11 second club finished

FINISHED!!!! =D this is the rendered animation. I did change the colour of the house cause thought it looked more depressing being grey. I am very happy with my outcome as it turned out better than i expected as i was starting to worry. I feel the character definately shows emotion which makes it come alive. I do feel however that it does still look robotic but i think thats because i made this animation by doing pose to pose instead of as i usually do which is straight through. But by doing pose to pose i feel i created stronger poses for my character which i wouldn't have been able to do the other way. I will definately aim to make my animations more fluid and less robotic and the only way i'll be able to do that is by PRACTISE!! =D which is definately what i have learnt from doing this project. I still feel i want to do character animation even though this project did stress me out a bit but i definately have an interest in it and feel like i've achieved something when i see the final animation.

The things that went well with this animation are:

• The poses are strong
• The timing between the poses i feel works well.
• The camera angle of the animation is interesting to the audience and you can read the poses well from it.
• The eyes i feel work well as i feel he blinks at the right time and it doesn't look unnatural.
  

Things that went badly:

• movement still looks robotic and needs to be more fluid.
• Lip sync is a bit out of time though i feel the second half of the lip sync works better but is probrably because you can see it clearer.
• I found it hard to get the pupils of the eyes to move right and i am still not sure whether its right or not =/.
• One of the things that makes the character look robotic is that some of his movements to different poses are all at the same time so i should have changed that and offset it more.
  

11 second club continued

This was the next stage of my animation. After the feedback i tried changing the poses to make him look more trapped. But it ended up becoming to many poses when hes pushing the window and after the next feedback they suggested that he only pushed against the window once. At this stage i was really not happy with how the animation was going as it didn't look right to me at all. As i was unhappy i decided to start from scratch, keeping the poses that i felt worked but adjusting where i didn't think it worked. I started from scratch cause i found it hard to adjust the characters poses in the animation i already had as he would move where i didn't want him to and just ended confusing me more so starting from scratch was easier.




This is the animation that i ended up for my character before i went on to lip syncing. And i am alot happier with this than the animation before. I made the character lean back before he pushed against the window which i think made the movement more impactful as he leaned forward. It also adds a bit of anticipation before he leans forward and a pause for the audience to see his movements alot clearer.




Then it was onto lip syncing my animation. I haven't done lip syncing before so wasn't sure how well it would turn out but was happy with the results and actually really enjoyed lip syncing (mainly cause i found it amusing changing the characters facial expressions) Adding the lip sync and facial expressions i felt made the animation come to life, and i felt that now the audience would be able to tell that the character is unhappy and maybe slightly insane.

Experimental continued

Heres the next stage of my experimental animation. I think taking out the part with the flower turning improved that section. I'm really impressed with how this is working to the music as i was really worried that it wouldn't but am pleasantly surprised by the results. I do feel however that the line part in the animation where it waves needs improving as i don't feel it looks as good as the rest maybe the line needs to be thicker or with more colour to stand out which i will try. I'm also not sure whether the last part of my animation where the cat, lion cub and lion appear are maybe too quick so i may have to adjust this but feel that i need to add the next section to be able to tell whether it is too quick.

Conversation project

Here are some more of the drawings i have done for the conversation project. I think i need to do some more experimenting with different mediums in my next drawings as i have gone back into my comfort zone of drawing with pencil.

11 second club rough animation

After showing my idea last monday they suggested that i needed to change the camera view. So i tried to think about the rule of thirds and set up a more effective camera angle.



I think this works alot better and the poses and silhouette of the poses will be more readable.











I then created a blockthrough of my animation. I tried to get the timing as good as possible for my key poses. However i feel the turn of the head at the end needs to end when he says cream and the arms need to be snappier.



I then went on to adding inbetweens in my animation and making the movements snappier. I tried adding sobbing to the character which i don't like at all because i feel it looks wrong and i need to redo it.



When i showed my progress on the monday they said that the pose where he has the hands in the air looks like he is praising something more than him feeling trapped. Which i didn't see and feel i need to go through my poses again to make the character feel more trapped and manic.

Experimentation

The next stage was to make the dope sheet for the music piece















From this dope sheet i then went on to draw some rough thumbnails of what i wanted in my animation and used the dope sheet to write down when i wanted things to happen.





























































This is what i have so far of my experimental animation. I've decided i wanted a kind of nature theme to it as thats what i thought of when i heard the music. I also want the same colour scheme throughout the animation. At the moment i have used foam, plasticine and pastel. I like the beginning part with the foam and circles as i think it works really well with the music and i was slightly worried about the lighting being inconsistant but i think it works because it emphasises the beat as it gets lighter when the circles appear. However i feel the next part of the animation with the flower doesn't work as well though i like the parts where it opens and closes and when the leaves grow out of the flower and then back in but im not sure about the spinning part. I may have to rethink this and edit that part out of the animation.

