this is the final product with everyone's contribution. yes that is Dawn French's voice, one of the people in the group was in a possition to ask for a favour and she happily obliged.
in my opinion the worst parts were the parts i did, i think i should have done the animations as less of a cycle to be used by everyone else and instead just done the hole background and person in the same bit and acually animated the person interacting with the background. other than that i think everyone did well on this.
so the heads of dead armless were like 'it would be nice if you had some spare time to do a zombie version of yourself to add the film' so i was like i have to put in a thriller reference because why not? they haven't looked at it yet so im still holding out that they might like it. i don't think i got it close enough to the original style but i did my damned best to do so
a harmless few concepts for colouring of the hall way. they hadn't done that by the time i got to this so o thought i would help them out. it is a film including zombies so i thought i would do a classic zombie hall way, no harm? well it was a little over the top so i took away the blood, then the level of destruction of the hallway. they liked it but i think the destroyed look was better but then again im not the one paying me. then again they aren't even paying me, so im doing this because they said so.
i basically used the roughs just i did less and coloured it with a fancy background i would be surprised if no-one notice, well they will now considering i literally pointed it out first thing in my comments. it just looks nicer than the rough though i should do more
is actually really helped me when i did that animation i showed earlier. it allowed be to visualize where everything would be in the animation because i knew where everything was thanks to this. wooo
i don't have much to say about this one because it is quite easy to see what i did. notice the batman on the left? the only problem was that i did this as a bit of concept art for the backgrounds, and the director liked so much they wanted this in my proof of concept shot, or at least i thought they did. this is what made that jump, trying to shoe horn this in when i should have done it fluidly, but hay ho what-cha gonna do about it?
this was back when the colour scheme wasn't figured out so i had a little free reign with the colours, and as you can see i went all out. the idea was that this was a dream and this was very much part of the dream so i tried going with the whole high on drugs approach. it looks good but it isn't in tune with saul steignburg's style so it was forgotten but at least my weird animals made it. small victories, wooo.
these may look all the same at a glance but they are actually all slightly different. the top one is the final on, where is took the worked in pencil look combined with the right layout for the office cubical. with hindsight i could have cut it down to at least three if i had payed more attention to the way the scene would play out. however i started this thinking it was to be more concept art than an actual background.
rough character poses, turn around and a couple of character designs, just because i thought i would add some. as it turns out they haven't done the pen character turn around or poses.
i tried to do some expressions with the pen but it didn't really work. most of the character is portrayed through the body of the pen.
same old problem, my style is different, or my way of drawing is different from how the others draw their stuff. i think it is how i shade stuff, my brush is softer than theirs and my way of drawing is just sketchier than theirs. other than that it is quite nice in terms of parallax, although there isn't much room for the layers to move there are a fair few layers that can move, although they haven't used the layers for parallaxing. i think i would try harder to mimic the others style next time or at least find out how they draw rather than just going ahead with this.
this is the proof of concept animation for the group project lucid. the first video is to get the motion understood. this was the longest of all of the stages to complete because i had to both think of where the characters be and how they would move. now i could have done this in three separate shots, but nope that's the easy way, i went with a dynamic camera shot where the camera followed the characters. it was a pain considering that sort of movement is what companies use 3D software for, even in 2D films. now i know i should do fast movement on ones as that would make it look better, but i just couldn't do that because that would double the work load and i just do not have the time for that fun. a small problem is that there could be some frames added into the center of the animation.
the second is the lining. it is nicer than the first. but that could be because it is actual straight lines rather than rough probable lines. one problem is that center part of the animation. it's jump is much more visible even with the tidying up. hopefully that will go away with the colouring of the animation.
the colouring animation looks quite nice, thankfully the final colour choices were chosen by the time i came to colouring because that would have been annoying. the jump in the center of the animation is still visible just less so thanks to the colouring. the shadows was a last minute invention to just add something to the shot to prevent it from looking too empty, and those shadows are used by Saul Steinberg in some of his works, so it counts!!!
so this is the walk cycle for the a guy carrying the box. the reason the background is black is because i did a background on photoshop that is going to be used instead, also so the guy can be taken as just him and put into the background. i still have that annoying situation of bubble and boil, its a pain but at least it isn't as bad as some of my previous one. practice makes perfect. also the box does move a little independently, but that can be a way the guy is carrying it. also my style is quite different from everyone elses, and that annoys me. its not dramatically different but noticeably but i can't fix that now. but maybe i would if i come back to it.
soo as it turns out the last one wasn't perfect. i had to replace the faces and change the back grounds, which isn't really a lot. it still annoys me that the red face morphs so much. and now with those new faces it is a lot more visible.
