Animation Theatre: Bill Plympton

Animator Profile: Bill Plympton

Maya Rigging 1: Tails & Tentacles (Spline IK)

Tails now complete, would be interesting to see the fur skin on top of this.

Maya Rigging 1: Eyes

Rigging of the eyes is now complete! Added some screenshots of the eyeballs moving and the blink to show it in action.

Animation Theatre: Phil Mulloy

Animator Profile: Phil Mulloy

Florist Window Boiling Test

For my story I need to establish that we are heading into a florist's to find the characters and so I have been testing out how to make the drawing of my florist's window boil. I will next play around with adding sound effects on top to help establish the setting even more. I did want to pan in towards the window but I thought I would start off simple and work my way towards it.



Delilah the Daffodil developed character sheets

Using the paint studies and the plasticine models I have developed the daffodil of my story, making her more rubberised and exaggerated. I started off by playing around with how her leaves could sit normally, then seeing how the pot could stretch and how the petals and nose of the flower can squash and stretch.

I then did a series of action poses for her, I liked using the coloured pencil to define them and go over the parts of really rough sketches that were working.




Finally I converted these pose sheets into silhouettes to check that they effectively convey the actions, I'm pretty happy with them!




Added bonus, my images are now showing up large enough hooray!

Animation Workshop Homework: Key frames and establishing the placing of the character

Last Friday Meg asked us to produce 3 frames that summed up our stories so I thought the best way to do this would be by drawing a frame for each act. I picked part of the scene when Webster is wooing Delilah, the kiss and Webster celebrating with a flip. The only thing that Meg and I both noticed is that all three frames are straight on shots so I'm going to keep referencing these when doing my storyboard again to remind me to stop the static camera!

Next she asked us to produce 6 frames which would establish where our character/s are placed in the scene, so I started with a far street view of the florist's and gradually panned in until you go through the window to where Webster is. I know that most of these shots will not be used in my final animation mostly because it will just unnecessarily complicate things but it was a really useful exercise in allowing us to see in our minds the journey to our characters.

Unit 5: Life Drawing Week 4

We continued working on portraying the movement of the model in this week's class, but instead of the usual warm up sketches we did a series of 1 minute sketches focusing on the movement from one key pose to another, so we ended up with 8 drawings. We then moved on to trying to capture the movement changes into each of the 8 poses and then tried to create a montage like overlay of images to show the movement of the model's action.

1 minute sketches of 8 related poses.

Movement between poses- the fabric was great to capture this.

Pose overlays, I used different mediums so that the poses could still be seen. Pitty I got a bit carried away with the first one and went off the page before the model had stopped posing!

Playing with poses

This time I have been playing around with plasticine, modelling my daffodil and manipulating it to help me with poses. Pity I couldn't get it to stand up, but I guess making a flower especially stand up out of plasticine is more difficult as it's very delicate and thin. I didn't get it to stretch and squash as much as I would have liked either but I'm guessing this is due to the temperature chairs my halls likes to have which kept making it fall apart!I have found that doing this has really helped me explore poses as I can more visually manipulate rather than jotting something down straight out of my head. All I should have to do now with these is take them into drawing and just exaggerate with squash and stretch a bit. Oh and please excuse the plastic bag in the pictures, it was a cheap DIY solution to stopping everything sticking itself to the desk :)

Original model

Flirty Poses

Hip and think

Hand rest and hip

Both hips and head tilt back

Hand resting above head and hip

Hand on hip and hand out

Hands interlocked, pushed out in front

Other poses

Front giggle

Shy, flirty giggle.

Kiss and holding head.

Stretched out for kiss, girly back hand hold.

Letting loose with Delilah the Daffodil

It has become my mission to find a way that can help me loosen up and really try and get my character designs stronger so I have been thinking of how I can possibly use something I am comfortable with to my advantage. After a discussion with Meg during last Friday's lesson she told me to grab a big piece of paper and just draw quickly across the page creating what would be similar to a gesture drawing. I then thought that I know I am more comfortable with painting, it is my preferred medium and I have found that when it comes to trying to get my first ideas down through pencil I tend to stiffen up and stop myself being more expressive. I'm not too sure how I manage that and so I have resorted to the paintbrush!

In the paintings below I have lost all detail rather focusing on shape and form to get the head and leaves more expressive and really see how she could be flirtatious. Sammy and I had a great conversation about how she managed to get her candlestick more feminine after drawing a typically feminine hourglass figure so I have taken a similar approach.



Some reference for a flirty feminine figure.

Firstly I used the hourglass references to quickly paint my own and then I experimented with the placing of leaves, thickening up parts of the step to resemble a bum and breasts.


I then took the paintings where the leaves made a bum and experimented more with them. I like 7 where the stem is poking out the front as if she is flirting with her leg.


Then it was time to try added the head with more size, I have simplified the nose and petals making them more rounded which I hope is more rubbery. I also realised that the pot I originally put the daffodil in didn't compliment her shape, I also think this pot will be better to squash and stretch when she moves.

Next up for the daffodil is to take the exaggeration further with the plasticine I have, really stretch it out, also this should help me get the poses down better!

Animation Theatre: Jiří Barta

Animator Profile: Jiří Barta

Animation Workshop Homework: Giddy Walk Cycle

When it comes to a giddy walk cycle there are many ways in which it can be giddy, but seen as this is a walk not a dance as such I thought I would go for the dreamer description of a giddy person and then I thought of a light and airy skip. It has taken me a while to sort out as I have been battling to get it right, a skip being a bit different to a walk but it's finally done!

Animation Theatre: The Brothers Quay

Animator Profiles: The Brothers Quay

Animation Theatre: Jan Švankmajer

Animator Profile: Jan Švankmajer

Animation Theatre: Ladislaw Starewicz

Animator Profile: Ladislaw Starwicz

Biped Rigging Part 3: Arms

Completed the arms now so all done yay think I'm getting the hang of this now!

Inspiration/research: Rubber Hose Animations

To help me develop my character designs more, making them more rubberised especially I have looked up some of the old rubber hose animations.

This Flip the Frog animation has been really useful in seeing the squash and stretch of the characters. The horns on the car and the kiss are great reference and inspiration for my daffodil!

The animals in this one help me understand how I could have my flower necks move very rubbery.

The beginning with the piano is great for reference when my character Webster jumps about in and out his pot.

Animation Workshop Homework: 10 a day gesture practice 2

More gesture practise, I tried to more action type poses like sport movements to see how I can try and get these across in my drawings as well.

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Animation Workshop Homework: Normal Walk Cycle

Animation Workshop: Chair/Standing Up Animation

Here's my animation finished from last Friday's lesson of Meg/a figure standing up. I tried to show her pushing herself up at one point so the shoulders get higher, I do think I could do this much better if I practised again.

Animation Workshop: Week 2

On Friday we continued with gesture drawing before doing the standing up animation exercise, but this time we drew one gesture then had to guess and draw the gesture we thought the model could do next from that position. It was really interesting trying to draw a gesture that wasn't in front of you. We then did blind gestures where we had the model do 3 or 4 poses and we had to try and remember them then draw them once the model had sat down, I think I did pretty well at this because I remembered all of the poses. Finally we had someone acting out an action such as hitting a golf ball or throwing a ball and we had to overlay the key poses, so the first and last movement. These drawings looked pretty crazy!



At one point in the lesson Meg told me to try and loosen up even more, using one line/scribble to try and get the whole figure on the page at once.

Moving Actions