shadows...

On a trip to Rufford Park with  my Mum and my Sister, I got a bit carried away with taking photos of our shadows! So I got us all to put our hands up and I took the photos as they moved they're arms. 

A lot of the weren't quite lined up as my hand started dropping due to the wait of the camera as I was only using one hand. I thought it would be fun to add some music and this song came on while I was editing the photos so I thought it was funny...

Also it's not that long as it's very repetitive, as I have pretty much used the same sequence of photos over again to make it longer than it was, as slowing it down wouldn't have worked.

... in a bit of a rush.

This is just a little animation I have done on my bedroom wall. But to be honest it was quite rushed but I felt like I had to do some more experiments. Although this is a bit messy and not particularly planned out, it is another attempt at my chosen method.

Yes I know it sucks. And for some reason now replaying it is also like the other one I did on brown paper, I did not use flash for this one though. Hmmm... Maybe I would be much better using After Effects to do my animation. I need to try it out.

 I think just start to get on with making my actual final animation... So I need to find out if using After Effects is a lot better, as not all of my experiments were crap... Maybe one more try out.

This is another quick crappy animation that I did, trying out using text. I think it sucks but its part of my experimentation and progress anyway...

I think it's a bit slow looking at it now, and also my writing is horrible and messy.. I need to stop trying to rush through this and take my time on things.

... Ojos de Brujo

My Dad has this amazing dvd with an animation that is the video to a song by Ojos de Brujo.. He watched it again recently and showed me it as I'm doing an animation. 

I absolutely love this! I think it's amazing that it must of taken so many drawings and everything turns into something else.. it's so clever, and goes perfectly with the song. I also like how at some points later on in the song the animation is slightly like how I want to do mine, with lines connecting and leading onto other things ect.. 

Another experiment...

This is just another kinda crappy experiment of the method I am currently planning to use for my final animation. I thought I would try out what it would look like on brown paper in white pen, as white stands out against slightly darker colours.

I thought I would incorporate drums into this so its actually relevant to my storyboard.

For some reason here on blogger the video looks like TERRIBLE quality and its all blurry..
The light is a bit funny, as it was dark when I was making it, I had the artificial light in my room and also the flash on the camera as it took the photos. This has created an odd colouring that changes nearer to the bottom on the frame. This may have something to do with the bad quality appearance of it.

NOTE TO SELF: do not use flash when taking the photos. must photograph during the day with the natural light.

Lewis And I ..

AT LAST me and lewis have finished up our WONDERFUL cel animation from the work shop a couple of weeks ago... 

Here are just a few of our drawings for the animation. 

Our story is that Tri-man (the triangle), is hunting down Octoman (the octopus), because he has invaded his turf and his been selling drugs to his customers. Tri-man is not very happy about this, so when he finds him.. he shoots him in the head. Turf war over.

Here is our final animation. Using all the things I have been learning in the After Effects workshops and will a little help from Sara, I managed to get the timing for each frame just how I wanted it, and also add the music, which is the beginning of the Scarface theme song. I'm really happy with this outcome! ALTHOUGH I think that Cel animation requires a bit too much work and dedication, as if it took us this long to do this 12 second animation, how long would it take to make a HOLE FILM? I have a new found respect for the Disney designers.

After Effects Workshop 3 - I AM THE PUPPET MASTER.

Firstly we opened up some files to work with. It was an image of a skeleton! This workshop is about parenting, linking different parts of the body of the skeleton to other parts so that they move together like a puppet.

This is the skeleton that we are working with. We made him move his head, and wave using his arms and his hands! For this first one, the skeleton was a Photoshop file, with the layers still available, so each limb was a separate layer..

 ..So to start with, we had to pair up all the 'parents' to their 'children', for example the torso is the parent to the upper arms, the head, and the upper legs.. then the upper leg is parent to the lower leg and the lower leg is parent to the foot.. This basically just means that they are attached, so when I move the leg from the top, the whole leg will move, not just the upper part.

This shows us what body part is the parent for which other body parts.

Select 'torso', move the yellow time line to 2s or so, then drop a key frame on the rotation line, and move which ever part of the skeleton, in this I moved the head a few times, and the arm and the hand.