The final versions of the tuk tuk cycle, hopefully. the original i decided to do in blue but the director, or producer, probably both, decided they would like it in red and they decided they weren't going to add a background so i needed to add one. the wave is a little jittery. it doesn't move smoothly like it has lost a frame or two, which is weird considering i know i added inbetweens.
The title is me being silly. im allowed to joke a little aren't I? ok this is another section to the Shelterbox that is cycled like the other two cycles i have previously uploaded. the idea for this is that there is a guy carrying a shelterbox in a tuk tuk. i had him wave as it was a fun lighthearted thing that was in the original animatic. this was relatively easy to animate in comparison to the walk cycle as the tuk tuk doesn't shift when it moves. i did have to reduce the bounce of the tuk tuk because, again, it was to bouncy before. a fun thing that i added to give it that bumpy road look is that i had the up and down bounce of the wheels aren't moving in sync with the tuk tuk, this makes it look like the bounce is going through the vehicle. i was also trying to have something move in the back ground, hence the bollards, but this doesn't work as i haven't added enough images to the animation, this makes the bollards look like they are moving too fast for the tuk tuk to be moving and confusing as to which direction the tuk tuk is moving.
The title is me being silly. im allowed to joke a little aren't I?
ok this is another section to the Shelterbox that is cycled like the other two cycles i have previously uploaded. the idea for this is that there is a guy carrying a shelterbox in a tuk tuk. i had him wave as it was a fun lighthearted thing that was in the original animatic.
this was relatively easy to animate in comparison to the walk cycle as the tuk tuk doesn't shift when it moves. i did have to reduce the bounce of the tuk tuk because, again, it was to bouncy before. a fun thing that i added to give it that bumpy road look is that i had the up and down bounce of the wheels aren't moving in sync with the tuk tuk, this makes it look like the bounce is going through the vehicle.
i was also trying to have something move in the back ground, hence the bollards, but this doesn't work as i haven't added enough images to the animation, this makes the bollards look like they are moving too fast for the tuk tuk to be moving and confusing as to which direction the tuk tuk is moving.
this is meant to be done but i don't like it, i would like to fix it but that would take too much time, that could be spent more productively. the bounce is still there, i didn't change that. the bubble and boil has mostly been fixed by the simple style of the characters. i say mostly because those heads do not keep their volume, they aren't event meant to change they are just meant to move with the rest of the body. the bag is the worst offender of the bubble and boil, i mean really its like they are trying to kidnap someone. it was also pointed out when i was getting it critiqued the feet are overlapping at each contact, which is kind of a large thing to miss considering ive been going over it again and again. it was also pointed out as something that might drag down the work of the other work. my defense for that was that the original planning was that i did the movement and people who could do consistent lines and forms would do the final layer, but instead i was expected to pump this out in a week with time in that same week to add a back ground that moved in time to the speed of their walk cycle. other than that i think it works
the lines are there so i have a rough idea where the figure should be and where his surroundings would roughly be.
again its quite bouncy but it is still bearable, other than that the movement is fluid and it easy to tell that he is walking. the reason i did this is partially because someone needed to animate a guy with a backpack. the main focus was the backpack as it is a rogue element, mainly because it is a stand in for a Shelterbox that is strapped to the guys back. as of writing this i have found out that the only time this was done by ShelterBox was for a charity event, so it is technically incorrect and i shouldn't add it as a result.
these are the skeletons for the walk cycle to get the movement before i start going into detail and adding MEAT! to the skeletons. the movement had to be cut back because i thought it was too bouncy but it still looks bouncy, but i can work with it.
i then added what i thought the MEAT! would be on the skeletons, as it turns out that isn't how the MEAT! would turn out but it did give me a good idea as to how it would fit onto the skeleton. the main problem is the same problem whenever i add a some form to the skeleton. it bubbles and boils too much but that was meant to be rough so i can fix it later.
i had the two men walk out of sync because it just seemed more realistic than having them walk in tandem. this does make the bounce a lot more pronounced but it is still bearable.
i did enlarge the image because i could hardly see it when creating this.
for the ShelterBox project i was asked to do a desert background for the animation. this was also before some major plot changes to the script so it became redundant.
it works as a nice flat bit of background, some nice shading and highlights to show the 'desert', however it wasn't done in layers, meaning it can't be created into a parallax, but i suppose that doesn't matter seeing as it didn't even get a chance to be ripped apart for that problem.
maybe as a result of it's almost immediate dismissal i could have used it for a different that i am spending a lot of time on, it would definitely save me some time, but alas i have done too much on the other one to stop working on it now.
