Now isn't this a wacky one? This is my first walk cycle facing towards the camera, and it was difficult and easy to grasp.
I began this with a few key positions in photoshop, which I initially made in my head, before using myself as a reference for the walk. I took a video of myself in this wacky position, and it was odd to say the least.
My greatest struggles came with the legs and the belly. I wanted to get the right feeling of weight in that belly of his, so I did my best to use wise spacing, which was difficult for me, because I'm not the best when guessing spacing.
Also, for the legs, I tried using my reference, and a page from Richard Williams' book, "The Animator's Survival Kit".
However, I'd say the legs did not work out very well. They feel slide like and floaty.
Oh well, this was my first time, so there's always a next time for me to update this thing or do better with the next one.
I liked doing the arms; I thought they came out pretty well for my first time.
Overall, this was a fun project to work on, and I hope that my next endeavor comes out, even better!
Behold, my newest walk cycle. I haven't done one of these in months, and decided to now take the time and do one more. This new walk is the product of watching my Richard Williams videos and finding inspiration.
Richard Williams talks about how a walk cycle can be just about anything, so I did just that. I made this angry fellow with two contact poses of his body being bent upwards, with a passing position of him being hunched forwards, and his arms downwards.
I started with those simple lines and built on my foundation from there in Flash. I struggled with inbetweens, and getting the transitions just right.
(Oh, and for your information, this entire animation is on 12s. I can see why 8s appealed to many animators in the old days.)
Another problem I had was with the arms, and the bounce of the guy's head. With the arms, I found that they were moving at ridiculous speed that seemed unnatural at first. However, after toying a bit with the idea, I feel they are moving at an appropriate place, seeing at the guy is angry he would swing his arms fiercely.
Then there was the head, when I was doing the basic shape, I found the overall bounce this guy had was fairly unnatural. he would just come up and down so roughly. Reluctantly, I left that in and continued on into making the linework of the character himself, and I'm actually happy that I did.
When linework started, I had already decided on the design I wanted to use. A bald, skinny man, with a long nose and gigantic arms suited my purposed just fine. However, I wanted to be a little daring in how I animated this fellow.
I decided to do a few illusion tricks I had learned by studying perspective. I may have been rough in how I did it, but I'm happy I took the challenge.
I made the edge of his pants move up and down to capture the sense that he was shifting from left to right, I also would move his arms from the left and right, so as to show that he is turning his body as well. And his feet aren't on a completely flat dimension. Also, his head will shift from left to right as well (going back to my talk about how I was happy with how I did his head)
It was a tough effect to capture, and even then, it's fairly rough, but I'm happy with it now.
However, I think I'm done with just flat walk cycles for now. My next one will be a walk coming towards the camera. And thanks to some papers from a teacher of mine, I'll have an easier time attempting this.
So I just started my latest full animation, after months of being out of commission. It's nothing more than a short gif really, but it works like a charm.
(I would upload it as a .mov, but blogger won't let me upload videos for some reason.)
So, I began this video on Sunday, and worked on it for about two hours. I got the idea in my head when I decided that I wanted to experiment with water for a little bit, so this was the product of that idea.
The hour before the two hours was spent conceptualizing the idea, and thinking of timing. I drew up some diagrams on how a rock would fall in the water, and how long it would take for it to drop, using video reference to help me with the timing.
I also did my best to try and understand what happens when something does splash. How does the water react? Does the rock significantly slow down when it gets in the water, or does it still go at a fast pace?
Through this, I learned that there's this thing called buoyancy; a force that pushes things out of the water, however because the rock's gravitational force (what pushes it down) is stronger than the buoyancy, it sinks. So I realize that the rock will slightly slow down upon impact with the water, and as it sinks, but only slightly.
Also, with the water, I figured that when the rock sinks in the water it creates a temporary crater in the pool. The side of this crater will shoot up rapidly, unleashing the first splash of water, and making the rings in the pool.
It's at this point, when the rock is fully submerged in the water, that water is rapidly filling the hole. So rapidly that it shoot out a huge jet of water from inside the ring, making the second splash. The water from this splash spreads out and usually will create multiple little splashes that will have the same effect.
