Double Leicas

It's been almost a year since my last post on here... having been caught up in group film work, and then subsequently nothing to do with animation afterwards, now I'm late getting back into the swing of school.
Enrollment issues aside, I dabbled with two film ideas because I couldn't choose what would work better as a school film. I ended up going with my ladybug story, but they both have similar, formulaic structures.

This year in our mentor groups, we had several Milestone deadlines to meet. It's all fairly straightforward and wasn't too difficult to catch up on. A few...

Completed Action Analysis

Finally composited and finished! Here's a video of Mr. Fluffy jumping into a pond. Working on this, watching him jump repeatedly... again and again...


Character cleanup (ToonBoom)


Layout field guides


Painted Layout (paint tool sai) was going for winnie the pooh-esque light atmosphere.


I wish I didn't crop the layout so tight... the overlays and multiplane pan wasn't really working after I did the layout testing. I might try and finish the boy's animation or use his base as practice for a rig in toonboom. It was a big learning experience and though I started out with an aversion to the program, I think I've learned enough to sort of get the gist of a bit of it. :)

RED ALERT: Group film individual handin

Last Friday we presented some of the individual work we've each done for our group film!
I left out my character drawings and member caricatures from the pitch package from my presentation because it felt redundant... I should've included them in the end for marks, though.

Our group film also has its own blogspot (think it's okay to share): http://redalertshortfilm.blogspot.ca

Action Analysis Assignment

What I have so far for individual assignment in Layout and Animation classes!
Chose my action as a 'jump and grab' on the dog's part; Initially it was to be a 'pitch' by the boy, but I haven't really played around with quadrupeds, so...

Workbook (storyboard to roughing out placements/layout)

Concept art package








Rough layout. Blew up the workbook and just detailed the levels. Drew at 1920x1080 instead of 1280x720, oops.


Rough animation! Did the walk cycle first after watching puppy videos (best homework).
Also was having technical issues, so I just drew the frames out in sai and exported them singly.



Class critique today said that the hang time in the air was too floaty and long- plus it pops forward out of the arc instead of dropping after reaching the apex of the jump (cue dog-hunting jokes,). DQ also commented the animation in all the parts have very even timing so everything is kind of 'soft', but taking out inbetweens shouldn't be too difficult!  Still have to animate the stick through the air (whole lot of other issues concerning pace compared to the dog's) and the water... and kid ruffs...
And make notes on the camera move, where the layout and animation should be (I drew it all weirdly so there's some funny levels shifting to do). Super simple concepts but somewhat tedious in execution as always.

Heroes and Villains!

Lining and celshade actually took double the time instead of painting. Regardless, this was a fun assignment.
This first character is my lady knight Djenn. Her armour is mostly based off of Gothic plate, and I modified its practicality slightly for this picture. There's so many more elements I wanted to fix/add but I'll settle with painting a new version... it was also my first time seeing my work as a single (questionable quality) print, other than in artbooks! Exciting.

disco dancing over extreme, oops



The life drawing poses they were based off of. I mixed some and took a lot of liberties with others.

End of second term- charas & anims!

Whew, it's been a while since I posted here. Just going to throw up all the projects from the last term in batches again.

Character Design
Anthropomorphism
For muzzle design, learning about how in animation, the mouth is often pulled back up to create a cheek and relation to the eye for more expressive faces, contrary to the lack of such in most real life muzzled creatures.
For beak design, learning to maintain the rigidity of the beak, yet also being able to pull back for a pseudo-cheek or show teeth only as emphasis on particular moments.

Also was suggested to show eye white for the owl for more emotive expressions/ relation.

Theme Design
I chose Victorian setting for my characters. I ran into some trouble when it came to the storyboard section using them, but it was a lesson well-learned!
rough concepts (two per title)

Final concepts and layout drawing! I'm not sure if anyone recognized it, but for the layout setting I meant to base the composition off of 'A Special Pleader' by Charles Burton Barber.

Can still see how off my grid lines are, oops.

Performance
Drawing a character in sequence, more like animation keyframes than storyboard.



Animation
Lip-syncing
Hello star shine!


Full body acting, concerning visual movement accents on certain audio parts
Audio clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.


Muzzle sync. The professor helped me lots on the cutting (on the action), where the cat turns around. He pointed out to keep the character within the same 'area' of the screen in both shots around the cut, so their placement is not as disrupting to the eye.
Audio clip from The Man in the Iron Mask.


Last animation of the school year was the beak sync! I wanted to do more on this, but time (and paper) was running out. I've yet to try digital animation to this point, more out of aversion to the line quality, so I hope I'll be able to during the summer.
Audio clip from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory


Next posts for digitools, painting, layout and storyboard...