The idea is to a storyBoard of a character entering through the door, putting their coat in the closet and then sitting down in that room. as it was meant to be done in a lesson i decided to be nice to myself and have an easy to draw character that can be drawn quickly, almost as if i had an hour or to to complete. which as it turns out i had a lot more time but that wasn't stated when it was given, hence the roughness.
the way i was imagining it is that the camera followed the bean whilst never cutting and only zooming a little at most. this was meant to emphasis the weariness of the bean, by making the camera work move in a similar slow and lazy manner, as if there is no more energy to be spent. i don't know if i have conveyed this in the panels, but i don't think i did, maybe that's because i tried to get in some more interesting shots whilst keeping the singular shot. i guess i can't have my cake and eat it.
i think i managed to convey the concept with this animatic of a scene. but the problem that there are too many of the girl from the side or straight on is still there, but i do think that the music i used fitted perfectly. the music i used had a fun little effect called shepherds note, which is a series or rising notes that are replaced with set or rising notes to create a seemingly endless rising pitch. this music is how i intend to create the tension, along with the visuals.
now i might be relying on the shepherds note a little too much but it works so well and it will be able to cover up any of the failures on my part
these are the wow images for the the Little Red presentation that will determine whether my project goes through or not. the first one was meant to be done in the style of Toulouse Lautrec but is somehow didn't translate to the computer when creating it. this could be a result of me not using soft colours or it could be that paper is softer in the presentation of the colours than a computer program. now i know those programs can create the same feel but i didn't do that as i didn't feel like i could, that and i though it would work better if i used block colours.
the failure of the first one, or at least me not liking the first wow image, resulted in the creation of the second one. this one was done less in the style of Toulouse Lautrec and more me trying to convey the general feeling of the story. it is softer and closer to Toulouse's work but still off as a result= of me paying more attention to the detail and the lighting, which Toulouse didn't really use in his posters.
the story is that there is a little girl that is wandering around at night when she hears a wolf howl. the little girl is startled by the noise and runs to the farm house which is the closest possible source of safety. there she finds that something is off, and as a result she wanders around the house looking for the owners. the house gets increasingly creepier the more she explores it until she reaches the last door where she can hear feasting and see shadows move from behind the door. she opens the door to find that there house owners are being eaten by the farm animals.
there isn't much in the center of the story but the plan is to have it as creepy as possible with the constant build up of tension to when the final door is opened.
as an a little side note the first set of three panels are meant to be the second to last set of images.
the main problem that was described with this storyboard is that there are too many front on of the main character. there was an attempt at fixing this with the above shot of the girl running, but that hasn't fixed the problem. also i have this feeling it doesn't work i can't quiet figure it out.
so here are my attempts at copying the style of Toulouse Lautrec's poster style. it is interesting seeing how the solid shapes of the character still convey the for of a person and their posture or their movement. i've almost caught this but not to the same degree as Toulouse does in his posters, it is the block colors of the character in the foreground and then the detail in the character's eyes.
the reason i think i failed was a result of me not drawing it correctly and as a result the feel doesn't come through
i knew i could do this as i had done a lesser version before the summer. it is more complicated but it is also an animatic in delivery so it evens out. the skeleton video at the top is the rough layout to help me understand the positioning and dimensions of the body in three dimensions.
it would be interesting to smooth out the animation into a full animation but there wasn't time and not what i was meant to do. in having the animation smoother the falling objects would be easier to follow as they fall but that is a fault that came about as a result of the requirements of the animation.
something that you wouldn't notice because of the animatic finish, is that some objects vanish once out of frame, you'll never notice this seeing as it is hard for me to notice the gun that appears literally in front of the camera and large so maybe it wouldn't be noticed even when it is easier to follow.
so i did this because i just wanted to do a small bit of animation. the idea was to have a dramatic spin out from the character as he prepares to strike the ground. as i went about doing it, it turned out i needed a good grasp on the character in three dimensions. the main concern though was the zoom and pan-spin movement.
