flash vids

another Walk cycle

overlap on ball throw

this exercise has helped me to understand the principle of overlapping action. the two drawings below places the body in two separate extreme poses. the first one shows the body going as far back as its going to go. the second shows the arm in its extreme back position while the body is starting to move forward. this allows for a more fluid and interesting movement .

ron lemen tutorials

figure Drawing

hand Drawing

head drawing

life drawing may

caricature

character Designs

photoshop illustration

shaver

I came about this animation sketching different characters off the top of my head. I liked the look of this depressed guy staring hopelessly into the mirror while shaving. I decided to expand this idea with a couple more drawings. The three drawings became keyframes.

hiker

I have found it easier to plan a walk cycle in flash on a single point with the feet sliding backwards. This time I decided to see what i could get away with not hand animating with it still looking convincing. I think the torso can stay rigid but it would have been good to get a bit of movement i the head and neck.

I also discovered that because its animated mainly on twos, you can't drag the character across the screen. you need to move everything else. i did the background more as an afterthought but can see the potential for doing it this way.

boom!

running surfer

decided to bring back my surfer character to life this time with better character design and the use of flash and flipbook. need to improve workflow but i am quite happy with result.

Ball bounce exercise becomes exploding frog

I have been on the computer for most of today, playing around with flipbook and flash. A few hits and misses, I am trying to find a way to incorporate these programs into my workflow.

I feel like I made a break while doing a ground plane in flash. I got this idea from the Adam Phillips tutorials: place a dot somewhere on the screen, draw heaps of lines coming out of it, some trees and mountains and bingo! A landscape. Next was to do an animation on this landscape (mental note: remember how much better it looks when you draw clouds going towards the vanishing point).

I roughly had an idea about how frame by frame animation works in flash and I have been thinking about timing a lot, so I did a 16 frame ball bounce animation. I drew the keys quickly, put construction lines on them and inbetweened using charts drawn on the right hand side. On the spur of the moment, I thought instead of having the ball bounce into the distance, why not make it explode. on the up of the 4^th bounce Boom!

On new layers I drew a stick of dynamite and a pair of legs. It was easy to locate where everything should go because I put the construction lines on the ball earlier, so I turned a simple bouncing ball into a doomed frog. While it was quite roughly done I think the animation has potential and has opened up a doorway into a new approach with my animation.

duck walk

I have found the mornings exercises of copying Donald duck very helpful when it came time to animate. I think having the proportions drilled into my brain through repetition has helped the animation process because it is not at the forefront of my thinking. I understand the proportions therefore I can focus on the other elements that go into this animation.

I implemented a system for constructing Donald on every frame. It began with the line of action. Then the basic forms of the character: the head, the upper torso, lower torso, the neck legs then feet; all in that order. Once these were established, I went through and made these forms more solid and thought about perspective as well as the forces involved. Thinking about forces helped me determine which lines were straight and which were curved.

The purpose of this exercise was to see if I could animate simple shapes and keep the proportions consistent. I also wished to display an understanding of the forces at work behind a walk cycle. On the whole, I think it has been successful, although, I found that I was lacking when it came to the neck and head. This has been something plaguing my work since day one and needs addressing.

hogarth anatomy studies

Been getting in to Burne Hogarth's book of late, trying to gain a greater understanding of anatomy. Yesterday I started at the head and am working my way down the body. i am currently on the arm and how it connects to the torso

Picked up an interesting bit of info about the muscles of the torso. The torso divides into three parts: top, middle and bottom. The muscles of the top are purely designed to move the arms, the same goes with the bottom section for the legs. and the muscles in the middle section are there to move and support the top and bottom.

bosko animation

This is an animation from the exercise on the john k blog. I am happy to say that I was quite comfortable with the character's construction, months of drawing porky are paying off. I found that i knew where all parts of the character were at all times.

Having said that, there are still kinks in need of ironing out. The head does a weird wobbly thing that is the result of bad inbetweening and my line work needs to be more deliberate so my drawings don't look so messy.

back to the drawing board.

life drawing 29/03/10

daffy and composition test

drawings that tell a story

I went to see my old uni lecturer today and after telling him about my recent trip, he encouraged me to put my experiences into the context of a story or stories. Even moments that could be expressed by a single image.

This has coincided with reading some of the Walt Stanchfield lectures where a recurring lesson is to tell a story with every drawing .

Also, John K has a post that comes to this conclusion.

Guess I better listen to the pros.

expressions

boy run

boy and plane

copying tom

trying out jerry

Copying Jerry

John K lesson 9a

According to John K, tom and jerry are ideal for copying as they are pretty much as generic as you can get as far as design goes. I spent a bit more time than usual trying to get proportion right although I let the last two go a bit. in the full body sketches, i was concentrating a lot on perspective and i think the drawings show a bit more depth.

Suprise Take

Thought I might start following some of the animation lessons from Eric Goldberg's book directly. This is a surprise take I replaced with my own character. I wanted to see if i could apply some of the construction lessons I've been learning to an animation. Starting to slowly comprehend the squash and stretch function of the cheeks and how the mouth pushes them up.

Copying Animation Frames

Half Pint Pygmy

These are some frames from Half Pint Pygmy that I tried to draw on the pegged animation paper. definitely doesnt have the vitality of the original frames. need to work on keeping proportion right as well as line of action.

comic book construction

Life Drawing 22/02/10

Line And Silhouette

trying to combine line of action and silhouette with solid construction. the idea is you can tell what the action is even if the figure is completely blacked out. some poses read better than others.

flash sites

Just got back from India and nepal so i have been quiet over last few weeks. keen to get back into the learning. thought i would have a browse at some flash sites and see what info i could get.

cold hard flash

computer arts

this is a site that centres around toon boom animate

calico monkey

variations on mouse character