Showreel

The little Helper Rough Hand in

Website (work in progress)

As rigging has been putting animating on hold for now i decided to have a go at designing my website. It is still a work in progress but here is the link for what i have got so far.

http://www.lucywheeleranimation.moonfruit.com/

Frankie reference

Before me and jenny animate frankie we needed to get some reference footage of how he would move so we recorded ourselves acting out the movements that we needed (badly on my part! see jenny's blog for better acting skills haha!) I found it incredibly hard trying to think how an old man would move and exaggerate it without making the movements too old as we imagine Frankie still being quite energetic in his age. Here are my attempts at acting out frankie's movements we started off with walking.

Then went on to filming how he would get down to put the toys in the box.

Then how he would slump on his chair after searching through his desk for his key.

And finally i wanted to record basic movement of how he would open the door as well as holding the box.

As well as recording ourselves acting out his movement we tried to think of old men characters in animation and thought of grandpa from the Rugrats and grandpa from the Simpsons. However after looking at some clips of these two I noticed that there isn't that much of a difference in movement.

Another obvious elderly character would be Carl from up here is a scene of Carl

Another Pixar animation that we thought of was Geri's Game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m7dcbIKvlw

Jenny also found a live action version.

I then went on to think about other old people in television and thought of:

Bruce Forsyth

Victor Meldrew character in one foot in the grave

And the characters in the last of the summer wine

As well as these I also thought of Prince Phillip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o60W286cm-E

From looking at this footage what i noticed is that they all seem to be very stiff in the shoulders and tend to hunch Over. There seems to be not a lot of movement from the shoulders up which can also be seen in the shot of Carl. As well as this they are quite stiff in the way they walk and put more weight on each foot. Or they don't take as big steps or pick up their feet as much.

For the style of Frankie's movements I feel the style of movement in the short Geri's Game will work well for Frankie being exaggerated and comical in movements to fit in with sally. Also the movements of Carl from UP will be a good reference but is a bit more exaggerated than Geri and feel he is more suited in style.

shots so far and adjusted shots

So the shots that just contain sally are now animated and its exciting seeing it gradually coming together. As me and jenny have been animating we have been asking for each others feedback and its really useful as sometimes you do not notice things and need a second opinion. Hopefully as well i've been doing a good job so far as animation director trying to keep both of are animations similar in style so sallys personality will come across in the final animation.

I did find animating shot 14 difficult as i found it hard to think of how sally would react to the key falling and make it interesting and funny. My first attempt was too dull and you didn't see enough of sally's reaction or expression. So with the second attempt I changed the camera to be closer to sally to show her expression more clearly. the second attempt at her movements in this shot i think work a lot better as well as her movements are clearer.

We then went on to adjusting shots

For this shot the bounce of the wooden circle needed to be adjusted as the last bounce didn't work as it looked like the second bounce was more powerful when it should be less.

after getting feedback from Andy and Derek i adjusted these 2 sally shots the first needed to be snappier as they felt it was to slow and feel this shot works better in comparison. The second needed sally's pose when she puts her leg in the air to be clearer so help this pose for longer.

Sally Animation Shots

Shot 1

Shot 14 1st attempt

Shot 14 

Shot 18

Shot 19

Shot 20

shot 24

shot 26

shot 30

shot 41

shot 43

shot 50

sally animation tests

We got the sally rig yay =D and as i have been assigned animation director before me and jen started animating the shots that contained only sally in i needed to make some test animations. This is so that when we started animating both of us had an idea of how sally would move. Then with the actual shots in the film the animation would flow and the viewer hopefully won't be able to tell a difference between who has been animating what.  

With Sally's personality we need to show her cute and playful side so with the walk i tried to make it bouncy. One of the problems with spiders is that people are freaked out by the way they move so i tried to make her not scary in her movements which i think works with this test walk. sally's walk was a challenge as the swaying i gave her made her look like she was strutting or a gangster which wasn't what i wanted but think it worked out alright in the end.

I then went on to making test animations of sally pushing and pulling something. The push test i kept simple and she reminded me of a puppy while animating it as i gave her a bit of a bum wiggle before she went to push. I think this shows she has a playful personality.

I really enjoyed animating the pull test as i played around a bit more and i like the part where sally pulls the key and the first look at the key shows her interest. However i wasn't happy with bits of the animation like the second look at the key at the beginning didn't really work for me but didn't really know what to add either which was annoying. Also after showing the tests at the production meeting they commented on how sally rubbing her hands in preparation to pull the key doesn't really come across and that her personality doesn't really show very clearly in this animation. Which i completely agree with and if i had more time i would of liked to alter it but it is still a good reference for how sally would pull something and the comments are really helpful for when we work on the actual animation. I really enjoyed animating these tests specially as have been excited to play with the rig and has been quite a while since i have been animating. I was impressed with the sally rig as well as dan is learning as he has been rigging the character and she was very easy to use and there wasn't that many problems with her that needed fixing which was great =D.