For assignment 2 we were tasked with creating animations through our preferred method of working (blender 3d and toonboom 2D) based on the animation pipeline principles. I stuck to 2d this assignment as I was more confident in that manner of working, although I wouldn’t be opposed to practising more blender animation. I enjoyed the freedom of 2D, however if I were to do this project again I would dapper more on the 3D side of things to help expand on my animation techniques for the industry.

For my previous project I used toonboom and found a method to use my ipad as a drawing tablet substitute. This worked well for me at the time however the outcome resulted in misdrawn dots and lines due to the laggy software. This time around I used a mixture of my ipad (for procreate) and drawing tablet for harmony as this worked out better in terms of keeping things tidier and helped with my workflow.

See below for process! 🙂

Jump:

Although we were introduced to weight lifting first I honed into the jumping animation. My thought process was to do a run and jump animation, and since we focused on run/walk animations last assignment it was a similar method/angle I was similar with so it was less daunting.

The main consensus of the notes I acquired from Animators guidebook is to keep in mind the line of action, the run into an anticipation and the method to avoid the subject from “floating” – mainly a action within the general action to void this from occurring.

Inspecting “Human and Animal Locomotion” reference breakdown:

As a class exercise we were to look at real life reference and receive feedback. This was a good exercise to put my notes into practise. I found it difficult to establish consistency in the pose when moving in the air as our previous assignment required us to simply move the characters on the spot, however drawing an arch to establish the general direction to carry forth my subject helped immensely. Using slowed down references allowed to better understand the posing and break down the jump frame by frame, which was a nice feature. Reference taken from blackboard:

Reference:

I researched into various run and jump scenes from different media sources to better understand the momentum that takes place to travel a far distance airborne and characteristics. There is also the matter of context, why the character is running. Are they determined, frantic? Are they running towards or away from something? The same principles follow, arms to guide/carry the movement, impact of landing, leg position to determine how the character will land and the force of gravity.

Idea generation, which gave ideas for the context of the run and potential secondary actions I can use to build character.

I liked the concept of  my character running away from an object that’s about to catch up with them so I went with my Indianna Jones approach, but using a character with longer hair to include another secondary action while airborne. My thought process was to begin the base animation of my character then implement the rolling ball afterward. I started off my sketches in Harmony but found that I had to alter the body a lot to keep consistent forms so I brought my initial sketches to procreate and continued my base from there.

This is my process in creating the base in procreate. I asked for feedback from my peers for the first stage of my animation and they passed on that the body needed to be scaled down, or the last stage to be scaled up. Since I wanted to show the full scale of the jump I used the transform and liquify tools to adjust my characters forms. By scaling down my character the distance of the jump was larger, allowing to adjust the spacing of my jump better. I initially drew my base stationary so I can use onion skin to keep body consistent.

Brief jump storyboard based off initial sketches:

With the feedback in mind I altered the base and proceeded to space out my layers/plan the jump. If I were to redo this base stage again I would have the character support their weight with their knee upon landing, alongside altering the body forms a bit more as I feel like they change too drastically still, but it’s an improvement to what it was before! This is the outcome of staging my jump:

I then imported these sketches into Harmony to work on my secondary actions. When I first implemented my sketches they came out as pictures, but through importing them I could simply change them to vector lines instead so I could edit the sketches in harmony if I wanted to. One thing I liked about this method was I could focus mostly on spacing and layering my secondary actions on top since I’ve already focused on the initial planning/anotomty stages.

This was my first pass at my run and jump with secondary actions (hat/hair.) I feel as though this worked out ok but it looked too fast (animated all on 2’s.) so I spaced out the keyframes.

Different timing. I feel with this pass you see the hat action better by slowing down the motion at the end. Realistically I feel as though the most momentum would be in the middle of the jump and less keyframes at the start/the end when they land, however I had it so she bends immediately when making contact to the ground to grant the illusion that she quickly landed:

I asked for feedback again from my friend and they suggested that the hair looked stiff, so I went back and added the hair on ones, alongside the hat, while the base remained mostly on 2’s/3’s. I feel as though this had a better result:

For the rolling ball I simply drew a circle with crack detailing to show it rotating, then using the rotate and transform tool to turn it and adjust it’s position. I animated the ball on 2’s to establish a convincing rolling action while using speed lines to give the illusion that it pick up momentum at the end.

 

Weight:

The first animation we had looked into practising was to do with lifting a weight. We practised this through demonstration in class, and although he seemed daunting to me since we were mostly using side profiles for our previous assignments it wasn’t as difficult as I first thought. It still proved a challenge, but once I broke it down to simple poses I was happy with the result.

I wanted to see what resources there were online regarding lifting various weights. James Baxter’s insight on weight and the balance, the more the lean the more frames you will need to use. Having a good idea on how to pose the character in each frame helps. I found through my experience with 2D I have an issue with overdoing the amount of frames I have and the distance in which a character travels. I wish to use this down the line to have my character appear to be off balance, this alongside my previous practise with 2D will hopefully help me become more accustomed to this.