as usual for this style of mine the character bubbles and pops a lot, i either need to find a way to keep a close enough consistency or develop a different style that is easier to keep consistent.
as it turns out the camera work, worked well enough for me to see it as perfect, however the actual movement of the character leaves much to be desired. this could be a result of seeing the movement from behind, but his bodily movement is too stiff or wooden.
the swing of the sword is blurred works well enough to distract from the movement of the body, and it has been commented that it is a good blur movement so i think it works
This is kinda like an interpretive dance.
if i was to do this project again i would have chosen a better idea and planned it better because this project was just a cluster ---- of problems that i had to deal with way to late in the term.
in terms of the animation i wish i could increase the speed of some of the actions, as they seem definitely animated in those areas. i also wish i had a base or something, like a line to use to prevent the figure from floating higher and higher. that is however very subtle and hard to notice over a minutes worth of animation.
another thing i wish i had done was come up with a more coherent plot, but i didn't have time and it was an experimental so it can work.
WITH OUR POWERS COMBINED!! we create a work of art. i really have o give credit to everyone else as all of their work looks amazing, specially Adam's, who made my backgrounds move.
the only thing i wish i could have done was do the parallax for the backgrounds myself but alsa i didn't have time to do that.
now these figures are all cut up and everything but i have put them together so that he won't act like an actual pain moving around the place i did multiple angles but i stuck with the front view and the side view, the side view is behind the front view for the reason i stated above. i had left the construction lines in because i think it adds to the personal side of my experimental, that and the devilishly handsome mug on top. as i have started on the animation already i would like to have cut the pieces a lot better and had better pieces to work with other wise i think i would do it almost exactly the same if i were to do this again.
the head being grossly out of proportion is also a little spice to give it some character, as it is otherwise just a blank character.
these are the designs for the title ssequence backgrounds, the idea was to give an suggest as to what the backgrounds could be like. most o the inspiration was from A guy called Jean Giraud's comic called Moebius, it had this awesome late 1800's scifi feel to it that i just love, and as it fitted in with the theme of the title sequence, yesterdays tomorrow, i felt the free reign to use the influence this had. the designs were also inpart a way for me to copy the style as i felt it fitted, so i copied a the pictures but i would not beusing this layout in the end. another thing was that we weren't using the same setting i couldn't use moebius for all of the bckgrounds.
the Ballons were just plae holders till we igured out what we wanted the ballon to actually look like, how ever i did use Albert Robidia a a reference to the design and probably for future designs for the backgrounds.
the main problem with my drawings is my style, it is to sketchy, the lines are rough ad there are threads of lines coming out of the main lines. this is a problem that can only be solved through time and practice, so there is little i can do there.
as for the difference in detail, that is more to do with time managment. simply put it i couldn't spend all of my time on these as i have lot of other stuff to do, and as it is i have probably spent too much time on this as it is.
this was a walk cycle that i did, as of my own initiative.what i was trying to achieve was a parlax, and a cape billowing in the wind. no i failed at the paralax, as i had no idea how to do it, as i attempted this before the lessons in which we started to learn paralax, however i did the cape billowing in the wind very well, however it does grow and shrink from the start of the cycle to the end. this came about as a result of not fully payning attention to the length of the cape with each frame. dispite that it does move like a cape would in heavy wind, the next type of cape billow would be a cape of prestige, a cape gently billowing rather than what you can see above.
apart from all of that i accidentilly got the figure walking in strong wind right, as it does look like the figure is struggling to keep going against that wind.
the representation of the wind sucks, i admit, but that is probably a result of me not knowing how to do wind, and hopefully i would be able to learn at some point in time.
over all it works as a little personal progect when i still had time to spare, and i did achive the main part i set out to achive with that animation.
this is a skip cycle, the motion of this one is really smooth, i put it on ones, which is why, and maybe unnecessary. the form of the skip does seem to be very good, and combining that with the fluid motion, the skip does look very good. however the main critisim that i got was that the form of the figure boils, which is a result of not properly redrawing the figure, and the highlighting, which is compounded by it being on ones, however i added a kinf of follow through with the hair and waist cloth thing, which adds to the motion of the figure. this added motion with the hair does make it look like it is going everywhere, but that is how hair moves with such motion, and the how the cloth moves smoothly and nicely with the up and down motion, just works. and finaly the dded florish with the motion of the axe on the return up, it is hard to see if you have to keep on pressing play to rewatch, but the axe's different path up from the right arm is horizontal to the camera, almost mimicking the blurred motion to elude to fast motion, which was a happy accident.
over all i think it works and looks great however, the teacher said the animation method is a too difficult a method to get right with a beginner animator.
