Now I'm just Experimental

Here is Tom Dowler and My "Experimental Animation Project"

There are a lot of issues with our final production but I am nonetheless very pleased with it. I do feel as though had we gotten on with it sooner, and given ourselves more time we could have devoted more time to the animation

and it could have been much smoother and much more focused. I really enjoyed animating in the technique that we used, but I did feel a little rushed, an consequently the animation is dubious in places (for example the hand in the water is very 'rubbery').

I enjoy the overall feel that the animation has, I think that we have been almost lucky in the way that it fits to the sound clip. It really suits the erratic strings, and the urgent vicious structure of the clip. The animation feels themed overall, there are a lot of connotations of danger involved, especially with the crashing waves and the images of sharks and the drowning man. There is quite a subtle but poignant narrative that runs along to the sound clip, lent to it by the animation, but the imagery suggests to me that somebody has been drowned or lost at sea in this raging storm. I am fond of the way that the clips of the sea build up to a climax, and reflect the dangers inherent in nature, and then the switch to the animation is indicative of a story being told, despite just wanting to try out a new technique. I think that the switch to animation does work, and feels natural, the chalk and dark paper creating a grayscale, dreamlike look to the aesthetic. The animated scenes to me work effectively, although they leave a lot to be desired in terms of technical ability. I feel that the sharks and the boat scene are most effective, from a technical standpoint as well as a storytelling device. I enjoy the way that the sharks signify a climax and denote a sense of peril, which is countered by the boat and the leaving of the sharks, leading us down from the climax to a calm conclusion and a return the – now relaxed – live action ocean.

The main problem that I have with the finished production is the technical side of the chalk animations. They are, due to time constraints, a little clunky and a little under polished and are in need of more inbetweens.

Overall I am very pleased with our finished product despite its flaws, I feel as though our attempts at the techniques involved are reasonable and work successfully. Obviously with more time and organised planning I would hope to produce smoother, cleaner animation, but I think that the idea of an experiment is to try something new, and I feel as though we have produced a coherent, as well as visually pleasing experimental animation. 

The Hungry Caterpillar 2

This is my finished 11 second club entry, I would have given a development and progress update type thing now, but my memory stick with all of my line tests has broken. Typical.

Despite it's reasonably poor reception on the 11 second club ( I checked, I finished 132nd with a rating of 3.82 I think) I am still pleased with this. However I completely understand the criticisms offered to me. 

The grabbing of the camera is easily misconstrued as being a morph or some kind of growth spurt. I think that is most likely to do with the timing here, it needs to be snappier, with less inbetweens and more overlap at the end, I feel as though up until the zoom/grab it works relatively well, perhaps he is a little static and conservative with his motions. 

Perhaps the grab was over ambitious at my current ability, and I should have stayed with squash and stretch, and just finished off smoothly, without trying to add that bit of dynamic action at the end.

Overall though, I think that I've produced something that I am proud of, I like the floppiness of the character, and the timing of most of it, obviously I will take the criticisms on board for next time I am doing character animation.

The Hungry Caterpillar

    

These are my inital designs and ideas for my eleven second club animation. I know that it seems cliche and a little unimaginitive to do a caterpillar, which is what springs to so many minds when they hear the word cocoon. However, I felt like I could really have fun with a large, flabby character with a lot of arms, and squashy, stretchy animation. It was suggested to me that I keep his enviroment cramped and restrictive, which I agree with, it will really lend a sense of discomfort to the scene and atmospher that suits the sound clip well.

Below is the video of the two acting clips i will take my reference from.

 

Double Team

Second post of the evening, just to cover the emotion change excercise that we were given last week.

I ended up working on mine very late and close to the deadline, due to complications with my previous attempt at the excercise. This is my reasoning for its obvious shoddiness.

I had two finishes to this one:

SAD TO ANGRY



& SAD TO HAPPY





The reason the I did not hand in the first one is because I felt that by making the character stand I was making a mistake in terms of camera and silhouette, the animation at the end is choppy, unimaginative and rigid.

That said, the latter is hardly better. There are obvious problems with silhouette, it is very difficult to see what is actually happening in the pose. As was also pointed out to me, the whole sequence needs longer pauses at crucial points, such as when he drops the harmonica, or when he inspects the coin. I think that the main issue is that I just didn't spend enough time on it, making sure that it was smooth, well timed and clear to the viewer what was happening.

