Personal Projects.

I have been trying figure out how cut out works so last week I decided to mess around with images in photoshop and then transferring them into Adobe After Effects. This is just a quick test of a slightly humerus space cat. I quite enjoyed animating in this way and would like to take these elements and in my own time develop them in Cel Action or Animate pro and use it as for practice exercises to get used to the programs.

space_cat from Anima Films on Vimeo.

Here are some various versions of illustrations I did for a friend. The image itself is taken from a drawing I did of the TV Presenter Jeremy Kyle.


I am currently working on my dopesheet for the experimental project and will scan in some sketchbook work as well as reveal the process of how the "modeling a coke bottle" maya tutorial George recomended to us a while back has turned out in my next update. We are getting Internet in our flat hopefully next week so the updates should be a little more random instead all on the same day.

Emotion...its a game of two halfs

For this weeks emotional response assignment I decided i would animate a character watching a football game. I wanted to incorporate the emotion excitement with a brief moment of disappointment followed by happiness. This if used in an animation would add to the anticipation of the game being played off screen.

I decided to use video reference for this animation for rough key poses (by capturing certain poses into pictures) and then re designed a character over the roughs and filling in the in betweens I needed.

Football Fan from Anima Films on Vimeo.

Experimenting with Footage

Some of the footage I have shot I have manipulated it further to attain specific effects in after effects. Since I am relatively new to the after effects program I decided to take this as an opportunity to practice and get the hang of the program.

This is water shaken in a bottle. If I can not use film for my experimental animation I will attempt to try a pixilation with water and lights. Here are the type of effects and mood I would like to achieve if I develop these ideas further into a pixilation animation.

water_texture from Anima Films on Vimeo.

water_lights from Anima Films on Vimeo.

Here is another lines effect I may use if i work on Film. I mirrored the shirt footage i filmed and added blending effects to make it abit more abstract.

Abstract_Lines from Anima Films on Vimeo.

This is more personal as I have seen this effect floating around on the internet and always wanted to do one myself. It turns out that the effect is simple to achieve in after effects, using the CC Flow Motion effect.

Untitled from Anima Films on Vimeo.

Experimental Animation

At the moment I am experimenting with Line and Wave Forms for my experimental animation ideas. Over the weekend I used a camera to film things that I could find that would give me interesting reference footage such as, water, curtain, radiators, walls, carpets. Anything that had strong lines. I am planning to take this reference footage and use it for drawing onto 16/30 mm film. As I only have a small canvas to play with on 16/30mm I thought it would be best to keep things simple so using lines and wave forms seems appropriate. If I can not work on film, I will attempt to work with water and lights using pixilation animation.

This was done filming the drapes in my room. As thread them together it creates a psychadelic wave optical illusion. I am planing on brining some of the drape fabric in and experiment with it under a light box if I have time.

drapes2 from Anima Films on Vimeo.

This was a lined shirt I had hung up in the wardrobe. The filming is a bit dark but as I said earlier it is only going to be used for reference.

shirt from Anima Films on Vimeo.

This is a close of a quilt. Again focusing more on the movement of how the camera picks up the lines to use as reference.

abstract_lines_test from Anima Films on Vimeo.

This is a close up of a radiator.

rad_test from Anima Films on Vimeo.

(I will be uploading the water I filmed as well as some footage I have minipulated once I have uploaded them to vimeo.)

Walk Cycle Assignment

I aimed to achieve a confident walk with the walk cycles I worked on over the week. Both of the animations are done using the same method, one with reference images one without. The first one I did was a stick figure which was animated pose to pose on 2s and then adding 2 extra inbetween key frames between each key pose. I am currently working on a 3d walk as well so I don't fall behind on my maya animating skills more than I already have but I will be uploading that later in the week.

walkcycle_one from Anima Films on Vimeo.

The second was exactly the same process only I added detail of a figure from photo refrence.

walk cycle 2 from Anima Films on Vimeo.

Weight Animation Exercise

I animated this frame by frame using pose to pose method in flash. I had previously filmed myself and incorporated different poses from all the videos I had for reference. I then animated the in betweens after the key poses were mapped out and then moved frames around to slow r speed things up if I wasn't happy with the timing. If I was able to revisit this, I would take a closer look at the style as I deliberately drew the body through the box for the aesthetic value of the animation, however after looking at it over and over again, I feel it doesn't work and confuses the idea of the box being a physical object. That said I chose to animate with more of a realistic feeling with minimal squash and stretch and exaggeration and focusing more on the anticipation of the characters approach to picking up the object to give the viewer the impression of something heavy laying before the viewer.

Weight_assignment from Anima Films on Vimeo.

Oldies....

I'm currently in the process of uploading all the animation tests I did last year and over the summer to vimeo. This post will be edited with some previous files that I missed out on last year.

Virgin Ident 1:

Virgin Ident from Anima Films on Vimeo.