So it’s been a bit slow this semester as far as blog posts go, mainly because our main project has been a months-long group film, which I prefer to post info about only when it’s done. However in the midst of all the stress that comes with finals we just had a really fun project, which was to caricature a famous person. Behold, Frank Zappa!
I enjoyed this so much that I’ve decided to colour it during the summer. Look forward to that!
This semester has been much different so far. They’re gearing us up for third year, when we’ll be making our own short films, and so this term has fewer but larger assignments including a mini film done in groups (more on that later). The first few weeks were devoted to a single animation, for which we were given audio and had to animate to match it.
It was a lot longer than most of our other projects, but I had fun the whole way through and came out with something I’m quite proud of. It’s without a doubt my favorite piece of animation so far.
The final animation assignment for year 2, semester 1 was this dialogue between two characters (although it was less lip-sync oriented than the previous one). Some challenges here included finding good poses for the key drawings, the very slow follow-thru on the toilet paper, and being able to include the whole “gotta go really bad” dance at the start (which was my own addition, not part of the assignment).
Okay, year two semester one is over, which means I’m officially at the halfway point of my animation education. And since finals are finally over, it’s time to show the world some highlights of my recent work. To start with, below you’ll find my final design assignment. No special gimmick to this one, it’s simply a pan background, with lots of detail and effort put into it.
This is technically only a rough, and they’ve told us that a possible future assignment might allow us to produce a clean version. Even so I’m quite pleased with how it turned out given the time pressure I was under. There’s a lot of variety in this one; industrial buildings, futuristic buildings, cliff faces, winding railroad tracks. It was a good way to end my first term of second year.
And here we have the biggest assignment of the semester by far. It was really more like what should have been the final, because of the length of time it took and all the different parts involved. It was the first ever animation I had to submit with multiple scenes (i.e. camera shots), and there were a lot of aspects that made it more technically challenging than anything else I’ve had to do up until now (for example, slowing out of a pan, treadmill walk cycle on 1′s, slowing back into a run cycle…). It was actually fairly brutal.
In the end, my line test was one of the most fully completed ones, but I still sadly didn’t manage to finish it completely. I was actually advised to finish it when I have the time, which I just might do at some point because it really did turn out well. The movement is there, it’s just facial and clothing details that need to be added and cleaned up in certain parts.
My second to last layout assignment for design class this term was a repeat pan, which is one of those backgrounds typically used in TV shows that repeat over and over e.g. while a character is walking. There was quite a bit of technical work behind this, in order to ensure that the right and left edges match up properly in order for the scene to repeat forever. This was supposedly also going to be used as the background for our animation midterm, or something, but that didn’t end up happening. It doesn’t matter though, because I ended up with a very nice stand-alone layout that I’m quite proud of.
It’s supposed to be a mad science lab. Lots of nifty lasers and robots and uh… Erlenmeyer flasks!
Now that 2nd year 1st semester is nearly over, it’s high time I posted some actual animation from my year so far. Here are two assignments we had to do in a very short time back in October, using the now familiar character Wendy. Personally I was very happy with how these turned out, especially the head turn, which I think is one of the best pieces of animation I’ve done so far.
It’s a brand new school year, with new projects to post. I’ve already got a bit of a backlog, but I’ll get things rolling with this background I just finished off for design class.
Here we have a futuristic city, with famous world landmarks floating in the sky, featuring a three-point perspective upshot. The surreal subject matter wasn’t my idea, sorry to say, and I wasn’t in love with it at first, but now it’s grown on me and I’m pleased with how it turned out. Stay tuned for some actual animation shortly!
Been working on this for a couple of weeks, on and off. It’s what’s known as an Ex Libris, or bookplate (basically the fancy version of writing “this book belongs to…” inside a book, instead you’d glue one of these on the inside cover – Wikipedia for more info).
I’m also proud of the fact that I conquered my long standing fear of the Photoshop pen tool with this project. Of course I couldn’t resist mucking up those crisp clean computer vector lines with some gritty faded texture for a little natural character. Also, compare with the original pencil sketch which I scanned and used to create the final version.
Our first animated walk. Not technically a walk cycle, because the character walks across the screen in front of a still camera, as opposed to walking in place with the camera tracking him.
This assignment was shorter than it looks, because there are only four main keys to a character walk, and for all the other steps it’s possible to basically trace the same drawings, or at least the same silhouette. Still fun as always!
This little clip was my contribution to the class anijam, which means that this clip would be stitched together with everyone else’s who all have the same start and end frame. The result is that the ball keeps on changing, and it’s kind of like an “exquisite corpse” for animation.
Not really a major assignment, mostly just for fun 
Well the school year is over for me, so it’s time to post a few semester highlights. After the getting up assignment, we moved on the the side step, using Bugs Bunny.
The purpose of this assignment was to start getting into some detailed character animation, as well as getting across the feeling of shifting weight. Overall one of my best looking assignments in my opinion.
Just got the mark for this back today (it was good so I figured it was time to post it up. It was our second animation assignment this term. Different principles to think about as always, but still fun.
My mission: To combine the surface anatomies of two animals, preferably of different types (reptile x mammal, fish x bird, etc.) Behold the result!
Ironically, this was a life drawing assignment. Yes, as in drawing things that exist in, er, life. Go figure.
My first animation assignment of the year! We jumped from circles with faces right into human character animation, which is really saying something. Keeping things on model and maintaining volumes is now a much greater challenge, as well as making the action look natural.
