Two Burts Walking

For this assignment I was already given a model of a character to work from (in this case Burt the robot) and I had to animate a walk cycle (where Burt walks on the spot) and a straight walk (where Burt actually walks). The most important thing I had to remember when doing the straight walk was not to move the foot that remains on the ground whilst the other foot is in the pass position. If I moved it, the foot would look like it was slipping back.
I found this easier to animate than the bouncing ball. It was more time consuming because I kept reviewing the motion and re-doing some sections to make it look right however it was more enjoyable.

Cubey character

For this project I had to animate a Cubey character jumping from one point to another and then reacting to something off screen.
The whole point of this project is to understand about how animation uses anticipation in order to give a believable movement. Over the week I've been watching numerous Looney Tunes cartoons in order to try to understand the way Warner Bros uses anticipation to build up speed before the character takes off.
Below are examples of anticipation. I selected running but a character can be building up anticipation for anything, getting ready to chop a tree down, even preparing to walk or jump.

 

Below is my cubey character.

 

Did a bit more drawing today to add to the sketchbook. One of the tasks is to draw human bodies with animal heads in case you're wondering where the bizarre creatures are coming from.
The others images of people are inspired by the credits from the Sherlock Holmes movie I watched last night. I wanted to have a go at the cross-hatched sketchy style so I experimented on celebrities (namely Matt Smith and Jennifer Lawrence).

Bouncing ball with a personality!

Another new maya video! This time it is a bouncing ball with character, it bounces down stairs and jumps through hoops. I'm pretty happy with this one, although I did discover, after working in just the side view of maya that when I switched to the perspective view the ball was miles away from the stairs. It was safely rescued though and below is the finished video. What have I learnt? Don't just work in the side view, work in all views when using 3D software!

More Life Drawing

Second life drawing class. I didn't really use any new techniques or ones I had learnt at A-level this time round. Instead I practiced adding tone to the body and just getting proportions correct.

 

Warm up exercises (2 minutes each). It looks like a small animation as she rolls to get up.

 

 

 

15 minute pose. With this one I measured out proportions as best I could using a basic stick shape and then building the muscle up from there. I like everything about this picture but the right arm (her right) is too thin and her hand needs to be bigger.

 

 

15 minute pose again. (Please excuse the creases!) This time I used the charcoal to not draw the tone in but rub tone in using the long side of the media. I don't really like this method, I prefer sketching it in and making bold, dark shadows. The feet are not quite right either, the toes of the left foot are too short.

 

 

Despatched

This is my miniature storyboard to show two characters meeting, one moving at a faster pace than the other. It had to be between 7 and 20 frames long but they had to have interesting compositions so if it was to turn into an animation the audience wouldn't get bored with the sequence.
After watching the Waltz of Bashir earlier today, I was influenced to create a story sequence about a war. The sequence is set in World War 1, I studied it at History GCSE and the war is quite personal to me as well because my Great Grandad was a Despatch Rider. I feel these riders don't get the recognition they deserve because they had a very dangerous job, riding over 'No Man's Land' dodging shells, gunfire etc to deliver their messages. It's also where my love for horses comes from. This is in his memory.

Below is photographic reference (and proof that I'm not lying!). This is my Great Grandad in World War 1.

 

 

Waltz with Bashir

An Israeli film director interviews veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to piece together his own memories of his role in the conflict.

Out of the three films I have seen so far (Coonskin, Animal Farm and Waltz of Bashir), this third film definitely made me feel more emotion towards the victims of the war.
It is an unusual film as it is made up entirely of interviews with ex-soldiers and it is also animated, combining Adobe Flash cutouts and classic animation with a tiny amount of 3D.
The appearance is very similar to comic book art as they've used very defined outlines and harsh black shadows throughout the film. I actually liked this style because it represents the overall atmosphere of the film, making everything darker meant we see the events as brutal and completely unnecessary as they eradicate innocent civilians.
At the end we see news footage of the aftermath of the invasion and it helps the audience to understand that, yes, this was an animation (which most of the time is seen as a fantasy) but in truth it is a depiction of what real veterans are imagining and to back it all up we see the true events that followed in real life.

I watched Tangled last night and low and behold I noticed some squash and stretch was used in the film!

 

Unlike 2D drawing it is much harder to achieve squash and stretch in 3D because the volume of the characters is set and cannot be changed. I think it was definitely required in this section, it exaggerates the gravitational pull from the Earth and the speed they are travelling and as the branch falls, their faces get left behind. I remember this technique being used a lot in previously animated films I watched when I was younger.

Bouncing Balls- 2D Drawing

This is the same assignment as the Maya software except I am drawing each frame instead of using a computer to add frames in for me. With 2D drawings, I can get away with severely distorting the shape of the ball and exaggerating the squash and stretch, this is not so easy to do with computer software as everything distorts according to the volume of the object. Some examples of exaggerated distortions in animation are below my videos.

Below is the heavy ball.

 

And the light ball.

 

 

 

 

Examples of exaggerated distortions in animation

 

Wile.e. Coyote has an elongated back and arms to suggest motion and speed.

