The Stakeout! Reference.

I finally got around to shot my reference, and I also shot a closeup reference of my lips speaking the lines.
I shot this back in Norway in my mothers car with the help of my little brother.

Here you can see the clips:

And the lipsync one:

See you later.

Youtube it! Part 2

Hi again, I just wanted to pop right in and recommend another little clip I found on the web.

This time it is a trailer for a music game that came out some time ago created by Harmonix.

This shows The Beatles going from an underground band to a world sensation. It starts as a 2D animation and goes over to 3D about midway through. How this trailer combine music and animation is just beautiful!
One of my favourite game trailers.
I also love how the animals(?) in the end is animated to the music, they have a lot of weight and the timing is perfect.

See you later.

The stakeout, Lipsync task.

For our second task in this module is a lipsync task. Penny handed us a bunch of different sound clips and I ended up picking a clip that I've heard before in a film. Usually this is a bad pick, but since I knew the origin of the clip I could avoid "copying" the animation of the source.
I pictured a scene where 2 cops out on a stakeout in an alley, and one of them is kind of a preaching tough cop, and the other one is a relaxed layed back cop.

I took the inspiration from The Incredibles by Pixar where Mr.Incredible and Frozone is on the secret stakeout in the back alley. (I am having really trouble finding any clips of this that is available online.)

I also remembered a lot of scenes from old 60s cop series.

Next I will post my reference shot, I will hopefully get my little brother to help out.

See you later.

Youtube it! part 1!

This will be the first post of my new series where I will be recommending short animations from Youtube.com and other places.

The Saga of Bjorn!

Bjorn, an old Viking, is determined to reach Valhalla, the warriors afterlife full of excessive drinking and debauchery. To gain entry he has to die a honourably in battle, but he discovers that the right death isn't so easy.

My comment:
This is by far my favourite animation in the last few years, and the most shocking is that it has been created by final year students at the animation school "The Animation Workshop".
The timing and visual style in this short is amazing, the laughs keeps on coming, even in the more serious parts of it.
The character design really fits everyone of the characters, from the big hulking old Viking to the slim and fast spearman/dragoon.
I only wish the design on the Dwarf was better, he kinda sticks out from the lot of them. But the looks fit the actions of it.
The animation is also really well done, and I do not think I have anything to criticize on it.

The presentation!

Our first task for this module was to create and present a presentation where we analyze a short animation clip of our choice.
I selected a clip from the amazing Disney animation Aladdin (1992), where Aladdin and Abu first meet the Magic Carpet in the Cave of Wonders.

The reason I picked this clip is because I abseloutly love the Magic Carpet character, even with so little to work with Randy Cartwright (wiki) gave this character lots of appeal.
Since the Magic Carpet has no voice it has to express emotion through its movements. Almost like using pantomime.

Here is the clip I used "Aladdin meets Carpet" , the original clip I used in the presentation has been removed due to copyright problems.

And here is my final presentation;

 
 Hope you enjoy reading this, and keep on checking in for further updates.
 

Welcome to Animation Practise 2

Hey, it has been a while since I posted something on this blog. We started Animation Practise 2 right after last module, I was however a little sick and burned out the first 2 weeks and the work has been going slow.

These are the tasks for this module:

- Analyse and presentation of a short animation clip.
- Lip-sync to a short sound clip.
- Lip-sync and acting to a "news anchor" sound clip.
- Singing and dancing animation to a music clip.

I will also write some post about some short animation I have found on internet.
Keep reading for good times.

See you later.

Almost death by piano! Final!

Yes! Here it is, the final submission for the first module.
But lets talk about the last few days of work before showing it.

On Friday everything went smooth and I got a lot of work done, I focused on most of the facial expressions and the hands, in addition to finishing up the run to walk cycle.

