Exterior background progress

I believe I'm pretty much done with the exterior layout and background (finally).

As you can see, I began by scanning in my original background layout, then built up the different layers based on their position in relation to the camera (i.e. back railing on the lower layers and such). Once I had the outlines, I used a finer brush in Photoshop to draw out the details of the wood, giving the deck a more authentic effect. I dabbled in various methods of how to add the shady area's and eventually settled for using a normal brush with black and lowered the opacity levels of the brush strokes to around 7%, allowing me to build up the darker areas.

Walk cycles: FINISHED!

Right, had to make three walk cycles based on several themes, I chose 'late for work run', 'flirty female' and 'macho male'. I decided to make all the characters 'ladybugs', even if one is male and the other more or less genderless. I thought this would help me focus more on the characters movements/actions more than whether they looked right.

Flirty Female:

I know, I know, the legs are virtually independant of the body. I was -trying- to mimic the catwalk strut models use, but I think the timing is off. And because the timing is off, the rest of the bodies match up wasn't as effective as it should have been. However, the one thing I am proud of is the use of heels in this animation, as they definately get across the fact that this character is female, even if the walk lets her down slightly.

Late for work run:

I'm proud of this little guy! First of all cause it's cute, and the general movement was based on the youtube video of a man running across a traffic crossing. I'm please with the little 'lope' it's got going on, and in my defense, all business men/women carry some form of bag/suitcase, so what would a ladybug heading to work carry? .....I like his leaf, nuff said.

I think I went overboard on the flickering of each body part though, particularily the head, I'll need to look into making the movements more fluid in the future, particularily for mostly stationary parts such as the head.

Macho Male:

I'm proud of this guy! He's currently my most perfected walk so far (I think). Hes kind of got a Rambo thing going on, but thats besides the point. I used amatuer footage of sumo wrestlers walking around the fighting ring as well as a clip from the Worlds Strongest Man tv series to look at the speed and leg movements. While the sumo's had the laid back 'strut',. the competitors from the tv series had the clear leg movements. Merging the two, I got this as a result.

The hardest part is/was his arms. Men tend to walk as though they've got a watermelon or a keg under each arm and swing their upper body from side to side, which is why they seem to bob up and down a lot when walking. I tried to translate that into this character, and in all fairness, for a first attempt I think I did pretty well. Again, the legs seem to be relatively independant at times of the body, but for the most part, the only thing I'd critisise myself for would be the lack of 'bobbing'. Given more time, I'd go back and exaggerate his movements more to make him more blatently obvious as a macho male.


In hindsight, if I were to go back and redo each of these animations, I'd exaggerate the movements of all of them to convey their 'personalities' more clearly, so that people would understand what kind of character they are in the first second or so, not the third.

Character Designs for the Group Project: Sea Rescue

One thing we noticed from looking at each others test animations was the significant variations in the character style, even though we were basing our drawings on the same character sketch by our character designer Beverly.

So, Beverly, Char and I (who shall be doing all the 2D animation in the short film) met and we took it in turns to try and draw the character each drawn before us, i.e. Beverly drew the original character, I drew from that design, Char drew from my design and so on until our sketches began to look similar to each other.

Character 1 (above)

Character 2 (above)

By using this as reference, hopefully well be able to animate individual scenes of the sequence without worrying about people noticing the change in character style too much.

The doodles.

I'm not quite sure what happens, during lectures while the main part of my brain is paying attention, the rest of it seems determined to scrawl as many random things onto my notes as physically possible. Not that I complain, its pretty good inspiration most of the time, and I can safely say I know which notes were taken during which lectures by the doodles that keep the notes company.

Me vs Pacman

It does make me worry about what goes on in this brain of mine, but at least it tends to stick with a theme.

In this one, for some reason I've entered a staring competition with pacman....who's looking really ticked off. No idea what I did to annoy him that much, but seems its come to a standstill.

