All My Files

You can find all my files here:


https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4GP5STBuu-1TkxvSUF5amx0cHc&usp=sharing

The Seasons: Component A

Katie Morgan

Weekly Journal.

Exercise 1:

Stages of production.

This week I will be creating a presentation on PowerPoint to explain the stages of production in a animation. I will be talking about:

• Ideas generations
• Storyline
• Production schedule
• Mood boards
• Background/environment planning/designing
• Character development
• Model sheet
• Character mood sheets (facial expressions)
• Storyboards
• Sound source
• Animatic

Most of these topics I know from my own knowledge however I will have to Google the meaning of a few of them such as: Sound source and Animatic.

I am hoping to add some YouTube clips in the PowerPoint as well to show examples of what I am talking about; also YouTube is the best way to show your explanation because there are some good tutorials there. I am going to add lots of images from Google for examples of what I am explaining.

This YouTube clip is a great example of storyboarding:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvdJq7RrSR0

Here are some screenshots of my PowerPoint have done:

Theses two screenshots are too show you the slides of my PowerPoint.

Exercise 2:

Frame By Frame.

Today I will be creating a frame by frame animation to demonstrate frame by frame. I will be designing my own minion with one eyeball. The story is that the minion notices a banana that pops up on the screen and moves across the stage hovering over him, the minion get excited with a big smile on his face the banana disappears. I will be doing this animation one frame at a time using Flash CS6.

I have really enjoyed this exercise fortunately for me it is one of my favourite styles of animation. I find it very peaceful using the ‘onion skin’ and drawing over the work you have just drew, I found it easy and relaxing.

I remember the first time doing a frame by frame animation and I got so frustrated and angry because it took as very long time to do and It was not going so right; comparing my experience then and now I know in myself that I have grew in the animation industry, I was calm and relaxed when I did this exercise I also knew what I was doing so I didn’t need any help, I knew my idea I knew what I wanted to create.

I know I will do this exercise again; it will be one of the main styles of animation I will use for future projects. If I stuck to the same idea if I did this again I would put more depth into the animation add some more characters, a background and the minion walking into the stage not the minion just standing there.

I Googled some images of frame by frame and luckily I found some amazing examples that was also really useful references:

Here is an image of a head moving, you can see the changes of how the head has moved.

Even though this was not relevant to my animation, I thought this was a great image for future projects especially when moving a head in an animation.

I YouTube some frame by frame animations that others have created themselves and I have found some really amazing work.

The first one I watched was 'Public sleeping – hand drawn cell animation frame by frame'. This was inspiring because it shows this type of animation style accepts the rough sketches, it proves that both the style of animation and style of sketches fit well together. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpE_Ot_FXZ0&noredirect=1

The second one I watched was completely different; this one was more comparing puppetry and frame by frame.

I thought this was very useful because it showed how jumpy frame by frame is towards a different style of animation, it also shows that frame by frame is best of being rough sketches rather than smooth characters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bh39mCktoc

This image is my first attempt at creating my minion, I didn’t finish it because it was too detailed for the exercise so I took a step back and created a different minion with less detail for the exercise. My aim is to finish the first minion and create a completed animation.

 Here are some screen shot of the progress on my animation:

Images of the timeline:

Exercise 3:

Squash and Stretch.

This week’s exercise is squash and stretch; a perfect example to demonstrate this is by using a ball; it can be a tennis ball, basket ball, rugby ball anything that can bounce in reality and also can be shown in the animation world as realistic as possible. This technique is basically when the ball drops when it gets to the ground it will squash and stretch as it hits the ground and retract back up it can also be a looped.

So today I have chosen to use a ball shape to create this exercise I’m going to create the animation on Adobe Flash CS6 with the ball and draw a line at the bottom as the ground.

This exercise involves timing; I have learnt you have to be on point with the timing otherwise the ball will drop too slow or too fast, it can also make the animation look non-realistic.

I really do not enjoy this exercise because however much I constantly attempt this exercise I can’t seem to get the grips of timing. So I know I need to work on this exercise more to understand it fully also my progress on squash and stretch to grow.

I found some useful images off of Google to help me with my animation and these images break the whole squash and stretch down, making it a little easier to animate my ball.

