It was Halloween which quite frankly is my favourite time of year. You can dress up as anything you want like when you were a kid and not be judged from it. Unfortunately at the time I was unable to go out last year for Halloween so I was stuck inside letting boredom set in.
At that point I decided to do a little animation project based around the Halloween theme. It is not much of an animation but it did get me to practice texturing and shading a little bit. My partner constantly keeps up with a Youtube series called Marble Hornets and asked me if I would do an animation of one of his favourite episodes.
I was rather moody that day as when I was doing the animation my work kept on deleting as my laptop was literally dying after being overused for 6-7 years. It kept cutting off and freezing and even if I saved my work it did not matter as it wanted to delete it anyway and if the laptop was not playing up my graphics tablet decided it wanted to die and kept breaking on me. I think I am cursed when it comes to technology.
Anyway because of my laptop and graphics tablet taking turns to bully me I ended up completing the animation with less detail than I originally planned as I just gave in to my laptop.
So here is my little Masky animation. I know it is a short blog post but I hope you enjoy it anyway. If you have any questions then please don't hesitate to email or comment. Cheerio.
I was a bit nervous about doing my first animation knowing that I would probably be a lot slower than the other people in my class due to not knowing a lot about the software that you use.
The first thing that I had to do was think of a pitch for my animation. Something that would interest people to want to watch it. I chose to do on-line dating as it seems to be becoming quite popular these days with all the social media sites people are on and how people don't seem to find the time these days to find partners in the normal world so they turn to the virtual world instead.
My next step was to write a script. I used Celtx to do this which is a script writing software. It was available to use offline at the time I wrote my script but I think it has changed to be used on-line now instead.
Then I had to design my characters. I had a few ideas on how I wanted them to look but in the end I chose a few simple designs. I apologise for the pictures not being great quality.
These are the main characters in my animation. Below the first picture is Bob who is looking for love but seems to find it hard to find the perfect woman.
This is the lovely young lady that Bob eventually meets in the park.
This is Bobs perfect woman that he practically designed on a website but he made her too perfect that she fell in love with herself and ended up being not all she was cracked up to be.
The next part of my project was to create a storyboard that went with my script. To plan every scene in my short animation.
I Would show you what my storyboards looked like but unfortunately they got deleted from my hard drive. However, I have drawn up the sheet that I used to draw the shots for each scene in my animation.
The location is where your characters are and what time during the day it is. Your shot number in your scene, a space to draw what is happening in your shot, estimated time the shot will take, dialogue that will be used in the shot, the camera angle used ans the sound effects.
Once I finished my storyboarding I created an animatic from the shots I had drawn for my storyboard and put in the sounds that I had recorded and downloaded. This gives you a little idea of what your finished animation might look like.
I then drew my animation into Photoshop. I ended up getting rid of quite a few scenes as my animation ended up being double the time it was supposed to be. Unfortunately it did not turn out the way I wanted it to and did not make a lot of sense. I also ran out of time so it ended up being in black and white but at least I finished my first animation. I will just have to try harder next year and improve on the speed of my drawing.
Classes that have to be taken
If you are not a fan of life drawing then I don't think animation is the right course for you. In animation, life drawing is compulsory and believe it or not you learn a hell of a lot from it. I am not too great at it myself but I can see a clear improvement from a year ago to my life drawings now.
Unfortunately I don't have any photos from the life drawings I dad a year ago but I do have photos of the one from over this year that I can show you.
My tutor always gets models who do an array of stances, some can be quite difficult to draw and you are not sure where to start but he says always find where the main movements and curve in the body is first as it will make it easier to draw. You also practice you speed with doing one or two minute drawings or sometimes you will have 20 minutes to draw in a little more detail.
Here are a few of my life drawings from over the year.
These two were to display the movements the model was making as I was drawing him.
You can see that I drew in the lines for the main movement and curve in the body that the model was making.
I took a little longer on these drawings. The time range was between 15-30 minutes. I used coloured pencils, charcoal and graphite pencils.
I must admit that I have noticed that I need to pick up my speed when drawings and life drawing where your drawing is timed has made me realise that. It is a skill that I need to work on especially with going into the animation field. Hopefully I will be able to improve my speed and become a better animator because of it and see improvement once again in a years time.
I was given a project to do an animation with a normal spray bottle. It was originally supposed to be a group project but I ended up doing the animation on my own as I left it a bit late and ended up doing it all in a night. I must say though it was the most fun I have had with any animations I have done so far.
So first of all, I had to make a profile for my character, quite a straight forward one, nothing too big so here is my characters profile.
Character profile
Background: A lonely cowboy who goes on adventures to save damsels in distress. He is smart and cunning, and always finds ways to get out of tricky situations. He got lost in a desert and does not remember where he is. He just wants a drink of water and to get out alive.
Skills or weaknesses: He is great with a lasso but sometimes thinks he is too smart which can make situations worse.
Description: He is an old school cowboy with a hat and waistcoat, very minimalist.
