Space Baby

Very quick update:

Did a turnaround for the space baby, and if I found it difficult just drawing it, I can't imagine what it will be like animating the baby. I should find some good reference footage, so I have more of an idea for they move. Also need to study how their facial expressions shift.

TTFN

Red or Dead rough test

Trying to get a better sense of how a cat moves for when the lion jumps through the hoop. Need to take timing into account, as it should have been faster (aka fewer frames) at the beginning. Still, hopefully this will help for the actual animation.

 

 

 

Red or Dead update

Well, not a full update. Still have some storyboards to upload here, but that's for another time perhaps. For now, we have some crazy ideas and I think we've mostly sussed out who is animating what. In the animatic (which is up on facebook and which I will get a copy of to put on here) there's a section where a person will jump through a hoop held up by another person (this will be liveaction). A 2D animated lion will emerge from the other side of the hoop. That's one of the bits I'm animating, hopefully in toonboom. Today I've been trying to familiarise myself with the anatomy of a lion, and get more used to drawing in toonboom.

It was kind of slow going, as I've never drawn a lion before. And I'm a slow drawer in general :P From here I need to find some good reference footage of a cat/lion jumping and landing. Maybe pouncing would be a better description. Will also flick through Richard Well's animation guide, as I'm not too familiar with the principles. Hopefully this will serve as good practise.

CelACtion Practice

Did another practice animation in CelAction. I think I'm starting to get more familiar with it. In terms of actual animation principles, I need to learn how to offset action so that the character seems more natural, but isn't doing too much in one instance.
 I was originally trying to make the character touch his toes, and found it tricky repositioning his feet so that his legs could bend. Then I realised you have to move the whole character from the root first, and only then do you pose the legs, working your way down the hierarchy. I think the next challenge is gonna be learning how to make him walk. Do I move his entire body along first, or do I just start by animating the legs, then the body, followed by the arms etc?
I was also testing animating on 2s or 3s. Because the playback in CelAction is slower than when rendered, it was kinda difficult to judge in the program itself. Seeing the result though, I think for most actions I prefer using 2s.

ChickenFox

So back with the new term, and I'm gonna be helping with the animation on ChickenFox, and that involves learning how to use CelAction. Here's the result of what I did at the weekend:

I was trying to make him jump, but I didn't put in any anticipation at the beginning. And he doesn't actually land XD (5:00pm on Saturday swings around faster than I thought). It was kind of weird, trying to animate the different sections of the puppet on different levels, and trying to figure out which frames to choose for the duration of the action. Also trying to figure out the tail rotation and then which of the different drawings to select to give a natural movement. Plus I forgot to delete the frames at the end which means he jerks back to a previous pose. So basically, he looks like he's floating off into midair and then getting an electric shock XD At least I have a slightly better understanding of the programme, although not of how to animate the characters convincingly.