For this animation however, I decided to take it easy with the splashing and just used a small rock at close up. However, I drew this thing entirely straight ahead, no pose to pose or extra hours put in to fix timing. But it was fun to do this and I look forward to experimenting with water again.
To all other animators wanting to try an experiment like this, I have to recommend these videos to you, they're great for understanding the nitty gritty details of how the water works.
So school is now over for me, and there is much I can talk about of the school year which kept me away. First, the final project for a video class I had. We were instructed to make a +4 minute film using a camera and over such devices.
Unlike everyone else though, I decided to work alone, with only myself and my family as cameramen. I decided I would test out some more After Effects and put some animation live action mix up to the test.
So here's the finished product.
Making the thing:
To start off, I actually didn't start this in my video class. I actually got this idea from an old animatic from my animation pre-production class.
This film was made to be as close to the animatic as possible, but it had to be stretched for time as well, along with the issues of one of the characters being a floating head.
So my goals were pretty straightforward:
1. Think of ways to stretch time.
2. Film.
3. Work out how to make animated character appear.
4. Mix audio together and record dialogue.
Step One: This was a mix of difficult and easy, as it took me about a week to think of how to extend this thing. I would come up with ideas usually on the spot, and would think of extra dialogue I could add when a situation needed it. However, my goal was to always have an extra bit of humor to the extension; it couldn't just be there to fill time or it was a waste. Some of the best gags, I feel came from the extensions, such as the face slap joke, and the commercial. However, I did find the first scene featuring me on the couch to go on just a little too long,
Step Two: This was aggravating. My mother was my camera crew for the majority of the filiming, and she had a lot of trouble understanding my instructions, forcing me to use her as an example for me to film so that she could understand it. She would often complain about the many takes that we had to do, and the many shots that went bad. However, I'd say my time with her was quite fun. Certain shots, like the character coming down the hallway, needed my sister to help make them work because the early shots were usually messed up in some way that I couldn't notice. Then you have the shots with the character alone, those are all stills I took myself because I wasn't involved in the shot. The same counts for the first walk through the kitchen with the credits.
Step Three: This part was just a little more simpler than actually taking the footage, because I actually had some experience using Adobe After Effects before. I chose for the character to be a still rather than fully animated since I didn't want to waste my time with a fully animated character, which certainly was an easier route.
During the still shots I could usually keep the guy's movement limited and let his facial expressions take over the humor department. Whenever he had to join me in a shot though, that's when trouble began. The first shot I worked with was when he tackled me and I found myself having to manipulate multiple points of the movement so that he remained in consistent enough contact with me.
Then the next shot with us together was the one where he was in front of me. Making that look fairly realistic was in all sense a pain in my ass. I needed to feather him away from my hair while at the same time making him not completely fade away or be too clearly cut. Not to mention I had to move him around with the camera and alter his mask so that he could remain consistent with my hair. It was probably the second most difficult shot to accomplish.
The most difficult shot was easily the one where he punches me. Not only did I have to make his fist come towards me, I had to realistically increase it in size as I moved it closer to the camera. And then there was that screen shaking effect that made his fist look like I cut a piece of it off with scissors. But there wasn't much I could do about that at the time sadly. Time was not on my side and I had to get this project out soon. So I proceeded to finish up the shot with the cutout fist which you can easily notice if you just pay attention to what's going on in the shot. Of course, this is my favorite shot as it leads into the K.O gag, (another extension I was happy with).
The other shots that involved him was one with a sword being over him, but that was easy to mask over using two masks instead of one.
Aside from that, the rest of his shots were never as intensive as those ones where he needed to be by me.
Step Four: First thing's first, none of that music was mine. It was all copied from popular games. The sound effects were all ripped from various sources.
The dialogue was all mine though. I was all the voices involved in the recording. I was the live action actor, and I was the floating head as well.
However, I bring this up because I ran into a big problem involving the audio in these releases. What I did not expect was that my dialogue was usually coming in too low; lower than the music, causing a lot of dialogue to be hard to hear, and mixing these tracks together a simple pain. I had to rerecord some dialogue even, because the original was in such a unsalvageable state, there was nothing I could do but that.