And Lift.

Belated post on the lift excercise from a couple of weeks ago.

Here is said lift.





The idea behind it is that the character is not expecting the object to be heavy, hence the lack of anticipation towards the beginning, although i feel that a little anticipation would have been a sensible choice, just to make it more believable. The lift loses the sense of weight and timing when the object is lifted to the characters chest. The object seems suddenly to change in weight, becoming much lighter, only to become unsteady and heavy again. I believe that had I pulled the pose into more anticipation prior to the big heave up to the chest, it would be more convincing. I like the drop and the jump/fall, i feel that the timing works well and the movement is fluid and plausible.

It's Blogging Time..

First post after getting back into the course on 2nd Year, so far so good.

Just thought I would upload my appalling walk cycle, it's fairly obvious that I need to keep up practicing on these.




Using the separate colours was an attempt to make the movements of each individual limb and the head/torso clear. Unfortunately I seemed to have conflicting ideas about the drawing styles, and opted for stick arms, torso and head, with full bodied legs. I think that combined with the colours, this makes it very difficult to see what is going on. However, based on playback I can see that the body is poorly proportioned and constructed, the head is far too animate next to the body, which along with arms and legs makes the animation much too busy to work as a walk cycle, because the eye has to focus on too much. I will keep on producing walk cycles throughout the year and post them, and observe whether or not I improve.

Bored of Stories

My completed, back breaking storyboard. Took forever. I'm very pleased with it however, I feel that in terms of artistic ability and capability I have achieved a new area and new standard for myself. I do think that the story could have been made clearer, perhaps a few more frames here and there to develop the tension and make the story a little more engaging.

Blogger has decided that it doesn't want to upload again, so who would I be to tell it otherwise? I will upload the storyboard if I can get blogger to recognise jpegs.

Hayle is No More

Well, it's finished and not a moment too soon to be honest. There was a certain sense of "whatever, that'll do" attitude towards the whole project from all of us as we came closer to the end. We had been working solidly for a couple of weeks, and the worry that we might not get it finished had infected us as a group.

Having said that, I'm fairly pleased with the final outcome, I'm pleased with the way it flows, the way the timing works and how the sound fits the animation. What I am most pleased with however is the overall visual style and how we have managed to keep aesthetic continuity between 4 different artists. Anyway, here be the finished beasty.





I was responsible for:
Production
- The backgrounds
- the animation and texturing of the old woman screaming
- animation of the scene in which she is finally subdued
- compositing the final edit
Pre-Production
-Ideas(group)
-Early Character Concept (Hamilton)
-Final Character Design (Old Woman)
-Colour Setups
Role
-Director

I am pleased with the work that I have produced, I feel as though my animation and timing has improved, as well as my understanding of programs like flash and premier. I am also very pleased with the work that the rest of my group has produced, the animation all tied together and looked pretty professional considering our time limit, the texturing and colour pallet was perfect, suiting the backgrounds very well and the sound effects were very good, staying low down in the mix and adding to atmosphere without being intrusive and distracting to the story line.

Overall, I think we've managed to achieve a very finished looking animation with good continuity and a distinct artistic style, even if use of computer software compromised the aesthetic that we had initially envisioned.

Ident Pre-production

Initially I had a few ideas and produced a moodboard to get ideas flowing more coherently.



This was my idea for chew tv's ident. It may seem a little disconnected from their themes and ethos at first but allow me to explain. The idea behind it is that the orb represents chew tv, and the sea creatures represent the creative public. The two characters focused on-the fish and the jellyfish-notice that the orb/chewtv is growing as others join it, and it explodes when they join. This is to suggest that to join chewtv you are joining a growing community of creative young people and that your idea could help it to explode into something big or just get your own idea into the bigger picture.

I wanted to try to keep the design and look of the animation quite close to the flyer and the new, sleek, space age look they were looking for. This is a set-up I produced for the pitch.

Maya Environments

This a belated post on the 3D environments that we modeled, textured and lit in Maya.

My Idea for my room was loosely based on my interior background that I did for Animation Design.

I changed the design slightly, as I felt i wanted to do something at least slightly different but keep a similar feel. I produced a loose sketch for it. (which wont upload for some reason)

This is my final render of the room.