Character Designs
I did my designs in pencil in a sketchpad and when I was happy with then I did a few designs in colour. Unfortunately with me leaving it so late I was not able to get the supplies that I would have needed to make my bottle look like the designs so I had to improvise.
Character in action, displaying a bit of personality.
Designs in colour.
My bottle character when I finished making him. I covered the head in plasticine. had some pipe cleaners for arms, used a marker to colour the spray bit of the bottle for a beard and made the hat out of some of the fabric I had. It also made a cute hat for my pet rats for about 2 minutes before they ate it.
I then got my script to read whilst recorded the voices for my animation and found some backing music to go with it. After animating and editing the sounds to my animation I was finally finished.
Here is my finished stop motion animation.
I shall leave you now to hopefully enjoy my cowboy animation.
I have been learning about basic walk cycles and advanced walk cycles. Basic walk cycles are where you focus on the stages that every walk cycle has. The stages of a walk cycle are recoil, passing, high point and contact.
Here is one of the images that helped me to understand the stages of a walk cycle.
My first walk cycle that I did was a simple stick man walk cycle and it was not exactly the best stick man you have ever seen either. There was so much wrong with it but it was a test to see if I could get the stages right. My timing was not fantastic either.
My second walk cycle I tried to do in a bit more detail and it is a front facing walk cycle. Unfortunately I do not have a picture to help show you the stages of the front walk cycle as my tutor helped me the steps. When I handed it into my tutor he said that it was actually classed as an advanced walk cycle as it has personality to it. A few people described it as having swagga...
Advanced walk cycles
These next walk cycles are classed as advanced walk cycles as they display a sense of personality and emotion through full body movements.
I decided to draw a few different kinds of walks to choose which ones I wanted to do as well as figure out the stages for the walk cycles.
I did my animations in Photoshop. A few were side walk cycles and the others were front walk cycles. Here they are in order from when I did them.
I think I enjoyed doing the female walk cycles the most as I found it easier due to doing one earlier.
I also had a go at doing an animal walk cycle. I chose to do a horse as a lot of people in my class were animating dogs and cats. I must say I did find it difficult and had to start from fresh quite a few times as I just confused myself but I got there in the end.
I drew the walk cycle stages of the horse to help me animate as well.
That is all that I have on walk cycles so far. Hope you have enjoyed the videos and the post has been helpful in some way.
So for this project I will be doing a bit of Character Design. I have chosen to do a dragon warrior princess.... OK so it is not the most imaginative of characters but it will do for my first character design.
As research for this project I have been looking at a few types of dragons to get a basic view of their body shape and certain characteristics that they may have.
Here are a few good images that I came across and links to the websites I found them on so you can take a look yourself:
I decided to look at picture of warriors and women to see who I preferred my character to look like. I think that Natalie Portman has lovely facial features and looks very feminine so I looked for a few pictures of her.
Here is my characters profile which helped me decide on how I wanted her to look.
Character profile
Name: Feira
Sex: Female
Age: 22 years old
Physical description:
Half dragon, half princess. Long nails to claw at enemies, sharp teeth, can breath fire every so often. Her tail has sharp bones like spikes on the end to attack, she has big pointed ears for excellent hearing. Wings to fly during battle. Claws as feet for balance and grip.
Strength and weaknesses:
Incredibly fast and agile, can fly, very good fighter.
She has a kind heart that could be seen as a weakness.
Background story:
Feira is a princess and trained warrior. Her father (the king) was away from the kingdom on a quest. Whilst he was away he made the drastic mistake of slaying a baby dragon to get to his final destination. The mother of the baby dragon saw what the king did to her precious baby and followed the king back to his castle to get revenge. She turned the kings daughter into a creature that was half human, half dragon. She was seen as a monster and banished from the kingdom. Feira now on her own travels the world to find the dragon and see if the dragons magic can be broken so that she can go back home.
Time to scribble down a few character designs
I had a little think of how I wanted my character to be, her background history and her personality, if she had any special skills. I drew a few designs where she was full of scales like a dragon but then decided that it might look a little too much so just put the scales in certain places on her body. I did the sketches in a sketchbook with no colour until I decided how I wanted my character to look.
First of all I decided what shape I wanted her skull and face to be. How long her hair should be, eye shape, nose and where I wanted her scales to be.
Then I started to design her body, with scales, without, how her clothes should look. If she should have wings or not, how her feet and hands should look. How much of a dragon I actually wanted her to look.
Then I focused on her emotions, what she would look like in certain situations. from her face with no emotion to angry, happy, her face from the side, breathing fire, being sad and smiling.
I chose to do scales on one side of her face to show what she would have looked like when she was a princess, before the dragon cursed her.
This is the back of her when I decided not to do scales all over her body but just in certain areas instead and what she would look like with her wings tucked away.
I did do more character designs in colour in photoshop but unfortunately my laptop crashed then broke and I lost it all so for now I will put this post up and then update it when I have redone my character designs.
