Visual language

Dog project

So this is the story I came up with. Because I designed the poodle all stuck up I thought she probably knows how pretty she is and thinks everyone is looking at her so in this she is walking through the park when she passes two dogs who she thinks are staring at her, she winks and they come running toward her, but then they run past her and she is confused. It turns out there was a ball being thrown near her and that's what they were looking at. So she ends up walking off in a huff! I thought it was pretty funny. I really like it! If I animated it I would do it in slow motion so you would see what is going on and it doesn't all happen too fast. 

This is my original thinking and first draft of my story board.

Visual language

Dog project

The word I was given for this project was 'Dog'. This was my first set of 12 drawings out of 32. At this point all I could think about was a fluffy dog! and a couple of other things like 'dog house' 'dog bowl' 'dog bone' 'balloon dog' 'hot dog' 'dog poo' 'dog pile', but they didn't really seem like things I could do a story with.



This is the rest of the 32 images. I started getting more ideas like 'scurvy dog' 'doggy paddle' 'dog collar' 'dog and bone' 'dogma' 'dog rose' 'dog leg' 'dog fish'. But again it was very difficult to think of a story to do with any of these I wasn't particularly inspired. The only one I thought of a story for was the posh poodle because it actually had character. So I chose that. I was originally going to do how dogs and owners look alike but mike said just concentrate on the dog.

We then had to do 8 images on our chosen image in different angles and using different mediums. I quite like this series of images. I like the shadows on the black and white pen one and I also quite like the newspaper one.

Fear

So here it is- my final animation! Turns out the gradient made it difficult to edit and perhaps I should have put it on as a new layer afterward but...I only thought about that now. Silly me!
I have never done a walk cycle before as we've not been taught...I didn't think this through when I was planning! so I had to research it. a  couple of things I found are these. I found that I kept missing out the passing part of drawing C on the second image, but I soon fixed that. I think it turned out okay! definitely room for improvement though and I cant wait to learn how to do it. I also found it difficult being a shadow moving because you didn't have the definition of both legs.  

 

Anyway...My animation!!

 

 

I'm glad I've got this finished. I set my self a target to be finished by the weekend and... I am! all I have to do now is convert my blogs to PDF and put everything on a CD!

Fear

So I started doing my animation on Photoshop and the first thing I did was do my storyboard images. So I guess this would be classed as pose to pose animation? Here are my images. I am quite pleased with them actually! I used a gradient layer to make everything look darker which worked well. I used these images as reference:

 

Fear

I was looking at a youtube video not long ago and I posted it on here about character design and he used a blue pencil (which we now have) so I gave it a go and I really like the technique! I like getting the shape with the light blue then putting in detail with the dark blue. I want to practice more at this as my first attempt. I also want to try more styles as this was just the one I read in a book I believe it was called character mentor? I also need to work on how to do a 3/4 view...cause that ain't right.

 

Fear

I decided to do choose the word 'fear' to do my animation on as I got the most on my mind map for it. The idea I had was about a girl who is sitting in an alleyway hiding from someone, a shadow is creeping closer and then she notices but the person puts their hand over her mouth before se can move. This is my storyboard for it.

 I want it too look all dark and spooky. I'd love to be able to make it rain and have a sound track of rain, footsteps and heavy breathing but I don't know how. This would make it so much better!! I was thinking of drawing this out on animation paper but in the timescale I had I decided this was not appropriate and decided to draw it on Photoshop instead.

Stuxnet

Wow this is quite thrilling and interesting. The actual content is interesting but I love to way its portrayed through type and image. I always find that if things are written down for me to read while someones talking its easier to take in the information. As proven here. The key information was written down in an interested animated way that made you read it and take it in and the little geometric drawings just helped recap what they were talking about. It made the context more interesting. As someone with a background i graphic design i feel this was typographically very good too I like a lot of the layouts Patrick Clair used. I'd not really looks at type animation yet but this reminded me of it and I believe it has more of a purpose. 

http://vimeo.com/25118844

Twerk it girl

HAHAAHA this is hilarious xD It's a short claymation video also by Kirsten Lepore of a girl twerking and dancing. I admire the fluidity of this piece and the way she got the ponytail to move after she's stopped moving is pretty clever. This just made me smile so I had to post it- hope it makes you smile too. Reading the comments- I just learnt that she is standing up well even on one leg by using tie downs on the feet so they have ties going through the block of wood she's standing on. Pretty clever.


http://vimeo.com/11649385

Bottle

This is such a lovely pixilation animation by Kirsten Lepore. Very clever how the waves move in the right timing to the sand. Must have taken ages. Well at least a year to get the snow too! It's like a human pen pal relationship and I admire the fluidity of her work. Then they decide to meet underwater but of course neither sand nor snow will last underwater. They're so close and you think they might just make it...but they dissolve just before they get to each other. It's so sad. A lovely way to show the idea of love though. I'm impressed that one person did this by herself.

