Friday 27 November 2009

During one part of my course, i was filmed walking. Here I was to explore the phase of an animated walk based on myself. To get more of a personality. A normal wlak, and a enthusiastic or proud walk after wards.

I prefer doing my animations 2D because of my love for drawing. Also because it seems easier. I did the first walk with 6 frames per leg movement, so it looked like a fast walk. Here I was looking at time again.



this one is a normal walk, I added 2 frames for each leg movement making it 8 frames for each leg.


For a Pixilation practice, I made a three finger hand out of card as a cut out animation. Unfortunately, the camera was a bit unstable and the fingers were too fiddly so movement was a bit complicated but it gave me a general idea of what to use in the future.

What I could do is use the hand to interact with another character or the hand could be the close-up of something else. I designed the hand to resemble a robotic hand. I thought having three fingers would give it a mysterius and creepy atmosphere.

Wednesday 18 November 2009

The Art of Walking

Walking Animation Cycle test

The art of making your animation or character move is a good experience. A simple animation test of a walking cycle is a start. But it basically starts from one's own walk in real life. I have learned that when one leg lifts off the ground, my height increases and my hips raise as well. Before I looked at the photographed waling cycle's of Eadweard J. Muybridge (April 9, 1830 to May 8, 1904). He was a photographer and is known for his capture of animals and people in motion and has able to project them through a "zoopraxiscope" device allowing us to see the walk cycle as an animation frame by frame.

One has to see how he will walk to see the animation. The shoulders move up and down and sometimes our body could move from side to side. I even learned the difference between some walks from women and that of men. My 2D and 3D teachers appointed the assignment to make a walk cycle animation. I started with the 2D:

According to Andy Wyatt, my Head course teacher, it takes 6 frames for one leg to start from an "Extended" point to a "Passing" and finally back to "Extended" and so forth thus making a total of 12 frames. But then this is not a walk I would make unless i was in a hurry for a lesson...then again I would run instead. I then thought of making it 8 frames per leg but instead I ended up making 10 frames foe each leg thus 20 slides in total for the two legs to "Pass" and extend. In the end, this turned out to be a nice, simple and calm walk: a walk similar to my own. I might have missed on frame somewhere where one leg moves down or looks a bit stiff but passing those errors, one can see a nice walk.

The next was using the 3D software of Maya:

This is "Burt", a robotic ball with legs added on. Once again I had no need to use a frame by frame technique but I did had to correct the leg movements, placing one leg in a position, "key selected" it and repeat the same step on another frame while relying on the computer to do the rest. Making him walk is fun but his feet seem quite heavy and rather large. At least this a test to make an animated character walk for other future projects in mind. What is useful, I now know that I could make a sculpture and the computer would scan it onto Maya, allowing me to animate that particular character. Imagine making statues coming to life.


I also began drawing walking cycles of my own characters from my "ARTA" idea. Here we had a 2D walking Cycle of OOD and NOG. Ood seems to have a walk similar to that of humans, despite that his legs and feet are completely different. He moves his arms back and form and his ears flop up and down when he moves.
Nog on the other hand has a very strange walk. He lets his hands dangle at his sides, almost trailing them on the floor. To imagine his walk, you need to have your legs spread outwards almost revealing your private area. Nog's back legs move up and down and forwards like an half insect-man. His head bobs up and down when he moves forward.For this Walking Cycle of Ood, I drew him walking in a 3D technique or as if he was walking round in a circle or on the spot but spinning revealing the 3D mechanism. His back body moves slightly from side to side when his small shoulders move up and down. His ears flop like a dogs ears. I like it when my characters have an alien walk that still can be similar to a human walk. To imagine his walk, you have ti walk on your toes ans sway your arms sightly from side to side while hunching up at the same time, because Ood's arms are at the back of his body which makes him an interesting character.

Friday 6 November 2009

Pixilation Practice

Sea Scorpion, Silurian Sea and Talking Old Man Pixilation Animation Tests, 2009

In my time in the animation studio, I have started practicing "Parer-Cut" animation. From the recent Pixilation clips by Derek Hayes, I had begun my own clips. First I just wanted to try out some tests. As I am an insect lover I looked at some images of prehistoric insects and one came up as the sea scorpion. Imagine you could view a world back in time where all things began, in the sea and somehow it is a theme around Falmouth. So I have decided to do some sort of prehistoric animal documentary of the Silurian Sea similar to the BBC series of "Walking with Dinosaurs", "Walking with Beasts", "Walking with Monsters" and the all time "Chased by Sea Monsters" which shows each dangerous filled sea in prehistory.

As i am a Arthropod fan, I wanted to animate a sea scorpion doing something comical. At the same time, this test is one step ahead to what could be the opening credits and end credits of my paper-cut animation. What is different about this...SOUND. I took each picture "frame-by-frame" technique and posted the frames on the software "stop-motion pro". Then I uploaded the clip on a software called "Adobe Premiere Pro CS4". This allowed me to edit and cut my clips as well as import audio sounds to make the animation work.


This one, I used more cut-out puppets into the animation, although using the same background. The main plot is the sea life of the Silurian Sea where small prey have to avoid large predators and survive the conditions of the sea. Trilobites avoid the large Orthocone but one eventually gets ensnared by the claws of a Sea Scorpion who waits and ambushes. (link for images: http://dinorider.blogspot.com/2007/11/monstruos-marinos-2003-parte-1-los-7.html)




Derek Hayes also showed the class a cartoon from the Monty Python series. I enjoy watching Monty Python over and over again, whether the jokes may be simple or confusing. I tried a paper-cut animation with the same style when they use photographs of people and animate them in a funny and rude way. For this animation, I used the help of a student Brain Williams to record my own voice. I am very pleased with the result which is also a test for voice acting.

I seem to have a style of cutting out photographs but in future I will draw my own cut-out puppets.

Tuesday 3 November 2009

More Drawings of ARTA

Tri-pod machine

Parakecium and slave designs



Hexoright clothing


Nog and Hexoright sketches



Insect mount



A couple of Arta's Wildlife