Study Task 2 - Character Design and Development (Second Version)

Tracing the line art of the turnaround in Photoshop proved to be nowhere near as difficult as picking an outfit and colour scheme for Beryl. What initially started out as a possible six classic red-and-black designs evolved into over twenty different colour schemes options as I experimented with adding more colours.

I picked what I felt was the best six (both from personal opinion and from the opinions of my peers) and posted it on the forums to get a vote on the best single colour scheme, and these were the choices.

Once I get a definitive vote I'll go ahead and finish colouring the final turnaround.

Study Task 4 - Maya 1: Modelling Skills

Keep on Truckin'

In this task we were introduced to Maya and taught how to break down complex shapes into simple polygons for the purpose of modelling. We learned some skills in Maya through modelling a toy truck.

What worked well:

• The symmetry in the wheels and axels
• The beveled front window turned out nice

What could be improved:

• Proportions could have been improved here and there
• Some edges look too sharp and could use a bit of beveling

Do It Yourself

Here we used the skills we learned while modelling our truck to model a simple object readily available to us. I picked a bottle thinking it would be simple. I was somewhat mistaken. I did however feel I did a fairly decent job with it and did have fun with it.

What worked well:

• The grooves on the side of the bottle
• The bottle cap turned out well
• The bottom of the bottle took some trial and error but turned out decent in the end.

What could be improved:

• The merging between the different cylinders that made up the body of the bottle didn't mesh as well as I would have liked.

Study Task 2 - Character Design and Development (First Version)

This week I made a preliminary design for Beryl the Peril. Even though we're not meant to be writing down the background stories as of yet, I've started to think about it. I noticed that we rarely see Beryl's mother in the comics if ever, and that she shows very little respect to her father. I feel that losing one's mother at a young age would be reason enough to be a peril or a menace as a way of dealing with one's problems, and doubling as an emotional shield at the same time.

I kept some of her features that made her Beryl in the original comics (like her long hair in pigtails) and added things to her clothes to make her look more rebellious, like a jacket and a cap and some tall boots.

Study Task 1 - Research and Refinement

A new module, a new brief! And it's with the Beano! How cool, barely into our first year as animation students and it already feels like we're dipping our toes into the industry!

That aside, we spent this week researching the Beano rebel females to be redesigned which mainly consisted of me going through old comics and drawing said mentioned characters.

I have personally read the odd Beano here and there during my childhood and was mostly familiar with Dennis the Menace, and I noted that Beryl the Peril seemed to be designed to be the female version of him. I ultimately chose Beryl for the redesign.

LAUAN403 Evaluation

At the start of this course, my self-taught animation skills were amateurish at best. Three months and twelve principles of animation later, I'm pleased to say my animation skills are now considerably less amateurish than they were before.

This module was overall both fun and enlightening for me. I found some of the tasks more challenging than others, interestingly enough these tended to be the ones that were more inclined towards drawing (and colouring) still images as opposed to actual animation, such as the character turnarounds, model sheets and solid drawing. I acknowledge that this is largely due to not coming from any formal artistic background and highlights something I will need to work on personally in my own time.

Something I noted throughout this module is that whenever I had the time to attempt a more complex sequence for the study tasks, it was more likely to contain flaws and be criticised and ultimately lead to being more time consuming than I had originally anticipated to make corrections. It made me realise that for some animations, less is more, but I can't deny that taking the time to correct the flaws also helped me gain valuable learning experience.

A good example of this was the anticipation task, in which I thought I could save time by rotoscoping a cat jumping off a table and drawing a dragon over it. I did not take into account the amount of time I would need to fix the position of the cat (as the original camera wasn't steady) nor did I consider the possibility of decreasing the frame rate to cut the rotoscope time. A few weeks later and not even halfway done with the animation, I finally bit the bullet and switched to animating a person hitting a hammer, which only needed a day to finish and worked well for the task. I now know for future reference, it probably will be easier to rotoscope keyframes rather than to do it frame by frame to save time.

For the most part I was able to finish the tasks within the allotted time, except for the anticipation task which caused a domino effect of sorts and set me back with all the tasks following it (thankfully I managed to catch up over the holidays). I generally felt like I may have approached this module with substantially more attention than I should have given it compared to the other two modules running alongside this and although I don't regret the hours and effort I put into my work for this module, I will aspire to even out the hours between the modules (and try to avoid being overambitious with some of the tasks) to avoid an uneven workload in the future.

I am happy to say that I feel far more confident in my ability to animate than I did at the start of the course and that there has been a general sense of improvement showing throughout my animations as they progressed.

Study Task 13 - Combine the Twelve

For our final task we were asked to make an animation that combined the principles we've practised over the course of this module. I decided to explore a dragon character I had created in passing for my arcs task, only this time he had grown some and had a nose that was sensitive to dust. And had a tendency to sneeze fire. And shared a home with a mischievous fairy that his owner trapped in a pendulum.

Character Development Sheet

Character Turnaround

Model Sheet

Storyboard for Gesignite

Final animation

What worked well:

• The principles of easing, exaggeration, anticipation, squash and stretch, follow through and overlap, and arcs
• The choice of sound and synchronisation
• Relatively simple design of the dragon.

What could be improved:

• The length of the animation could've been cut shorter (although at the possible cost of a few principles of animation)
• Secondary motion could have been shown better
• The fairy in the pendulum could have been visualised better
• Possibly could have added more colours to the dragon's design
• Possibly could have added some indication of colour to the storyboard
• Shading could have been added in more places in the final animation.

Study Task 12 - Secondary Motion

Secondary motion is an action that happens as a direct result of another (usually primary) action and adds more realistic complexity to an animation. For this task we needed to produce a hybrid animation in which we videoed ourselves and animated a prop over the video. As it was near the Christmas break I decided to go festive and animate some leafy antlers (as well as a red nose).

Dancing Antlers

What worked well:

• Timing of the movement to the music
• The use of music from a personal karaoke recording to keep the sound original

What could be improved:

• The movement of the antlers was reanimated in certain places as it wasn't following through properly
• The animation of the antlers were a bit jumpy in some places
• It was time consuming to add the extra detail of the red nose and I ultimately cropped the video to save time.

Study Task 11 - Follow Through and Overlapping Action

In this task we animated boxes to exhibit our understanding of follow through and overlapping action, which is basically where different parts of an object (or objects that are in contact with each other like these boxes) will move at different times or different rates (overlap) and continue to move when one part (or object) has stopped moving due to inertia (follow through).

I chose to demonstrate this as an animated magic trick (because what's more magical than animation?) with the weight of the boxes decreasing from bottom to top. I figured the largest box would be something heavy like metal or heavy wood, the middle box wooden, and the top box cardboard.

Magic Boxes

What worked well:

• The overlapping shown by the delay in the higher up boxes when they start to move
• The follow through in the higher boxes shifting forward and falling over.

What could be improved:

• Possibly showing contents of boxes by having one of the boxes open when it falls.

Study Task 10 - Staging

Staging is defined as the method of presenting a dramatic performance and is meant to direct the audience's attention and present what's important to the flow of the narrative. For this task we were asked to practise this in the form of a storyboard for a nursery rhyme, and I chose Jack and Jill.

Jack and Jill storyboard

What worked well:

• The mention of type of camera shots on each scene
• The indications to movement in each scene
• Choosing to add wordplay: Jack being a jackrabbit, crown being literal, Jill cartwheeling or 'tumbling' in the last panel.

What could be improved:

• Possible addition of colour
• More development in the characters' details.