Animatic Work

Our tutors, Chris and Ellie, think we're at a point now where we can start getting some movement planning. Particularly with the camera shots as we could be quite creative with it in this animation. I've worked on the first scene today and am about to start having a play around for the middle section; the free fall.

Scott Ramsey kindly brought the opening of the first Power Rangers movie to our attention as it contains the characters skydiving, one is even sky boarding.


This is the first scene that I've worked on, the timing might need adjusting but the idea is down.


Rachel's Blog!

Feedback from Tuesday.

Our tutors wanted to us to consider camera angles that may be used for our animation. As I had work that night, Rachel volunteered to experiment with the rigs and camera for the next day because she's lovely.

Check out what she came up with! (The host of her blog - blog.com seems to be down at the moment, I will fix this as soon as it's up again.)

Sketches from final component of AP1

Here are the sketches and notes I did during the animating of Component 2. I hadn't uploaded them before because they practically lived on my desk while I was working on the animation as I kept referring back to them or adding key frame numbers.

Final Hand In for AP1

Finished the last assignment for this module (Animation Practice 1). Pretty happy with the result though I can see where it needs improving already!

Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com

Final Assignment: Test 2

I've noticed I haven't put up a lot of tests. This is mainly because I don't tend to render off unless I'm finished a round of inbetweening or something like that. Sometimes I'm so in the zone I forget to!

Anyway, test 2!


I'm actually happy with it so far. I'm not confident that it's fantastic but I'm still liking my idea and happy to work on it which is great! Since by now I'd have usually hit the 'blindness'.

Waiting for feedback before I put splines back on and render it, will wait half hour to an hour at most since deadline is tonight.

Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com

Final Assignment: Test 1

Here's the first test for AP1 component 2. Still needs more breakdowns and the ball and tail still needs blocking properly but it's getting there. Just uploaded it for feedback. Will continue working on it in the meantime as I need to decide how to end it.

Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com

Remember remember

Not the 5th of November, Constraining!

Just had to figure out how to constrain objects to things (characters mainly) because, well, you forget if you don't do it for a while. Last time I constrained something was somewhere around this time last year. So I'm writing it down here in hope that I won't forget again (or at least if I do, I can come back here!). I even changed the colour of the important bits!

I was trying to attach one end of this box to Malcolm's hand because he's going to carry it. I will have to animate the constrain to unattached it when he comes to letting go of it. But we'll cover that another time.

Firstly I was trying to constrain it by Constrain > Object to Cluster but it wasn't letting me pick any cluster I created or any geometry to create a cluster to attach it to. I enquired the legendary facebook group TagerTalk for advice as I remember it was a fiddly thing to do so perhaps I was forgetting something.

To constrain something this way, first you should create a cluster on the geometry in the area you constrain to (pick point(s) Edit > Create Cluster or Ctrl + L), then create a null and Constrain > Object to Cluster. If the geometry cannot be selected (as was in my case), create a small point cloud (2 x 2 or something, depending on how big a cluster you need) parent it to a bone or joint or whatever is appropriate to get the desired movement and then select points and create a cluster.

Then select the object to be constrained and parent it to the null.

I did this and realised it was not what I needed. I needed the box to be able to rotate with the hand and using this method does not take orientation into consideration. Only tranforms!

So I actually needed to Pose constrain. And this is how I did that with the help of my tutor: As Malcolm does not have any selectable bones in his hand, I had to use his main wrist control. Select the object to be constrained. Click Constrain Compensation (CnsComp button under the constrain menu on right). Constrain > Pose. Done!

Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com

Reference and Sketches for Final Assignment

We shot reference videos for our final AP1 assignments today. Was fun but had headache so couldn't help out too much :(

My feel for the scene is that Malcolm has spent the day putting things into storage and having a good sort out. This is the last box he has to put away so he's quite tired out at this point. When he places the box down and turns around, a rat has appear in his path! He's not too pleased with this company so he tries to catch it in a box, though what he's going to do after... well, he hasn't thought that far ahead...

Anyway, here's mine:



I really liked Scott's reaction to the 'rat' so I'm thinking of having that in my animation. I'd been switching between entering from a starcase (cellar) or from a ladder (loft) but I think I'll stick with the original idea of a cellar for simplicity.

This is the original roughed out storyboard:

This shows the character entering a cellar with a heavy box. After this I was unsure about the idea and kept changing things back and forth. Will update another time with a complete storyboard.

Spent some time drawing Malcolm, so that I could draw him in poses later.

Roughing out an idea for the scene (when I was thinking about having it as a loft).

The first attempts at drawing Malcolm's emotions. These are awful...

Again, still toying around with the scene being a loft. These are of Malcolm entering the loft with a heavy box.

Playing with some facial expression ideas.

Been trying to get some shocked/scared poses down. Glad we did the reference because it was so hard trying to find the right pose and I think Scott nailed it in the reference better than I could find/imagine.

Scaredy Poses

While looking around the internet for some 'scared' poses (as in, just been frightened out of their wits), I came across a little Mr Bean animation.



I found this a bit anti-climatic after all the build up. It might be because I am looking for and expecting a big shock reaction of some sort at least before the 'oh... it's just a mouse...' The reaction he expressed seemed more like a 'what the hell...?!'

Still, I would have put a little scream or even a gasp in! Good loft reference for my final assignment though. Perhaps I should think about a build up in my animation too..


It's harder than I thought to find reference material of someone being scared/made to jump. I've found a few good pranks but I'm finding it hard to see those poses (being either too small an action or not the right movement like dropping to the ground) being a part of the animation. I did find some good (and funny) videos of people getting scared. I'll just have to take note of what people commonly do when frightened, such as arms go upwards though how upward they go varies on situation, type of scare and type of person.





And some people flail like crazy!

Rats!

Been looking up videos of rats on youtube for reference, since I no longer know anyone who has pet rats. Here are a few pet rats from various youtubers:







Makes me want a pet! Anyway, more importantly, I need to see how they move. I will only be animating a ball and tail but I'd like to get as much rat like behaviour and movement into it as possible.

And of course, when thinking about rats and animation, we think of Disney Pixar's Ratatouille!
Back in 2008, the first Animex Festival I went to featured a lecture by Stuart Sumida about the 'Science and Art of Ratatouille'. The amount of research, studies and testing that went into getting the rat movements right was amazing, but obviously necessary. And it paid off! I love watching Remy's behaviour and movement change from rat-like to more human-like. I'd like to have some of that influence in my ball and tail rat animation.

Final Assignment for Module 1: Idea

The final assignment will be to combine what we've learned so far:


6. Bringing it all together
Principles employed: arcs, timing, follow through and overlapping action, anticipation, ease 
in ease out, secondary action.
In this exercise your character must walk at some point during the sequence and interact
with two of the following:
A pendulum (swinging thing)
A ball
A ball with tail.
A big box
You are expected to add additional animation in keeping with the personality of your 
character and his/her reason for interacting with the objects.
Duration max: 20 second



I plan to have a ball and tail and a box. My idea (set in a loft) is to have the character walk on screen (poss with heavy box) and notice a 'rat' (ball and tail). He'll leap back away from it but it creeps a bit closer, he keeps a good distance between them. He'll see an empty box beside him and use that to capture it (after a few failed attempts) and sit on it.

I'm currently working on sketches and a storyboard which I'll post up soon.