I have added foley and music to my 3D animation of Conan and the Dragon. Since the last time I posted, I added some length to the close up scene of the man, showing the change in his attitude with his expression as he decides to face the dragon. I pitched down the roars we created so that they had more of a rumble like a dragon would, and tried to make the footsteps sound heavier. I think I'll be changing the music as I'm not fond of how it sounds currently.

Self Portrait Animation

This week I've finally been making progress on my self portrait. So far I have a few little bits to fit together, and the main body of the animation will be done in TVPaint which I haven't really had the chance to use this semester. I'm quite happy with the style, although I still need to add little things like blinks and make sure all movements are smooth, like with the umbrella.

I still want to include some stop motion animation, with sand and other objects, which I will be creating later this week.

More Animation Tidbits

This week some very intersting animated videos have been released by the famous band Gorillaz. They've always had some great animation ideas, with their own style and creative characters, and I love seeing some new work. 

From the very beginning you can see some good use of parallax, something we've been looking into this semester in our 2D background project. I am much more fond of the 2D animation in this video in comparison to the 3D with the clean lines and shading.

From here, I've been able to look more into Passion Pictures, the producers of this particular video. I am able to recognise some of their other work too, so it really shows what a diverse range of different projects that can be taken on. When looking through the work presented on their website, I found a piece called Once Upon a Line. It only uses two colours yet halfway, things become very busy. It's simple yet clever.

http://www.passion-pictures.com/uk/animation-studios/project/once-upon-a-line/

Title Sequence Updates

For our group project we've worked more on the final animations and the videos ahead are the parts I've worked on or helped with. For the hand, I drew the final outline and coloured, although it still needs some editing to become a final product. The cup needs to blend with some stopmotion footage we have shot, but I created the 2D animation to link to the next scene. I was present for the stopmotion to help, giving opinions and using Dragonframe to try and get the best shot.

I've worked more on my final 3D animation, and I've now surpassed the required number of seconds. I changed my mind about what was happening a few times throughout the process, and there may still be some work to do with the shots/camera, but I'm overall quite happy with this. The animation will still need some work over the coming few weeks to make things smoother and fill in some gaps, although I've tried to keep both characters moving whenever they are in the shot. One problem I have is how the dragons wings or claws fall through the floor on occasion. It's not always noticable, but it's something I can change.

Title Sequence Contributions

We've gotten further down the pipeline on our Title Sequence project, and I contributed a few scenes to our final animatic that I've compiled here. They're quite basic, but they've helped in deciding timing and the order of our sequence and give us a good starting point for the final animation.

2D Background Update

After coming quite far with my digital painting of my animation background, today I had the chance to import the layers into AfterEffects and create a parallax. In doing this practice I was able to spot more flaws with my background and I can now edit them to make a better piece of work.

There are gaps in my artwork that I will need to fill as the layers move against each other. I also need the foreground to move a bit faster to show more distance between it and the far away layers. The camera move will need to be a bit smoother as it zooms into the bike, but I'm happy with the quality of my image as it doesn't drop when you move closer.

Final Animation Project

Over the past couple of weeks we've been working on a longer animation project, to have two characters in a scene together for 10-15 seconds. The characters we are working with is a warrior and a dragon, and after planning out how I wanted me scene to be shot, I've started working on animation the characters.

Above is the first few seconds of dragon animation where I've got the model appearing to chase my other character. There are still bits of secondary animation I want work on like how the wings move and the feet. In the later video, I have fixed how the elbows seem to pop due to how far the dragon stretches, and have also paid closer attention to the toes.

This was my second try and making this character run. I've been finding it quite difficult because of the size of the legs and his upper body, although the challenge is welcome. I need to fix my timings for the run as well as the way he slows down at the end.

The final video shows a bit more progress with both the dragon and the man and you can see where they are in the same scene. I've added a few more secondary animations, although I still have a probem with timing on the run I feel.

As well as correcting mistakes, I'll be working more on the next few seconds of my scene over the coming week.