Project Five-20 second animation

I decided on an idea and i started planning it but i felt that it would take too many drawings and that it would go over the 20 seconds by quite a bit so i will save that idea for another time.

The idea that i went with is a lot simpler than the first idea i was going to do since i wasn't there for the fourth week so i had 1 week to do 2 weeks worth of work.

References: This is the reference image i used to help me make the sitting dinosaur, i should have put the nostrils on but i didn't want it looking too similar.

This you tube video i used to help me with the yawn, i yawned alot myself when doing this project (not through boredom

though purely research)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMnekeLTUrw&feature=fvw

Heres my first test:

This was to test what the yawn would look like, the yawn looks good I think,what I would change about it though is not hold the frame on the way up and change a couple of frames on the way down so that the mouth goes back up for a split second.

Unfortunately I haven't made a final ink animation as yet but watch this space, i do like this animation, the things that i would change about the animation is that some frames need to be held a bit longer because it seems that the actions rushes too much from one action to the other. I might play about with holding the pencil on the page too when it comes on the page just before it begins to draw. I hope you like it, any comments welcome.

Project Four-Anticipation

Anticipation is sometimes a pause before a big action or the slowing of a movement so that the viewers can be prepared for a fast action such as like the anticipation in road runner, like when road runner is about to sprint off, road runner hangs in the air for second or two so that the viewers know that he is just about to sprint off because if he just sprinted off then it would be too quick and people would be wondering what happened. The video is below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJJW7EF5aVk

Also for referencing i used a video of me jumping:

I did a stickman jumping from one side to the other, below are the tests.

I didn't really like this test because it doesn't really look like a jump, you can tell its a jump but the start it seems to glide and there not much anticipation it in. The spacing needs to be worked on because that it flows too much, there is no ease in or ease out.

This test does look better than the first since ive held some of the frames a bit longer like when the stickman bends his knees to jump and when he reaches the ground after the jump he slowly gets up not like on the first test where he shoots up.

For the final animation i have took some frames out so that it doesn't look like the stickman is gliding, also i have redrawn some of the frames at the start that the stickman is more closer together when he goes to jump which looks better. I have also played about with the spacing a lot more and held the frames at the start to show anticipation before the jump but not so much that it wouldn't look realistic. Theres not much that i would change about this final piece except that i would want to make it more real from the fact that when he jumps the angles wrong on the way down, when you jump like that the angles more straight but i did that for more of an cartoony effect.

Project Three-Bouncing Ball

For this project we had to animate a bouncing ball. Which the sound of it sounds easy but oh no nothings never that easy.
I did some research into the bouncing ball using media such as The animators survival kit by the richard williams which was very helpful because the hardest thing i found for this task was the spacing,I used an arc of what the ball was going to go to help me know where the ball was going to go. I made a squashy ball,a bowling ball and i made a perspective view of the squashy ball. I tried not to make the ball bigger as i didn't want to make it obvious that it is a bowling ball or any type of ball more rather relying on the timing and spacing to come across that it is heavier.

I didn't want to make any story to it as i felt that it would have made me concentrate more on the story than what i was actually doing and that is learning about timing about spacing.

The tests that i have made looked good i think, I need to play about with the spacing and the final perspective view the ball at the end goes off the page.
The first test looks ok (from what you can tell from the video since the lighting wasn't that good),I should have put a smaller bounce on the bowling ball but i think people get the idea.

The second test doesn't look that good I think the spacing needs work as the bounce coming down should have been faster. I like the hang time on the bounce i think it works well as there is more frames at the top of the bounce.

The final test looks as i wanted it to apart from the part at the end that i dont like because the ball goes off the page and the squash looks bad i think because i held the frame for too long its too noticeable also I should have held the frames more on the up to show more hangtime.>

Project Two-Exaggeration

This is the second project-exaggeration.
For this project I am going to animate 4 different facial expressions.
I did more planning for this project and in the classroom we were told to draw people and exaggerate peoples features and expressions, not too much that it didn't look real because its got to look believable.

I made a lot of ideas but in the end I choose to do a simple cartoony character as I didn't want to get bogged down in the details of a proper human face as i wanted to concentrate more on the task of exaggeration. For referencing in the task i drew leshika in different expressions.
I then decided to go a bit simpler than that though so i could concentrate on what determines a happy face,sad face etc, so i made just a shape of a head and drew different expression,taking note of what made the face look happy,shocked or sad etc. I liked the more cartoony look of expressions as they be more exaggerated than human faces with still being believable.

The references that I used for this animation was that I got an image off a website called cartoonsmart.com which i found really useful because of the fact that the facial expressions are believable and its good to show how if you move something on the face just a bit it can be a big difference to the whole face for example like on the image sad and sadder, all that the artist has done is make the pupils bigger,some lines on the mouth and the eyebrows a bit closer but it does work.


For the final idea the facial expressions i decided to go with is:
1-Normal
2-Sad
3-Shocked
4-Happy
Then the animation goes back to normal so that it can loop.
I did like the end result of the animation even though it didn't loop because in the start of the animation when the normal expression goes into the sad I moved the face down to show the sadness more but then didn't realize to bring it back up again. I should have made the spacing a lot different too as most of it looks the same, it was only afterwards I clicked that I should have made it go faster from sad to shocked and a bit slower from shocked to smile.
Problems and solutions:

I need to spend more time planning so that i dont have to keep stopping to figure out what im going to do next.

Take more breaks-I should take more breaks as i found out that I get more tired im making more mistakes and then realizing afterwards thus taking more time to correct.