Reflection

I was quite eager to begin this project, and I ended up spending a lot more time on it than originally intended. The quadruped locomotion was easier to me as I've done it before, but I've never animated a semi-aquatic animal (otter). Also since I was animating on ones this was very tedious and I probably did a lot more work than I needed to. However I think this was great timing-practice, and it ended up looking mostly very smooth. Since they are not as well adapted to move quickly over land, it was very different and interesting to try and get the clumsy, floppy running right. I've never done the transitions between the paces before either, and I think this was really valuable experience.
The weight-assignment was trickier for me, the timing and the gestures were hard to make convincing. Although I didn't spend as much time on this assignment as on the quadruped locomotion or the obstacle course, I think I learned the most from this.
Finally the obstacle course was a nice way to finish off the module, and I had a lot of fun designing the course and animating my fat little cat. The technique I used for this (animating straight ahead) showed me how surprisingly nice un-planned animation can look, and this is possibly the animation I'm the most pleased with of all these three.

The research-process was a bit different for all of the assignments were a bit different than what I'm used to, we got up and out, found heavy objects to feel the movement and action we were going to animate, and we could look at each other do it, and take pictures for later reference. All in all it was encouraging and inspiring to use these new ways of finding reference for my drawing.

Overall this module has been excellent practice. My animations could always be better and more polished if I had more time, but considering the amount of material I've created and the quality of it in the time we've had, I'd say I'm quite pleased with what I've achieved.

Week 5+6: Obstacle Course

For the last assignment we had to keep what we had learned earlier about weight in mind, and animate a figure moving through an obstacle course. I decided to animate a cat, both because I enjoy animating animals, and I though it could make it just a little more interesting and unique. The process here was pretty straight-forward. We looked at people and squirrels making their way across a variation of obstacles, which is where I took  lot of my inspiration from.

The first thing I did was make a layout, deciding what obstacles to use, how big they should be and where to place them. When I was happy and I had a layout I could realistically create an animation for, I made a nicer background with defined edges to make it easier to start animating. 

I animate from one angle only, from the side. I didn't make too much of an animation-plan, other than making marks to know where my cat would be jumping and landing, and the arcs it would follow as it jumps and/or falls. The rest I animated straight ahead, frame by frame. It's a little frightening to animate like this as it can be hard to know if you're going where you want, but in this case it gave the animation a nice dynamic and spontaneous aesthetic. I was happy so far, and kept going until I had a whole sequence. 

Because of time constraints I decided to skip the bottom level and just fill the end-drop with fish to make a decent ending. It still ended up being 28 seconds, which I'm quite pleased with. I'm the most happy with the last jump, where it spins through the air before dropping into the pool of fish. I think this specific movement ended up looking nice mostly because I was drawing the frames straight ahead.

It's a simple design and the line-quality looks a bit crude, but I'm really pleased about the movement and timing of this animation.

Week 3+4: Weight

Next on the schedule was the weight-assignment. For this week the goal was to focus on implementing the illusion of gravity and weight into our animations. We needed to make three sequences, one with a figure lifting a box, one where it's pushing a box and one pulling a box.

We started out taking out a big box and a camera, and started lifting and pulling to get a feel of the movement we were trying to create. This was helpful, but I didn't end up using any of the photos we took. I went on pretty much straight forward and started animating in flash. I wanted to have all of the sequences in one continuous clip, so I went for a person picking up a fat dog, placing it on a table and pushing it off of it again. Here's an early version with only keyframes, and missing the pushing-action.

I continued cleaning this animation up, and to stay within the deadline I settled with a sketchy style. It's not as clean as the quadruped locomotion-animation, but for this I was focusing on getting the movement right before I ran out of time.

The end result I got ended up looking quite rough, and I didn't get the time to add inbetweens for some parts. However all in all I'm happy with the movement, the timing was tricky to get right in this one and I don't think I succeeded as much as I'd like to, but overall it works well. Animations can always be better, but I'm pleased with the sense of weight and movement I ended up with.

Week 1+2: Quadruped Locomotion

Our first task for this module was to pick a four-legged (quadrupedal) animal, and make an animated walkcycle, then a runcycle, and the transition between the two. I have already done quite many walk- and runcycles with horses, dogs and cats, so I wanted to challenge myself and do something I hadn't done before. I chose to do an otter, because I'm really fascinated and charmed by their clumsy, short-legged gait. However before jumping into the animating process, we were asked to look into quadruped anatomy and spend 45 minutes drawing a canine skeleton. Here's my drawing;

I moved on to do research more relevant to my specific animation. An otters skeleton is more adapted to a marine lifestyle, which in broad terms means long, flexible body, short legs and a big powerful tail. With this in mind I did some observational sketches.

I was finding it a little bit difficult to find good reference material for otters, so I had to look at several pictures when sketching them. Finding good footage of a walking otter was even harder, as you rarely see these eager mustelids move at a constant pace. After a look around on youtube for good material, I finally found a couple of helpful videos. One video ended up being my primary source of reference, since it was one of the few videos which had both walking, running and the transition between the two, and it was filmed from the side most of the time:

Next on the schedule was making a walk-cycle diagram. I did this quite quickly, just to get an overview of when each foot is lifted, how long they stay in the air and when they touch the ground, etc. 

I now felt ready to start animating! I usually prefer working with pencil on paper, but I decided to use Adobe Flash CS5 instead, since that means I can test and make corrections to the cycle much easier. 

After a couple of days animating, I had a sketch ready. 

I started out with the walkcycle, which I think works. It looks very correct, but is then again very static and mechanic. It's a good base but I'm going to have to re-work it. I'm very pleased with the runcycle, it looks much more alive and I think I captured the gait quite well. I'm also happy with the transitions between the paces, I especially found animating the walk to run-transition very confusing and challenging, but I'm very happy with how it ended up looking. I didn't get to finish the stopping-animation, which at this stage was just keyframes. I really wanted to finish this animation so it looks nice and presentable, so after finishing the motion, I started making a clean line-art. I ended up with a video that looks a lot better, reads better and I even added a little bit of personal stylization.

Introduction to the Advanced Animation Skills Workshop

The purpose of this blog is to present work I've done for the module Advanced Animation Skills Workshop, tutored by Jonathan Hodgson, at my 2nd year at the BA Animation-course at Middlesex university. The work is done over the course of six weeks, and is separated into three parts; quadruped locomotion, weight, and obstacle course.

I will not only be presenting the final work, but also the research, my sketches and the progress and my personal opinions and observations. Finally I will be writing a 250 word reflection, summarising the entire project and looking at what I've learned.

I'm quite optimistic about this assignment. I already have a bit of experience with this kind of experience, but I think this will be a difficult but fun challenge. Let's get started!