In History class, we discussed the freedom of expression in early animations opposed to more recent ones.
Betty boop f.ex, lost alot of her audience because of the lack of sexual content in her recent episodes. I think it shows a good example of why the creators should be able to show what they want. And not give in to the stupid demands of censorship. Its probably very easy for me to say that, but i still think that creators should have TOTAL creative control.
Ann constantly gives us examples of "Post-modernist" work. A term that is still quite vague for most of us, though i think is starting to sink in.
She showed us several "Visual Music" animations. I did the common mistake to look for meaning and purpose of the animation, but once you view the thing as a whole, it becomes awesome and totally new as a visual media.
In Animation Principles class, we started working on Walk cycles. I've always wanted to learn it, but apparently it is way more difficult than i imagined.
We were given 9-11 frames in which to animate a character taking two steps(one with each foot).
We were even given an example of a walkcycle, but it was still hard to follow.
At first, i concentrated on the timing of the feet and the hips going up and down, and figured i would position the feet accordingly. But i forgot about the timing of the feet, and it made him look like he was either walking very fast leaning forward, or just stomping angrily along. With Andys help i located the frames causing the errors. I was even missing frames, in my own opinion.
So i re-did some of the frames and even added some. The animation turned out better, i think, but still needs more improving.
There is no doubt that walkcycles are hard, but also fundamental in character animating. This has been the most challenging of the exercises i think, and i want to do more!
In the Maya bit of the class, we were given a fully rigged mesh model of a girl. We learned the basic key frames of a walkcycle, and animated the girl just by using these 3-4 keyframes for each step.
By slightly altering the existing keyframes, and playing with the positions of the different body parts, alot of interesting "walks" can be made. I took my stomping drawn man into concideration, and copied the movements onto the girl. Which gave her a nice angry walk.
I have played around alot with 3dsoftware and this is something ive always wanted to learn. I cant wait til we get to make our own models for animating!