11 second club Idea

For the 11 second club animation i have decided to use the cacoon of horror sound clip as i thought it would be more challenging.

I started off by thinking up different scenarios that the character could be in and drew up rough storyboards for them.

I started by thinking of the obvious like the character could be in bed feeling ill. I didn't think this idea would work as its not very interesting.












I then thought i could have the character lying on a rug with the character looking down on him to make him look even more depressed and pathetic to the audience. The poses in this are more interesting but think the scenario is dull.










With this idea the character is drunk at a bar which i thought was fitting for the sound clip as he sounds like he is talking complete nonsense. Again i like the poses however i think this idea will be hard to get reference footage for unless the person is drunk themselves. I think animating a drunk character would be hard to as they are very unpredictable. Also i feel that if he were drunk his movements would have to be very sluggish and sway alot and i don't think i would be able to fit that in in 11 seconds =/. I will see how the reference footage looks and then decide.




The character in this scenario is shouting out of a window and then looking up into the sky when he says about eating the whip cream as if he's asking for forgiveness. I want the camera angle in this to be looking down on the character from above to make the audience sympathise with him as well as emphasising the fact that he's sad. I think having the character shouting out of a window is good as it emphasises the feeling of the character being trapped. I think the poses in this will work too as they are exagerated but i don't feel they are too exagerated.


I then went on to film reference footage for the bar and window idea.

This is the footage for the bar idea. And from this i decided i can't get good enough reference footage and theres not enough time to make the character look drunk.

This is the reference footage for the window idea. One is of me getting the acting right then i took some footage of my housemate acting it to get an idea of the angle.








I set up what the animation would look like in maya as well and used the dee rig for now as i didn't understand how to use the other rig =S. I feel that the majority of the poses are readable apart for the crying poses which may be a problem =/.

Experimental animation test

for my experimental animation i have decided after watching the youtube videos i want to just experiment with using different art materials and making it into a stop motion animation.

With this test which i hope works as rendering it was a nightmare!!! i tried using plasticine, pastels and water colours. i wanted to try and get them to flow into each other so i made the pastel wipe away the plasticine so i would have a clean piece of paper to go onto the watercolour. However i did fail as the lighting went wrong cause i did the watercolour at a different time so it became darker. Which i need to watch out for when im making my actual animation. With this test i was just seeing how they would work not worrying about the music for now though i can see how it would work with the music. I would like to experiment with more art materials before i get started with the actual thing and do more tests. And also check the size of the images im taking as the first load i did were extremely smaller in file size compared to the next load which is most likely why it took ages rendering and uploading. And why the quality is so bad cause i kept trying to make it smaller =S .



I really like the effect of the watercolour and how it spreads and i think where i made the plasticine create a wave looks effective and would work well with music. I think the pastel worked well to switch between different mediums as well. I could also in another test try drawing with pen ontop of the watercolour to see how that works and the pen should bleed with the water too.

Mood Change

For my mood change i decided i wanted to have my character laughing with someone and then having to wave goodbye then when they go he's all depressed. I started of by filming each of the actions for reference.









I tried to make my actions exaggerated but i think i can cross out acting as a career path. I found it very hard to try and laugh really exaggeratedly when there was nothing funny in the first place to react to. But hope it came across better in the animation i produced.



I enjoyed making this animation the most and i am really starting to like character animation though i feel i need lots of improvement. With this animation as i used video footage as reference and used it for timing my characters movement i found that they became too slow in the final play blast. Which i need to watch out for in the future and only use the video footage as reference and not take the timing straight from it and adjust it so that it looks better in the animation. I found that the actions needed to be snappier. I do feel the actions flow but that flow to much into each other as i found it hard to get the character to pause without him looking dead =S. I think i should have added more to the end of the animation to make him look depressed and not just have him sigh as it would make people feel more sympathy for him. I think i need to improve the key poses in my animation as well and i did try to get the character into the main poses first of all and then add the inbetweens but couldn't really get the hang of animating that way because i added actions on the way. But will definitely make a block through animation of all the key poses for the 11 second club animation as i think it would really help and make my animation look more effective.

Like i said before im really starting to enjoy and get interested in character animation and think i could see myself working in this area (though still very undecided!?) The reason why i like it is because you give the character life and its always different your never doing the same actions because every character is different in some aspect. I would really like to improve in this area and have decided that im going to do some short character animations in my own personal time to improve (when i get myself organized with the work i already have.) I think as well that if i make a character and animate him i will be more motivated to play around but im going to make that my aim in the christmas holidays (though will start now when i have time) as rigging, modeling and getting a good character idea in the first place takes some time (especially the idea part for me =S) in the mean time i will continue to animate the characters that we are using now.