Tetris Takedown

In this one, I appear to be challenging a tetris block to a sort of kung fu ninja fight. Luckily the tetris block seems somewhat confused and not retaliated. I fear doodle-me is not as skilled as she thinks.
(And below that is a series of small images trying to figure out facial expressions. Even my subconscious gets distracted sometimes.)

Pong takes revenge

 Finally, doodle-me has met her match. Never mess with Pong paddles. They don't take kindly to their games being interrupted......

Now, I don't know how all this quite relates to the lecture on getting into the industry (which I was paying attention to, and frankly, the video interviews we were shown seemed pretty 'happy-go-lucky', and all that was determined was 1/3 of the group wants to do pre-production, 1/3 wants to do post-production, and the last 1/3 has no clue), but it may be my repressed self demanding I go see Wreck-It Ralph.

I didn't. Instead I went and saw the Croods, which is a truly brilliant film. It's not much in the way of a solid three part storyline structure, it does have a structure, but most of it rolls together in a way where you're constantly paying full attention to the screen and is full of emotion. The story seems to centre primarily on the bond between a teenage daughter and in particular, her father. At these points I'll admit I did almost start tearing up, so if you have daddy issues, bring tissues, but it was totally worth watching the whole film from start to finish. I also loved how there was a 2D animation introduction which, well, introduced the main characters and their situation.

Group Project: Animatic

Now that I've finally caught up on the sleep I've lost trying frantically to get the experimental animation done, I remember to put up my groups animatic. Theres a scene that we've been discussing to go in the middle to make it more dramatic, and there'll be a twist at the end, but beyond that, I've taken Beverly's storyboard and done my best to get it moving and in time with the interview soundtrack (which, knowing my luck, will also have to be altered. Again.) My favourite part of the whole animation has to be when the victim leaps out the water and flails, classic slapstick comedy.

Studio Ghibli Season conclusion

Been caught up trying madly to get back on top of my experimental animation that I neglected to finish off my Ghibli posts!

Right, one thing I have noticed in particular over the past few years is that each time the Ghibli season comes on Film 4 (the poor mans Blockbuster's selection on shuffle) more of the Ghibli films are being shown in their English-dubbed versions.

Not that I'm complaining, no subtitles means I can devote more of my brain to the film itself, but even so, I get the feeling that since the release of 'Ponyo', the UK has become a lot more receptive to the studio ghibli collection, to the point where their movies are being shown at prime-time slots rather than in the dead of night after another action-thriller.

Its interesting to see the studio getting the credit it deserves for its brilliant films, although it just goes to show how hard it is for people in the mainstream culture to get exposure to films from other countries (America not included). The painstaking lengths me and my friends went to in order to track own our desired Ghibli collection films all these years, and suddenly, its like they've become available overnight. And slightly more affordable as well.

Perhaps its a knock on effect of our cultures definate tilt towards 3D animation as the main technique for big screen films, the backlash causing everyone to scurry for the best of 2D animation in movie form. You only need to watch a supermarket advert to see just how well Disney 'classics' are doing (I once went in and found them for sale at £15 EACH!).

Either way, I'm just happy to see the Ghibli's back on screen and still going strong. Definately looking forward to the next Film 4 studio Ghibli season.

Walk Cycle

This one was a pain to get done. After agonising over how many frames to use for half the walk cycle, I then tried to make the head bob appropriately, then came the body, then the legs (which were at war with each other) then the arms. It seemed that after adding a new limb, I had to go back and redo the last one so it would be synchronised with the newer limb, and so on and so forth.

This person is running about on the balls of their feet, its something I do, but I did exaggerate the angle of the ankle, running about like that for long periods of time at this guys speed...hurts....a lot...so yeah, don't try this at home.

This is as close to finished as I'll let myself go, I know I could spend months working on getting this 'just right' but I have my whole life to agonise over that, for now, its just a matter of pulling out an acceptable attempt that I can use as reference for future attempts.