In The Words Of Van Halen.....

I was gunna talk about how this was blatantly the hardest thing I've had to do since i got here but i started animating my 6 week project today and it's absolutely crippling me.

So heres the finished, second hardest thing I've done

Im pretty proud of this one, i think I've managed to get a fair bit of anticipation in here throughout, unfortunately i did have to use double frames to help with this quite a lot. Wish i had taken longer and animated the slow downs, especially when he's hanging in the air. It does also look a bit like he's taking off rather than jumping, i feel good about blaming a badly planned arc for that one.

The time has now come for all mini projects, our last week long animation is supposed to demonstrate anticipation, another one of the sacred principles of animation.

We had to show a character jumping and concentrate on the extreme poses, it's pretty much the bouncing ball task with arms and legs. I got ridiculously excited about this project though once they showed us some clips from Tom & Jerry and realized how awesome all the actions are and how every frame is freakin' hilarious.

Heres my first slice of pie which is mainly the key frames with a few imbetweeners.

I quite liked the poses I had lined up so far but i thought i could push them a bit further, the first pull back and the crouch before he jumps could of been more expressive.

This one has the same keyframes but the movement up until he jumps is all finished, for now.

I like what I've got so far, the little step before the jump was so hard though, not looking forward to walk cycles. From now on i shall only draw cars or slugs. Need to work on the timing when he pulls back but me thinks its lookin' good.

More balls anyone??

I wanted to do summat a little more ambitious than a ball bouncing so i landed on doing, wait for it, two balls bouncing!!

Tried a heavy one and a super one at the same time but like a moron thought it would be a good idea to have them bounce off each other aswell. This is where planning and key frames come into their own, thanks guys.

Heres the first encounter.

Oh my god it's hard to make balls collide. Wasn't happy about how quickly the bowling ball drops off the ledge so i went back to fix this and finish the super ball.

I call this one "please work you bas**rd!"

The name didn't really help, the bowling ball looks pretty stupid throughout, the pacing is off on the ramp and it comes to a stop way too suddenly. Hopefully the pretty small ball will distract from that. Gotta keep doing more planning, free-styling is not cool when two objects need to interact.

I'm Havin' A Ball

So we have to animate some balls bouncin' all over the place, small ones, fat ones, some as big as yer head..... sorry. Doesn't sound too exciting and the reason for that is because it isn't but it's a good way to get our heads around some of the old principles of animation such as timing, spacing and squash and stretch.

Heres my first attempt with just the key frames and a few in-betweens  

Thought this was lookin' alright so i added in the rest of the frames, i had done another test before the final one but it was obviously so crap it erased itself off my memory stick. 

Heres the latest, shot in singles with all the frames.

I really like this one, i think it hangs in the air maybe a bit too long on the last bounce but it still looks good, lets call it artistic license. 

Face-Off

"Nah i don't need to plan it out better than this, it'll be fine",

I truly hate myself for saying these words. Tried to go back and add more to the crying and angry bits but because of the tear i randomly put in it was impossible to add more frames without messin' up the speed. Managed to get round the same problem with the bit of steam coming of his head when he's pissed though, just had to make it hang in the air a bit longer. I only managed to add 2 frames and black out the mouth, i also shot it closer.

Here it is.

Kinda wish i'd pushed it further and taken more time over it, Im happy with the speed though and i think the transitions to the different emotions are pretty smooth. Gotta plan it more next time and when i think Ive pushed it enough slap myself an try again.

Exaggeration Mini Project

This weeks trial was to create a face that would change expression a few times then go back to neutral, I'd go so far as to say Im a fan of faces so i was pretty happy with this.

Spent a while drawing people in the class then went home and tried to work out a face that would be fun to play with, apparently it had to look like someone but i seem to have ignored that so I'll just say it was meant to be me after Chemo.

Heres my first go at a smile.

Was pretty happy with this but tutor man said it needs to be bigger (more exaggerated i assume) and i just so happen to agree. Have tried to make the rest of the expressions better and will come back to this one tomorrow.

This is what my first go at the full cycle looks like

Once again i quite like this but it speeds up in parts and i think i can push it a bit further, I'll try adding a few frames tomorrow and see how that tastes.

First post, also known as 'The Flip-book Mini Project'

So I've only gone and been and went and done a blog coz apparently we have to (and i secretly want to). Need a place to put all my crappy little video project things, seemed like as good a place as any.

A week ago we had to make a 100 frame flip book then capture it on film, we were working in groups of 5 and all our films had to lead on from each other. We decided to include a bomb in everyones and since i had already decided i was gunna use a Pirate this worked out well for me. Heres the thing i spat out.

This was too slow, didn't flip, wasn't 100 frames long and barely merged into anyones video. But she's still ma baby girl.

Next time i wanna take more time and get up to 12 FPS instead of the 6 i used for this, also not use lined notepad paper.