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.

Week 4

Animation Principles

2D
This week we talked about character acting and interaction, which was good because it feels like we're starting to branch out from physical technicalities.

Our task was to create an interaction between two block characters this time, one dominant and one submissive.




The animation works individually. If you watch the characters separately the animation is believable in my eyes though perhaps a little fast. However when watched together as a piece there is too much going on and it becomes too busy to appreciate the animation. I needed to devote more time to keeping the characters movements separate and give them pause while the other is moving-this is demonstrated at the end when the smaller(dominant) character stops moving completely whilst the larger character moves out of his way, making this bit the most successful part of the animation for me.

Character Reaction Test

I made another short video quickly to practice giving the characters separate times to act. I know that this particular scene is childish and unimaginative, but it shows the timing and actions much more clearly than the last. Also I am annoyed with myself since the drawings always seems to change shape, probably due to the fact that I work quickly and, some might say, lazily, which is something that I need to work on.






3D
This week we animated a 3D block character, much like the one we have been using in 2D. We made him jump off of a ledge.
I found this exercise a lot more fun than the bouncing ball which i found quite painstaking. I am happy with the outcome of my video i feel that the animation looks smooth and natural, i have been a little over ambitious perhaps with the fall backwards, but i think that there is enough forward momentum for the fall to be realistic.



Motion Studies
Lets talk about life drawing quickly. To someone who previously considered themselves to be good at anatomical drawing it has been an eye opener and a lesson in humility. I suppose its because i am used to character design from imagination and using reference only now and again, I am also used to laboring over pieces and doing them slowly, making sure i get everything right. there doesn't seem to be time for that with our poses and its knocking the confidence a little, but its about getting the feeling not producing a masterpiece so, not to worry.

Animation Priciples Week 3

This week in 2D we learned about the priciple OVERLAP. This is where someone jumps forwards and when they land they topple or bend forwards a little due to the foward momentum, again this is exaggerated in animation to make it more obvious.

Our task was to take our block character (whom I have modified to make less oblong) and make them jump from position A to position B with an overlap at the end. Similar to the Ledge Jump, I needed to aticipate and then add squash and stretch with an overlap at the end. For this one I sketched out a plan of the of the most important keys to give me an idea of the timing and to keep the scaling correct. I completed a rough animation to give me an idea of what was missing and what I needed to do. This technique worked well because it identified that I was infact shrinking my character by about a third, so I needed to rectify that, I also needed to add a few frames in at the end to make the overlap match the force of the anticipation, and add a frame to make the apex of the jump more natural.

Having done that I feel that this animation is probably the most natural one so far, although my chracter does still shrink slightly so I need to practice my scaling, but other than that I'm pleased with it. I am looking forward to trying these techniques on more complicated characters.


Up until now we had just been getting to grips with the priciples of animating in Maya; moving around, getting the weight and timing right, and learning some of the functions of Maya. This week we started on squash and stretch balls that Georg had set up. So far it has been a nightmare, all I have managed to achieve is to make the ball look like a blob desperatley trying to hop away from the screen, I find all the graphs and key framing awkward, especially when the software doesn't do what you asked it to. But it'll get better, hopefully. I'll get a video of it up when it looks a little better.

Animation Principles Week 2

This week we learned about the principles SQAUSH and STRETCH, and ANTICIPATION. Our first task was to create a bouncing ball that had a realistic feel to it. The squash and stretch give the ball a sense of weight that it should have were it a real ball. I'm not paticularly pleased with how it came out. I think that the squash at the bottom works well, but it has no sense of weight because the timing is off, it is not natural, the accelerationand deceleration are not there. If the ball were to accelerate on the downward pull and the beginning of the upward thrust, and then slow as it reached the top, I feel that it would look much more natural. Our next task was to draw a block character - no legs or facial features, just a block(although mine is more of a sausage) with arms and a round head - jumping from a ledge onto the ground at a lower level. The point of this task was to teach us about anticipation; when a person jumps, they need to build up the energy to do so, in much the way a spring does, and when they land they squash down in order to absorb the shock. In animation, this is exaggerated to make it more obvious to the human eye. I feel as the though the sense of weight is better in this one. The anticipation works well in my eyes and the arms in the fall give a good idea of how fast the character is moving. The bottom however, is not so good. I don't think that it squashes enough or holds the shape well enough for it to look realistic and it looks messy and slow at the bottom. Although, part of that may be that I copied some frames, which is lazy I know, but that is why the arms suddenly jump forwards and backwards suddenly at the bottom, I hadn't noticed that when I did it. (The videos are still not working, says something about them not being closed, will sort it out when I know how)

Week One of Animation Principles

This week we learned about the principle TIMING. We were tasked with making a zoeotrope strip. My strip did not work due to the fact that i did not reverse the pictures to create a loop. Our next task was to draw 6 frames of a circle morphing into another shape. I found this helpful with the timing, it gave a good indication of what looks right. I chose to morph my circle into water via a wave.



I feel that it worked well, and introducing the colour works nicely, although the whole thing does looks a bit scrappy due to the colour, but overall I think that I have achieved what I wanted from it.