Tuesday, 25 March 2014
Motion Studies Walk Cycle Assignment
For this motion studies assignment, we had to design a character's walk cycle. I made a stickman figure in Flash and then created a rig for him using the bone tool. This was the first time I tried something like this in Flash and I ran into many problems in the beginning with this character because the joints acted funny and moved in ridiculous ways. After much experimenting, I finally managed to make the character move in regular earthly way.
Sunday, 9 March 2014
Traditional Animation
Traditional Animation:
Recently our class has started creating simple animations using traditional animation techniques - Pencil, paper and lightboxes.
I actually found this more enjoyable than Flash because it was way more intuitive and everything felt more natural and organic. It was more tedious yes, but it was a nice experience.
Our first assignment using this method was to animate one character throwing a hammer at another character and then animating how that character would react after being hit:
Recently our class has started creating simple animations using traditional animation techniques - Pencil, paper and lightboxes.
I actually found this more enjoyable than Flash because it was way more intuitive and everything felt more natural and organic. It was more tedious yes, but it was a nice experience.
Our first assignment using this method was to animate one character throwing a hammer at another character and then animating how that character would react after being hit:
Saturday, 8 March 2014
MAZED Project
MAZED Project:
Log : (9th March 2014)
Our class has been approached by a company producing iPhone Apps which help people learn about the history of Cornwall. Our class was divided into groups and each group was assigned a particular story. The stories are Cornish Folk tales, and each group is supposed to make animations depicting the respective story they are given. My group has been given the story ' Copper for Cake ' which is an old folk tale about a miner. The groups assign various roles within themselves. In my group, I have been given the role of Editor and the person in charge of post production. I am also in charge of sound effects. My group has decided to make the animation in a 2D cut-out style. My team has come up with impressive character sketches and a storyboard so far. I am currently arranging the frames of the storyboard into an animatic and I will post it on this space when I am done. As I finish each segment of the project I will post it on this space gradually and keep logging the date when I make each post.
As of now I feel like making the sound effects shouldn't be too difficult. I will have to find an effective way of recording the sound effects that take place within the cave and ensure they have the appropriate reverberation.
Log: (11th March 2014)
I finished the first draft of the animatic yesterday. One part I had difficulty with was deciding how much of a time gap there should be between when Sam's helmet falls on the ground and when the knocker reaches in to grab the Figgy 'Obbin. The time gap had to let the Knockes appear sinister and let the audience know that it had planned to kill Sam. But if it was too long even by a second, the animation would appear awkward. The first draft of my animatic did not contain sound. I then went on youtube and downloaded some sound effects such as loud clanging sounds and the sound of a rock falling on the ground, and added these to the animatic. Dan had also recorded his voiceover of the narration and I mixed this in with the animatic. I used Audacity to edit the voiceover and separate the segments in the track to insert them in the appropriate areas of the animatic. I now have to add ambient sound effects that play when Sam enters the cave and sounds such as birds chirping and wind blowing when he steps outside.
Log: (18th April 2014)
Today I made the 4th version of the animatic. Jack had redone certain parts of his storyboard over the Easter break and added some new frames so I made the same alterations to the animatic. This time I added the soundtrack that we have decided to use and several other sound effects. Nick had told us to add shot numbers to the animatic so I did that too. The fourth animatic flowed and looked really good with the extra sound effects, voiceover and especially the soundtrack! The sound effects were downloaded from a website called http://www.freesfx.co.uk/.
Log: (1st May 2014)
Today the remaining members of my group finished their animations and the final movie was supposed to be handed in tomorrow afternoon. My job was to edit the film - arrange the scenes, insert the dialogue, sound effects and finalize the film. The day was absolutely chaotic and the other team members were struggling to finish their animations as soon as possible, and the animations were handed to me at night. I worked on the film from 12:00 AM to 9:00 AM in the library. I ran into countless problems because I didn't know where the various scenes where stored and which versions I had to use. And I couldn't ask anyone because they all were asleep after 3 AM.