This is what it looked like after! It's a bit slow but I wanted to see what it was like. We were able to make him move, like a puppet. 

Then Johnny showed us another way of making him move, that is more 'bendy' and free. For this one, we opened the skeleton as a PNG file, so it had been flatten meaning all the body parts are attached and in the same layer. 

For this one, we used the 'puppet pin tool', and clicked to make a point at all the joints, but including the top of the head, and the kneck ect as well as like arms and legs. 

This way allows the actual bones to seem like they are bending and curving as well as moving at the joint. You can change it as much as you want and get all sorts of different outcomes and techniques. 

This was just a quick little test of what it could do, you can tell that it moves a lot differently to the first one. Depending on what effect you want, either one works great. 

THEN he showed us how to make a line look like its appearing as it's being drawn.. WHICH IS WHAT MY ANIMATION WILL BE LIKE! So this was VERY helpful! Although slightly confusing too... 

So first we opened up this file, then  Layer > New > Solid, to open up another layer on top of this.

We made it a colour so we could see it, and then changed the opacity so that we could see the line in the layer underneath.

Then just using the Pen tool, we drew a line over the top of the line, following it exactly...

Then in the top menu we went Effect > Generate > Stroke. This opens another different menu of options at the side, which allow us to change the colour of the line, and the brush size and hardness, and also the opacity, and where is starts and ends.

So I changed the colour of my stroke to RED so it stood out more...

... and then changed the start time, so that when it starts the line is visible fully, but as it runs through, the line starts to disappear :

Then I changed the colour of the line to white, so it's the same as the background of the streak that we started off with on the first layer, so that when the streak that I drew starts to go, the line underneath starts to appear... giving it the illusion that it's being drawn out in front of us. 

And then this is how it looked! Although extremely simple and not quite perfect, I now feel that I could make an attempt with some of my drawings maybe? As this might be how I end up putting my hole animation together...

This one was also another really simple thing. Johnny showed us that if we just drew a shape, in this case a star, we could make it move around the page in real time however we wanted it to. 

First you have to draw the shape, then at the top right, where is says 'workspace', change it to 'Animation', and then again, more options appear at the side. One is called 'Motion Sketch', and with this you can change the timing, so it will either be the time you move it as, or you can slow it down or speed it up.. 

Basically you click on 'Start Capture' and then click on your shape, holding click down you can then move the shape around the page with your mouse, making it follow what ever path you wish... Then when you're done, the shape will follow the path that you created for it... Like so: 

I think this is really good to know, for time when you just want something to move across the page for example, or to follow the path around another shape or image in your animation. I may not need this for my own animation this time, but it's certainly helpful to know this for the future.

Ok, and now this is the last thing we did in this workshop... as we did cram a lot into one session! Masking...

So we opened up this photograph along with 2 other ones which are on layers underneath this image at the moment.

Using the Pen tool, we just drew a random shape, and cut away the rest, only leaving this section of the image...

Then in the options that open up from the toggle in the bottom window menu, you see an option called 'Mask', which opens up more options of things you can change.. You can do things like feather out the edges and change the opacity of the image..

.. Which is what I did.. I made it more transparent so that we would be able to see the other image slightly through it..

You can also change the appearance of the image with these other options on this drop out menu (seen above) I changed mine to 'Hard Mix', which has changed the colours of the top layer image slightly.. making it more visible I think.

The animation made from this basically shows the smaller section of image 'feathering' out, and also the colours changing into 'hard mix'.. but there must of bin a problem when I saved it, that I didn't notice at the time, so I do not have it.

Method Experiment..

Before going ahead with making my animation, I thought I should try out my method.. to see exactly how it will work and to see if it looks good! For this little one, I just drew on top of a photograph that I had taken and printed out. I drew each line bit by bit, and for this 5 second animation I took a total of 73 photographs.

I am definitely happy with this method and think I will go ahead and do a rough try out from my actual storyboard! Or I might even do another experiment as this is ADDICTIVE! The only annoying thing is that it looks like the camera moves slightly.. but this is just because the camera is focussing so it makes it a tad jumpy.. as I am using a tripod to hold my camera still!

