Wednesday 11 December 2013

My Animatic

Well... Here is my first ever animatic!



There are too many frames in the run cycle, when there shouldn't really be since it's only supposed to give you an idea of how it's going to move, but apart from that I think it's good, for a first try at least!

The feedback I received when I presented it to my class was overall good; They liked the dog's run cycle and look forward to seeing how I develop that (as am I!),
The only things I need to think about further are character development; a suggestion was to put the squirrels in football kits, to add humour and make it more obvious to the audience what they are doing.
I also need to decide if I should add colour to it, and after the presentation I concluded that I should - to hopefully make it a nicer image to look at!

My main plan of action now is to finalise the backgrounds, since I don't have Photoshop at home to start animating over the Christmas break, and decide exactly what sound to add to it.

Tuesday 10 December 2013

Animation Progression

This is a brilliant side by side animation, showing all the steps of progression from rough storyboard to final piece...



It shows the audience how the animator gradually worked out the timing and placement of the camera, and how the ideas changed slightly as they kept working on it and decided the final character designs.
It's interesting to see on the rough animation parts of the characters faces had already been fully coloured in, to show they had already considered colour and style when creating the movements.

Monday 9 December 2013

Animatic Examples

To get an idea of what I will have to do to make an animatic (since I've never made one before) I looked at some examples:



"Despicable Me 2"'s animatic has clear movements of the characters, as well as action lines around the shaking bins and their arms are duplicated to portray their panicked/fighting motions.



"The Final Exam" is a good example, since it has arrows indicating the camera movements, only a few facial expressions, but enough for the audience to get the idea of what is happening.

Both of these have shown me that I just have to take the pictures I drew for my storyboard and add only a few movements to give me an idea of the timing and how long it will all pan out for.

Photoshop Tutorial

One of the software that we are allowed to animate our final piece on is Photoshop. I found this easier then Flash since I've had some previous experience in an induction we previously had.


Using the timeline, each purple box represents one layer, which is easy to manoeuvre along the lines to change the order and timings of each drawing. It also allows you to reveal each layer before and after your current layer/drawing, which is useful for getting the object in the right place. 
I think if I had continued to draw the rest of the action of the ball it would look better, but I think I have applied the squash and stretch technique well to this ball, since the movement is quite fluid.




Once I had figured out how to duplicate the layers to keep the same image, it was easy enough to move the pendulum. One fault I would say is that it moves too fast; to cure this issue I would add more frames in between each key frame (both sides and bottom).

I think I will use Photoshop to animate my final piece, since I found it easy enough to grasp the basics and enjoyable to work with.

Wednesday 4 December 2013

Visual Styles

In order to animate this piece, using the same style for everything would make my life easier. Heres some of my experiments:



To make a quick animation in a short period of time you need a design that only needs simple lines, yet still shows the character for who it is, and portray their actions sufficiently.
I think most of these sketches would be too complicated to draw for my animation, so I took what I had learnt from drawing these and applied that to my final designs:



I think both designs are easy enough for me to draw, but still have the cute characteristics for the dog, and slightly menacing for the squirrel.

Monday 2 December 2013

Final Idea... Refined

I wrote out my final idea again, to try and get a better idea of how my piece is going to look.

"A dog and it's owner are in a park, surrounded by forrest. The owner throws a ball for the dog to play fetch, towards the forrest... As the dog runs after it he spots a squirrel has picked up his ball - they look at each other, then the squirrel starts running as the dog chases him... Suddenly the dog runs into a tree and lands in a pool of mud - the owner then appears in the forrest after searching for the dog and starts taking him back towards the park. The camera cuts to the squirrel with the ball in a tree looking at the dog, but his attention is caught by some more squirrels, who just want to play football."

The idea is to explore the element "Earth", with the animals and environment acting naturally - or unnaturally. The punchline is the dog running into the tree, which hopefully will add some humour and emphasise that Earth is the element I'm exploring.
I think this idea has a simple storyline that allows me to have the chasing scene for as long as needed - It could be as long or short as I want to fit the story in the 20 second time slot.

This is the storyboard for this idea:






I think looking at it in this format has made me realise the story is too long. It needs to fit into 20 seconds, so for my animatic, I will experiment and maybe cut a couple of scenes out.

Flaaaash... Aaa-aah

The Adobe Flash induction, a software kind of like Photoshop, proved to be a fun task. I found it quite difficult using key frames on this programme, since it automatically predicts the movement between the frames. 


This pendulum was easier to make, since the movement pivots on one point at the top, keeping the same distance between the ball and the pivot point the whole time. It's also easier to create the easing in and out at the different key frames to make it look more like a pendulum.
Just either drag in any direction or type in the number you want.


Making the action fast - slow

Making the action slow - fast


After playing around and receiving a re cap from my tutor, I managed to make this bouncing ball:



I think the squash at the bottom works well, as it's quick and you can see the exaggeration since the frames either side of it are more circular. 
I don't like the transition of the easing in and out at the top of the bounce because it's not smooth and kind of pops out at me! However for a first attempt at using Flash I'm quite proud of what I've achieved.


Sunday 1 December 2013

The Bear & The Hair - John Lewis

This has a very unique style of animation - a combination of cut outs, 2D and 3D sets - which has wowed many people recently:



I think the actual quality of animation is brilliant. They have a 3D feel to them despite each image being a cut out; this is due to the shading and style of the pictures.

Using real-life sets contributes to the 3D feel of the advert, and little details such as creating footprints in the snow when the rabbit leaves the present adds to the illusion.

Bailey and the Snowman - Animal

This is only a 30 second piece, yet it tells a nice little story within that time slot, whilst advertising...


Bailey and the Snowman from Animal on Vimeo.

I really like the visual style behind this, as it has a finished look, yet it's still simplistic. The colours used also add to the style overall.
The actual quality of animation is very good on the boy, although I think the snow could have been better, if it looked fuller and as if it was falling heavier.

"Animal", the company who made it, was established in 2001, and since then has gone on to win many awards for their animations for clients such as Honda Japan, Taco bell, Delmonte, and many more companies.

They generally use a mixture of special effects on film, and animation, to create adverts. This is their showreel, including "Bailey and the Snowman":


Animal Sizzle Reel Summer 2012 from Animal on Vimeo.

It's interesting how one company can use so many different styles, showing a good variety of different talents.