Saturday started out great, and I got to work on the stuff right after my character picks up the ball. However, when I rendered a preview and showed it to a friend of mine, we noticed that the steps where waaay to long and the animation was choppy.
I decided to delete all the animation I had done that day, and start over by fixing the storytelling poses in stepped keys. Everything was going great, but after 2 hours I noticed something strange with my rig.
Somehow the foot had been twisted and there was a gap between the foot controller and foot. I had no keys at all that made this happen, I carefully went trough the entire animation 1 frame at the time.
So when I couldn't find the reason behind it, I manually twisted it back and lowered the entire controller to make the animation normal again.

Phew, crisis averted I thought! Not at all, somehow the foot I had problems with would not go out of stepped animation. At that point I almost had a meltdown. I had been sitting at Uni for 10 hours animating and fixing, and I could not get rid of the last problem. I saved one more time and went home to get some sleep.

On Sunday I woke up fresh and ready to tackle the problems and finish the project. Even though I did not fix the problem, I got through it in the end. I sat for over 20 hours, only taking one break to get some food.

Wow, what an eventful weekend this was.
So here it is in all its glory!

Almost death by "piano" WIP 5

Today I continued to work on my breakdowns. It is going slow, but I am happy with the result.
Only a couple of days left before hand in, so I need to work faster! But faster often means less quality.

Here is the work so far:

Enjoy!

Almost death by "piano" WIP 4

Today I have been working on the run and walk of my character.
It is fun to do, but it takes a lot of time. i have never done a run before, and certainly not a run into a walk before either!
I am learning a lot, and I am trying to keep the animation clean and neat without to much stuff messing up.
Under you can see how far I have gotten, and you can probably see where I have not done anything yet.

See you later.

Almost death by "piano" WIP 3

Today I have been working on the bouncing ball, added the piano and fixed his fingers to match each pose.

Here you can see a picture of the piano and a small clip with the bouncing ball.

See you later.

Almost death by "piano" WIP 2

Today I finished the storytelling poses for my blocking phase. I already love how it looks, and cant wait to get this animation done!
Do not mind the weird ball animation at this point, it is basicly only 3 keys to just give me an idea where I wanted it to go.
Tomorrow I will hopefully get the ball and maybe the piano/box done.

See you later!

Almost death by "piano" WIP 1

Over the weekend I have been blocking out my storytelling poses, and created a small environment.
When animating, I always love the blocking part. This is where the animation is at its basics, and by creating good poses you can tell a story.
When moving on from the blocking stage, I always get nervous for some reason. I think it has something to do with the fact that it gets way more complicated at that point.
Nevertheless, a good blocking stage helps a lot when moving on.

Enjoy!
I will be back tomorrow, where I will hopefully have blocked out my main story.

See you later!

Ball with tail final!

Here is my final ball with tail animation, I wish I could do it over again. I am not happy with how it turned out.
I cannot believe how much trouble this animation is giving me.

Enjoy!

Almost death by "piano" Reference

Today the whole class was in the green screen room with Mark Bushbaker and Penny.
We each shot our reference footage and helped out where it was needed, and came with new ideas.

It was a blast, and we got a lot of good laughs doing it.

I am pretty happy with my ref shots, and you may notice that I changed the ending too the "lucky" one.
It seems like a much more fun idea, and I get this classic slapstick feeling about it.

Here you can see the footage, I have also added Frame counter to each of the clips.

Now I am ready to start getting my storytelling poses down on paper and in 3dsmax!

See you later.

The Walk final!

Here is the final version of my walk animation.
I had some doubts about having the breathing pause in the animation, since I felt it kinda broke the fluidity of the walk.
But most of my classmates like it, so I am sticking with it.
This task was a blast to do, I have never done a good walk animation before. And I am quite happy with this one.

Enjoy!

Death by "Piano" storyboard.

As our final ICA in this module, we are tasked with creating a small animation.
This animation has to have a person who is acting together with two of the following things: Bouncing ball, ball with tail, or pendulum.

Often here in Middlesbrough I see kids running in the streets playing football, and thus I got an idea the other day walking home. What if a person runs after a football that went wide, and after he picks it up he gets slammed by a piano or box that was being hauled into a tall building. The box is suspended in air by some straps that acts just like a pendulum when it swings.

