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.