I am pleased with what I have produced. I think that the modeling is decent and fairly detailed, particularly the stereo. I think the texturing is fair, the bed and carpet I like, the bump map on the walls is a little too strong and needs to be toned back a bit, especially considering the look of the rest of it. The main problem with it is that it is too dark. The strength of the ambient light needs to be increased to help light some of the detail that is missing in the shadows; whilst the shadow does bring a dynamic to the room it still needs to reveal more detail. The light emitting from the lamp on the bedside table needs to be softened and dimmed as the shadows it creates are too harsh and bold. All in all though, I'm reasonably happy with my attempt.

Here is the polygon render to show all elements without shadow.

Live@5

On monday we spent the day collaborating with the broadcasting students on Live at 5. It was our job as animators to produce the graphics for the show. I say produce the graphics, it was more a case of editing pre-produced graphics to suit the topics of this weeks show. Since my specific job was to edit the names on the aston straps, it was, suffice to say, dull. It was a simple task that, I feel was a little pointless for an animation student to be doing, it could have been done by anyone who had used after effects a little bit before. I think that the broadcasters didn't really appreciate that they could have had more than what they were asking of us. Also, whilst Orla did a good job of organising us as producer and communicated well with their team, they still kept coming back to us with mistakes that had been made, mostly by them. The day was good as an experience, as an example of working in a group and in conjunction with another team of people, I just feel as though the potential was wasted, they were specific about what they wanted and we adhered to that and left no room for any creativity or display of talent. I would say that I was pleased with what I had produced but, what is there to be pleased with? I typed in some names into a pre-designed After Effects project, and exported it so it was ready for them to use, not exactly an achievement. They could have done that, it didn't really require animation students to produce what we did for Live@5. As I said before, I can appreciate the day as an experience of working with other people, I'm just not sure it was necessary for us to be involved.

Walks3

Our final sector on walking was producing assessed walks based on videos of ourselves walking. I chose to a striding walk.

This is my 2D attempt.




I have mixed feelings on this. In animation terms, I feel like the top half and secondary animation work fairly well, they convey a strong sense of rigidity and purpose. However, the legs make the overall effect fail as they are far too short proportionally, and this makes the stride in the legs unable to reach as far as it should to be realistically accurate. There are also issues with speed in general as it is a little too fast. I think that given the chance to rectify these issues the animation would be much more successful.

My 3D attempt.







I feel that posture in this one is successful, the animation is a little rigid at times and to me seems a little unnatural, however overall i think that this one works, perhaps more so than the 2D one, because the stride is more accurate. The secondary animation (head and arms) is also fairly successful in my eyes, although perhaps the head moves a little too much to each side making it look a little like a comical strut.

Walks P2

This time we did more walks.

In 2D we had to come up with a different walk to what we did last time. I elected to a sneaking walk.






Well, this walk is clearly not so much a sneak as a velociraptor impression. I think that the legs work well for a sneak, it's the upper body and use of the short arms that give it that raptor feel. the body leans back and forth at the wrong time and too dramatically to be even a comic sneak. I think that if the arms were more expressive and the body was just a little more rigid then it would work more successfully as a sneak.

In 3D we were actually creating a cycle this time. I chose a depressed walk for mine.




I'm fairly pleased with this, the animation feels smooth. However, I feel that because of the slightly off timing, it looks a little wooden at times, which reduces some of the lifelike quality. Parts like the head need to be less erratic in the upward lift and the feet need to feel more like they are touching the ground, there is not enough sense of weight. It's one that I think I should have spent a lot more time on, trying to get all the separate parts moving individually but working as a conglomerate.

Walking P1

Long time no update.

Walks. We have now ditched our block men in favour of characters with legs to create a walk cycle.

This was my first 2D attempt





I think for a first attempt this is not too bad. The legs work fairly decently and the fast pace is complemented by the secondary animation in the arms. It looks somewhat like a powerwalk. Where it fails is in the bounce of the body, its too sudden and needs to ease in and out of the change in height to look smoother and more realistic. To make it look less like a powerwalk and more ordinary, a change in stance of the character and adding frames to slow it down would be the place to start.


My first 3D attempt




This isn't quite the right video but its basically the same. With this walk I was trying to covey a very feminine walk. I think that whilst the first step is jerky and and not very smooth the rest of the animation works to an extent. The way that the hips move and the hands curl definitely works, but the legs seem a little too crossed to feel completely natural. I also think that i got got carried away with making the hair flick and it looks slightly unrealistic.