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the branch Joined: 30 May 2005 Total posts: 169 Gender: Unknown |
 Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 8:28 am Post subject: The Branch's ANIMATED Sketchbook (Updato -My PORTFOLIO!!) |
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Hey all,
I am an animation student from Toronto. After completing art fundamentals at Max Animation school, I applied for the classical animation program at Seneca College. As part of preparation for that program and a strong desire to master the craft of animation, I've spent my summer split between drawing (characters, anatomy studies, life drawing) and actual animation exercises.
I've accumulated quite a bit of work over the last 4 months, so I thought it was time to start putting it up and getting feedback on my work thus far. This is the first board I've found with such a large amount of animators and animation students, so this seemed like the perfect place to start. Plus, I'm learning animation on my own. My instructors at my first "Animation" School felt that not even the BASICS of animation should be taught or even reviewed until second year! I'm using the Illusion of Life, Animator's Survival Guide, Animator's Workbook, Animation from Script to Screen and looking through online student portfolios from Calarts, Sheridan and XAV (and the rest of that amazing group of French animators).
I don't have a server or a video webhost, so I've converted all the files to .gifs and reduced the quality to meet the requirements for this board. They were all shot on 24fps using Flipbook (an EXCELLENT bit of software!)
I'm not married to my work, and frankly all I care about is improving, so please be totally free with your comments and crits. I'll probably be posting new stuff a few times per week.
Thanks,
The Branch.
Last edited by the branch on Tue Nov 15, 2005 10:55 am; edited 8 times in total |
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| the branch Joined: 30 May 2005 Total posts: 169 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 8:35 am Post subject: |
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This is an exercise from Tony White's Animator's Handbook. It called for a head turn using a simple ball-head character. I tried to complicate my life by using Kuzko from the Emporer's New Groove.
The Branch.
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| the branch Joined: 30 May 2005 Total posts: 169 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 8:42 am Post subject: |
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This is my most successful attempt at a walk cycle so far. The character is based on the model sheets of Darla Dimple (from Cat's Don't Dance).
I think it works, though it's very stiff. I would have liked to have spent a bit more time making the walk a bit more individual and less robotic.
The Branch.
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hondo
Joined: 19 May 2004 Total posts: 63 Location: Montreal, Canada Age: 33 Gender: Male |
| Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 9:50 am Post subject: |
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are you going to add arms to your walk cycle? It's hard to watch the twist in the body with out the arms and shoulders.
Also, congrats on being in an animation class. I graduated from Algonquin's Classical animation class (in Ottawa) about 5 years ago. It can be a hard industry to get in to I've found but if you love it it can be lots of fun.
Nice head turn too. Is that just your key frames?
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crylic
Joined: 24 Aug 2003 Total posts: 241 Location: Halifax Age: 32 Gender: Male |
| Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 10:45 am Post subject: |
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| well the head turn looks pretty sweet, good on ya for that. as for the walk cycle it'd be nice to see some rotation in the torso as well as turning the head, and ya she needs arms for a proper critique...all in all good stuff, keep posting
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| the branch Joined: 30 May 2005 Total posts: 169 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 8:07 am Post subject: |
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Hey all,
Thanks for the replies.
To answer your questions/comments:
Those are the key frames with standard inbetweens. I used the timing charts indicated by the Animator's Workbook.
Also, the walk definitely needs more twist. I've been working on improving my walk cycles, and I'll post up as soon as I get a solid one for you guys to crit.
Now, onto today's update:
I hope this one is clear enough. It was just a quickie that I did with the last few pages from my last stack of animation paper.
The object was just to have a character do a standing broad jump. I used the Gatekeeper Model sheet from Dragon's Lair. The Gatekeeper has wings, so I thought it would be interesting to see their effect on the motion in the air.
So it starts out like a normal broadjump then his wings open and he hovers for a bit before they give out and he falls.
To be honest, I was really pleased how this one came out. I just had a rough idea of what I wanted to do in terms of the action and I just did the whole thing straight-ahead. When I get more paper today, I'm going to inbetween it and clean it up a bit.
One thing I'd like to fix is that there isn't enough of a PUSH off from the ground. It looks too much like he's doing a Superman leap in the beginning. I would have liked to have really slowed down that beginning motion so you really feel the push, but like I said, I was running out of paper. 
The Branch.
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| the branch Joined: 30 May 2005 Total posts: 169 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 8:27 am Post subject: |
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Second update:
Here's an earlier attempt at a head turn (plus blink). I used Ling from Disney's Mulan. It was done before the Kuzco one I showed above. I thought I should probably post it as well.
(FYI: For those interested in Mulan Model Sheets, there is a thin book called "How to Draw Disney's Mulan" available at most art stores. Normally these books are filled with cheap cartoon construction suitable for children but not really animators. However, for some reason this particular volume was made exclusively from Disney animator model sheets! It's hard to believe, but it's true! If you get a chance to check it out you can see that the model sheet for Mulan on MagicalEars have drawings and guides that are identical to the ones found in the book)
The Branch.
Last edited by the branch on Tue Aug 16, 2005 8:34 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| the branch Joined: 30 May 2005 Total posts: 169 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 8:34 am Post subject: |
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Bonus Update:
This is my first real attempt at a foward walk cycle. I used the cover of Sharknife (an excellent OGN BTW).
