Advanced walk Cycles - Semester 2

Advanced walk cycles. 

For our first project in semester 2, we had to do 4 advanced walk cycles. I chose to do a run, sneak, tiptoe and a double bounce. We had a lesson with Jud before the Christmas holidays to help us with this. I also looked at different animations and walk cycle tutorials to learn about different techniques. Once I had done this I took a few films of my self doing these walks so I could get the general movements. I then exaggerated this for my animation.

The Run.

I thought the run was quite simple. However, I think the hardest part was getting the timing and spacing of the character speeding up through the air and slowing down on the ground. 

The Sneak.

I think out of all of the walks the sneak was the hardest because of the body shapes and how the character bends. I enjoyed trying to get the speeds right and make it look exaggerated but realistic. 

The Tip toe.
I liked doing the tiptoe because I think the outcome was the best. I also think it was the easiest because it is the same as a normal walk cycle but with a different body shape, and higher knees. 

The Double bounce. 

I like the double bounce and it is used in a lot of different cartoons because it's a great way to show emotion/ However, I think it is quite hard to animate because it looks unrealistic with too much bounce, and just wrong with not enough. I thought finding the balance was quite a challenge.

Animation History, 500 words – project 14, Frances Humphries

After researching a lot of different animators and their work, I think my favourite animator from the list was Adam Elliot. He is an Australian animator who is mostly based in Melbourne. As well as animating he also directs and writes his own short and feature length films, a lot of his films are based on true stories and family events. He has films named ‘Uncle’, ‘Brother’ and ‘Cousin’, all of them based on his family experiences. However, they are slightly exaggerated but not so the stories are unrealistic. Adam Elliot has a very dark specific style, his films are for adults and touch upon extremely strong depressing subjects while keeping a slight funny ‘tongue and cheek’ edge to the films.
Most animation is used for children or humorous films but Elliot uses dark colours, tones and slow movements to give a muted sad feel. He does this so the animation can be taken seriously and the strong points can be put across.

In his animations he touches upon, mental illness, death, suicide and other bad things. I think the slow style in which he animates works really well with the themes and characters of the films, and even though some people might find them disturbing and miserable to watch. I enjoy the dark humour and powerful realism behind his films.  

A lot of people also like his work for the same reasons and I think this is why Adam Elliot has become famous and will go down in animation history, his work will always be remembered because of the strong views and thought provoking meanings behind his films, and I believe that it’s extremely relevant to today’s society as well as animation community because it’s important for these views to be shared.

The animator I didn’t really like was Joanna Quinn. She was an animator and director during the feminist movements. She based a lot of her work on this and wanted her animations to be a voice for women. I think that this is the reason her animations are important in the history of animation, because they were important and stood up for a good cause. I liked this about her films and think that it was good how she showed her views though her work. However, I didn’t like the style in which she animated. She uses very rough drawn sketches and not much detail in her animating.

 Joanna Quinn based her animations on the average women’s life and made the characters very common, which I think made her short films quite boring. However, in a way it’s good because it’s an opinion and view not often seen.

I think that both Adam Elliot and Joanna Quinn use animations to show very strong views and points. However, I think that Joanna Quinn’s views were more important during the feminist movements and can be quite boring now. However, Adam Elliot’s animations focus on life problems that occur all the time and will always be very important in society.

Maya

 

We started off animating a basic walk cylce in maya. At first I thought it was quite hard, but once I played around with it, I got used to the tools and controls and it got quite abit easier. I think the basic walk cycle was quite easy to do. But making sure the weight and speed was right became quite difficult.

Once we were happy with the walk we moved on to doing short animations of emotions which linked to the body language project. I used some of my hand drawn animations as guides for the movements I needed.
Once I got into it I really enjoyed working with maya, sometimes somthing would go wrong and it would take a while to figure out. However, I think it is a really good tool and is fun to animate with.

The emotions I did was. Anger, Sadness, and joy.

