Update Dump

I finally finished my balloon animation earlier this week. I am pretty happy with it, and Michel (our animation teacher) has been infinitely patient and helpful when it came to letting me know what to fix, whenever I could find her.

All that's left to do is to re-shoot the Bouncing Ball and the Bowling Ball on the final BG, to add a few frames to the end of the bowling ball to make it roll off screen, and to add a single frame in before the balloon contacts the box to cushion the impact a bit. All in all, I am happy with it, I and I am looking forward to animating the marine animal project!






Other than the animations, I've really enjoyed working on some of the assignments for Layout and Character Design as well. I'm not very capable with cartoony styles, so I studied the Character Animation Crash Course to get a better grip on it. The result was 'cool cat', my kind of generic lion character for rotations in character design. He came after developing a few other stereotypes and archetypes in lion prides.

After that, we had an some homework from layout class to draw some characters in any situation, with a partial environment.

I had no idea I went in all the wrong directions, but here were my favourites:


Happy Bear


Snooty Poodle


Eager Bird


Girl in Prayer

In the end, we were to choose one to develop into a proper environment. I ended up choosing the girl in prayer, and developed a temple that I had imagined she would travel to/from.


Concept/Sketchy Image


Grid




Final Temple


Something about the temple bothers me, but I can't quite figure out what.
I'm sure I'll understand as I learn more about developing environments.

I find that a lot of information about the place can form itself while you're cleaning up work. I imagined that this is the temple of a earth goddess, a goddess of creation. Bottom half of a snake, like the chinese creation goddess. Behind her, a pantheon of gods were immortalized in gargantuan white sculpture. The aquaducts behind her fill her prayer pool with every rain fall, and in times of heavy rain will overflow the pool into the pit surrounding it.

I imagined that monks and priestesses like the girl I drew would maintain the temple, removing debris but not allowed to perform repairs, as decay is a natural part of the cycle, because eventually even gods must fall. Then I thought, since she's so tiny compared to her environment (my praying girl is the red dot infront of the statue), that I might have to add a monolithic creature to suit it-- A creature that has come to take on the goddess. Just like a boss fight :)

It was a lot of fun to work on, and I'm looking forward to developing it more in the coming assignments, as we are to do different camera angles and framing in the place we've made.

During the weekends, when I'm with my family, I like to doodle creatures. I imagined a giant fluffy mount that I could ride down the street. Complete with little signals on his saddle like that man and his horse I saw on a show once. After I finished figuring out what I wanted him to look like, I had to draw his skeleton in, just to get a better idea of how he'd move and how he could be articulated.



Thanks so much for reading through this!

I really hope to improve on all of this very soon.

Some Final Animations

I found out that the class I thought was going to be animation was actually character design. I got some practice in a cartoon style, which I will try to add when I get to my scanner.

I did revise my animations with the help of Hoon and DQ, though!

I managed to catch my animation teacher today, and showed her my bouncing ball animation and new pendulum animation.

Bouncing Ball:

Need to add my name to the background, and to erase the bouncing ball when it disappears behind the windowsill. Michelle suggested tuning it into a bouncy creature, which I might do.

Pendulum:

Did this after watching some of the Animator's Survival Kit Lectures. It taught me alot about spacing and how to determine where to put things. Still need to work on my timing, though. After I finished the pendulum, I realized how easy it would be to make it a turning cylinder, so I tried it. I was only able to do it because my roommate is awesome and gave me an amazing compass.

Happy day :)

First Day of Class!

Lecture was fun today. Everyone gets the same Tuesday lecture, so it was good to see some friends outside group E.

Here's a quick ball exercise I did after the lecture, to practice for the upcoming assignment:


Sorry for the sucky quality. I snuck into group C's animation principles class to use the flipbook stations, and their blinds were way open. It made getting a good shot hard with the cameras. And then I ran out of tape, so I couldn't keep the pegbars secure.

I learned a lot. A second year named Nick helped me with how to log into the school system and how to use flipbook! He also corrected the timing, and showed me how to flip and roll the pages to animate! I might want to add the internal circles next.

I am hoping to finish a few other exercises tonight.


Edit:
And I did! In order-
Animations I did after this post:

Rough pencil test for the ball animation:


Rough Pendulum Test:


And then a VERY quick bowling ball test to see the path it should take:


I am ok with the first three. There's a lot to adjust, but I can address them when I get to my first animation principles class :) The last one is really painful because the ball shrinks as it moves, goes to fast, and on a poor path.

It's just a rough though, so I am happy.
OH! Also, sorry it's all so faint. It's all in blue col-erase right now so I can see the movement. Except the first practice, that was penciled in :)

For a first day of animation, I am so happy! The thrill of seeing my drawings move for the very first time was great. I got to work with so many great classmates today, and the only class we've had (at least, group D and E to my knowledge) is the lecture this morning!

Good day :)