Stopmotion - Anticipation and Follow Through

This week I completed our next stop motion task which was to capture the movement of the puppet throwing something. In this video there are four different attempts at the same action.

 

I can see a few things wrong with each of my tries, and I will talk about them here. I found that I needed to leave the puppet in each key pose for a longer period of time so that you can actually take in what it happening, and I failed to do this a few times. I needed more of a follow through motion too, which I think will require me to try this task again at some point in the future.

TV Paint - Head Turns and Walk Cycles

Over the past couple of weeks we've been stepping up in our animation and looking at some more difficult tasks such as head turns and walk cycles.

Below is my attempt at a head turn. I think it moves too far across the screen, and you can also see that the hat moves quite a lot in a way it shouldn't as the head turns.

Next I tried another headturn that was very different. I created a cute rodent/bunny character and made it sit in one spot while the head moved. It's common for a character to blink as it turns it's head, so I included this too. The foot on the right probably needed to come of the ground as it moved, as right now it's just sliding across the floor. I like the way I made the fur on the chest push up though, and the perpective of the ears as the head turns.

After the head turns, walk cycles were the next thing I needed to practice.

I created a very simple walk first, which I could then add features to make it into a character walking. I think I could have added more inbetweens to make the actions even smoother. I should also think about producing slightly different types of walk, as not everyone walks in the same way.

After making this initial animation, I went a bit further and made it into a fox. The face was harder to keep consistent I found, although I think this version has more personality.

Maya - Walking

This week we worked with a model of a little green man. With this, I was able to key frame out the movements for a walk, then add in the inbetweens to make the actions more smooth. I also included the secondary action of his eyes blinking on occasion in all of these videos.

The above was my first try at making the character walk. It moves a bit fast and the actions still seem a bit stiff.

Next I tried it again, this time starting from a stand still and coming to a stop. I included some squash and stretch on this one too to add a bit more personality to his walk.

After I'd completed a second walk, I thought I'd try make him jump from one spot to another. I think the jump itself is a little bit slow, but I'm happy with the way he lands and comes back up to standing straight.

Maya - 3D Animation

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been working with the 3D software Maya. We started simple by moving objects across the screen, and have now excelled onto adding squash and stretch and follow through.

The above video was my first attempt at creating a path for a 3D object. It involved creating a lot of key frames for each bit that needed to move, whether it was through translation or rotation. Some of the movements in this are a bit jerky, especially where the ball changes direction against the wall.

In the next task we had to concentrate on follow through. Not everything moves at the same time or finishes in the same way, and a good way to practice this is by looking at the tail of an animal. If I am to do this task again, I want to add more actions that will make the animal seem more natural. I could also increase the length of it's path, letting it jump around more so that I could maybe test out new movements.

Lifedrawing - Sessions 3 and 4

So I thought I'd share more of my life drawing work with you, since I really do enjoy it and I think it has and will continue to improve my drawing over time. These were done in two sessions, some from the October 5th, some from October 18th.

The first two pictures below focus on pose. The faster sketches were good to show the weight of a pose, where the body is shifting. The photo on the right is of my attempt to draw using negative space. I found this more difficult, having to focus on the shapes outside of the body.

 Below, the three poses show the action of the man opening an umbrella. It follows him through the movement in three steps. It was good to look at the way the body turns from these different angles.

For another piece,  we worked on black paper with chalk to study the way the light hits the body. I liked curving my lines to give a feeling of three dimensions, as well as trying to show the perspective and the ways the leg is further in the distance.

 

Last but not least is one I really enjoyed working on. The use of brown paper starts you off with a tone that is familiar when thinking about skin. It allows you to work around it with darker tones and also apply light sections where white paper wouldn't allow you to. One thing I know I have to work on though is the curve of the back, as the human form is rarely straight and it can become habit to make it that way. 

Stopmotion - Touching Your Toes

For the first time today I was able to use the stop motion puppets we have available to us. The little guy I had is apparently named after 'The Milkybar Kid', and I suppose I do see a resemblence. The task was to animaate the puppets touching their toes, and I did this multiple times to try and get the best result. All of my outcomes have pros and cons.