Faical Animation

 



Once we had looked at body language we then moved on to facial animation and looking at how emotions are show through face movments and expresions.
I think facial expresions are extreamly important in animation because it can show a characters personality in very intresting ways. As well as showing moods feelings and emotions.
Facial expresions are very cleaver because even the subtlest of things can let you know someone's in a bad or good mood. It's very hard to understand someone if they have an expresionles face. Which is why it is imporant in animation because the audience needs to understand and relate to the character.

 

These are just some images from the animations I have done. I did very basic faces, because you only need the main features to create expressions.
I  did, annoyed, sad, scared and worrid. I also did a suprised face and just a silly face on Flash as small animations.

 

1 Second Week 10

I like this animation. However, the fire could have been better.

www.freesfx.co.uk

Week 8

This 1 second isn't really relevant to my week however, I had a headache and I felt like I'd been hit in the head, so I made this animation. I also tried to involve the facial expressions in with it. I like this animation. However, I think I could have smoothed it out a little and maybe worked on the timings because it's a little fast. 

 

 

Week 7

 

I couldn't upload this one onto blogger but here is the youtube link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN9XPZcv2eE

 

I think it's very simple and the yawn sounds more human than dog, but I think it's cute and the timings work well.

Project 9 - Initial Character Design. 

For project 9 I had to create a character with a developing storyline and personality. I looked at composition shapes and what kind of characters they could be. I started by doing 10 initial design sketches for my ideas. 

This was my first initial character that I designed. He is a young boy who's dream is to become a wizard like his dad. He takes his dads old wizard clothes which is why the cape and hat are way to big for him. I could also draw the boots to big for him as well. 

 This character is quite shy and cute and keeps to himself trying to learn magic tricks. His character develops when his dad looses his powers and he has to go on a mission to find his own magic for his dad. The character develops from shy and weak to confident and strong.
His clothing will be coloured in blacks and shiny blues to create a dark mystic feel to his wizard outfit.

This was my second initial design for characters. It is a fox pixie, which lives in the Amazon jungle. She is quite big. However, she can cleverly disguise herself within the plants and flowers. 

Her wings are so small compared to her body that she can only hover a few inches off the ground and cannot fully fly with them. She is a vegetarian and can change the colours of her fur like a chameleon for camouflage.

She is a shy character and the last of her kind, because of this she embarks on a mission to find another of her kind which leads her out of the jungle and into unknown places. She becomes a brave determined character. The only environment ideas I have for this character are rainforest jungles with a lot of flowers and trees.

This was my third design he is a snail which has a shiny shell and gets bullied by the normal brown and black snails. He is laughed at for being different, even though he is bullied he always tries to put on a smile and is nice to everyone. I haven't really thought of any more story which can go with this character because I don't think it's interesting enough. 

This was my llama called Liam. He lives with the rest of his heard who is owned by a farmer. He is a pretty normal llama except he is blind, and he has to have his friends help him get around. They sometimes play tricks on him and tell him to go the wrong ways. He is very embarrassed about being blind so he doesn't leave the barn much. Because of this fear he makes friends with a bat who lives in the barn and learns sonar, and soon he becomes a friendly happy llama who loves to run and play in the fields. 

I decided to base one of my characters on my own pet dog, so I drew quite a few different initial drawings for this. I am going to work on the story and his personality, once I have the full thought out story. I quite like my first initial drawings. However, I like the mix between realistic and cartoon instead of just realistic or too much like a cartoon.

This was my final character design that I came up with, it is really simple and doesn't have much of a story, basically he is a fussball table player, but he isn't happy with his life because his dream is to play basket ball.

 

I chose to do the dog ralph for my character so I had to develop him further. I decided he would make him a famous race dog which looses his leg and has a mechanical one built for him. I think it adds abit more story into the character and a little more exitment.

 I decided to go for a more cartoony style because I think overall it looks better and more apealing to watch. I also think you can see the cuteness of the character better with a cartoon style where as the more realistic style looks quite cold.