I made a quick storyboard showing my idea, and I am going to show them to Penny tomorrow.

Above you can see the storyboard. I also made an alternative ending, where the character is lucky instead.

That is is for now.
See you later.

The walk WIP 5

Hello again.
It has been some time since my last post, this is because my darling girlfriend came from to Norway to visit me last week.
Felt really good to get some time off, and I am now feeling fresh and motivated to complete this module.

After last weeks feedback session I made some changes to the walk animation, and I am in process of giving my character a thinking pause.
I am really happy with the feedback I got, and I cant wait to start the final ICA for this module.

Here it is, enjoy!

See you later.

The walk WIP 4

Today I finally got my breakdowns done, I have also added a "up" and "down" position to his walk.
This is the one I am going to show tomorrow for our feedback session.

See you later.

The walk WIP 3

Hello yet again.
Today I have been working on my breakdowns. I am not done yet with them, but I figured I could post a updated preview.
As you can see, the animation flows more fluid at this point. The breakdowns allows me to define the person that is walking too.

I will post another update tomorrow.

See you later.

The walk WIP 2

Hello again.
I am now finished with my key storytelling poses for this animation.
Next I will be doing the breakdowns.

See you later.

The walk WIP 1

So here is the first few steps in my walk animation.
This is just pose to pose with automated curves on, I have a few more steps before I start doing the breakdowns and all the other stuff.
So far I kinda like where it is going.

See you tomorrow.

Reference for the walk.

So yesterday, Kristian from my class helped me shoot my reference footage for my next assignemnt.
My plan for this walk was found when I spotted one of the teachers at Teeside walking with alot of books under her arm, and a big and heavy suitcase in the other.
She had this fantastic arc of motion trough her entire body, and it made her look kinda like a old woman.

here you can see me trying to get the same result when creating the reference:

A big thank you to Kristian for helping out.
Now onwards to doing some animation!

See you later.

The Ball and its Tail WIP 2

Hello dear reader.
After having a successful feedback session today, I sat down with the "Ball and Tail" Animation again, and fixed up a bit of the stuff I got feedback on today.

These are some of the things that are fixed:
- Gave the whole sequence about 50 more frames to work on.
- Fixed the squash and stretch so that it is not squashed or stretched when the ball reaches the peak of its jump.
- Created breakdown for the squash and stretch on each jump.
- Tilted the Ball towards its movement trajectory (not sure if this is correctly written)
- Gave the landings 1 more frame, before it starts on the way up again.

Here are the result, I still have a lot more I want to do to this before we are done with this module.

Hope you like it so far.

See you later!

"Overjoyed" Poses

Here are my poses for the sentence "Overjoyed"
In these 3 slides I wanted to show someone who won the lottery or something like that.
He first gets really surprised about what he sees, then he curls together to let out the scream/loud "yeah!" sound of his life, just before he jumps into the "success" cliche pose.

The only one I am not so sure about is the third and final picture. I keep comming back to the question "Is it powerfull enough?"

Thats it for now. Time to work some more on the "Ball with tail" project.

See you later!

"Waiting to start" poses

Hello again.
For the last few hours i have been posing the first choice.
Here are my results:

I am really pleased with the results, and hope for some positive feedback.
I may have to exaggerate the last shot a little more.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the next one.

See you later.

Evolution of the sketches!

As i said in my previous post, I struggled to find my own way of drawing my poses.
Here you can see the evolution of my work. Warning! Some of them are really bad!

So yes, this is why I am so happy to have found a way to draw fast and somewhat okay.

See you later.

"Overjoyed"

The second pose I chose was the "Overjoyed" one.
At first I had this idea about a child getting a big present for Christmas, and just ripping it apart!
But I had some problems setting this up in my head.
I then read this story about this dude winning the lottery, so I wanted to make one to illustrate a person experiencing this.