This was the perfect opportunity to practice follw through. To do this, I needed to think about how the head would move first, to look down at the ground, then how the arms would follow. Then the body would bend and move

One difficulty I found was keeping the clothes in a similar condition throughout the animation. I had to touch the puppets to move them, and it was very difficult not to edit the shape of their clothing from shot to shot.  

Getting the timing right was also quite difficult. I think attempts two and three are too slow, whereas my last attempt seems to have a better speed. A problem with my last attempt though is how I nudged the camera with my arm halfway through and had to readjust it's position. I continued anyway but I know that I could have started over. In my second attempt I like how the arms swing when they reach the floor.

As well as doing the task, I also tried making the puppet wave and gave it another action of picking up a ball. It's short and simple.

TVPaint - Jumping cube

A task I had to complete was a jumping object. I had to think about squash and stretch, keeping the volume the same as the subject moved from one point to another. I found getting the perspective for the turns at the beginning quite difficult, although I think the animation came out quite smooth in the end.

 

 I have also had more time to do my own animation exercises and here is one of them.

Stopmotion - Cannonballs and balloons

Today I worked on my next stop motion task. I found the balloon exercise to be quite challenging, but after multiple attempts I can see improvements in my work. As a warm up, I chose to do the heavy object first.

I did this one a few times as it was quite a short animation to make. It had to fall fast and not bounce too much, as the weight of the ball stopped it from doing so.

From here I moved onto making the balloon.

The above video is of my second attempt. I found it difficult to get the swaying motion and the correct speed for the movement of the balloon. I think the later swings are a bit too fast for a balloon movement, however you could also consider the fact there might have been a breeze. I'm quite happy with the way it bounces once it hits the ground.

I feel like I was able to achieve better swings with the balloon in my third try, spacing the frames closer together at each direction change. I think the whole thing could be slower though, to get a real feel for the object I'm meant to be portraying. The bouncing at the end might be over exaggerated.

Beginner to 2D Animation

So today I went to the studio used my time to work on TVPaint. I'm new to this program, so it was good to do some more exploring and tackle a couple of tasks. In our session at the end of last week we focused on making a bouncing ball. It doesn't include squash and stretch but I had to concentrate on the spacing of each of my frames. One thing I need to improve is the size of the ball and keeping it constant throughout the short animation.

 

The next thing I tackled was the bouncing of a ball in a 3D space, in this case a box or a room. Again, this didn't include squash and stretch, but I added colour, shading and shadows to add depth to the environment the ball is bouncing in. If I am to do this again, I would try different directions. The direction the ball bounces towards the end doesn't quite work, so I'd need to consider my canvas space a bit more when working.

  

This next animation is something I had a bit of fun with after completing my set tasks. I wanted to create a character shaking it's head, so started with a very simple face. I slowly built it up into more of a human figure, and while the sketch is very rough, I enjoyed making it and practice is always important.

Stopmotion - Pendulums

The first animation task I have completed this week has been a pendulum in stop motion, shot in twos. There are two versions, one where the swinging is natural and the other where it is mechanical, like in a grandfather clock.

The video above isn't of my first attempt. It took multiple tries to get to this point, as practice is the best way to improve. I think I could have exaggerated the slow in and out a bit more in this, although I did try to space the coin to get the effect and I think I achieved it. During the exercise, I had to fix various things. One of these was shadows across my work, which could have easily been caused by my hand and arm, as well as positioning the coin incorrectly and making some parts slower or faster than they needed to be. By facing these challenges, I was able to explore more with Dragonframe, the software I used to create this, and correct my work to make the movement more fluid.

The above video is of the mechanical motion. Each placement of the coin is evenly spaced, and as with the example of the clock, the arc of movement isn't as rounded. In the above video, after reviewing it later on, I can see how I've left in shadows at the sides of the video. In the future I need to be more careful with this, as it can't happen in professional work and lighting needs to stay constant throughout a shot.