#dynamicsproject

[solzit]

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[unitba1a]

October 15th - Jump Animation 

I actually managed to get this motion down pretty quickly in the one workshop session that we had. I feel as though I didn’t really maintain the size of the figure consistently though and that they grew in size as the animation progressed but suddenly shrank and the end of the animation because I drew the two contact frames before anything else in the animation.

So, I attempted to smooth out the end of the animation by editing a few frames at a later date. 

[unitba1a]

Walk Cycle, attempt 1 - 1 step and no arms 

I really struggled with keeping the forward most leg consistent throughout my walk cycle. I constantly kept switching the forward most facing leg and honestly it was really frustrating because it was somehow really hard for me to spot? I had to ask for an instructor to help point out the issue. 

Going forward, I’ll definitely place a lot more attention into the placement of the legs in my walk cycles because that seems to be a big problem point for me. 

I also reviewed pages 102-127 of The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams to help further understand exactly how to carry out the motions of a walk cycle.

[unitba1a]

October 1st - Hard ball bounce 

After discussing the idea of squash and stretch in lecture, I attempted to do a ball bounce without applying this principle and the followed doing one applying it. 

I feel as though I did not space my frames well with this animation and I drew too many frames for it to work at 12fps leading to my having to animate it at 24fps.

I also did not consistently maintain the level of the floor throughout the animation so I will be keeping an eye on that in the future. I feel as though I should’ve edited the brightness and contrast settings of the this animation as well. 

[unitba1a]

These are some scanned pages from my notebook. 

[unitba1a]

September 27th - 2D Standard Pendulum Swing 

This pendulum swing was based on the plan that I drew detailing the frame spacing. I tried to apply the idea of using easing in and easing out to the swing in order to give the pendulum swing a more realistic sense of timing and spacing. 

[unitba1a]

Sept 24th - Pendulum collision 3 

This was the third iteration of our group pendulum swings using Dragonframe. Once again we had an issue with the cropping of the video file. Going forward, I now know to always turn on my safety borders as I work to ensure that I stay within the boundaries of the cropping ratio. 

[unitba1a]

September 24th - Pendulum collision 1 

This was my groups’ second attempt at a pendulum swing involving a collision. We used a smaller ball to hit into our main pendulum and discussed the impact that the size difference between the balls would have on the spacing of the frames as well as the overall arc that he ball would take. 

We swung the ball on the string to demonstrate the arc that it naturally swung with and observed the overall weight of the motion. We determined that even if the smaller ball was to be moving faster than the bigger one we were using as our pendulum, it would not be able to have a super massive impact on the bigger ball. 

We ran into another technical issue here in that our video file didn’t save properly while we were exporting it in dragonframe and so the video doesn’t play completely. After asking a technician about it, we were unable to determine the cause of this issue. 

We also had a bit of an issue where our blue tac shifted as we were working and so that impacted the overall consistency of the animation.

Going forward, I would like to spend some time familiarizing myself with dragonframe in order to avoid these issues. 

[unitba1a]

September 24th - Standard Pendulum Swing 

This was the first pendulum swing that my group, group J did using dragonframe, a tennis ball and a piece of string. 

Having had no real experience with the software, I was pretty uncomfortable at the beginning of the lesson but by the third pendulum swing I felt somewhat less intimidated by using dragonframe. 

I feel as though this first swing was pretty well executed aside from the fact that it got clipped off a bit at the lowest point because my group and I were still unfamiliar with the ratio in which dragonframe crops films by default.

[unitba1a]

Walk Cycle attempt 3 - 2 step, arms and secondary action

I finally managed to fix the leg problem and I also added in some hair to show secondary action. I feel like a could’ve been a lot more neat about the hair and that it detracts from the overall polish of the animation because of it’s inconsistency. 

[unitba1a]

Walk Cycle attempt 2 - 2 steps with arms 

I feel as though the issue I had with switching the legs is clearly visible here. It took quite a while for me to properly spot and resolve it.

[unitba1a]

October 4th - Secondary Ball Bounce attempt

I feel as though this first attempt did not work as well as I initially planned because the secondary motion is hard to follow. I will be adding some more defining features such as a face and shading in the hopes of making the motion in this animation more clear.

[unitba1a]

October 1st - Ball Bounce using squash and stretch 

I feel as though this animation didn’t really work well because I didn’t apply squash and stretch properly or time my frames properly. I plan to redo this exercise. 

[unitba1a]

September 27th - Planning out my pendulum

Having discussed the idea of laying out a spacing chart in lecture with Helen, I set out to plan the extremes, passing positions and in-betweens that would take place in my pendulum swing. 

I can honestly say that at this point, I didn’t fully grasp the idea of laying out a spacing chart and so I definitely feel that I didn’t plan this swing out fully or properly. As a result, I will be redoing my pendulum swing at some point in the future.