2D Reference

During the week I referenced and animated my open an object piece.  I recorded it just outside my house by the riverfront which was perfect with a big open space.   I usually always reference for my character animation as I feel it gives me much better results as the movement is much more fluent and the overall anatomy is more correct even if my body type isn’t exactly the same as my character.  Live reference is usually used in the industry also, such as big film companies almost defiantly use it as well as some smaller advertising companies.  As I am more interested in the character performance part of the industry it is important I analyze and observe as much from real life as possible to apply to my art as well as making sure the timing is right. 

Here are some screens of my reference video:

I then storyboarded my sequence, although in the industry it is done the other way I sometimes have a rough idea on what my character is doing and therefore just act it out first then chose which one I like the best as I usually film more than one sequence.  I would like to maybe consider being a story artist as a career, as I am not brilliant at perfect clean drawings and I don’t really enjoy colouring as much as just drawing or doodling.  So with storyboards they are usually quite rough and quick sketches that only really need to communicate the emotions of the characters and story as well as what camera angles and movements would be going on in film.

For the remaining of the week I was animating the sequence in my room at Newport, I would rather animate in the studio but it is much more difficult living a bus ride away, and especially with late night access now no longer allowed it just makes everything I bit more complicated.  Although I cannot line test as much now, I expect to make full use of the studio when my course moves to the new campus just as I did last year.

Maya 3

This week the work load was finally on and time management was essential.  With Maya sessions clashing with life drawing which would be more beneficial considering the 2D specialist option I have taken I have to make sure my time is spent wisely and that the Maya sessions I attend are worth my time.  This workshop was rigging and it was one of the more complicated workshops.  I did roughly get the hang of it by the end but lots of re-reading the manual and asking Claire had to be done before that was achieved.  Rigging is one of the most important part of CGI, without it characters movements are distorted and de-skeletonised.  It is certainly something I would not consider as a career, I did not enjoy it but again found it interesting and you really do need a good understanding of how the anatomy works, perhaps more so than 2D, although a good understanding of anatomy is of course needed for all mediums of animation.  Knowing this I was to question why second years have not got any life drawing sessions of our own?  Although this year we are exploring more abstract and independent ways of animation world I still think it is essential to know the realist aspects, especially the moving human body, lots of books I read from professional artists say that to use the fullest of your imagination and the abstract is to first have full understanding of the real, which I think this semester is lacking of.  My rigging wasn’t completely complete, I had not joined up the ankle to the leg yet.  Except for it uncompleted I do count my rigged foot as a success as the overall foot did move the way a real foot should and the joints put in the correct places. 

Although the overall lecture was interesting and I know have a much better understanding on how CGI characters are made, I would certainly not pursue this line of work, although in CGI it is a most important part of animation it is not actually animating as there is no moving process, therefore not exciting to me.

The Return of Alix

Our first assignment was to animation a character trying to opening an object that refused to open.  I have noticed that assignments are a lot more open this year, with not as much detail on how the overall actions start and end, although this gives us more freedom to experiment with different emotions/situations/movements it also has the damage of overworking one piece so careful time management is again essential.  

Firstly that week I was trying to redesign my last year’s character Alix.  I first tried to eliminate the difficult and annoying parts of her design that were difficult to animate.  Her hair was the first thing that sprung to mind, so I have given her still a short hair style but with more of a bouncy bob.  Her overall dressing style I changed too, from a punk short top and skinny jeans to a long top with a poofy bottom, a much girlier take on my character which will be a interesting juxtaposition to her personality, which I will try to maintain from last year( a hot headed blonde).  Influence wise I looked at my cousin from England who has a much more middle class background from me so her fashion sense and hair is (I think) really interesting.  My cousin also is working her way to become a musician which is the same as my character.  So fashion sense wise I took influence off my cousin and personality wise I’ve taken off the artist/performer P!nk, I just like the way she presents herself in her music videos as well as seeing her live this summer I do want to maintain her no-bullshit attitude in my character.

Here are some reference pictures for my character, my cousin's hair and soft face with P!nk's sense of attitude:

 

Here are some sketches of Alix’s new design:

Maya 2

My second session at Maya, again working on the bouncing ball but this time into more detail on the actual principles and approaches to rigging and control the animation’s fluid movement .  First we looked on how to construct a squash effect to the ball without it moving from its pivot point.  At this point I am still getting my head around the controls and what does what.  Maya is still like no other programme I have used before, I thought I would be able to at least compare it to Photoshop but the overall setup and principles are not the same.  Within the first part of the lecture we looked into parenting and how to constrain two objects together.  A few times I had to ask James go over a few things as I’d just missed out what was said or some things just weren’t sinking in.  Most of the time, I just had trouble finding where certain windows were such as the set driver.  But finally I was able to complete the first session of the ball to squash and stretch.  I could see how the rigging of the ball to make the ball squash and stretch is referred to Disney’s principles; therefore my 2D skills still apply while animating on Maya, you just have to approach it a differnet way.