“How to use the body using force” through the use of body mechanics. How force is used for the body is through the pose, keep in mind “centre of gravity”, when your body is in balance it helps in your capability to move an object. Effort of character – the result of the action and how much effect it will have on said object. This video goes into depth about the aspect of gravity, weight and how it would impact the character through body language, which is something important I will need to think about regarding my own animation moving forward.

As mentioned above we dedicated a class to practise lifting a weight, slowing down and using the below clip as a close reference to how the body reactions surrounding the object. The anticipation one has towards said object can classify the weight before interacting, how the person ponders over the best way to lift and the slight shake in which the person struggles against the weight. My attempt resulted to be more static/awkward than I had intended, I made a few notes on how I could improve in the future regarding weight and the result I conducted.

Reference regarding character, method, perspective:

For my animation I decided to go with the idea of a librarian lifting a stack of books. I tested out this idea with a bunch of hardback books I had stacked upon one another and tried lifting them, them proving to be a heavy duty weight for my idea to work. I was a bit worried regarding this idea since it could be easily conceived as the books not appearing to be a significant enough weight, however with how I intend for the character to take on a feeble, skinny appearance to counteract this. Alongside the collected research and how I animate the interaction I might be able to conceive a convincing enough animation. I looked at references available online to closely look at how the animated principles could be carried out through movement, paying particular attention to timing and spacing to have the character prepare for the full impact of the weight they’re about to lift.

Arm under and above weight, imbalance of surface creates a stagger backwards! I like the idea of my character attempting to a stack of books only for them to throw him off balance to add character:

I broke down the character in simple shapes through procreate. The characters movement involved them bending down, lifting the object, the object tipping and have him lose his centre to gravity to readjust and place the pile of books onto the nearby table.

I went over the sketch when I was content with the perspective and positioning of my character. This was also down through procreate. I had it so that when he interacted with the book I would animate this on the same layer to conform to his movement. I adjusted the top book so it slid off a little in coherence to him losing his balance.

Added clothing and hair details, adjusting when angle changed.

Added the book to the floor and side table:

Overall I’m content with how this animation came out, however with all my animations I would’ve like to be able to polish them a bit better. A lot of the timing for my animations were also off due to not working directly into toon boom. I would insert my base sketches and have to adjust them so they were spaced out correctly/realistically to how my character behaved. One improvement I would make it spacing out my end frames so it wouldn’t feel as rushed, but I’m happy with the amount of time he lingers picking up the book as if he was struggling against the force of the object.

 

Lipsync:

Overall out of all my animations the lipsync was the one I was the most overwhelmed with. I’m glad I got to experiment with how a character expresses themselves directly through body language and their face, as if giving a performance, however I wasn’t the most experienced in lip syncing and this was the area I was least practised in. Despite this I started off gathering images that replicated vowels, and gain an idea on how my character would shape out their words. I looked at a mixture of both 3d and 2d stills to gain a feel on how phonetic sounds were symbolized in both spaces:

  

Based off of 2D character references, cartoony simple approach. As I was taking on my lip sync in a 2D space it was nice to see vowels broken down on simpler characters and shapes.

I liked the look of this comparison reel as it gave the idea on how a real, staged out performance can be carried over to animation and help build the fundamentals for shots. The movement is very expressive to match the cartoony, dramatic movements of the character.

I also looked briefly at films made by those who aren’t in a studio. The first video demonstrates a good understanding of expressive character expressions and well timed mouth animation based off of the audio. The second animation was found from the 11 second club, which was the main inspiration behind my own animation. I liked how much character the individual gave the person and how expressive they were, so I used this soundbite myself when using my own and using the animation as a guideline.

Rough pass. Focused mainly on staging my character through shapes. Wanted to try and match her body language to the audio before going in and shaping her face.

Clean base. Basically a really rough animatic to depict how I want my character to appear.

When placing my procreate sketches into Toonboom as vectors this was were things got complicated. The amount of frames didn’t match to the soundclip, nor did the mouth, so I went over the mouth on a different layer to try and match the audio. I didn’t have enough time to add more frames to the stationary poses, she needed to pause to process emotion, but this was also due to having to longate the frame to fit the audio. As I didn’t have time to change this it appears more awkward than it does intentional.

When animating the hair I wanted to do a simple pony tail, so when she whips her hair around I can delay the movement by a frame to get a realistic flow to the hair. I had to change the size of the hair frame by frame, alongside the original character in the base animation, as the perspective changed. This was really awkward to try to work around in all my animations but I believe it turned out fine.

There wasn’t as much practise for this animation than I would have liked. Because of the way I went about this I feel like the result could’ve ended up a lot smoother, but due to time constraints the animation turned out more rigid than I wanted it to. If I were to redo this again I would ensure I had more frames to smooth out the mouth between words, or go over and practise with the exercises on blackboard. Oh also I added muffins.

Overall I was ok with how all my animations turned out but I feel like there is room for improvement. I also wish I had time to fully clean and flesh out my animations, however due to personal reasons and loses over the holidays my passion to continue this project came to a standstill. However I found when I got back into it I genuinely enjoyed the process of animating and only hope to improve in the future.