told me something vital when it comes to run animations; because the frames don’t last long it’s harder to differentiate the foreground and background silhouettes. The less frames the less detail we can pick up on, so it’s good to keep in mind exaggerating the limbs when completing the base..

 

I then added the secondary/overlapping actions. I first started with the hair and attempted to grasp the movement based on the characters arms/how low she dips. When the arm flicks back so does the ponytail due to the impact of the swing . I decided to add ears to the character to experiment with the force impact when the character enters the down pose, ensuring when the character goes down the ears go up, lagging behind the movement of the character. I tilted the ears forward to implement this detail, following a mini arc to keep consistent. I included one band over the foreground leg to ensure the silhouettes were recognisable.

 

 

That led to my final animation. I feel as though I should have looked at a reference for the hair as I attempted to animate based off the movement of the body, however I feel like the movement of the hair is too dramatic for a basic jog.

 

Run with Personality – Gleeful Goblin : 

For the run with personality I wanted to use my friends DnD character who crafts potions and has an upbeat personality. I wanted to achieve a gleeful skip with prop suspension before coming down with the character. Using what I’ve learned so far about cycling animation I gave my best attempt at having the character push up from the ground enough for a small leap, the weight of the bag becoming lighter when falling to the ground. This run cycle proved to be a challenge for me and I’m quite knit picky with the result.

Things to note:

If my character was going to become airborne they need to build impact in the knee before lifting off, their torso stretching to accompany this momentum.

I ensured the characters knee was bent when landing, however looking back at the animation I feel as though this would have more impact. The torso would also probably bend forward for balance, and the knee bending upon landing would be exaggerated.

As objects surrounded the character would move in their own time I switched between 1’s and 2’s, longer frames for when the character would be airborne. I feel as though the potion bottle came down too quickly and felt unnatural. I intended to add other potion bottles but due to time constraints I was unable to do this. I included squash and stretch to smoothen out the transition of the object falling to the bag.

Conclusion:

To conclude I was content with my overall work during this assignment, however I feel as though I needed to take more time to fully flesh out and clean my animations. I enjoyed using toonboom, although never working with the program before through the class workshops it was easy to pick up on. Looking back I feel as though I need to communicate my work process better and send in work to get feedback. I sometimes feel embarrassed by showing off my work although the times I have done it’s improved the outcome and helps me develop my skills. It’s an important process when in the industry and I learn a lot by doing it, so it’s something I hope to become better with in the future.

Through this assignment I learnt the importance of spacing, timing and consistency, and how to convey the body language of a character to show off their personality through the way they move. I saw a lot of areas I needed to improve but I’m looking forward to expanding my knowledge of 2D in the next assignment and hope to come out of my shell a bit more.