#advancedanimationworkshop

[zolapatoodi]

I tried to record my kitten Abelele walking, but she just wasn’t having it! She’s a bit fussy about being recorded, so decided to lay down and look regal instead. I guess I’ll have to try some online reference.

[diogobaiaomdx2]

Reflection Report

During the process of making of this project, I have learned many skills regardless my animation capabilities. I generally have both learned new things and particularly improvised on the previous ones I mostly had before in a major way. Thanks to the lifting up and putting down, push and pull animations, I have learned even more about height and dynamic on the movements. Before I hadn’t much experience with heavy objects and the strength that the human body had to use for those situations in animation.

Thanks to the quadruped walk cycle I have learned more about the anatomy of some animals, not only through my animation but also thanks to my classmates animations. I have gained more realistic movements and more quality in my general skill of animation. Before I had never worked on animating animals so thanks to this project, I have now more knowledge in animalistic movements.

Thanks to the obstacle course I have learned even more realistic movements, especially for height, pacing and timing, of certain movements. I have also improved on making walk cycles in a different way with perspective.

Overall, I think I have improved a lot since before this workshop. I have improved most of my animation skills, learned new ones and also managed to learn not only from my experience but also my classmates experiences too. I have become a better animator thanks to this project.

[cheesebunnyanimation-blog]

Planning - Foot placement/ Analysis of Gallop Cycle

I used www.anilyzer.com to view a video of a fox galloping frame by frame. I used the video “Red Fox Running” from Youtube (by user “AlanF439), and studied the frames from 02:80 seconds to 03:24 seconds. The cycle actually begins to repeat at 03:20 seconds, but I included the next frame anyway to show that the pattern repeats.

Again, the chart showing the foot placement shows that, just like the trot cycle, the gallop does not have a mathematically perfect pattern. This does not surprise me, as there is less control in a gallop than there is in a walk, or even trot. When I create the gallop, I will amend the inaccuracies in this cycle and make it more mathematical.

[zolapatoodi]

Progress of ye olde candy course...will finish, currently too tired :(

[zolapatoodi]

250 Word Reflection - Advanced Animation Skills

Overall, I really found this project useful. I think I have a much stronger foundation of understanding the anatomy of multiple different animals as well as how they move and behave when performing certain tasks like walking and running – although I could probably be a bit more observant of their running motion.  I think this is great because it means in future, I can also consider adding animals into my own animations without apprehension about the way they may behave in a scene. 

As well as looking at the quadrupeds, we had to do the push, pull, and lift cycles. I really enjoyed this part because it forced me to be considerate of the 12 principles of animation – particularly, I found anticipation to be very significant when characters are moving items and I never really thought about the complexity of different principles that may come into place when doing an action as simple (yet intricate) as a push or lift. I found this to be great fun though and this has helped me to distinguish the weight of items my characters interact with also.

 The obstacle course is a tricky one as I went into the project extremely excited and keen to complete it, but I think my mistake was that I overcomplicated my background to the point where it was really long (in width) and I needed to make the camera pan across the screen in order to get the whole of my background. This in-turn meant that my character had to move quite quickly amongst some of the obstacles and, that I had to continuously edit the position of my character so they wouldn’t be tracking across the screen in places that they should’ve been still as the background moved. This overall increased my workload far more than necessary and I think keeping it simple, in future, would mean I can be more productive and more considerate of animation principles while animating interesting character challenges like that.

[zolapatoodi]

as far as I got with my obstacle course....tried to make the movements more believable and slow things down a bit in terms of creating longer holds and more anticipation etc.

[zolapatoodi]

I don’t really know what possessed me to create this monstrosity, but there’s definitely room for improvement here lol! Supposed to be a walk to run but based on multiple animals with no real direction...I just thought i’d wing it!

[diogobaiaomdx2]

The final Advanced Animation Workshop film compilation. In this video I have my Lift and Putting down, Pushing, Pullin, Quadruped Walk Cycle and my Obstacle Course.

[diogobaiaomdx2]

Here is my finished Obstacle Course. I decided to use a character that resembled a test dummy. Animated on ones, I wanted to keep it in a mixture between realistic and cartoonish. There is a lot of struggle on the movements but also it moves in a rubberish way.

[zolapatoodi]

My background for the obstacle course going through it’s many stages from sketch to completed colour version. My inspiration for this was candy and sweets - all things to induce cavities! I thought it would be a fun area for my character to traverse

[zolapatoodi]

For my obstacles I was inspired by popular tv game show obstacle course like Total Wipeout which I used to watch as a kid laugh manically at and American Ninja Warrior which I only recently discovered, but am now obsessed with! Moreover, I was inspired by the horrific challenges I did in cadets like jumping, climbing, crawling and running - I’ve included an image here of me and two fellow cadets after a completed incognito recce patrol where we climbed barbed wire, hid in bushes and rolled across wet fields in the countryside :(

[diogobaiaomdx2]

A short animatic for the obstacle course project. I am still unsure if this is going to be the final choice of obstacles.

[zolapatoodi]

I looked up some reference of cats walking for my quadruped walk, but I’m not entirely sure I found them as useful as I initially thought. I feel like it would be useful to see a cat walking in real life so I may try and record my own cats or look up some online. 

[zolapatoodi]

I have decided I would like to do either a dog or cat for my quadruped walk so in my spare time, I just decided to draw out a dog skeleton just to get a feel for the bone structure of one of our four legged friends! Luckily, I had a lot of fun doing it and I found it very interesting becoming aware of the placement of common body parts such as the ribcage, spinal cord and pelvis.

[zolapatoodi]

This is my attempt at pull and lift so far. I utilised the reference and also tried to be considerate of the moments of hold and strain for the character even before the object begins moving. I feel as though a bit  more exaggeration of the strain for the lift before it comes up may improve that animation in particular.

[zolapatoodi]

This is a compilation of videos from our class pushing, pulling and lifting this lovely box. I thought these particular videos would be great reference as we can see people of different statures trying to move different loads of weight which creates some interesting poses and actions in terms of anticipation, holds and angles of the body.