Experimental tests

Final animation!!

This is the final render of my animation. I rendered out my character and the chair in Flash, and then imported them into after-effects to add the background. I could then position my character how I wanted to on the screen to improve the composition. I increased the size of the character slightly to emphasise how big he is. I then rendered a MPEG file and also high quality TIFF files with a separate sound file.

I'm really impressed with the quality of my final animation. However I enjoyed the pre-production and postproduction, even though there wasn't much of it, more than the actual animating. The animating part I found really difficult, as I kept noticing little things that were wrong when they should have been changing the big things. I do think this animation has come a long way from the Hayle project, and is much higher quality even in though there were less people working on it (just one) and less time.

Things are really pleased with this animation are:

• the character design-I really think you get a sense of character from his appearance and from the way he moves
• background design- you get a good idea of where he is and how desperate he is from his surroundings
• the lips sync- it is accurate enough that you understand the words that he is saying and shapes are clear
• size and weight- his size doesn't change too much out the animation, and you get an idea of his weight from his movements. I think this is because I filmed myself first, with my size and weight increased
• style-I really liked using this style with sketchy rough lines which move each frame, similar to the Hayle project, but less flickery. I also liked the sketching is the background, not tidied up and still in pencil

Things that could be better in my animation are:

• anticipation overlap- some of the movements don't have any overlap, and I could have improved the ones that do. Also because of his size, I needed to create greater anticipation of things
• I could have included the doctor
• sobbing- I could have emphasised this a bit more, by more violent movements and rocking and shaking

Next time I think I will put more time into the actual animating rather than the aesthetic appeal. However, my favourite part of animation is definitely the designing part, not so much the actual animating. I find animating too frustrating sometimes and can put me off the project.

Background

This is my final background for my animation. I decided to go with monotones because it doesn't distract your eye from the main character. It also creates my sketchy feel to the whole animation. I was going to use the aspect ratio of 16:9 however I think I'm going to go with 4:3 so I can fit in more of the surrounding area to set the scene.

The chair seems to contrast with everything else in the animation, because it's smooth and slick and doesn't have a sketchy outline like the rest. I think it helps create the feeling that he doesn't belong there, and he's a bit of an outcast.

Lip syncing it up!

These are my dope sheets for my 11 second club animation. They include phonetic sounds that spell each word, tell me with the timing in the lip sync. They also include rough 'stage directions' for the character.

Below is a rough lip sync of the speech. I mostly stuck to the timings on the dope sheet, but to get it to look right I had to move some of the frames around, either forwards or backwards along the timeline.

This is the final animation with lip sync. The mouth shapes were slightly different from my test because they suit the character more without teeth. It was really difficult to get a lip sync right for the last section of speech, because there are so many different mouth shapes that are very similar. If you don't change mouth shape at all it made him look like he'd frozen, yet if you changed it too much it doesn't look like he is saying too many words. I think I managed to get a medium between the two, but I still think it looks a bit strange.

Final Tidied up Movements

Here are my final tidied up movements of my 11 second club character. I could add some shading or 'rendering' to my character but I don't think I will as I'm afraid it will move around and not stay consistent.

The image below shows the arcs of movement my character creates as he moves throughout the animation. There are a couple of frames that break the arc, but other than that its smooth.

I think my animation could include more overlap and anticipation. Especially when his arm drops to the floor on horror. My animation it just hangs there stopping suddenly, however it should swing slightly but not much, to keep the effect of his weight.

Finished Conversation Project

I have finally finished my conversation drawing project!! I really enjoyed this task, especially having the chance to draw animals as well as people. I think I will keep up drawing animals and their expressions.

One thing I wish I had the chance to do on this project is some painting. I just didn't have the time or space to set up my paints and clear up after myself. Maybe next time.

Enjoy my sketches!!

Experimental Animatic so far

(The video hasn't uploaded very well so please excuse the jumps)

This is a quick animatic for the first section of my experimental animation. This is essential because I need to know exactly how many frames there are in each movement so it is in time with the music.

The basic idea behind my animation is it all starts with a book of 'fond memories'. The book opens to a page with a postcard of beautiful scenery saying the typical 'wish you were here'. A stick man has been drawn on top. As the music progresses, he gets out his violin and starts to play along.

He eventually unzips his stick man self to reveal a real human (done in pixelation) who then continues to play the violin. He walks along with the scenery moving behind him until he stop in front of a woman who is also playing the violin (its a duet). Towards the end of the piece they embrace and it fades out with the music.

My next step is to do some more detailed animation for the stick man section to print out, and to do the rough timing for the pixelation part.

Set the scene for 11 second club

This is the basic background for my 11 second club animation. I wanted it to be a stereotypical psychiatrists office the kind you see on the likes of the Simpsons etc. The camera angle wont be the same as this one, it'll be set slightly lower so it emphasises the size of the character. I will have to be careful not to counteract this when I add the psychiatrist, making him too big in the foreground will make my 'large' character not so large anymore.

The basic movement of my character

This is the first rough version of my animation. It's only the key poses so far because its just to get the timing right. I'll add in the inbetweens and thing like the leg movements and his rolling flab later on. I think I could still make my character appear larger, maybe by using foreshortening or change of perspective.

I was worried that this would look completely terrible, but it's not too bad. It's just got a long way to go. However, I think I've got the timing nearly nailed.

Reenactment...

Andy and Georg gave me some helpful tips in Mondays lecture, so I've gone back and recorded my rather large man scene. This time to help me simulate the weight and size of the guy I strapped pillows to myself and lay on wobblier chairs. The things we do for animation. I really wanted to get the arm moments right, and tried not to repeat things to much. I reckon I've got the basic timing for everything and the film is only a guide anyway. I also tried to get the movement from my upper body to follow through to my legs this time.

All in all this is a better take, because there is a more accurate sense of weight and character, enjoy:

Captured Conversation

These are some of my drawing for the conversation project. I've finally got a scanner that works so I've uploaded a few of them. Some are drawn from real time moments, some from photos I've taken and others from film. I really enjoy using pencil, but I think I need to experiment more with different mediums. Trying biro is quite fun and so is felt tips but they are still quite safe options, I need to go for something a bit more messy. Watch this space for more...