11 second animation

At the end of the animation I decided to add the little alien like character to skip into the wall, and sync it with the final bits of the audio so it looked fairly decent, and I had referenced the slaming into the wall from the survival kit for animation, with cartoons using it such as looney toons (road runner) and family guy. When using this reference I learned that you can skip alot of frames from the current pose to the slam on the wall.

Overall I think that my animation isn't that good, and the reasons for this are that the looping on the animation wasn't done very well because I think more frames need to be added to make the animation look much better so its more smooth. My character aswell I don't was to good as it could of been but that is all down to character development so maybe more needed to be done.

Even though I like drawing this project has shown me that how difficult it is to do traditional animtion compared to cgi animation, becuase in traditional animation each frame has to be drawn and from a normal walk this will take 24 frames so 24 frames has to be drawn and in cgi you only have to apply the key poses which is 9.

Testing audio

I found that the audio went well with the bit of animation that I had, and discovered how to add audio to dragon, and export with audio from dragon, becuase people kept having problems but I found out that all you have to do is press sound and it then it will be exported with an audio.

Test Animation

I wasn't really going to make a test animation however I wanted to see of the skip could work and I felt like it did.

Skipping Reference

This is one of the skipping references I found and I thought it was very good and that the animation was fluent and is kind of what I want to do for my animation.

This reference reminded of a picture that I saw a while back, because the character looked the same so I researched it and found a picture that looks simimlar, however overall I found the animation was exactly what I wanted to do.

Here is the reference that looks similar to the video above and is what my animation will be based on.

Character Reference

 This alien looks too goofy for the idea that I have becuase of the teeth but the oval eyes, the skinny arms, big body and big feet maybe an idea I could use to put onto my character.

This picture is looks similar to the one above and I will incorporate the same ideas from the first picture and the second picture (big head)

With this picture it stands out to me becuase I think that it looks more alien than most pictures and also becuase its done digitally, even though it is squidward from spongebob.



This picture is what I had in mind when designing my character with the long head, thin arms and big belly however I will add longer legs to so that I can animate the character skipping. 

Overall I think that all the aliens above look generally the same and this could either be becuase of copying so when a random person looks at the character they can already recgonise that it is an alien type thing or that what people perspective of what an alien is.

11 second animation (ideas)

For the 11 second animation there is a big variety to choose from and so far I have chosen 3:

1.      This one’s sounds like there is a mother shouting at a little girl “Don’t you ever!!” and is very angry at the little girl as you can hear in the voice. For this animation my idea will be having a mom shout at a young teenager he is sitting in the corner of the room, the mother will either have its head chopped off e.g. cow and chicken, tom and jerry etc.

2.      This audio was talking about TV, “TV is power, the power to love and testify”, for this animation I will either animate what’s on the TV or the actual TV itself.

3.       This audio clip was just plain and had no speaking in it, but from the sound of it, it sounds like the person/s are jolly/ exciting etc. For this animation I was thinking to have someone skipping down a street.

Anticiapation Completed!!!

(Video distorts becuase of blogger) 

Generally this animation so far was the trickiest for me however I did enjoy the challenge of animating a jump. The reason why this task was difficult for me was because I am used to setting key frames on Maya and then the frames before will be handled by the software and in traditional animation I had to work out every single frame. If I had to do anything more for this task I will have gathered more research so when my I did my jump animation it would look better and I will have research to back it.

Next time I do a task that requires a jump or any kind of long distance movement I will carry out test animations so I can identify what frames need to be done in between the key frames so when I do the real animation it will look better. At the end of the animation I attempted to do a skid, and I thought that it did look good however with sound it isn’t as good plus I think it will look better if it was in perspective.

The principles that were used in this animation were anticipation, timing and spacing. Anticipation was used throughout the animation mostly at the beginning of the animation where the character jumps and swings its arm back to front because he is standing in a stop so a swing is necessary and so is bending the knees (as shown in the reference).  The spacing in my animation is decent up to a point on when the character jumps and in mid-air and looks like a couple of frames have been skipped, however the timing of the whole animation was fine.

Exaggeration Completed!!!

(Video distorts becuase of blogger)

Overall I thought that my animation which was based on exaggeration was really good and flowed really well evem when the animation was looped. If I had to make any changes on my animation the only thing I will do is add more expressions so it will look better and more longer. This task I thought would of been hard becuase I'm so used to drawing from a perspective rather than a straight on face, however in the end I took on the task hands on and found it was rather simple.

