Animation tests

Before starting the final animation piece, I made 2 sample animations to test out what methods work, how I'll need to sort out the movement depending on how many fps; and also a colour test to see if the idea of using colour would turn out well. (or take up too much time and effort)

The first was testing with 24fps of just a sheep bouncing and roceting off.
I'm used to animating with only 12fps so this was an interesting learning curve, because I drew out each frames thinking along the lines of 12 per second, so the inital second was much faster than I wanted.

Only a short second test to see how animting in colour turn out, it didn't take too much time; however I doubt I'd have enough time to do this in my final piece.
Worked with 12fps for this.

Character Designs

Once I started the first storyboard, I had a pretty firm idea as to how the characters should look; for some reason I found the Mr.Hoskins was taking on a super hero like image in my head.

The amazing named 'Laydee' was the first I started to sketch out, I wanted the body structure to be easy to animate, so gave her very dainty features; the hands and feet in particular; I also made sure to keep the facial features to a minimum so I could portray the emotion through eyes and the body movement. No complex detail to her so it focuses on the reactions I hope to animate.

The wonderful Mr.Hoskins' design I had a lot of fun with; I made sure to design him as streamline as possible but still kept him with the same stylised image as 'Laydee'
Again minimal facial features, even more so with a mask; which I hope the mask will accentuate what reactions I hope to achieve.


The idea for opting for a stylised, almost stretched style I think I drew from the game 'Okami', The characters faces lack in detail yet it is still pleasing to the eye; though more so as to why I was looking into this game was the whole take on colour; it is as if playing a game on watercolour paper.

http://www.creativeuncut.com/art_okami_a.html

With these character designs it is very bright colours with a soft application of it. The colour isn't overpowered and retains a gentle appearance to it. Hopefully I may be able to animate it with colour so as to attempt something along the lines of this.

Storyboard ideas

The original storyboard, I was aiming to get in a decent run cycle before the speaking in the sound file kicks in, but when listening to it again the the woman starts talking very early in the clip; rendering over half of the story board useless.
However I wanted to keep the clip dramatic, so opted to keep the idea of an Assasins creed like fall into a cart of hay.

The finalised storyboard for the animation, it starts with mr.Hoskins landing in the cart; the lady goes to help him out, pulling out a sheep in the process. I didn't have an amazing amount of ideas for the first sound clip, but I like the final ideas I had produced. I feel as though I've planned out for enough movement, but not so much so that I'm putting too much work on myself. Most of the movements are very quick, particularly for Mr. Hoskins; so animating him should be quicker to go through and dynamic.

Animating: bouncing balls comparrison

2D animation

I found animating in photoshop the easier of the two as I have had experience with 2d animation prior to this course, however this was my first time properly animating in photoshop; it took a while to get to grips with the features and so forth, but I did enjoy using photoshop for animating.

Th onion skin feature in particular was possibly the most useful feature on photoshop, as I had only really animated traditionally or alternate forms of animation: cameraless film, sand, white boar etc. Didn't take an excessive amount of time to animate, I will strongly consider animating in photoshop.

Maya

Again my first time animating in Maya, I had only previously used Maya to add textures to buildings. It took a while to get to grips how to et it going, I'm sure with more practice I'd manage to animate with more ease; but animating by keyframes did feel much easier to do as opposed to drawing every frame.
out of the two I do prefer animating in 2D, as I know if anything goes wrong I can pinpoint what the cause is much easier, however better quality movement is easier to acheive in Maya.
I want to give animating in Maya another go, but for the final admission piece I would like to do 2D, I would love to get better grasp of animating different movements, in differing styles.

Varieties of animation

Animation work

2D animation

Traditional animation is the oldest and most popular, historically form of animation. In the earlier forms of animation each frame was drawn by hand. Voice recording for  is usually done before the animation, almost all American animation is now pre-synced, whereas nearly all Japanese cartoons (anime in particular) is always post synced.

The most famous animated films are courtesy of Disney; in 1994 Disney was voted the 13^th best out of 50 greatest cartoons, the film chosen was the renowned ‘Steamboat Willie’ 1928, which was the first Disney film to have synchronized sound.

A useful form of traditional animation is the process of ‘Rotoscoping’-  this is a technique that essentially is tracing over a live action footage to animate. This technique does make the animating process considerably easier and quicker, it also creates lifelike movement.

Stop motion

Also known as frame by frame, this style of animation is making a physically manipulated object appear to move on it’s own. The object is moved only slightly between photographed frames, this creates the illusion on movement.

The first stop animation ‘The Humpty Dumpty Circus’ 1898- created by Albert Smith and J.Stuart Blackton. The film consisted of a toy circus of acrobats coming to life.