And I didn't even notice this error until pretty late into the process, when some music tracks were mixed with audio tracks. What a chore that was.
So for all it's worth, it was a fairly frustrating event that really exhausted me, and stole my time away from my practices involving animation and the like, but it was fun to do, and the final product isn't that bad of a mess. I won't be eager to do something like this again though, that's for certain.
This is an animatic I made for my storyboarding class. I took the time to practice with multiple perspectives, actions, and such. I also took the chance to work with special actions for adobe after effects as well.
It's the comedic failing of a duo aiming to fight for a hotpocket.
My latest post was about a week ago. I'll be back next week to talk more about the advances I've made in my studies. However, for now let me post my latest drawing.
Well well well, this was a poster that was a long time in the making, and now I intend to reveal it.
I begun this poor thing back in late February when I was developing my portfolio for college. This was one of the pieces I had intended to put in my portfolio, but due to that version being awful, I had to postpone it. Constantly tweaking and tweaking the deisgn so that i would come to look presentable. Now here is the final product. This easily pushed most of my skills in painting to the max, and I hope to create more pieces as epic as this colossus.
So then, why don't I talk about the process of developing this baby?
The design itself is not mine actually, instead I pretty much stole this design from an unused poster for the Disney film, Aladdin.
Obviously I changed a bit in design here and there, but the overall feeling is still the same. I aimed for a sense of mysticism and magic, attempting to capture a core group of characters to illustrate the many individuals our main character will come across along the way of her adventure. (If you're a die hard Zelda fan, then I've left you enough clues for you to tell who our main is.)
The smoke effect was difficult to manage, and forced me to learn an entirely new blending style just so that I could capture my desired effect. I used multiple layers for each different sets of lights, and studied golden lights for reference. Surprisingly enough thouh, there aren't as many layer effects as one may think from this piece, most of this is just natural brushes and natural color theory.
I also tried my best to give this piece more of a flow storywise. Obviously the eye will begin at the top of the layer, but as the eye follows the trail down, you'll notice that it actually is a clever little trick that eventually will lead your eyes to the logo of the piece.
Zero Point Perspective is simple enough to describe and talk about. It is when there is essentially no vanishing point to follow. This technique applies for when you are drawing a mountain range on the horizon line of a drawing, or a set of buildings.
Now you see, what prevents this part of the image from being flat is the shading. It still remains a 3D image, even if it does not follow any set path of vanishing points. Also note that these sorts of images don't have to be on the tip of the horizon line, they can also be slightly below the plot of the horizon.
Still the image does not have to apply to just mountains, but any object that lay near the horizon line and follows no real vanishing point.
And that is essentially all there is to say about Zero Point Perspective. It's a simple enough technique to grasp, but it is very easy to mess up. Be sure you know your shading techniques should you want to draw out these types of images with depth behind them.
Now onto Four Point Perspective.
So four point perspective is a technique that captures that distortion into a flat image. It's not particularly useful to use, but it's useful to know and helps for understanding perspective.
Earlier I had talked about Three Point and how you would have essentially three points. Two points would be to the side of the picture, while a third one would either point to the heavens, or down to Earth, creating a sense of an object being far below you, or going high above you.
Now in the case of four point perspective, the guideline is simple. If you are already drawing in three point you simply need to add a fourth vanishing point either to the bottom or the top of the drawing.
You simply start from the area where the horizon would be, and draw as if you were drawing your third vanishing point.
You should get something similar to this:
I find the best usage for this technique is when you want to make a drawing that makes the viewers eyes follow the distortion, like say you were drawing a tower that is supposed to be very up close to you. The bottom of the tower would be far below the horizon line and be where your feet are. Then you would make the tower rise high up to the sky, creating a long vanishing point that simulates the feeling of looking up to the sky.
And that is about everything I have to say on the subject of the perspectives. It was a long and arduous study, and I know fully well that I need to learn more for the future. Well, I can only hope that these blog posts helped any artists looking for simple advice.