When taking on this task I had found a technique from just being lazy, and this is was when I drawn my animation up to a point of the final expression I wanted the face to go back to normal, so rather than drawing the frames again I used the drawn faces I had already done leading up to the final expression and just reversed it. This technique had its advantages because it saved me quite a bit of time, which is essentional when working in the industry when working towards deadlines and also made my animation smoother becuase there was no out place facial features for when stretching the face in the final expressions.

The animation prinicples which I used was were exaggeration, timing, spacing and stretch and squash. When exaggerating my character I made him have big oval eyes and a big nose that dropped below the jaw of the character. When stretching my character I made it animate so that its face stretched so you were able to see the mouth then squashed it back to its normal face. The timing and spacing was used really well in this animation because of the spacing of esch frame it made the whole animation smooth and the timing was the right speed so everything complimented each other.

Anticipation video reference

My jump will sort of similar to the video sense in when he takes of and the way the arms move.

This is the sort of skid that I will put innto my animation at the end of the jump.

Exaggeration (reference)

These are references of how exaggeration can be expressed using the animation principles squash and stretch, as you can see with the pictures when they are laughing the head/ mouth will be stretched and when some characters are in a mood (upset) there face will be squashed.

Exaggeration (planning)

I have finished all the planning for the exaggeration of the face, however all that needs to be done now is the reference to real images (myself) and to draw up the animation. In my animation I will make my character spin its eyes, then I will make it blink and finally I will make the character looked shocked.

Ball Animation Completed!!!

(Video distorts becuase of blogger)

Overall I think that my animation was a decent standard, not because that it was my first animation but because my planning was applied to the animation and this ball worked as I wanted it to When looking a my planning I mention some principles that I've applied to my animation e.g. stretch and squash were applied to the when the ball reached a certain speed or when it the ball hit of the ground. If I had to change the animation I would be more carefuuly of when drawing every frame becuase the size of the ball did change so it was fairly noticable also the velocity was abit fast on some areas. Other principles that were used was timing and spacing however I don't think that I used this very well. Another problem that I saw is that towards the end of the animation when the ball was rolling I felt the ball went too fast.

This task wasn't really hard or even time consuming, but I did enjoy how the finished animation looked, knowing that I was the one who had drawn every single frame. The only alterations I will use on my animation is to focus more when drawing up the animation so I can get the correct spacing so the animation looks more smooth. I learned quite abit on this task range from how to use dragon e.g setting up the camera on the stand, and connecting it to the computor and then operating dragon, from knowing how to take more than one picture at one time and also editing the cinematography so I can view the animation in a condition where by animation would of looked like a disco, but in the end I learned how to edit it so it was clearly visable. The last thing I learned was that when doing my animation I should put a grid behind the animation paper so I work with the lines that are used instead of being on the edge of the paper.

Ball Animation

I have finally drawn up my ball animation and now on monday I will capture very image in dragon so this should be completed mid day monday

Four Different Ball Reference

Bowling Ball Reference 

Here is a video reference of a bowling ball bouncing, this shows that the bowling ball when tossed at different heights it makes a relatively small bounce and after it finishes bouncing it rolls down any unsteady ground e.g. if dropped on on a slant it will roll down until it hits an obstacle in its path. As seen in the reference the shape of the ball doesn't deform because of the hard material a bowling ball has.

Rubber Ball Reference

Here is a video reference of a rubber ball bouncing, this shows that when the ball bounces at any height the rubber ball squashes and stretches ever so slightly. The rubber ball bounces really high showing that material can be squashed and stretched ever so slighty becuase it is a solid material. The rubber ball will also roll in a direction of unsteady ground but obstacles such as rocks and litter will easily stop the ball in it its path.

Tennis Ball Reference

Here is a video reference of a tennis ball bouncing, in this video the tennis ball is filled with nothing (air) and that is why the shape of the tennis ball is easily stretched and squahsed. Also the tennis is ball is also has a layer of rubber which is why it bounces so well. The outside of the material is made of felt and is used for durability of the ball, which is not really needed in my animation.

Rubber Ball (liquid filled)

Here is another reference of another rubber ball but this one is filled with a liquid rather than a solid. As the video shows there is more of a squash and stretch being shown and this is mostly beacuse of the material and becuase of the liquid inside. If there was less liquid inside the ball the stretch and squash will look more exaggerated but the ball looks quite fall of liquid and because of the outside material the liquid can't escape. Also the ball does bounce after hitting the floor but not as high as a solid rubber ball would.

Reference for Bouncing Ball Animation

Reference for Exaggeration Animation