I am not pleased with how it looks at all. I find that walks continue to be a big challenge and I understand why getting good walks is a high watermark of animation skill. I completed half and realized that I'd really botched it.
Oh well, practise makes perfect...or insanity. One thing I did try to do was make sure that the twist that you guys mentioned before was more evident in this walk. I don't think that I hit that mark either. The shoulders move but the construction is unclear, so it makes the twist disappear. Also, I had problems straightening his knees during the passing position. I kept trying to keep it loose and natural but it looks like he walks with his legs bent.
Any advice on how to improve these would be greatly appreciated.
The Branch.
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Christopher L Knowles
Joined: 04 Aug 2005 Total posts: 67 Location: New Joisey Gender: Male |
| Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 11:16 am Post subject: |
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| Very promising start! My main crit is that you haven't mastered the rhythms of the body movements. That's the stiffness you were referring to. But that will come, and soon I bet. Keep going!
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adny2
Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Total posts: 22 Gender: Male |
| Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 10:43 am Post subject: animations |
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i'd love to post someof my animated works up as well, but the site keeps refusing them because of their size. and the site wont accept wmv files also. is there any compressions techniques you guys can recommend that i may use to get small animations (about 3-4 seconds long) to run smooth and amlost clear on this website?
thanks in advance
adny
_________________
Story first
Visual Second
Business Last... |
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monkeyfeather
Joined: 13 Aug 2001 Total posts: 2951 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 11:10 am Post subject: |
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| Good start. The first thing that I noticed looking at your work is that your timing is too even. I didn't count how many drawings you used, but try to think more like this. Here are some timing charts I did on the wacom, excuse the bad printing...
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monkeyfeather
Joined: 13 Aug 2001 Total posts: 2951 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 11:27 am Post subject: |
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See how in the second chart, everything is equally spaced? This can kill your animation when you're doing things like head turns and jumps.
When animating the jump, (especially since he's supposed to be flapping his arms at the top of the arc) you should have drawings favoring the top of the arc, giving him hangtime. Then, not many drawings on the way down, maybe a big stretch drawing, a drawing for contact, and then favor the squash of the landing, or maybe only favor coming out of the squash, so you would have stretch, impact, squash and then inbetweens favoring the squash before he gets to his rest position. Keeping him in the air a little longer and lessening the drawings on the descent will give a better sense of impact and thus, give your character more weight. Same goes for the jump up. Think snappier timing. Warner Bros. cartoons are great at this.
I'm not giving you definite answers, I'm just trying to give you things to think about while you're animating. What should I favor? How can I give this more snap? More weight? Watch animation frame by frame on dvd, see what drawings they favor. Start looking at live action footage and real life and try and figure out in your head, how you would animate that action. What foot is their weight on? What's leading the action? Their hips? Legs? Arms? Head? How would I translate that action to animation? More squash? More stretch? More hangtime?
Also, watch the arc on the jump. Near the top, the character falls out of arc and the drawings "pops" making it look out of place and destroying the illusion. Map out a smooth arc on a seperate sheet of paper and make sure the character follows this path of action.
There's some solid drawing in the head turn on the character from Mulan, nice work. The structure of the head is well drawn.
Keep at it, you've got a great start.
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| the branch Joined: 30 May 2005 Total posts: 169 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:33 pm Post subject: |
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I just wanted to say thanks so much for all the advice.
Check back for my next update next week. I'm already working on a wave cycle with a flower in a breeze to try to improve my rhythms as was suggested earlier.
I'll also do another jump with varied timing to try to add what you guys just suggested.
The feedback is so important that it really makes a big difference in my work.
Thanks again!
The Branch.
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| the branch Joined: 30 May 2005 Total posts: 169 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2005 11:12 pm Post subject: |
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Something I forgot to add.
Monkeyfeather - the 'interruption' part of the jump is actually the part where his wings open. So I had them open, pulling him up towards the left, which causes his lower half/stomach to swing forward. Then his wings carry him to the right where he eventually falls. I realize the low-rez image capture made this next to impossible to see.
Also, I will be posting my timing chart for the next jump (I'll be using Mulan's villain, Shan Yu). My focus will be varied timing similar to the one that you posted.
Adny - The program I use to shoot these pencil tests is called Flipbook by Digicel. I convert the animation to animated gifs, that I reduce to greyscale from 256grey and sometimes I have to make the image size smaller to fit. That said, some of my longer animation exercises (100+) frames are just too big and cant be made to fit the site requirements at all.
See you guys next week.
The Branch.
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| the branch Joined: 30 May 2005 Total posts: 169 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2005 1:13 am Post subject: |
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Hey guys,
I literally just finished this last wave test. I did a flower with an eXtreme response to a breeze! I'm very pleased with how this one came out. This is my SIXTH attempt at getting a wave cycle to work. The movement turned quite smooth and the rythm is very consistent. I really found that having a weighted element at the end really made it much easier to understand the motion. However, one key problem is that the length of the stem isn't quite consistent at all times.
This was my first attempt using a seperate background/overlay. I'm trying to improve the technical elements of my work, so I'm studying a few books on 2D Computer Animation. The original plan was to scan the drawings and do some simple ink/paint work to do the shadows, but I need to get back to improving my understanding of movement. So I scrapped that in favour of working on another jump for next week.
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Next week's Challenge:
Mulan's Shan-Yu doing a standing broadjump from one balcony to another with perspective and full layout.
'Til Then,
The Branch.
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