Challenging

Hey guys,

Here's the rough animation that I did today. I was having a pretty frustrating time with this. I'm still reacquainting myself with drawing/animating via a tablet since I've been working traditionally for over a year now. I still greatly prefer it to digital 2d but right now I don't have a choice since I'm no longer at SCAD. Not having to capture my work before being able to watch it speeds things up significantly though.

Anyway, on to my main issue of the day. I have pages of sketches and thumbnails in my sketchbook but I'm still unsure of whether or not my scene is being done properly. I need the cat to step through the cat flap and take a few steps before being stopped by his fat. The problem is, I have no idea how many steps he can/should take before getting stopped. I also feel like the overshoot for that part can be pushed but each time I redraw it, it ends up being too much. I'll continue trying to work this issue out. In the meantime, any comments, crits, and or ideas on solving this problem are greatly appreciated!

Quick Update

Here's one of the rough layouts for my new senior project idea, Cat Flap. I think I'll clean it up during senior II (which is clean-up and color) and move forward into thumbnailing my scene, since I don't have much time.

In A Hurry

Here's a kuzco update. This is due on Monday, so I highly doubt it'll be nearly as finished as piglet. I think I'll try to polish up the Tibo scene the most since I like his acting. Right now Kuzco needs a lot of work. I think he rotates his torso too much when he says "yeah" but I'm not sure if I'll have time to change it.

It's Done!

There are still a few tweaks that I would like to make, but I really need to move on. I'm really happy with the scene regardless though. =D

98% There

It's almost done! I just have to fix his ears on "toilet", add a blink after "hey" and finish inbetweening "at the" and "store". I'm really happy that I continued to work on this even though it was due weeks ago. I'll be resubmitting Piglet on Monday with a 200% improvement over the original. Once I'm finished, I'll upload a small progression of the scene from start to finish. I looked at a couple of older versions of this and was surprised at how far the scene has come. Piglet will definitely be on my demo reel.

Yesterday's Life Drawings

Working Out the Kinks

I'd like to say I'll have this finished by the end of the day tomorrow, but I highly doubt that would be true. I have to go to the open model session as well as run a bunch of errands relating to graduation. I don't know if I'll have very much time to work on this, but I'll do my best to try as I'd like to be finished within the next day or so. It's turning out to be a nice scene and I'd like to put it on my demo reel. To do that I'll have to make sure it's as perfect as possible though.

Almost There

Hey guys,

Here's a piglet update. I'm working on his eyebrows now, trying to make the changes in his expression read better. I think the brows can come down faster before he starts to say "where". I also need to animate/fix his ears and decide what I'm going to do about "at the" and "store". It seem like "at the" works when the dialogue is played, but when the sound is off it looks like that section should be toned down. I'm still trying to work out my spacing on the transition from toilet to store. I'm not sure how I feel about it at the moment.




Here's a quick look at my next assignment. I dont have very much yet, but hopefully its enough to give people an idea of what I want. I'm trying to be really rough this time around. Last week, my prof. said you should be able to get a rough pass of a scene done in an afternoon. I'd like to have a really nice rough version of this scene by Monday. That way I'll be able to spend the rest of the time working on drawing the characters on model.




Right now I'm really leaning towards animating my senior project really rough digitally and then printing out the frames and drawing them on model traditionally. This should allow me to actually animate my film at home without having to worry about how I'm going to capture my scene every so often. My goal is to return to SCAD in the winter with at least some of my film on model. I've decided to go for a rough colored pencil look for the final film, so I wont need a bunch of clean lines. Once everything's on model, I'll go over each frame with colored pencil to finish it off. At least, that's the plan. Time constraints my force me to just paint bucket everything in Photoshop. Then again, that would require clean, smooth linework...

I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Revamped Rough Animatic

Hey guys,

I've been thinking about my senior project and I've decided that I'm not sold on my Morning Stretch idea. I like the concept of a cat getting stuck on a garage door, but I don't think Morning Stretch was the best execution. In anthropology class I thought, what if a cat gets stuck going through the garage door? That way we can see his face rather than his back the entire time. I threw together a rough animatic and I like the new version 100% more than Morning Stretch.

My only problem is, I wanted the cat to respond to the fact that the garage door is about to open before it actually does. That way he'll already be struggling to escape as it starts to life him. My other problem is the fact that the garage door sound starts a bit before the cat actually starts to go up. Once I figure out what tips the cat off on what's about to happen, I imagine I'll be able to just move the garage door sound back to when he starts to lift from the ground.

Does anyone have any ideas of what the cat can respond to that will cause him to struggle desperately in preparation for the door to open?

On Monday I Have an Interview With:

Last week, I submitted my demo reel for Blizzards visit to SCAD. I'm applying for their internship since I'm still in school. I'm not sure if I'm actually eligible for it anymore since I wont be returning to SCAD next year. We'll see what happens.

This Little Pig...

It's getting there!

The Next Level

Hey guys,

Sorry for the lack of Piglet updates. I'm reworking the entire scene to incorporate what I've learned last Wed. It's taken me all weekend but I finally think I've got a solid handle on how to (hopefully) use squash and stretch on the face successfully. I understand the principle and the concept behind it and I can see how it's used . I'm just having trouble applying it to my scene. I think it's because I'm not used to doing so much at one time. In 3d, squash and stretch is something that I add towards the very end, but now I have to think of how I can use it (along with everything else that's going on) as I draw each frame.

