Experimental Animation

Pete and I teamed up for this one.

We decided to animate a skateboard going along the ground, doing flips and grinds like you would see in a skate video. Though we tried to make the tricks look somewhat realistic, we also wanted to take advantage of the fact that we could make it do anything. And that is why the skateboard is suddenly going along the wall and stuff like that.
I think we could have probably gone even further and done more "fantasy tricks", but once we had all the once we envisioned from listening to the soundtrack, we just left it at that. And we are happy with the variety of tricks.

The technique was clear from the beginning: to animate the board one frame at a time, with someone holding the board in position, and then in post key that person out. This sounds way easier than it is. Keying is a complex tedious process. With most of the clips, we would have been better off reshooting them, but we already worked a lot on them.
Things like fingers on the board and shadows especially, is something you know to keep aware of whilst shooting, but it is, like i sais, easier said than done.
We both agree that the end result meets our expectations, but it would be fun to get it even better.
The timing of the animation and things to be aware of while shooting, are the key elements of this project. And we feel we could have done that better. But all in all we are happy with the experience of the animating as well as the post production we did.
It makes us laugh and we had fun!

11 second club animation - FINISHED!!

I finaly finished my animation!!
I made some last minute changes to the camera before submitting this to the 11 second club site.
But now i wont change it any further. I am exhausted from this project. But i am really happy with the result.

Here it is:

11 second club animation - keepin´at it!

Im nearly finished with animating the body of my character.
Here it is. I am very tired after a couple hours straight of animating!
But this thing is starting to look good. Just some finishing touches and then its on to facial animation!

11 second club animation - animating

I started animating the inbetweens of the keyframes i already had on my character. And i even changed the keyposes around too. Going back and forth tweaking and improving.
Now i have basicly half of the clip animated.
Just the body though...

Before i started animating properly, i animated the character doing a 360 flip on a skateboard just to get to know the controls n stuff.
I thought it looked good, but looking back at it now is funny because i realise that the more you keep at it, the better you become. And the more time you spend NOT animating, the more your skills will slip away.

And it had been a while not animating when i made this:






And here is half of my proper animation. I think it looks good now, but who knows in a while...

11 second club animation - preparation work

Listening to/ scrubbing through the soundfile we were given, i started writing down the different parts of the sentences. I got confused about just how to write the SOUND of each letter/pronounciation. Basicly because of the difference in norwegian and english language. I think in norwegian, but talk in english.
I just wrote the whole speech down the side accurate to each frame, and then put mouthshape names next to it.

And i need more dopesheets! i underestimated the length of the pauses and sighs etc.
But i think ill redo all the dopesheets anyway because i want the "sound-language" to be right.
The way its layed out now works, but only to make rough pose-to-pose blockouts.

With the hand drawn scetch-out of my 8 key poses, i slowly went trhough the dopesheet and added them to the frame that they would start. Or at least where the pose is most important.

And then, in maya i could just follow the dopesheet. Im starting to see the importance and practibility of the dopesheet. You wont really need to load the soundfile in maya. You can just follow the notes on the dopesheet. For now anyway. I guess things will complicate along the way...

So at the right frame i posed my character to the right key pose. And since it is so few keys given i set the motion curves to stepped tangents. That way he "clicks" from one pose to another, but still with the right timing.

11 second club animation - First stage

Our whole class is entering animations for this months 11 second club competition.

The sound file given this month is just a guy sobbing, saying "I am living in a cocoon of horror... yesterday i ate nine cans of aerosol whipped cream".

This tells us two distinct facts; that he doesnt like where he is living. And that he, in some way ate nine cans of whipped cream.
But the rest can be played with i guess.

I saw some good examples from my classmates of where he actually is and why he has eaten all that cream.
And i want to do something original too, but without losing focus of the character of course.

I wanted to use this project to explore my skills in 2d. I always go for the 3d version, which makes it more comfortable for me to do the same every time. But i wanted to break away from that pattern, just to see how well i can actually do it in 2d.
BUT, concidering that i have a lot of things to do nowadays, and knowing that 2d takes more time and concentration, im doing it again. And saving 2d exploring for next time.

I stated out by scetching out some poses. I didnt care to think about camera angle just yet. I figured out what im roughly gonna go for.
The feeling i want to display is mainly hopelessness. If that is a feeling:P He is obviously sad, but the way he talks to the camera is sort of "look at this. this is hopeless". Like someone straight out of a relationship, trying to adapt to his bachelor pad *cough*:)















I videotaped myself acting out what i wanted the character to do. I tried to focus on the main poses, but since i am a horrible actor it looks way too casual. But at least the poses are there.. sort of...




And here is the character i am using. He is a standard rig provided by our tutor. Most people are using him. I think that is good in a way because you forget about his appearnce and focus on the different ways he´s been animated.
So i made this character sheet trying to focus on depressing poses, since that is what i want him to do.

Mood change animation

I started animating the character on wednesday. And worked on it until saturday. But today when i woke up and was supposed to finish the animation, i found that the file had been deleted!

So basicly i spent the day making a simpler and shorter animation.

The original was going to be the character walking very cocky. And pointing out as if to a crowd. Then he was supposed to flick his collar "cantona-style" and kick a football with extreme anticiation. Then he was supposed to flinch as if he heard some noise, and then turn around and gestigulate with his arms like footballers do when the referee has given them the whistle and they disagree, so they shrug their shoulders a lot and point with both arms to themself and stuff around.

Anyway.. the animation turned out good. But somehow i deleted the animation or some file... i dont know.

There isnt much to say about this last one i made though. I tried to focus on the timing, but i could have the running away bit in the end a bit faster. it looks like he isnt moving quite fast enough. Had some problems with the feet. The knees seem to suddnly pop out in the wrong direction.
And i wish i had made the strut walk more exagerated. He could be leaning back even more and the movement could be tweaked a bit.
Also the transformation between ball-in-face and sad turn around doesnt feel right. something wrong that i cant put my finger on. Maybe if he moved a bit faster as he turns? i dunno..
I figured out how to control the curves in the graph editor better and im cutting down on stupid mistakes.

Again im happy with the result. Though it could have been way better if only i didnt delete it!!
But what the hell i got good practise from it, so next time will be even better!