Strong Stick Man!!

We were given the task of animating someone lifting a box, taking into consideration principles like weight and centre of gravity. Firstly I filmed myself lifting a heavy box to get the correct timings and have an idea of the key poses. I used Flash with a simple stickman and wireframe box. I sketched out the frames roughly and then tidied them up afterwards. I decided to work in 2D because it's what I feel most comfortable with.




There were some frustrating moments when my graphics tablet decided it wasnt going to line up with the screen anymore and pretend it was a mouse. I tryed to change the settings but even though all the right boxes were checked, it didn't solve my problem. I had gotten so annoyed at this point that I'd lost my train of thought and my concentration so I had to call it a night and hand in something I wasn't completely happy with.

I think if I had more time to do this again I would try animating in Maya, and go down the 3D route. This is mainly because it's so much easier to tweck the little things without having to rub out sections then draw it back in a millimetre different. I'd like to become more confident in using Maya to animate, and might do some playing around with it in the future.

Experimental Project

Land Rover Advert



I think I've found the style that I want to use for my experimental project. I've seen this advert on TV a few times and thought that its a pretty interesting technique. I think this may end up with me using a whole rain forest to animate only a minute. I have also decided to use the 'Mally' music for this project as it's most suiting to my style and the technique.

New pretty lighting

I've finally gotten around to playing around with HDRI pictures and 'Image based lighting'. this part of the task I have found really quite interesting and a lot more fun than modelling my face or my eye. I'd like to try making my own HDRI map at some point which I can imagine will be quite difficult.

The results at the moment are 'pretty' and ideal for a desktop background. I can see how this is useful for films with added in CGI characters.

The walk... again

It was quite strange being given this task again this year and brought back all the memories of struggling with the walk cycles in year one... At least this time I had that experience and I think I remembered most of the things Andy suggested last year. I decided to do it in 2D because I feel a lot more comfortable using it compared to 3D on Maya.

I think this walk has a nice strong bounce and the movement through the back emphasizes this. There is a slight jump in the arms which can be hard to follow in the middle of the cycle. Overall its not as good as it could be, but for easing back into flash its not too bad in my opinion.

Back in the land of Fal!

I thought I would do a quick update... So we're back here again. I feels like an age since the Hayle project and I still haven't watched back our final render. I think I might leave it a bit longer. I have a good feeling about this year, and the ideas are already rushing around in my head. I just have to put them to paper (or screen) somehow.

Georg asked us in the 'Advanced' Maya classes to model our own heads and showed us some really interesting models done by others. Its gotten me interested but I haven't considered the 3D work as much as 2D so far so I've got some improving to do. While talking about ideas like the 'uncanny valley' there was a task of finding out how unsymmetrical our faces really are. This is my findings... (the lighting isn't very good in this picture as this is the moment the sun actually decided to shine)

As you can see I'm not symetrical but I think it could be a lot worse. It proves when you model the human body you can't just copy and paste one side and keep them exactly the same.

Finished Animation!!!

This is the done and finished animation. I don't really know how I feel about it... I think I've spent too much time staring at Winnie to know whether its a good animation or not. I know there are things that could be improved.

The simplicity of the camera angles don't distract you from the story that Winnie is telling, however they donut show off the 3D element as much as they could. The 3D animation ended up in some scenes being more of a guideline then something to trace over exactly. We could of done something like in the pierce sisters when they drag the fish up the inside of the building. Maybe zoom in from above them stood outside Woolworths.

I think we've managed to keep a good 'boiling' effect throughout. Even redrawing still frames to keep to movement fluid. Yet I do think the frame rate that we were drawing at should of been a bit lower so it looked less like its all vibrating.

We've managed to keep the style consistent throughout, I would draw the first frame and then someone else would draw over the rest of the scene, using my drawing as a guide for colours, shading and line thickness. To make sure the old Winnie stayed the same (and with a Cornish ear) I did the lip syncing and animating for her after Jenny drew her living room and a motionless Winnie enough times to repeat them for the boiling effect and using they Maya animation as a guide. There is something that bothers me though, and its that in only one scene Winnie is holding a tea cup, to the audience it looks like its just magicked there. Because we animated it we know that she picks it up for a sip while shes talking then puts it down again when you cant see her in another scene. It just looks a bit strange when we put it together. I also was getting stressed when animating this scene where she holding a tea cup, and you can see that in one frame her arm shakes slightly... maybe its just the old age?

I really enjoyed doing the sound for the ident project. But for this one sound effects didn't seem as important, we didn't want to distract from Winnie's story. We recorded loads of different sounds at the beginning of the project, but only used a few to add a little colour.

I think this is probably the best we could of done for this project and we worked really well as a group. But I don't think Ill want to see this Winnie for a while :)

Block Through

Jenny put together the different scenes in a block through before animating.