So I have been building a walk and so far have gotten these legs to do some work.
I did have trouble early on with the spacing, but its fixed.
Here I just thought it would be an interesting test to see (along with the ordinary pencil test) the legs instanced to about 6 or however many there are.
All hand drawn and a great way to learn walks…by doing them!
FUN OL’ HAND DRAWN
I have been reading A LOT on traditional handdrawn animation recently, so I decided to do this to practice my timing and spacing..of course some imperfections.
It took a while but finished, though I could do sooooo much more to make it more interesting. The idea behind it was to do a ball bounce that started far off in the distance and to bounce up and past the screen. Soooo much paper was used for just a ball drawing… maybe I can erase them :)
Animation Reads
So I stopped by the campus library and picked up some books I have been wanting to read for a little while:
I have only gotten around to reading a great deal of Secrets of Digital Animation along with Dream Worlds, and haven’t read Inspired 3D or Setting the Scene yet, and so far they are really informative.
Secrets goes into the many areas of animation, providing tips and in-depth description of the many processes that are involved in the many styles and techniques of animation; from 3d, traditional handdrawn, or digital Flash based animation and artist interviews on how they begin and end their process.
Dream Worlds is also very inspiring. It displays so many never before seen art works from production designer Hans Bacher who had worked films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Mulan.
There is so much in this book that I cannot stress enough as to how much it’ll inform you on most aspects of animation during the pre-production and production process. You will learn how stories are developed, how the vast grouping of artists within art departments come together and collaborate to finalize a film. Not only that, but also film techniques and reasons for cutting within a sequence or reason for choosing shot types to portray emotion and to captivate an audience. There even an insightful section on ways to frame a scene and along with many examples. There is so much more I could say on how it evokes your way of planning and the entire creative process that I could type pages, but go see for yourself…. I’m just half way through the book :)
Ok, So here are the two storyboard gatherings of a great deal of imagery I am going for within my hand-drawn animation for the fallowing Fall semester. I am trying to keep it simple and have the animation and character acting make the story really SHINE. I keep thinking of plots and new ideas to give the story a twist, involving this place that Sillo (the main character) lives in to be a figment of his imagination and throughout the story he drifts in and out from real life while what happens in this solitary dreamworld is a metaphor for his real life experiences….
But I still just want to keep it simple due to time constraints and the special effects I want to replicate through hand-drawn animation.
The Reaching Scene:
For the hand-drawn animation I’ve been working on , I have been roughing in the animation for a particular scene where Sillo is reaching toward the light when he first encounters it.
Sillo attempts to touch this light to figure out what it could be and abruptly the light’s mood (I believe I would call it that) shifts.
The storyboard shows the color change from a more relaxed, pulsating green to an eye-piercing red , causing Sillo to pull away covering his eyes. What I am going for is his overall reaction to being scared so suddenly and his recoil from the scare; breathing heavily, slowly turning back his head, and overall nice arc movement within the head turn and arm swing.
If any questions or feedback please feel free to comment!
I am just on the first pass right now and plan on correcting the shape more for the anatomy. The hair will be animated next along with the features of the face.
Preston Blair’s Advanced Animation Book
Ok, so I haven’t been working on 3D, in fact, 2D to me is more of my preference. Only because of how much I have control over my art, no software stamp or anything of that nature… but I do like both and is why I think it’s important to practice the two.
Anyways not getting into what animation is better over the next because they are all great and have their unique touch.
What I have been doing is getting back to drawing characters, this isn’t mine, but a practice at being able to look at a character construction and successfully mimic it.
I stumbled upon the blog of John Kricfalusi, one of the animators on Mighty Mouse and creator of Ren & Stimpy. This was while I was, off-and-on, reading Preston Blair’s book.
all of the links are found there.
My Trial and Error
It took some tries as you can see, and in the beginning I didn’t think I could come close to looking exact but practice does make perfect… or close enough even though there are some imperfection.
If you can, let me know what you think, what stands out the most from the picture and the copy?
Animation Compilation 2012
Sorry for causing nausea and dizziness from the constant table-turns… :)
I now see how it can be a problem ha ha!
….also, view my Vimeo to see even more animation from when I started–to work I haven’t even posted on here!
To The Past!!
Ok so I have been working off and on, animating and setting up the scene for different parts of an animation I have been working on since last semester at school, so why not bring you all (or whoever may be reading this) up to date!
It’s been mainly at home when I have the free time due to there not being any lab hours during the summer… oh well, just makes for an even slower process :(
Anyways here are some screen shots of the scene where the arrogant body builder bullies this little bunny and then the table turns as he does not know what he is up against.
The animation was a little difficult at parts, and still need to work out a bit of the timing along with some technical issues. Overall I am happy, but still have more to animated on this scene; facial expressions, arm movement, and then the running away from the creature when he gets the chance.
The scene is all a part of a grouping of stories by which the characters pass along an emotion to one another..more or less a cause an effect story of how characters have influences on each other.
Anyways I am rambling, but to see the animation I will post a link to my video titled “Animation Compilation” which include some recent work; models, animation, exercises, that I have been working on or have made in the past few months.
Again, there is still more to do, so I would call it a rough, even the camera angles….
Here is a test for Sillo running in the woods as in the storyboard. It is VERY hard to see the character at this point, I’m going to have to brighten him up. I experimented a lot here, more specifically with him being outside/ out of the frame while running. This being because I wanted to see how it might be visually appealing to see him distant from the light he is chasing after… more of accentuating the metaphor, heh heh.
So as for the texture of the character, I am going to go back and hand paint the frames to have the texture conform to his run instead of it being static like it is now.
More to come…