Here are the sketches to illustrate what I want to do with this one;

One other thing worth mentioning is that I finally found a way to draw my character easy and simple.
Yay! That makes me a very happy animator!

"Waiting to start"

Hello and welcome back.
So I have chosen the first pose for this task, and it is "Waiting to start"
The first thing that popped into my mind when hearing that sentence was a person going to run 100m in at a track field.
Here are the sketches I have done to illustrate what I want:

As you can see, I had some troubles nailing the third and final pose. But I am kinda leaning towards the comedic "Flee" pose.

Posing and staging!

Our next assignment is to create a series of 3 still poses from 2 of the choices below.

1. Waiting to start
2. Late for
3. What's inside
4. Troubled
5. Er .. Excuse me
6. Overjoyed

After I have selected the two I want, I need to sketch out the rough poses. This way it will be easier to do the final pose in 3Ds Max.

I will be using a rig called Dee Rigg created by Manuel Sierra.
This rigg was changed a bit by Remi Vaage, former MA student at Teesside, he fixed up how it looked and gave it more appeal.


Next update will go into detail about what of the choices I picked, and hopefully some sketches.

See you later.

Ball with tail WIP 1

Here is my first WIP from the assignment i started over with. This is 2 days work.
Instead of doing pose to pose, I decided it would be better to animate it in "layers". First i Animated where I wanted it to move, then the bounces, then the tail. Then Squash and stretch in the end.
I still need to time it a little better. But this is a good start.
I also need to add some more pauses so I can show that the ballthingy thinks.

But for now, I need to move on to the next assignment.

See you later.

Sketches!

Here are some of my sketches I drew on my smart phone. I am using "Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile" to make them.

I am in no way any good at this, but I will keep practising to get better. These sketches illustrate different walks I saw on the street.
It is so difficult to get the pose down before the person has moved on or I have forgotten it.

See you later.

Setback!

So today I showed my half finished animation to our teacher Penny and a fellow student. I was hoping for some pointers on how to give my animation more personality. But instead got a bunch of negative feedback on the stuff I had done so far.

I got really bummed out about that, and not because I got negative feedback, but when you are only getting negative feedback, and not constructive criticism to counterbalance that with it kinda gets me frustrated. 

So I went home to get some sleep instead, since I unfortunately only got about 2 hours sleep last night. 

After coming back to school at about 6 PM and working on it for a few more hours, I ended up deleting my whole animation in frustration. I could not solve my problem in those hours, and my frustration just grew and grew.

So now 12 hours before we have to show our finished animation, I have nothing.

Not sure about what to do now. Do I pull a all nighter? Or do I let it go, complete my next assignment. And then go back to this when I have time?

Block it! The ball and tail.

Here I am almost done with my block. I used stepped keys to stop 3ds Max from creating the "drawings" in between the frames. But somehow it would not work on the squash and stretch part.
If you compare this to the simple storyboard, you can easily see how it will turn out in the end.
Storyboards are so vital to all the work we are doing!
As Penny, our teacher, mentioned in a class : "Planning is half the work"

Here it is:

Next post will be when I finish this, hopefully. I still need to get it "approved" on Wednesday.

Peace out

Can this be concidered as a Storyboard?

So I made a quick sketch of how I want the "Ball with tail" to do.
I then drew it again in Photoshop, since I dont have access to a scanner where I am located right now. It is fairly crude, but hopefully it will work.

In the assessment it is specified that the ball has to bounce on top of a box, and then down again in addition to give it personality. I know alot of my classmates have these complex ideas for how to solve this, but I for one will keep it fairly simple....I think.

Next I will be posting my blocking.
Stay tuned

A ball and its tail!

So here is the pre-made "ball with a tail"  rigg I will be using for our next assigment.
I really wanted to make one myself, but since there is so little time to do this, I found out that it would be wise to skip it.

This rig is found on this page : RigsArena
It does not say who made it, but it was posted by Umar Muzammil. So all props to him.


next update will contain my plans on what to do with my animation, as well as an explanation of what kind of assignment this will be.