http://vimeo.com/12155835

Meet Buck

I like this style, I believe its done in photoshop judging by the lines and the textures. This is how I expected it to be when my boyfriend met the parents!! haha! I think its quite comical how Buck has a dear head and the girls dad is a hunter and has animal heads on the wall...perhaps ex boyfriends?! The fathers hunting skills kick in and he wants to protect his daughter so he goes after Buck. It all ends in a catastrophe but bucks friends (also animal headed) save him and turns out most people have animal heads... maybe this is like saying that the Dad sees all boys as meat that he wants to hunt and not let near his daughter? Maybe I'm reading too much into this but I think that would be a pretty cool idea. I like the colours and how its just painted but it looks like its 3D. 

http://vimeo.com/17535548

Shave it

Erm... okay... not really sure what I just watched if I'm honest. A monkey finds a handbag that happens to have a razor in it so he shaves his whole body so he looks like a human, then goes into the human world, is awesome at his job and gets promoted and ends up really rich and then it all gets a little weird from there. He destroys the city cause he has a mental break down? Okay the colours are nice and the smoothness of the animation but... seriously this guy must be all kind of messed up. Just not my kind of thing i guess.
http://vimeo.com/63528500

In a forest

This 3D animation is very exciting,Directed by Fons Schiedon (fonsschiedon.com) and produced by Submarine.nl. I like how they pan the camera to show that theres no-one around and then this wolf appears and all hell breaks loose so the rabbit runs away and falls down and it's all very dramatic. While watching this I was thinking 'wow i love the set design, it's so realistic, is it a photo or is that cgi? That's pretty impressive.' I did think though that the background is more realistic than the characters so wondered if they really fitted together. Then the background disappeared and i was a bit confused and the characters simplified and like turned into rigs. Then the rabbit was cornered so just jumped off this ledge and landed on a cushion It's so surreal but it's showing that its just a character and if you take them out of the scene they're in, they're perfectly safe. It's really strange. Interesting to see the rigs though. Reading the description, I don't think it should have turned out like this but something went wrong in the run up to the deadline.
http://vimeo.com/77579558

Light painting with pixelsticks

This is pretty awesome! It's like pixillation but using light painting, what a neat concept!! I never would have thought of that! So basically they capture scenes of a city with cars and lights whizzing past and they do light painting and the light is taking a journey through the city! So clever! The idea of this video was to show off what the pixel sticks they made can do and it certainly does just that! I like all the different patterns they have. They can do so many different things!


http://vimeo.com/78163959

Upstairs

This has such a good story line that i can relate to. When you get to sleep and suddenly you hear strange noises, you start thinking of random scenarios that would fit with those noises. I'm not sure bout the style of drawing, it's extremely simple and that's not really my thing but it's still good. I like the way they used boxes as the rooms and used other little boxes for the different scenarios. When it went to the shot of what it actually was it made me giggle that it was something completely legit and not what he thought at all. But they had the same thoughts like 'oh no what if its someone come to kill me' kind of thing and the guy asleep would rather not be able to sleep than to get shot so he doesn't end up finding out that its actually just some old lady doing some sewing!! I relate to this like when it's all dark and you see a shape and you think its a person but when you turn your light on its just a coat. 
The maker of this mentions that this is what happens when your brain is stimulated before you go to sleep. Definitely love the way the story is told.


http://vimeo.com/68226169

Le Gouffre

This is fabulously drawn by David Forest, Carl Beauchemin and Thomas Chrétien. I love the realism, I think i would like to try this because it just inspires me and makes me want to do it. I love this style. Obviously i like other styles too but i just think this is like a level above! If you scroll down on this link theres also a bit to do with the bridge. I found it quite interesting seeing how they made it move, i'd not really thought about it before. Id like to see more of this not just the trailer.

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/crowdfund-fridays/le-gouffre-looks-beautiful-and-was-made-by-just-3-artists-89045.html

Making the distance

This is a 2D animation about a lady who loses her short term memory. I like the way this is like a voice over documentary kinda thing, you don't really see many of them unless you look at the animation world. I remember seeing one about a lady who lost her arm that was pretty good too. It makes it seem more real because its like the person it happened to is recapping it but someones painted the picture for you so its right in front of your face. There was some funny parts in this one like where she thought someone she worked with was her mum! I think this does its job well, it portrays what life is really like after an accident from a first hand perspective.  

