The 3 tests

Here’s my three hand drawn animation tests that I put all onto Vimeo. I know there’s still some frames I’d like to add as well as composition issues, however these are the first tests I have been able to do with hand drawn animation and I believe they’ve helped me more than I ever imagined with understanding the principles of animation as well as the timing and process that is needed to make an animation believable.

It’d be great to know what you think of them.

Stare Test

Walk Test

Ball & Tail Test

Ball and Tail test

Moving on from the original ball test, I went back to the very first frame and added the tail so that I could focus on the movement of the tail to the ball and it’s reactions to the surrounding.
This has to be the most enjoyable part for me when I was animating this simple test. I love creating a very believable character from simple movements, like the tail and having to focus on that detail to how the tail would move to create a feeling, weight or characteristic. Simply by adding the tail, it brought a whole other level to the animation and gave the ball some life.
I tried to play with the movement of the tail compared to the ball, which is much more simple, and thought about how it would react to the certain situations. I found it quite hard to work out how to make a ball with a tail seem shocked or scared so I did do a lot of jumping and sitting up. I had also actually taken some reference from the movement of animals like a fox and squirrel, which I got from looking through carious animation books.

The animation overall seemed fairly fast, but in the end it seemed as though it fit the character of the ball better being at this tempo. There are still frames I would like to add but overall I think it turned out quite well. With this animation in particular I also thought it would be best to work at 24 frames per second which I have now gotten use too with the tests I have been doing, which I have actually been moving to and from paper to Flash.

Ball Test

After working on the walk and movement of the character, I went back to the basic animation tests and tried to get my head around the ball and tail test.
I started with just the ball at first to make sure I got the main movement of the ball correct first with the use of the 12 principles and focusing on Timing, Anticipation and Arc.

This is the first test footage I took fo the ball movement which I worked up quite quickly after all the research and tests I’ve now undergone with the hand drawn animation. After watching this test I added a few more frames and tried to sort out the timing as it seemed too fast. Two things I’d do again if I was to create this animation again, is to first place the ball more central to the sheet as at first, I was going to create some more animation for the ball to move around but then decided to focus on the action I already have. Secondly I would have planned out the animation using a dope sheet, this would have allowed me to really pay more attention to the timing of the bounces and actions of the ball. The reason I hadn’t done this at first was because I was looking at creating the animation in a straight ahead style rather than working from pose to pose to see what the outcome would be. I did still feel as though I had to plan it out with key frames and extremes I needed the ball to reach, so although I aimed to just create a straight ahead animation, it always works better to work pose to pose as well.

Andy and the tribot

Andy has been busy with his negotiated studies in which he’s looking at motion tracking whilst still perfecting his technique and knowledge over modelling and design work.
He stopped me not to long ago to ask for some help animating some of his models which he had created and rigged, which I was more than happy to do so. So the other day now, Andy had asked me to animate his, now small, tribot character he had created within a scene that he had created to practice motion tracking.

This had been done whilst I was still working on my first animation test, but I felt as though some of the things I had learnt from that test had already sunk in. Here I was just trying to put those things I had learnt already into action with the timing, movement and use of frames but I still have lots to learn.

If you’d like to see any more of Andy’s work click on the link below.
http://vonlitch.wordpress.com/

Camera Rostrum set up

Just a quick blog post about the set up that I have been able to use to take images of the frames that I have been drawing to be then placed into editing software.
The software that I’ve been using to capture the images is called ‘Dragon Stop Frame’ and I have been using a DLSR to capture the images.

Disney Application Form from 2000?

I found this a little while ago that was given to my parents for me back when we had visited Disney World Florida back in 2000. When we were visiting MGM Studios there was a Disney cel artist, David Rippberger, there who had an interest in my drawings apparently. This wasn’t because I was carrying around drawings but because they had a drawing session with the kids over there where there were animation tables laid out and allowed kids to draw their hearts out!
I had a ‘Learn To Draw – Chip ‘N Dale – Rescue Rangers‘ book signed by the amazing artist at the time as well.

After the drawing session he had taken some time to speak to me about animation and working within Disney, which also led onto him giving some very interesting and exciting information to me.

These files had been kept away from me for a while now simply because I was at an age where I most likely wouldn’t have taken as well care of it as I would now. But within the folder I found a sheet going over how to ‘care and handling of animation art’ more specifically cel artwork care.

As well as this David had actually given me a Walt Disney Feature Animation Application Form.
The application form has lots of information about how to apply to work at the Walt Disney Studios and covers various areas and what is needed to get a job within that area. It’s interesting to see what sort of requirements and level they expect for a Disney animator, but what’s even more exciting is that it doesn’t just have the information for various areas within Disney Animation Studios, but also the actual forms to apply and address, dates and other information to hand in portfolios and work.
Of course a lot, of the actual application information will have changed as it has been roughly 12 years since I was given this!

