More cubie animation practice

The next assignment was to animate the "cubie" character. At the same time we had to add another character to interact with the cubie. The 2D has a small cubie jumping up to the big one only to see that he is not welcome. The 3D from the software "Maya" has the cube jump on a sphere the moment it enters the scene.

Here are some practice drawings of the movements and actions of the cube characters. From these drawings I can fully understand the character's emotion, exaggeration, line of action and body language. It also shows the anticipation of the characters from the way they react to each eacher similar to the Pxar Lamps animation. The 2D animation took exactly 51 frames. Despite the fact it is just a cube with no arms I am animation, I am still fascinated by the animation course and what it is teaching me. I probably still need to practice with the timing for the 2d cubie jumping.

Pixilation

I have practiced with stop motion before and I personally enjoy all forms of this animation because it involves making the puppets and models. What I have done here are two tests of the animation technique of Pixilation from the Digital Animation Course.

I practiced with my pencil case through the software of "stop-motion pro". Here it involve the pencil case spitting out its contents and then sucking them back in if necessary. The second one involve the objects fighting each other and then a cardboard arm appears and attempts to impress us. This is but a test to see what else I can use for this particular animation skill.

We also watched several examples of Pixilation and one of them has a particular interest because of the technique. During one session, the course tutor presented us with a "Cut-out animation" of "Binky and Boo"by Derek Hayes in which it involves an old musical comedian looking back at his memories of himself and his old partner. Its the actual method of which I am interested in. See website link below:

(http://www.derekhayes.co.uk/)

Life Drawing

Here are six life drawings which were drawn in my Animation course of life drawing at Falmouth. Four are drawn from one man while the others are drawn for observation students in the Stannary.
I have done life drawing before two previous art and design courses, one from the International School of Geneva in Switzerland, the other during a foundation course in Poole. As described to me, life drawing is essential to all forms of art including animation so that the "character design" can get the right format or body movements and poses. The life drawings were done from different angles.

The one at the top is crouched onto a chair and the media is in soft pencil while the other is sitting and drawn in green ink pen.

These two images are drawings of students but with animal heads instead. The sketch-book assignment was that I had to enter a group and draw students through observational drawing.

I have a string liking for insects, arthropods, deep sea marine life and reptiles (crocodiles)

Media: Charcoal and soft pencil. The animal heads were found on the web and printed them out.

Insect/Arthropod Faces

This part describes my interest for insects and arthropod designs. I quite like insects, also the fact because they have been living on earth for millions of years before us. Insects are considered inferior to most but to me I think of them much more superior to us. I watched the film "District 9" in which it involves an alien race referred as "prawns" have their ship stuck in mid hover above the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. The aliens resemble arthropod, extraterrestrial beings. They are given a home called district 9 but the human population has a few bad reactions. The story involves one human who will experience the aliens "point of view". I am impressed how they make them look sapient and the way their mouths move when they talk. I always have tried to imagine an insect talk through its mouth parts. It is very interesting to see such aliens could live in our community. (link of image: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1072531712/tt1136608)

I really like District 9, not for the human aspect of the story but of the insect-like aliens that struggle to live in a planet who judge everything by appearance. If such aliens would come on our world and would not harm us, I would accept them. Maybe the film is preparing us for such future events that could happen. Who knows...

The picture on the left here is a microscopic photograph of some unknown insect. The shape is somewhat similar to the "prawns" in District 9 so I drew up my own drawings. (link: http://www.uglybug.org)














The drawings are aliens similar to that of the prawns from the film. I really enjoy drawing insects. I cannot give more reasons but I plan to use such concepts for future animation projects. Currently, most of my insect related drawings go back to my "ARTA" drawings (see previous blog posts). As District 9 is a live action film, it is in my very interest to see my own drawings in such an animation.

Here is some more drawings. For one assignment I was to draw life drawings of people and replace their heads with animal heads/faces. I started to look in depth of some insects but most faces are difficult to draw from.
To the right are some Ghost Crab face/head drawings, the picture was clearer and came from a library book about marine life.

To the left are some woodlouse drawings from the first 2d assignment, in which I have drawn them to appear sapient or human like. In the middle is an attempt to draw the face of a Mantis Shrimp.

Ball Animation and Nog character test

The art of Ball Bouncing animation

For another assignment I had to learn from the animation course was the technique of bouncing a ball. If you understand the principle of a bouncing object, then one can do it as an animation. For this task, i had to animate a bouncing ball from a 2D scale and a ball tied onto a bouncing cube.

Here are the tests of ball bouncing animation that I have completed. With animation its all about the timing, the weight and the speed. some animators do not necessary obey the natural rules of life with certain objects and characters but it must be shown. When the ball is dropped, according to what speed, the ball changes shape when it lands it squashes itself. drawing the bouncing effect and when to drop it needs to be precise, which is why timing is important. I have learned through 2D animation when to draw precise moments of time and speed of certain objects, example when should an object go really fast by skipping a small action bit in the frames. You may notice this with the cube bounce, it hangs a bit in mid air then increasingly heads downwards very fast.

This here is a 3D animation ball test(s) along with my notes of the Ball Bouncing Animation technique. The 3D test was on a software called "maya". With little experience it took me a while to figure out how to work it but with the help of other students from my course, I was able to configure of how to make a ball bounce through the software. Each ball bounces differently because of the weight i placed upon them. One bounces for a short period while the other bounces a little more before coming to a halt.

The heavy ball

The lighter ball

Introduction of a new character: NOG

From the same concept as a hero only he represents the funny or comic hero. He becomes Ood's best friend in his quest to understand the world of Arta and free it from the grip of ill. Nog is of a very different species, a creature with three pupils in each eye,a very thin mouth and whose legs are wide apart. I wanted to have an amusing character for my future Arta projects. He is not very bright but can improvise on ideas. I used him to try out a jumping technique of animation using the same "ball bounce" skill.

Nog is in the air heading towards the ground. His head is back then moves slightly forward. When his feet touch the ground, he begins to bend his legs down. His head squashes in then stretches his body up and pushes on his legs to jump up. his body elongates a bit then comes back to normal after the jump. This is but a test to see how I can animate my characters through several techniques.

The Drawing Continues

After the stop motion of OOD, I wanted to contine with further improvement such as more scenes, events after he escaped, more characters and introdcing the wildlife of ARTA. I want to commence the very beggining of this project as a series or films with Ood's introdction to the world outside Hex Industires.

There are more drawings of possiblie wildlife of Arta in another sketchbook. This is just a preview. To the right are woodlouse like creatures. The small ones are called weevils since they can eat of farm foods such as corn. The sapien ones are caterpillar shaped and resembling to the giant insects from the japanese animation: "Valley of the Wind".

The other picture is what could be a ruined temple thus introducting the history of Arta. At the same time I though up of new additions to the villans such as flying mounts and machines.

This tall four legged machine was inspired from the tall robot like forms from "War of the Worlds". This design however, has four, skinny legs instead of three. Its smaller too because of having maybe one or two pilots in it but these machines can still reach above forests.