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/cartoon-brew-pick/marking-the-distance-by-the-rauch-brothers-90623.html

Pixillation animation

Here is my Pixillation animation. The theme I used was predator-Prey. This was a nice quick way of animating I found. The difficult part was keeping the frame the same and not letting things move of get added to the shot because this makes it look less like an animation. I also found making things float and things was difficult, i ended up using string and blue-tack to hold up a spoon and photoshopped it out. I should have figured out how i was going to do this before I started though as it slowed up the process and resulting in me having extra bits in my shot that i didn't know about until i put it all together.

Overall I think it turned out okay and followed my plan but i dont think the quality was as good as it could have been. Part of this is the lighting. I probably should have done it in the day time to help this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45uLFxQsFnY&feature=youtu.be

Happily ever after

This is by Yonni Aroussi and Ben Genislaw from Bezalel Academy or art and design Jerusalem in Israel. I cant believe how good it is for a student! I find it a little strange how their mouths don't move much but that was their design, it looks like a puppet. I love the story line, you really feel for the characters and what they go through because you know that that really does happen. When you get to the end your so relieved. I like how they portrayed the ageing of the characters, that was pretty clever. I also really like the lighting techniques and the textures they used. 


http://www.skwigly.co.uk/showcase/happily-ever-after/

Mute

I found this on Skwigly, its such a strange concept but it kinda makes you think, what would we do if we didn't have mouths?! It's kind of grousome and a bit cringeworthy but actually a really good concept! Its a 3D computer animation by Job, Joris & Marieke in the Netherlands. So the reasoning behind this is odd "Joris cut himself in his toe once, while he was swimming. He thought the cut looked a bit like a mouth, so we thought: this calls for a film! We love to tell short, weird stories." The style of it looks like its intended for kids but when you get into the story...its really not. But i don't think thats such a bad thing because it kind of surprises you because it looks so innocent so I think it still works.
http://www.skwigly.co.uk/showcase/mute/

Honda 'Hands'

So i was absolutely wowed by this, it's so clever! I wasn't sure how they managed this so I googled it and this is what I found:  http://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-making-of-honda-hands/ 
Seriously, check it out its actually quite interesting!! Theres even a video of how its made. Basically they filmed the hands and used models in place of where the cars etc go. Then they created the cars and bikes and things using CGI then merged the two things together. Its really cool how it looks so realistic, at first i thought it was extremely smooth pixilation, the motors look so real! Apparently the ideas came from someones love of transformer toys. They started off this idea by using story boards, then boardomatics to get timing. The idea of this was to advertise honda and it certainly does just that! I think it's intended for young adults, maybe that remember playing with transformer toys, that are wanting to buy a car or a motorbike. It also advertises what else they make which s a good idea! So cool!!

http://www.youtube.com/user/HondaVideo?v=Dxy4n0UT82o

Pixillation

Lost things pixilation animaiton

I found this lovely animation today. Firstly, the photography is beautiful. The use of lighting, depth of field and the quality is great. I particularly like the part where she gets a letter and she opens it up and it's black paper, then i turns into fabric then she puts it on the floor and somehow falls into it like those cartoon holes. I cant get my head around how they would do that!! I also like how her hair transforms into a tree and blossoms with flowers made out of tea cups, they work really well!!Theres just something really beautiful about it! I admire the fluidity too. I definitely need to learn how to do that and keep the camera in the same place every time.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwX7uEiEWx4&list=PLEFD755B0AAA4D7CF

Pendulm

This is my pose to pose animation. This is where you draw the main poses that you want in your animation and then fill in the gaps. I think this is a very good idea. We did this on special animation paper using special animation pencils and light boxes. This was quite fun but quite long and tedious. I liked how the paper was thin so you could see through it. Also the pencils were cool because they blend well, can be rubbed out and also the light blue one used to disappear when they made photocopies but we don't do that anymore. The aim of this process was to get the slow in and slow out action. I believe I got this but not as well as I perhaps could have. I think I needed an extra one or two frames either side or maybe one or two less close to the middle? I also should have made the pencil darker before I scanned it.

 

 

Flip Books

 

I scanned in my flip books page by page and then imported them to quicktime 7 which is proving to be a very fast way of creating a film... one you've scanned it all in. These are the bouncing ball animations we were asked to do plus an extra cute one! The balls are done in 12 frames per second because there are 24 pages and it takes 2 seconds to play the movie. I have been trying to get my head around that today!

I think this was a pretty neat way of animating and I've never done it before. Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy. I found starting at the back of the book good because then you can see where your previous drawing was. I also find it easier to flip the book this way. I enjoyed this and was able to get quite engrossed in it however I think it would be difficult to do a long or detailed animation like this. for a start you can't use half the page because you cant see it when flipping, and also if you go wrong you practically have to start all over again you cant just pull out a page!!