Another thing I'm working on improving is drawing really rough. My prof. told me when he was pressed for time, Glen Keane had a scene of the Beast approved which was little more than dotted eyes and a squiggly line for the mouth. I've also seen how rough some of the animators at Disney work from looking at their scenes from Princess and the Frog. The thing I'm struggling with is drawing that rough while still maintaining volume. I imagine that's something that will improve with time and practice.

I wanted to have my Piglet scene finished enough to put on my demo reel for Blizzard, but the deadline for those is Friday and I know I wont be able to have Piglet 100% finished, completely on model, and somewhat cleaned up by then. I'm wary of putting a rough scene on my reel since all of the 2d reels that I've seen have had the characters fully on model and cleaned up. I wish I could put my Bolt work on my reel, but I have to wait until the film comes out first.

Today I learned...

Man, animating a character doing nothing is very hard! Everything I did today messed up my piglet scene. I was so afraid of my scene looking "posey" that I kept trying to over complicate/add small things that weren't in my original performance. I told my prof. I felt like I had to add small recoils and more opposite action in an effort to keep him alive. I told him I didn't have this problem with my Moley soup scene since the character was always doing something, whereas in my current scene Piglet is just relaxing on some bleachers.

My prof. laughed and said "animating a character doing nothing is hard isn't it?". He told me I was on the right track and that it should just be a series of simple arcs rather than a bunch of elaborite action. After class I had a long chat with my prof. and after an awesome demonstration, I feel like I should be back on track. My prof. liked my version from the other day, so I'm going to return to it and continue from there.

I'm going to try to loosen up Piglet's face throughout the scene as I go along. During my prof.'s demo I realised he goes about animating a bit more straight ahead than I do. I think this is why I was having so much difficulty creating a nice organic feel to the face. I'm going to try out his working method tomorow and see how things go.

Update

Here's an update on my piglet scene. I still have quite a bit of work to do before I turn it in on Wed...

Piglet Scene

I just realized I posted my golden poses pass on my Piglet scene on the wrong blog. As the result the golden pose pass and yesterday's pass will be uploaded at the same time.


Golden Poses




Yesteday's Pass

"Final" Moley Scene

Alrighty, here's what I turned in to class last week. I finally finished redrawing everything with the (hopefully) correct volumes. I'm going to make sure the first frame of my piglet scene will be 100% on model so I wont have the same problem. I could have inbetweened a lot of this if I hadn't spent the final week redrawing everything to match the first frame. There a lot of things that need to be broken down more and I have pages of things to tweak/fix.

I'd like to finish this and resubmit it, but I dont know if that'll happen. I still need to work on my senior project in addition to this new piglet scene.

Starting A New Scene

Hey guys,

I've started preparing for our new assignment in 2d character II class. We'll be animating a dialogue scene with Piglet. Thankfully the clip is short and is about 125 frames long, which is much better than my 400+ frame soup scene. Anyway, here are the thumbnails that I've done for the piglet scene and a few drawings from the model sheet that my prof. gave out.



I'll save the most recent version of my Moley soup scene after class and will upload it once I get back.

Really Old Work From Last Year

Hey guys,

I was preparing to burn my work from each year at SCAD onto separate DVDs when I came across my folder of work from my 2d character class. I don't remember posting it before and I think it was because it's really unfinished and doesn't flow together very well. In my usual fashion, I over complicated all of my assignments from that class to the point of not being able to finish. I would say I've gotte better at that, but my Mole assignment is 28 feet long when the assignment said it should be at least 7 feet, lol.

Anyway, I've decided to post my old 2d character work anyway, since there are tiny bits of the piece that I like.

Break it Down

I've added a few more breakdowns to the scene to see how everything is working. I have a long list of things to adjust and I'm going to rework the timing on some of the arm movements to offset them from the main action a bit more. I wanted to make the swallow more subtle but I was having trouble drawing a convincing squash pose without reversing the spine. I'll talk to my prof. about that on Monday.

Much Better

Hey guys,

Here's an update on my soup test. It's over 100 frames longer than the previous version but the acting is much better. My prof. and I really like it and I was told to just get as far as I can by Wed. I wish I had known how rough I could have drawn everything though. On Monday my prof. showed us some Andreas Deja examples from Hercules and told us to draw loose like that. I knew the varying degrees of rough that the guys at Disney work, but my mentor wanted me to work on keeping the main volumes in my roughs. Since I was used to working that way that's what I had been doing throughout this project. Now that I know how rough my prof. wants us to work, things will go much faster.

I'm just worried about when it's time to start tyingdown my drawings. I know I have volume issues gallore and am expecting to have to spend quite a bit of time fixing them. My prof. wants me to tiedown my main keys and some breakdowns to make sure the acting is clear. He said the inbetweens can get rough as long as they maintain the proper volume.

I'm really enjoying this assignment and I'm learning a lot. Now I know a better workflow for me may be to blast through the scene working super rough and getting all of the action in there working and reading. Then I ca spend the rest of the time working on volume issues and tyingdown the character.