That was strange, I went to add a new post a while ago and there was an advert preventing me from reading what I was writing. I'd like to know who allowed some one to place an add on my blog composition page. Especially when it prevents me from adding a post. Anyway I managed to deactivate it but it has made me a bit suspicious as to how it happened.
Back to the matter in hand. I started animating yesterday. I have most of the drawings done and was keen to get started as I know this will take a lot of time. After finishing the drawings, in pencil, I then inked over the lines so they could be scanned. I only just found out that there was a scanner in Clare street. I used my own printer scanner up till now but the quality isn't great. I had noticed that I was spending a lot of time filling gaps in the scanned artwork, prior to filling areas with the paintbucket tool. A way to cut down on this and get much cleaner lines is to trace the image in Illustrator. It gives a comic book style to the images. Thanks Dave for the tip. It became obvious how much better the images traced in Illustrator were when I started to animate. As you can see in the videos the quality of the fist bike is much poorer than the second bike, which was traced in Illustrator.

 

 

 

 

The video above has the first bike after being traced. There is an improvement, but as the bikes all have to pass close to the camera, the quality has to be as good as possible. I think I'll now trace all my scanned images first which will add to the time needed. But then I should save a lot of the time I would have spent touching up the gaps, and it will improve the overall quality.

So the next thing I have to do is an animatic. The audio would have to be done anyway so it'll get that sorted, and help me to see any areas that might be adjusted or improved. I will be posting that as soon as it's done.

 

Finally got the storyboard finished for the Christmas card brief. I'm starting to get a bit worried already as it's taken the bones of four days to do, and that's just nine still images. O.k. so a day was lost trying to upload it - technical errors - but I have a ton of work to do. I still have several characters to draw plus a dozen or so motorbikes. There's also a lot of background stuff that still needs to be added. First though I think I'll have to clear out some old files as my computer has slowed down dramatically, even Photoshop which worked fine before, closed itself down last night, probably exhausted. There's roughly six scenes, the first four will be only about two seconds long - each. But there's a lot of motion in them so that'll require a lot of drawing.

 

The image above is the opening shot, it will include several bikes speeding past the camera/viewer. It's the only one I've done so far and I want them all to be different so I won't be just copying this bike & rider (though to be honest I'll have to do it if time is a factor). I have animated a moving wheel as part of the research. That is I added lighter shades to opposite arcs and made it move up and down, to give the impression that the wheel was moving. Now that I've been working on the timing I don't think this will be necessary as the bikes will pass by so quickly.

You might guess that I've discovered the clouds filter in photoshop

 

 

Again there will be as many bikes as possible within the time for this scene and hopefully they can all be different.

 

It'll be snowing in this scene, should be interesting to try

 

 

This scene needs to be darkened as it's set at night. I want to include the light beams of the bikes as they pull up outside the hospital. This might be a bit ambitious so it'll be left till near the end and dependant on time.

The main thing for me with regards the storyline was to avoid the stereotypical images of Christmas. I think I've done that in the first half of the animation. O.k. there's a robin in there, and snow, but they don't necessarily have to imply Christmas. There is an obvious reference at the end, there's only two more scenes. But I wanted to build up a sense of tension/ apprehension so that the ending would be a surprise( It'll be a surprise for me if I actually get it finished in time). But that's part of the entertainment isn't it, to have a twist at the end of your storyline.

The remaining two scenes are firstly, the group walking along one of the hospital corridors, and finally reaching their destination and carrying out their business. Hopefully I'll have at least the first scene animated and ready to add to my next post.

 

Since we got our latest project, an animated Christmas card, I've spent a lot of time looking at animations on the net. This is part of my research and it's got to be done. Actually it's good to get an idea of what others are doing. It's not the first time I've checked out animations on the web, but I'm trying to get an idea of what not to do. It was recommended that we avoid stereotypical Christmas visuals, so I 've been looking at Christmas animations mainly. And Christmas e-cards. It's hard enough to come up with an idea without any traditional Christmas visuals, and at the moment I'm still researching (waiting for inspiration). I found it useful to read a few traditional Christmas stories, and am kind of drawn to the message of peace and goodwill, so I have to come up with a script that portrays this.
 In the meantime I've finally got round to photographing what I've done in the drawing classes. What I'm posting here isn't everything to date as there's a share of stuff in my sketchbook. This is just some of the drawings we did in class on larger sheets.

 

 

 

The images above are blind drawings. A good exercise to improve hand eye co-ordination. I can't help thinking of Picasso when I do these.

 

 

 

The two images above were still life's of basic forms made up of a white rectangular box, a white paper cone and two eggs. They were done using a 2H pencil which was probably too light. I built up the forms gradually using shading only. this was because the background was also white and it was more of an exercise in tone. No lines were drawn first which is what I'd usually do to map in the shapes.