 I have screen shot some of my work,

The first couple screen shots are from my first attempt at squash and stretch:

With the ‘Onion Skin’ on; this is what the ball looks like when it’s dropping, this was good to use because it helps you with the timing.

My first attempt was very bad; I know I can do better than that so I went on YouTube looking for ‘Squash and Stretch tutorials’ fortunately I found a great video that has helped me out a lot, it breaks down the squash and stretch animation and is very useful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaLESWaRMjU 

I have had another go at this exercise and I think this was more of a improvement than my first attempt, I know I will continue later in the future with this exercise because I want to be able to create a squash and stretch animation with no problems.

As you can see there is a improvement on the timeline, the first attempt's timeline is longer and has more frames that are not needed in there; whereas with this timeline, it is shorter with less frames. 

This is to show you the improvement from the first attempt to the second attempt and how different they are. As you can see the second attempt is much more accurate than the first attempt. 

Exercise 4:

Facial Expressions.

Today we have to create facial expressions on Adobe Flash CS6. I will be creating a female face and changing the facial expressions from happy, shocked, sad, laughing and crying. I will be demonstrating the different types of expressions of the human face.

So I typed ‘facial expressions’ into Google to see what type of expressions could help me out with my own work. Luckily I found two great references that I knew would of helped me out alot.

Here is the first image I found, I really like all the different type of emotions shown it also has a character to go with the emotion which is what I want for myself in my animation for this exercise. This is the type of facial expressions I want to create myself however I realise that this is a bit more harder and complicated for me at the moment. I know I will eventually lead myself up this path so I will be able to create my own female with these type of emotions, but for the mean time these are too detailed for what I am aiming at today. 

I noticed this image and thought this is perfect for simple easy facial expressions. I have picked the sad, shocked, crazy and sarcastic look out of these images; I then will create my own emotion on my characters face.

This image I thought is very useful and handy to have for present and future times.

I found some online tutorials to help out with the facial expression for the animation. YouTube tutorials are great for this type of stuff I have found a 20 minute tutorial in how to just change the face, I thought it was quite long but when I watched the video its worth the 20 minutes because of how helpful the animator is. This tutorial has definitely helped me out a lot. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKv7rRcb2Cw

This animation is something more my style of animating, I would prefer myself to create something like this than what I originally did however if I can I would like to give this a test for  future projects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9z8me1Iiwo

This video I spotted on YouTube was brilliant! The video is clips of animations with facial expressions and lip-sync. This is definitely something that is inspiring to me and something I really want to lead myself up to doing gradually. However this is in 3D I would aim to do this in 2D and gradually build myself up to doing it in 3D. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jblvIvWd6w

This is a great example of a humans facial expressions, these images really capture the face size - how the shape changes size in each expression. Captures the eyebrows of how they move with the eyes. 

My animation mainly revolves around just the face, and the face moves to one expression to the other. I created a character to go with the face using tweens to join each expression. If I have the opportunity to do this exercise again I know I will because I enjoy creating the face expressions and replacing the faces I would use frame by frame to do this. 

These images are screenshots of my characters facial expressions on my animation. Even though they are simple expressions with a simple character I think I captured the expressions well which was the man thing in this exercise. 

As you can see above on the timeline the character is broke apart into their own layers so it is easy for move the changes of each expression without all of the face changing as well e.g. eyebrows, eyes, mouth, nose and head. I should of joined the nose with the head because I did not animate the nose however looking back at it now Im glad I didn't join them together because when the head moves the nose would of moved as well at parts it should not be moving. 

To help me with changing the expressions on the face I imported this image on the right of the screenshot into Flash as a reference. This image I got from Google was a great reference I chose the sad, sarcastic, crazy, and shocked face out of this image although I created my own version on my own character so I was not copying the expression. 

Personally I prefer to create model's/animation's this way with a reference in Flash because  it helps a lot and it does make a difference.

After my character was completed and all the facial expressions was complete, I added the word of what the expression was - in the screenshot, e.g. shocked. I used a shape tween between each word, it was a big risk using a shape tween but I honestly think it does work and it was what I had created in my head.

Exercise 5: 

Walk Cycle.

Today's exercise is to create a animation using the 'walk cycle'. This should be very interesting because I've never created a walk cycle before and I've been very intrigued to attempt this sort of exercise in animation. 