I'm not whining or anything, but it would have been great if my team had finished their animations at least 1 day earlier so that I had more time to work on it. And it would have been even greater if they arranged all their scenes into one folder so that I knew where to look, and kept all the scenes in one format. One of the scenes even had a problem as the main character had 4 arms instead of 2. Many of the scenes had huge file sizes and since I was using an extremely slow computer, I had to use a media encoder to change their format to compress them so that they wouldn't cause a heavy load on the computer.
I should have stressed to my group earlier that it was important for them to finish their work early enough for me to edit it. I will keep this entire experience in my mind the next time I'm on a group project and make sure I do so.
Log : (9th March 2014)
Our class has been approached by a company producing iPhone Apps which help people learn about the history of Cornwall. Our class was divided into groups and each group was assigned a particular story. The stories are Cornish Folk tales, and each group is supposed to make animations depicting the respective story they are given. My group has been given the story ' Copper for Cake ' which is an old folk tale about a miner. The groups assign various roles within themselves. In my group, I have been given the role of Editor and the person in charge of post production. I am also in charge of sound effects. My group has decided to make the animation in a 2D cut-out style. My team has come up with impressive character sketches and a storyboard so far. I am currently arranging the frames of the storyboard into an animatic and I will post it on this space when I am done. As I finish each segment of the project I will post it on this space gradually and keep logging the date when I make each post.
As of now I feel like making the sound effects shouldn't be too difficult. I will have to find an effective way of recording the sound effects that take place within the cave and ensure they have the appropriate reverberation.
Log: (11th March 2014)
I finished the first draft of the animatic yesterday. One part I had difficulty with was deciding how much of a time gap there should be between when Sam's helmet falls on the ground and when the knocker reaches in to grab the Figgy 'Obbin. The time gap had to let the Knockes appear sinister and let the audience know that it had planned to kill Sam. But if it was too long even by a second, the animation would appear awkward. The first draft of my animatic did not contain sound. I then went on youtube and downloaded some sound effects such as loud clanging sounds and the sound of a rock falling on the ground, and added these to the animatic. Dan had also recorded his voiceover of the narration and I mixed this in with the animatic. I used Audacity to edit the voiceover and separate the segments in the track to insert them in the appropriate areas of the animatic. I now have to add ambient sound effects that play when Sam enters the cave and sounds such as birds chirping and wind blowing when he steps outside.
Log: (18th April 2014)
Today I made the 4th version of the animatic. Jack had redone certain parts of his storyboard over the Easter break and added some new frames so I made the same alterations to the animatic. This time I added the soundtrack that we have decided to use and several other sound effects. Nick had told us to add shot numbers to the animatic so I did that too. The fourth animatic flowed and looked really good with the extra sound effects, voiceover and especially the soundtrack! The sound effects were downloaded from a website called http://www.freesfx.co.uk/.
Log: (1st May 2014)
Today the remaining members of my group finished their animations and the final movie was supposed to be handed in tomorrow afternoon. My job was to edit the film - arrange the scenes, insert the dialogue, sound effects and finalize the film. The day was absolutely chaotic and the other team members were struggling to finish their animations as soon as possible, and the animations were handed to me at night. I worked on the film from 12:00 AM to 9:00 AM in the library. I ran into countless problems because I didn't know where the various scenes where stored and which versions I had to use. And I couldn't ask anyone because they all were asleep after 3 AM.
I'm not whining or anything, but it would have been great if my team had finished their animations at least 1 day earlier so that I had more time to work on it. And it would have been even greater if they arranged all their scenes into one folder so that I knew where to look, and kept all the scenes in one format. One of the scenes even had a problem as the main character had 4 arms instead of 2. Many of the scenes had huge file sizes and since I was using an extremely slow computer, I had to use a media encoder to change their format to compress them so that they wouldn't cause a heavy load on the computer.
I should have stressed to my group earlier that it was important for them to finish their work early enough for me to edit it. I will keep this entire experience in my mind the next time I'm on a group project and make sure I do so.
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