See you later.

Animating a pendulum!

So when we recived this task, our teacher posted this amazing youtube tutorial from Keith Lango. These changed how I see overlapping when animating.
Here is the tutorials:

For the animators out there, I really recommend seeing all three. For the non animating people, the first part pretty much sums up overlapping and followtrough.

These are the animation principles I used when animating this piece:

-Timing
-Overlapping
-Followtrough
-Ease in & out

When animating a pendulum, you will be suprised by how automatic the animating will go. Once you have placed the first pendulum swing, and decided on if it is a heavy or light ball at the end. The rest will kinda fall into place naturally.

That is it for now, but the next assignement we got will combine the bouncing ball and pendulum animations into "Ball with Tail" task. Here we will also try to give the animation some personality.

Stay tuned for more.

How to animate a bouncing ball!

Since I am now "done" with my bouncing ball animation. I thought it would be a good time to write how I did this task.
I was mostly using The Animators Survival Kit tutorials, when animating the bounces.
Things you should remember while animating a bouncing ball is:

-Timing
- Ease out & Ease in
-Squash & Stretch
-Arcs  (this will sort of come together by itself when animating, but Ill put it here anyway)

After reading up on these animation principles, I shot a reference video:

And added a Frames Ticker to it, this way I could easely see how many frames each bounce takes.
I am especially pleased with the first ball in the shot, it is almost 2D in the way it bounces across the screen.

You then go on to pose the ball in the extreme positions in the animation and adding frames. After you are pleased with how the bounces look, you then go on to time the bounces, and by doing this right you add weight and motion to it.

I did have some problems with my timing, and that made it look "floaty". But after some feedback from my classmates and Penny. It turned out good after this.

After you are done with that it is time for the Ease In & out part. This is where you define the bounces as bounces and not something randomly moving trought the screen.
Remember ease in and out on top of the bounce, and fast in and out at the ground where it makes contact.

When all of this is done, you can add squash and stretch to the balls that needs it. I did not add that to my golf ball, since it is so riggid and firm. But I added a tiny bit of squash and strech on my rubber ball.

I also found some really good internett tutorials today with good illustrations online that hopefully can explain things in more detail that I can here.
These are:
Idleworm - Angryanimator
Randolf Dimalanta - Intro to 2D Animation

That is it for now, but the next post will be about how to animate a pendulum.
Stay tuned.

Are they done?

So these are the two versions of my animation I will probably turn in at end of this module.
I may have to pick them back up again, based on feedback from class and teachers. But I have a good feeling.

Thank you for watching and reading so far. Keep comming back and you will hopefully not be disapointed.

WIP Bouncing Balls 3

So I think I am finished with this animation too. I will hopefully get some feedback on wednsday from my class.
I will also be making a seperat blogg entry explaning the various animation principles used to animate both the pendulum and the bouncing balls.
In the meantime here is my video:

See you later.

Where and what?

So some of you may wonder where I get my help from when animating the Bouncing Balls and Pendulum. I am using the book The Animators Survival Kit by Richard Williams. It has some great illustrations in it showing how a ball bounces for example. Check it out, I highly recommend it!

Bye bye.

WIP Pendulum 2

Hello again.
So I think I am almost done with the pendulum task. I just need some more feedback on my timing at Thuesday, then I'll do the finishing touches before this blogg is being marked.

See you later.

WIP Bouncing Balls 2

So I think I'm done with the big balls bouncing. Now I need to finish the smaller ball, then animate the reaction when the small one hits the big one.

I may need to tweak the timing alittle more, but I will do that when I am done with the small one.

Stay tuned.

Final Presentation slides!

This is the final presentation slides for tomorrow. I am supposed to do a short presentation about the animation principle Appeal, covering about 10 min.

All images where found using Image search from Google.

Hopefully I will keep my nerves under controll, and not get instant alzheimers like last years final presentation in SPB.

Wish me luck ;-)