So to help us out with this our lecture has given us a template on Adobe Flash to show how the walk cycle goes. I found this template was very helpful because it shows you how the walk cycle walks even just as a stickman. Fortunately we was allowed to draw over the stickman walk cycle to get the feel of how the character is meant to walk. 

As you can see above these screenshots show you the templates that we got given to demonstrate how the walk cycle goes. The right one is a demonstration of how the walk cycle looks with a character and the left one is a demonstration how the walk cycle looks as a non-character so as a stickman. You can also see that I have sketched over the left one using the paintbrush in a red colour. 

These screenshots are how the stickman looks when i sketch over the template with the red paint. 

After I have completed the walk cycle drawing over the template, I deleted the template that I used and was left with my drawing. As I watched it back it was very rough and sketchy, I really liked how it came out. 

Before creating my own walk cycle with a character I did some research on YouTube and Googled some images that would be best in helping me out this exercise. There are some great images and videos that are very helpful. I also found some walk cycle's on the side, explaining how the walk cycle works and front walk cycles.

These images I found on good are examples of how the legs should be moving in the animation. This is telling you that it's like a number pattern from 1 to 4 when the legs are moving; also a contact, pass position, propel, break the fall and contact. I thought these are great for when I'm creating a character walk cycle in future projects also they are great reference's and both patterns will help work the walk. 

These are some examples of the how a walk cycle on the side should be, I have shown how a character walks, how a human walks and a diagram that examples how each step goes. 

Below is shown how front walk cycle is created. These images are useful for when creating a front walk cycle because the images give you examples of how the arms and legs move, captures just the legs, shows you the hips and shoulder movement. 

Above is a front walk cycle.

This is a great example of a simple walk cycle. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-d52ozo4B0

When creating my own walk cycle animation I felt confident to do this exercise because of the test experience I did and the examples I researched. I created a character then added a moving background for affect. I used the frame by frame technique and when it was completed I felt very happy with it because it came out to be really good. 

 With this screenshot I am showing you the left arm is out of screen because there was no reason for it to be in screen. 

I  really enjoyed doing this exercise because it was moving the symbols a piece at a time and it was frame by frame. It was quite relaxing and I didn't have any problems with this at all. 

Exercise 5: 

Bone Tool:

Today I will be learning the 'Bone Tool', I'm looking forward to how this plans out. i'm quite nervous because I know how filially it is and need a lot of patience for it. However I know my patience has grew quite a bit from when and first started animation to now. 

Like last week we got templates on the Bone Tool, I've had a tester experience with a block figure to get grips of how the Bone Tool works. I must say it is very frustrating. It is hard to understand how to move the limbs without it going crazy, even if the points are pinned in place. 

Below shows you the difference of when the Bone Tool is showing to move the limbs and when the Bone Tool is hidden. 

As you can see above on the timeline frames are placed to show when the action of the Bone Tool will take place. I had to pin the body in place because it kept going everywhere on the screen. 

This tutorial on the bone tool was a great help because it breaks down how to use it in a easier way. It didn't make the Bone Tool easier but it gave me a better understanding in how to use it.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqyMHpVAEZw

This is a good example of how the bone tool should look. 

So after my research of looking at tutorials and how the Bone Tool should be looking I decided to give this animation a go myself. I used my walk cycle outline as a guideline in how i should get my Bone Tool character to walk as well. I created my character first then added the Bone Tool; I did it as frame by frame because it was easier than using tweens. However it was not going so great but it was my first attempt at the Bone Tool and I'm pretty happy with how it came out. 

Above shows you how the characters are walking. 

As you can see my character and then the Bone Tool on top , this is showing you where I have pinned the limbs and what i have been moving. 

This is the timeline of the animation. As you can see the green layer is the Bone Tool and the layer on top my other work that i have been using as a guideline.

I know I need to definitely practice more on this topic because I felt nervous in doing it, it was not the best exercise to do, but in the long run I am glad I did it and got a little experience in using the Bone Tool for future projects if I decide I need to use this at any point in my animation. 

If I ever do this again, I know I would do it differently I wouldn't want to feel nervous in doing it I would feel confident because I know it will not be perfect first time. I know I have to work towards using the Bone Tool properly. I would not use a character I would use a animal e.g. a worm. I would animate the worm moving around in a piece of fruit with scenery of the woods. But I have enjoyed experiencing the Bone Tool.