I am a little upset I never had the chance to look through this before though, as it has so much great information within it. After all the job area information and application forms, it has a section for ‘recommended course of study for students interested in careers in animation’, ‘computer animation facts’, information on ‘entry-level training programs’, ‘advice for students considering a career in animation’, a ‘booklist of suggested reading’ and then a list of Disney’s Features, only up to 1998′s Mulan of course.

It’s an incredibly exciting piece of document and it’s encouraging and makes me quite proud that I’ve always shown this passion towards animation and illustration, and that I’ve always been meant for this. I’m sure I wasn’t the only child to get this but still… I’m sure it wasn’t for every 9 year old.

Refined Tests

Here’s the two tests I’ve been working on recently that I’ve recently taken images of again to get a clearer version as well as having added a few frames here and there.

The walk is a little more difficult and something I can’t decide over is the speed. Although I created and laid it out to be 24 fps it seems more appropriate at 15 fps.

24FPS

15FPS

Let me know what you think! Cheers.

Developed Cels

After doing some testing with my home made cels, I went with the digital painting method to then photocopy it onto acetate as I don’t have a printer near by that simply prints onto acetate but I will look into that.
I created a stance version of NomNom within Photoshop to try to create some more exciting pieces and carying pieces to display the character as well as simply to look awesome.

Here’s the Photoshop drawing of NomNom in a ‘cheeky’ stance which I had also remembered to flip for photocopying.

Once I photocopied the image I then placed a white piece of A4 on top of it and outlined where the original image sat. With this outlined I then drew around the outline and this is the outcome with the acetate on top and drawing underneath.

I really like the outcome but I may try to create some carried backgrounds as well as looking into printing off A3 versions.

Let me know what you think of these especially with the composition and scale.

Home made Cels for animation

As well as trying to understand the basics of animation and looking into the actual practice of animating using hand drawn methods, I felt as though I should touch upon the creation of the cel based part of the animation process.
I had looked into some of the methods that people have used to create cel based work and methods without having to purchase cel paints. Cel paints start powder based until you add water of course, but looking at various blogs and discussion pages for animators, alot of people had mentioned using acrylic paints as a substitue.

Here’s the process I went through though to make my own home made style animation cels.
I first took one of the drawings from the walk cycle and I drew it out again, just because of the animation paper size and wanting to experiment, I changed it to work on an A4 sized piece of paper.

With the drawing I had then photocopied the line work onto a sheet of acetate. The first sheet of acetate didnt’ actually work very well simply because the sheet wasn’t thick enough and had wrinkled under the heat of the photocopier. The second time I had photocopied it though, I had used a thicker sheet of acetate which stayed much more flat. With this sheet I had then flipped it over to try to paint on the back of it.
The paint I had used was acrylic with only a little bit of water, but this didn’t turn out great.

My painting skills aren’t great so it struggled with this part and understanding the right consistancy of paint. So after looking around on the internet to only find the same information, I went over to some of my friends in Visual Communications to help with materials and ideas. Bobby and myself went through a few various mediums to see what could work, as can be seen above, as well as a few other people getting interested and pitching in ideas. In the end we couldn’t reach any suitable method but layering the paint.

After looking at the sheet, I thought about, although it was some what of a ‘sell out’, digitally painting the character within Photoshop and then printing it out to then photocopy that to be placed onto an acetate sheet.

Print

Acetate

As you can see I forgot to flip the image as when you photocopy it, you want the inked side to face the surface so that the shiny side is facing upwards. The results looked great but it doesn’t have as much presence as the inked cels. Although this is a nice alternative, cel paints will always have a greater appeal as well as being cleaner and vivid.

Walk references

The other day Michael Chapman had taken out the lights and XD camera to do some light tests for his negotiated studies brief in which he’s looking at the technical and filming side of Digital Film. He was testing out different light set ups and a little bit of lighting in general, so I had offered to help him set it up and in return I got to get some walking footage and reference footage for my animation work.
I also had some help from Sacha in Visual Communications to do a little bit of exaggerated walking for me!

Here is the footage that we had captured but with them some of them broken down into the key points within the walk cycle.

I had taken each clip into After Effects and exported them as image sequences so I could go through them frame by frame. I then had chosen the extreme points within each walk that I felt was different or appropriate to use as reference.
With the selected images I then placed them into Photoshop to layer them up and using the ‘multiply’ blending option on the layers stacked them. As well as having the layered version I cropped the images slightly to fit them in the correct order and laid them out underneath to show the extreme points. For those of you who aren’t sure what I mean by extreme points, these are the definitive points within a movement that are the ‘extremes’ of where they are going to go. For a walk cycle this means the Contact > Down > Passing > Up > Contact, but of course this can vary depending on the style of the walk or exaggeration, although from what I have looked at you will always have a Contact and Passing motion.