We then looked at the swinging arm, we were able to download a model of a basic arm from the mle that already had the pivot points and constrained points set for us.  Using our knowledge from the bouncing ball, we had to animate the arm swinging from side to side, using the graph editor to create a flowing loop of the waving arm.  I am still not used to the graph and the way to set key frames, as Maya inbetweens everything for you and it is all calculating the number or frames where as last year most of my animation was not key framed so it is something I simply need to overcome.  I am still a little lost with learning new aspects of Maya but am indeed finding it very interesting and now and mind blown how all the full length feature films are done considering I am still having trouble just bouncing a ball.  I am determined to continue attending the lectures and hope that I would have understood it enough to at least make a small sequence to put in my show reel.

2D Specialist Option Module BEGINS!

At the end of the week our 2D module had finally began with Matthew Gravelle.  Overall it was just a 'this is what you are gonna be doing' lesson, so we were given our semester planner and basically roughly going over it.
It felt good to be finally starting back on 2D again, I didnt really do any 2D animation over the summer so was afriad I'd be a little rusty after so long.  But after looking at the plan I was more excited than nervous, I was espcially looking forward to the dialogue between two characters. Never animated two characters interecting before.  Also am looking forward to a character going from one extreme emotion to another, I really want to do a medium close up of the face and really mess with facial emotions, most probably looking at Jim Carrey for reference.

For some reason I totally didn't think about what character I would use until we were given our first assignment. I just decided to re-design my last years character Alix, making her a bit older and different hair, it was a pain to animated each strand of her spiky hair.

After we were with Matt we had a little introduction to scanning our frames to photoshop with Stan and how to work the 'actions' tool, which will most probably save hours. Very very helpful.

3D Stopmotion Session

My specialist course had yet to start so I decided to attend the 3D stop motion class as well.  I found it most interesting and I have always been amazed by how stop motion is constructed and filmed.  The man giving the lecture was Austin Charlesworth and was an experienced animator from the industry.  He started straight off with saying where he’s worked and that 4 of those studios are now closed, a real look into the current stop motion industry, which at present doesn’t seem to be booming.  He also drove straight in to say that stop motion animators don’t really have full time jobs, on average will find ten months work and five months doing something else.   After hearing this I was quite glad I didn’t chose stop motion as I would have only really chosen it so I would have another skill in a different medium in animation not because I was passionate about it. For about an hour he showed us one of the children’s TV series he worked on called Igam Ogam, and how the mechanics worked and answered any questions we had.  I'd never heard of this series before and I didn't really enjoy watching it as much as other childrens series I've seen before but I did indeed appreciate the hours of effort that was put in by the animators and the bright colours were very eye catching, but overall not my style of entertainment or what route I'd like to take.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjWjn3s7TlQ&feature=related
[This is a trailer of the series that was shown to us, Igom Ogom]

One of the most interesting parts I found was when he showed the class various puppets and why they were good or bad by what they were constructed or how they were designed.  He also looked at how the problem with stop motion is that everything is real, therefore everything has a life span, such as materials rotting or breaking.  The final part of the lecture was him giving the class a go to animate a coin bouncing, from this I can see that the principles of animation with stop motion is the same as 2D but just a different way to approach it and create the movement. 

Overall I found it a very interesting insight of this form of animation, although it may not be for me I do certainly appreciate it more with all the effort that goes into it.  Depending on if I have free time from 2D and CGI lectures I may attend the other stop motion sessions as I would like to see how the modelling process works.

Second Year Begins

Second year of uni has began and a whole new selection of work to go with it.  In the second year the class has been spilt up into three group for the secialism part of the term: 2D, 3D and CGI.  I decided to go with 2D as that is the medium I have a true passion for. However I am still very much interested in how the mechanics of CGI works and I think with the big boom in the animation industry mainly produced in CGI it is important to have atleast a basic understanding of it.

Today I went to the Maya class with James Manning and started to learn the basic mechanics of how to animatate in the program Maya.  From the introduction to Maya last week I had a very rough idea how to make shapes and how to work the angles but the actually animating part had not been touched upon. The lecture I attended today looked on how to create key frames with a bouncing ball and how to improve this by looking on the time/displacement graph.  With this I learned how to control the exact movement of the ball by adjusting the shape and handles of the graph's line displacement.  At the end of the lecture I had learnt how to animate a ball bouncing and slowly decelerate to a complete stop the front angle.

Throughout the process of being introduced to Maya I did feel a little uneasy thinking of all the vast different settings and the overall process of learning a completly new skill in animating.  I did find some parts quite easy (like creating key frames and moving the ball from one place to another) and other parts a little more challenging (acctually perfecting the displacement graph to effect the speed and when the ball hit the floor)  Overall I did enjoy learning this new skill even though I have only just scraped the surface Im sure after much more practice I will be able to preform atleast basic animated sequences.