The top cycle is meant to be of a four legged animal, so i used a dog walk cycle as reference, however i designed the animal to be a lot easier to animate than a dog. in hindsight the walk cycle is very similar to two, two legged walk cycle next to each other except they aren't moving in tandem. now i made a mistake and had a fore leg bend more than it needs to throughing, however this is very hard to see, especially if you don't know how to loop the video. i added white highlights to make the creature a little more interesting even if it makes it boil, but as i still need to work on preventing the boiling effect that my style has, the highlight made the nimal look much better.
over all i think it worked, but i know it is just one animal walk cycle out of many, its just good to understand the idea.
the foreward walk cycle. this was relatively easy to understand after doing the walk cycle last term. however the wierd figure shape was a way to prevent the boil of the figure from happening, also to make animating it easier, as having my usually style figure would have been a little too much effort for that week, and also a result of a sugestion from the teacher. the legs definitly look like they re going backwards in space as the figure takes the steps, and having the arms swing infront of and behind the figure helps make them appear to go forewards and backwards in space. the timing seems to work, as the figure has an exagerated walk style.
overall i think it shows i learnt hat type of walk cycle, at least for the mle version, if i had time i would go over it with a better design for the figure.
Project was based on lip syncing and how to go about it. however another element was added, and that was inbetweening someone elses animation, so we get to know what its like. this one is the one i inbetweened. the original character design and spacing was done by a friend.
I synced up the audio with the lips, i think i did well, but having the mouth stay open long enough to be seen and keep up with the audio was hard, in retro spect i would s have the voicing to be slower, as to allow the different lip possitions to be seen. another problem was the box head. he had no mouth to animate for this lip sync project, so to solve that i had the box verberate, as all the box head really says is 'no'. I also added the shaking of the fist, it was a flare that i thought fitted with the shouting of the no. And the other part i added was the colour. I found out that the colour had to be the last thing added, other wise the colours won't match up to the forms, and inbetweening would be a nightmare.
Now yes i would love to show the original designs and figures i drew, however, in a fit of rage i seemed to have destroyed them. You see i was stressed that i hadn't the time to actually do my original plan and combining that with the realization of the impracticality of my idea, drove me to destroy it thinking it was useless and wouldn't help me in any way shape or form. yeah the experimental for me was a real failure.
these however are the designs that i drew out on paper which i would then cut out on Photoshop, which will then be transferred to celaction and used to animate with. they are simple designs with the head not being inked because i was going to us my actual head photoed and plonked on-top.
if i were to do this again, i would draw each piece independently or cut up independently giving nicer shapes to animate with other wise i think it worked well for what it was
The final designs for the backgrounds. the reason they are vied from this angle is because the ballon was to fly through these buildings casuing a prallax effect. the reason i added the first one was because i wanted to use it to help me explain the layers and my process. also because i don't save works in progress because it desided it was a waste of space and couldn't possibly help me in any way. that was supid of me. anyway i would draw a hole load of buildings with that settings style in at random on different layers. the coloured onesare in the foreground and are the cloest the smallest building are in the middlegrouund and the large pyramid is the the background. the reason for this layer seperation allows the one doing the parallax to control the layers with ease making the parallax, it also makes changes to the design alot easier as i can just wipe a layer without having to rub around the other layer's lines. as it turned out without the pyramid in the background there wasn't anything of substance to have in the background so i added the extrea buildings, however i couldn't make them small as they would otherwise fade into the background unnoticed, alot like the buildings in the gothic style background design, it is only now that i notice that. part from that i am actully really proud of the gothic background, i think it is as a result of the added detail, which does make it look better, but it also kills to do, as it take up a rediculous amount of time to do.
on the under the sea one i figured out how to create a nice glow using photoshop which was a heavens send and which also made that background. i think this one had a nice balance of detail, as there was enough to keep it interesting but not too much that it takes up a lot of time. also that gap was left for cthuhlu to be animated into or a similar beast, otherwise i might have filled that gap in with something to keep it interesting.
i was to to do these again i might reshade it as there is little to no focusing with these backgrounds, no lack of detail or shading to direct once's eye to a specific point, but as this would have a something moving through it i think that would have acted as the substancial difference to grab the audience's eye.