 

 

 

 

 

The life drawings above were done with the same 2H pencil. I really need to get a HB. My other pencils are 3B and darker which I tend to use for shading.

 

 

I used a charcoal pencil for the image above. The poses were time limited for this exercise.

 

 

A few of the forearm and hand drawings, again with the 2B pencil, apart from the obvious charcoal one. I really like the Photographic effect gained with this method (charcoal pencil and rubber). I tried it first in the following images. These were similar to the fist still life tonal studies, using white shapes on a white background. A really nice composition can be gained with the right lighting. Again the forms were built up gradually but with the advantage of using a rubber to enhance the lighter tones. By reworking the tones several times the image eventually gains a realistic feel. I have to say I like this method of drawing and will be doing a lot more when I get the chance. I think I'll try a portrait, just out of curiosity. Don't hold your breath though. It might be six months time before that happens.

 

 

Apologies for the poor picture quality. I have to keep the camera resolution low or it takes forever to upload images.

 

 

 

 

 

I have to be honest lads, that IDI project was tough. After doing the research and the storyboard in the first two weeks, I was looking forward to getting down to the actual animation. I had two ideas for the animation and I was confident that I would have enough time to create both of them and have the option to submit either one. As it turned out I ended up being under severe pressure just to get one finished in time. The main reason for this is my inexperience. I chose to animate in Adobe Flash and it proved to be a lot harder than I thought it would. Having spent over two days getting a walk cycle correct - using the bone tool - I realised with two days left, that this walking motion was only applied to the characters legs. This meant that he could only walk on one spot. This is fine when you can move the background, to give the impression of the character moving, but if there's another character in the same scene, he or she moves with the background. So I had to create another walk cycle for the character involving the whole body moving. There were also problems with importing a motion clip into a new file. I spent days on that too. Thanks to Dave, who sorted the problem in minutes. Though by then I was under pressure for time. I suppose one thing I learned from the experience was that I need to be more proficient in a method before I commit myself to using it. I also need to organise my time better. I spent a lot of time in Photoshop preparing the various body parts that I used to compose the characters, and there was a lot of them. When I get a chance I think I'll build up a library of various body parts that I can use over in different projects.
I've uploaded the storyboard I used in the animation. Another thing I learned the hard way was that I never factored in the time properly. Our brief was for a 12 second animation but by the time I had finished and edited mine it was 23 seconds long. I did know before I started that it would run over a bit, and have to be trimmed down, but I ended up cutting big chunks from it to get it down to 12 seconds. Anyway the storyboard below will give the gist of it.

 

The opening scene sees a caveman on his way home after a hard day at the office (hunting). As you can see he's giving the wife a lift home. Surprisingly, for a woman, she's talking incessantly. This is intrinsic to the plot.

 

 

He stops and groans when he realises how far he is from their cave.

 

 

A banging noise to his left attracts his attention.

 

Another caveman is busy carving a stone into a circular shape. He's dreaming of building a cart. An early designer?

 

The first caveman has a bright idea

 

He trades his kill for a stone circle. Is he thinking of building a cart too?

 

 

No, it seems like he has another idea.

 

It's got potential.

 

 

The category

 

I've uploaded the original and trimmed versions of the animation, just to show how important getting

 the duration right is.

 

 

The original 23 second version

 

 

The 12 second version

 

I've looked at everyone else's animations on dropbox and I have to say they're all very impressive. Well done guys. 

 

I was surprised at the amount of time the editing took. I tried to use Adobe After effects first but for some reason the audio wasn't importing with the video. So instead of adding audio again I chose to use Premier Pro. I've used this before but its not as versatile, luckily enough it did the job and as I was pushed for time I stayed with this programme. My plan was to edit two scenes at a time, in case of disasters, and then bring everything together into one project. Naturally this didn't go to plan as, when I imported the pairs of scenes into the final project, they came in as a folder which, when dragged onto the timeline, separated randomly and had to be re-arranged again.

 

I had thought about hand-drawing this animation at first but I don't have a light-box. I'm definitely going to get one as I'm sure I could have done this quicker, even by drawing each frame. I normally use a window for tracing (at home), but that's confined to weekends now due to it being dark these evenings. I also need a break from this computer before my eyes explode so if it suits our next project I'm going to do stop-motion, maybe claymaytion.. I've been working on a character rig based on those wooden figures that you can pose, for life drawing. I'll put the images on the next post, along with a description of the construction process. I know you can just buy these figures but that can prove expensive if you need more than one. I also have a design, from 'The complete animation course', for a clay figure wire & wood rig, for a figure. I'll put that up too or I can photocopy the pages if anyone wants (AMD2013).