Best when played on repeat

Decided to take a break from working...

Continued to play on Flash with minimal lines.

Animation is just great.

I DID IT! Rain craving satisfied (maybe)

After looking at lots of animations with rain, I decided to go for it.

Just for the heck of experimenting.

Would have preferred to use thinner and light lines next time.

Added a second layer of rain to try and add a bit of dimension.

My love for rain

It's been raining on and off lately and I just thought wouldn't it be pretty cool to animate rain.

From a light shower to a heavy storm.

Found this lovely short animation 'Rain Town', a graduation film from a Kyoto Seika University. 

Also the city landscape is just stunning.

Windy days

After animation follow through and tails, I decided why not try hair.

Especially after watching Robert Lobel's animation 'WIND'.

I loved his minimal drawings.

How the characters have solid square bodies but their hair or anything moving is rounded and soft.

Now there is a load of follow through happening.

Squirrel numero 2

Storyboard for Deep is done!

Me story boarding this weekend...

Monty's first steps

Playing with timing, squash & stretch, and angles.

Observing different people's walk was fun and trying to capture a glimpse of it in Monty was tricky.

The blinking though! :D

How cute is the blinking?!

I had to figure out how much angle each head turn would need to be effective.

Working out where the camera angles should be made this a lot harder.

I actually had to go back and increase the turn even more for the first turn as you could barely see it from that angle. 

Also remembering where he is in the shot so that the cuts make sense.

Touching toes

First attempt at toe touching:

Second attempt after asking around for a second opinion:

Notes: Observe the real action first. 

As you bend down your butt sticks out to counter balance your weight going forwards.

Exaggerate movement & speed to give the puppet more energy and life.

Don't forget to stretch out the fingers at the end.

The beginning of an action and the end are very noticeable therefore important.

Planning it out

Do squirrels jump that high?

Squirrels, squirrels and squirrels

It was another follow through day.

Was strange how much my hand was used to drawing bouncing balls and tails by the time I was given the squirrel assignment.

Was going to just add legs to a ball of a body but something didn't look right.

So decided to go for the whole squirrel.

Turns out it, chopping off bits of the ball made the tail a lot more proportional to the body.

Yay!

Also, remember..

GO NUTS

Shaun Tan

Definitely one of my favourite illustrators/artists of all time.

His characters, his worlds, his stories and their messages just amaze me.

Imagine animating that!?

What about in stop-motion!?  

Luis Cook = sketchbook goals

Weight & follow through

Little guy trying to pick up a big grey blob.

Really enjoyed making him fall through the floor.

I found out that making legs or arms quiver is a lot hard that it looks.

To get it just subtle enough to look right and not like the lines in his legs are dancing off his body.

I ended up experimenting in a separate flash file over and over.

Mechanical pendulm

There's still something off about the movement on the right hand side.

The left looks good but I just need to replicate it for the right.

Back to the studio it is.

Storyboard planning

Pretty excited about drawing out the storyboard for the new script given as you can see.

My sketchbook has been overtaken.

Stop-motion puppets are awesome

So had my first go at animating a real stop-motion puppet.

The assignment was to do a head turn and make her touch her toes but I decided to have a play before to get an understanding of how the armature works and how to use the joints properly.

The thing with head turns is that there are so many ways to turn your head.

I might try all different sorts of turns just for the heck of it.

Never hurts to experiment more than asked right?

Note: The light aperture changed suddenly mid animation so I decided she should go with it and respond to this strange blinding light :)

The Tail

My first attempt at the tail without referencing:

My second attempt at the tail with referencing:

I found referencing from live videos helped massively.

Probably better to observe from life but sadly foxes are a bit shy.

Not to sure about the head movements in the beginning so will have another go later.

Perhaps removing the obstacle course and just focusing on the movements.

Just the fox and his/her lovely tail.

Tails & follow through

Animating a tail and follow through.

At first I asked someone to jump and tried to observe their ponytail but then I remembered this useful site called Youtube.

So then came the stream of fox jumping videos.

Foxes in winter.

Foxes in summer.

So many foxes.

After sketching out the basic movements and positions of the tail it made life a lot easier.

All I had to do now was key frame those key positions and begin the tweaking.

My love for foxes also grew massively.

I blame Youtube.

Maya Fun

Was just introduced to the fantastic world of 3D modeling.

Or at least the very, very basics of polygon shapes.

Although movement has always captured my attention in animation, 

Finding out that I can transform a character sketch into a 3D model immediately caught my attention.

Will need to experiment a lot more on Maya.

Had a little go below but I think I got a little carried away.

Not sure why he has a stick in his eye but oh well.

Judgement 

Silhouette play

Porpoises

Walking man experiments

Character drawing

Robots & Rabbits

People watching

Key Poses

Toonboom newbie

At first it was a helpless mess of wrong clicks and random frames appearing out of nowhere.

Then things finally started to make sense and I managed to get all my key frames in.

Trying to understand how a four-fingered hand would look like turning was the hard part.

At first, I was so bogged down on trying to get it right in the first go.

Then a lovely third year came along and told me to relax and draw it all out roughly first.

"Get the flow right first"

Making sure the action works before making it pretty.

Ellipse Trees

Look at them voluptuous trees.

Decided to change things up and go outside to do some life drawings.

We were encouraged try to to find a way of simplifying foliage in quick drawings so I decided to experiment a little.

Balloon & timing = death

Making a piece of plasticine seem weightless.

 Basically, make the impossible possible.

BUT

since it's animation, nothing is impossible. NOTHING.

(hands up for optimism whoopwhoop!)

So far we've done Pose to Pose exercises 

(make a coin move like a pendulum) and planning every key frame out 

to animating Straight Ahead actions (hand turns, jumping squares). 

Switching from one type of mindset to another has been confusing but I think I'm starting to understand the balance a little more. 

Any great animation needs a little bit of chaos and control.

Knowing when to hold back and when to let your imagination run wild.

Maya

First time on Maya & another bouncing ball.

Going from Flash to Maya was a bit disorienting 

but once you get your head around it it's not that bad.

I love all the textures and rigs available.

Definitely need to keep playing with Maya after this.

Possibly find out how to get the ball to rotate as it bounces.
Kind of looks like its hopping along at the moment.
Nothing wrong with a independent ball though :)

Monster munch

Another play on Flash.

I'm having too much fun.

Would probably use a tablet for the tongue next time though...

Just learnt that I've been animating in the 'Straight Ahead' way.
Great for fluidity but maybe not so good for group projects where more planning and thought is required.
Realllllyy fun animating that way though.

Animated fun

We were advised to keep experimenting with what we've learnt so far.

So basically, we were told to creatively/productively mess around.

Which happens to sound amazing to me.

Here's what came out of 3 hours of experimenting.

I really liked the idea of manipulating a simple object like a square from the previous assignment so I decided to stick with a simple shapes.

P.S I thought the main square was a bit lonely so I made him a friend to play with and change the timing up a bit.