Another style of stop animation is Clay animation, which is stop motion with play-doh. The most famous for this kind of animation is Aardman, their iconic films being ‘Wallace and Gromit’ films and the character ‘Morph’.

Other types of stop animation consist of:

Cutout: eg, Terry Gilliam’s ‘Monty Pythons Flying circus’, South park.

Model animation: eg, Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the titans.

Object animation: Animated movements that aren’t fully maleble. Eg, toys, dolls. ; Another form of object animation is using people, called ‘Pixelation animation’

Animation fundamentals

12 principles of animation

1.    1. Squash and Stretch: This principle gives the character/ object the appearance as if it has weight and size. Depending on the extremity of the movement, requires differing degrees of the squash and stretch; it is vital in animation as it gives much more realistic movement for the character/ object, without it the animation would be stiff and less dynamic. Example: Invader Zim: The Christmas episode while Zim is wearing the Santa suit, Dib hits him but the suit has a jelly like recoil to it, so it squashes in, and then out drastically knocking Dib backwards. The suit is entirely made out of some gelatinous substance so most movements it makes has uses squash and stretch frequently

2.    2. Anticipation: The preparation for a major action; for example jumping from the floor, the character must crouch down slightly before pushing themselves off of the floor to make the jump. If there was no anticipation for this the character would just float up into the air. Anticipation is basically the backward motion before executing the action. Example: Ghost in the Shell (1995) Motoko is back flipping her way, away from the onslaught of bullets.

3.     3.Staging: Communication to the audience of the characters current mood, through expression, camera angle or reaction to the current setting. Example: Invader Zim – The girl who cried gnome. The girl is selling cookies, one particular man says no thank you to her offer, the staging here is the aftermath of it. The girl holding a wad of cash and the man in the background is slumped against the door with his face stuffed full of cookies. The whole setting shows how forceful the cookie girl is.

4.     4.Straight ahead and pose to pose: Straight aheads are usually used for more frantic, faster paced parts of animation. Proportions and size are sometimes compromised along with this. Pose to pose however proportions and other factors are paid closer attention along with the animation itself, the whole animation is planned out and key drawings are made.

5.     5.Follow through and overlapping: Follow through is that the focus of the animation stops and the smaller features that concern the focus are catching up with its path of action. Like a character running and their hair moves along, or clothes. Stopping moments after the character. Overlapping is the opposite however the focus and the features that follow them are going in opposing directions, the character changes it’s direction but the features are still taking the same path the focus was originally taking; still catching up to the focus.

6.     6.Slow in and slow out : Basically the more drawings used for movement the slower it will be, the less used the quicker. More would be used for a particular pose, and the next pose; but less for the transition from one to the other. This makes the movements much more lifelike. Example: Invader Zim. The point where Zim yells at Dib, “Can it protect you from this?!” The scene is fast paced, with speedy animation, making the watcher panic at which point Gir bends over firing a sandwich out of his head the animation goes in slow motion getting a considerable more amount of detail an creates comic unnecessary drama, as the sandwich gets closer to Dib the animation speeds right back up, with a lot of motion blur added.    

                       

7.     7.Arcs : Actions in animations pretty much always follow and arc shaped (or circular) path; this particularly apply to animating humans and animals. Arcs in animation make the action much more natural. Example: Invader Zim; Mortos Der Soulstealer: Zim is throwing mutant vermin at people’s houses, the motion has an arc as it flies through the window, also in the same episode Gir bounces in an arc motion from his feet to head repeatedly.

8.    8. Secondary action: The action after the main action that enforces the main movement. Enhancing the action more so to make a simple action much more characteristic. The girl who cried gnome- The cookie girls are throwing ninja star cookies at Dib, this being the primary action, the cookies flying towards him and also Dib dodging them work as the secondary action.  A more common occurrence in the Zim series of secondary actions is when Dib runs in a frantic fashion, he suddenly stops; his hair however still moves afterwards for a brief moment.

9.     9.Timing : The amount of frames an action takes, usually done in ones (24 FPS) or twos (12 FPS) depending on the kind of movement wanted, will affect what kind of timing is needed. Example: Invader Zim, A gopher is dropped from a spaceship, falling in a fast paced animation, landing in a fairly soft way in comparrision to the escape pod falling at the same height and falls considerably quicker.

1010.  Exaggeration: This gives expression, movement, pose etc. Much more character, without exaggeration the character appears nigh on mechanical. Just making the movement more animated simply put. One form of exaggeration is Gaz’s reaction to when the beans explode in the microwave, after her dad said that they if they explode it would end all life on earth. Another is as Iggins bursts through the remains of a broken elevator, his eyes actually extend from their sockets, as short as a moment it is, it is extremely exaggerated.

11

1111.  Solid drawing:

1212.  Appeal