Light Photos!

After trailing around town looking in lots of shops trying to find sparklers.. I finally found an odd little shop, that had letter sparklers.. like so:

I wasn't sure at first, but I thought as I couldn't find anything else I should at least try it! So I did, and this is how they turned out!

This one is an attempt at drawing out Bongos..  Can you tell?

This last one is also meant to be a drum.. ! I think I needed to be in a more open space, but at the time it was very windy! So I needed shelter, and also the sparklers weren't that great. One of them went out within seconds and was really hard to try and light again. I struggled to light them in the first place, so relighting them seemed like a lost cause.

I think if I was in a more open space and if I drew them a lot bigger it would be a lot better and also clearer. I might try this again, and hope its less windy. Also as they are letters and they're quite small, they do finish quickly, so I would need a lot more.

Also.. I had a thought while struggling to light the sparklers.. A TORCH. Surely a torch would work in the same way, and maybe even the line would be clearer and I could do it neater? Question is.. do I have a torch? ... Definitely something worth trying!

LIGHT!

I recently found this image of the light from the fire making a line..

Then I thought, WOW what would it be like if I made the lines in my animation out of light? I could draw out the lines and get someone else to take photos of it with a slow exposure so the hole drawing would come out? Or take the photos myself and get someone else to draw it out for me. I think I'd prefer to draw it myself actually though.

I thought I would look on YouTube for examples of people doing this already, and I found this amazing one!

 

Skip forward to about 1minute in, that's when the light drawing starts! This a major massive one, with lots of people involved and a lot of time has gone into it! I LOVE IT. If I did one of course it would be on a major down scale from this! I do want to try it out. I will.

I also found this one, which is extremely short, and as it's named, it was just a test that someone else has done and loaded up onto YouTube..

..However this is a perfect example of what it would like for what I want.. As it even has the light in a line like my idea for my animation, I would just carry the line on and
do the drawings of my drums too. This may not work very well though, as how would I
get the 'tween' photos of it developing? Discuss with someone.

This one is an example of someone making text out of the light. This is a good one as you can not see the person drawings drawing it, all you see is the line of light creating the letters. I wonder how they did this?

I also just found this!! This is an example of light streaks that have been created in After Affects, also from YouTube. But now I know that maybe I could just use my pen drawings and then create the light in After Affects rather than trying to actually draw out in light?

I need to find out how to do this, talk to a tutor maybe and try it out! It could look AWESOME!

MY FIRST STORYBOARD.

Well, firstly I drew out a rough version to help myself understand and see it more clearly in my head first. And also to think about how much time I will have for each drawing to unveil before my 30 seconds is up, as 30 seconds really isn't that much!

This is my rough draft, on the storyboard template sheets that were given to us on blackboard. However I do not like these sheets. Also as there is only 6 frames on a page and my storyboard needs 7 key frames, it only uses one box on another sheet, which isn't neat. I would prefer to draw it out myself in my sketchbook as then it will all be together as well, not on extra A4 sheets that don't fit in my sketchbook!

Each frame... So as to see it better:

More Drawing...

Before actually starting my storyboard, I thought I would do a bit more drawing to get some more ideas of what the drawings in my animation will look like.

I am AWFUL at drawing hands! But I tried.. HAHA! You can tell what it is, so if I maybe tried some drawing while holding the pen right at the top or something so I can less control anyway, then the drawing wouldn't be bad, as it would be meant to be look like that. :)

This last one is one I like, as this is basically what my animation will be like. All the drawings in a line, but my animation will follow the drawing of it from the beginning and we will see it developing and moving 'along the line' kind of thing... CONTINUOUS LINE THROUGHOUT.

Mood Boards..

The brief also asked us to create some mood boards in our sketchbooks, with ideas ect from our assigned music. For my mood boards I have focussed mainly on colours that my song makes me think of.

These are my two mood boards so far, I have stuck with colours like:
                    
REDS, YELLOWS, ORANGES, BROWNS, AND BLUES

...mainly because they are the colours I think of, and they are also quite African colours. So I will probably stick to these kinds of colours when making my animation.