 

 

This is an example of emphasised expression. Surprise is conveyed through the elongated neck, arms and legs. The expression such as the beak and eyes have also got bigger. The dog also has an exaggeration of the shoulders and a squashed neck to look hunched and angry.

 

Early Mickey Mouse cartoon showing the stretch of the donkey/horse's tail and the squash of the neck.

 

We may be able to see all these exaggerations now as still images but when these pictures last much less than a second on screen, we do not notice how out of proportion characters are.

Bouncing Ball- Maya Software

These are the bouncing balls I was assigned to do in the Maya 3D software I am learning.

Below is the video for the Heavy Ball, this can be seen because there is not much of a bounce after impact with the ground. The numbers underneath the video shows the frame number.

 

And this is the video for the light ball. This one has more bounce to it.

 

 

 

Censored Eleven

While I was watching the extension task of viewing some other videos in the history and theory of animation, I came across a description under one of the videos that mentioned it was one of the 'Censored Eleven.' Curiosity led me to look into this and found some interesting information surrounding the Warner Bros studios.

The Censored Eleven

They are a group of Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoons that were withdrawn from broadcast as they were deemed too offensive towards black people. None of these eleven have been broadcast since 1968 when the United Artists censored them.
They have been others that have also been censored but are not on the list. For example Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips has also been removed as it offends the Japanese (this was a World War 2 cartoon).

1. Hittin' the Trail for Halleujah Land (1931)

Features Piggy as a river boat captain whose boat is the stage for a band of black performers.

 

 

2. Sunday Go to Meeting Time (1936)

 

Nicodemus' wife attempts to show him the ways of righteousness as he is caught gambling with dice.

 

 

3. Clean Pastures (1937)

 

 

Popular black musical stars of the day are seen livin it up in heaven.

 

4. Uncle Tom's Bungalow (1937)

 

 

Tex Avery parody of Uncle Tom's Cabin

 

5. Jungle Jitters (1938)

 

 

A dumb travelling salesman knocks on the door of a hut owned by cannibalistic African natives.

 

6. The Isle of Pingo Pongo (1938)

 

 

A ship leaves Port for Pingo Pongo which is home to Zulu natives.

 

7. All this and Rabbit Stew (1941)

 

Bugs Bunny is hunted by a black hunter who is obsessed with gambling.
(Yep even Bugs Bunny was censored.)

 

8. Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (1943)

 

Parody of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' but with a black cast.

 

9. Tin Pan Alley Cats (1943)

 

Fats Waller is portrayed as an alley cat who enters a club for some wine, women and song and is whisked away into another world by a trumpet solo.

 

10. Angel Puss (1944)

 

 

 

A black boy is paid to drown a cat.

 

 

11. Goldilocks and the Jivin Bears (1944)

 

 

 

Different version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears but with an all black cast and the bears are jazz musicians.

 

 

 



Animal Farm and Coonskin

Over the past two weeks I've watched screenings of two very different films emphasizing two different aspects of world history.



 Coonskin (1975) was shown in the first week and depicts three African/American characters, Brother Rabbit, Brother Bear and Preacher Fox who rise to the top of organised crime by encountering law enforcers, con artists and the Mafia. It was influenced by and heavily exaggerates the 1946 film Song of the South which had also come under some controversy of racism although in a very light manner. The idea of Coonskin was to attack racial stereotypes as Bakshi was against the organised criminals of the world regardless of race or colour. However black people in particular believed the opposite, they thought Coonskin was using blackface minstrels, including stereotypes from Hollywood films to exaggerate the racism.
The film never made it onto the big screen and was distributed to a limited number of places as home video.





 Animal Farm (1954) portrays an animal community living on a farm under the charge of a drunk farmer who no longer cares for the welfare of his livestock. They chase out the farmer and assume control of the farm and its day to day running, supposedly acquiring equality among all animals.
The idea of the film is based on George Orwell's book under the same name and expresses the founding of the USSR and the reign of Stalin and his communist ideas. It represents human characteristics in animal instincts as each animal dreams of being equal and sharing the land but when the pigs take over, one of the principles of the revolution is forgotten until the animals have less freedom than before. Instead of the act of revolution being the animal's downfall, it is in fact the corrupt leadership of the pigs which destroys the equality the animals strived for.

Neither of these films are like the fantasy story-tellings of Disney but they hold a very clearing connection to world history. It helps me to understand what information is considered too sensitive for today's audience so I know what to put into my own future animations without causing controversy.

Animation Principles

A brief was given whereby I had to animate to an image of my choosing in 12 drawings from an image given to me from another student in class. In other words I am morphing an image someone else has drawn into my image. The end result will be a film made by the entire class where each of us completes a second in the sequence.
Below are some of the drawings I have done where I am morphing a CD player (which is someone else's drawing) and turning it into a dragon (my drawing). Some are not perfect but when each image is going to be on screen for 0.08 of a second, they are not meant to be perfection.

 This is my starting image, given to me by one of my classmates. This is the last image in their sequence.

 Below is my last image which I have given to the next person in the sequence as their starting image.

The final morph video is below. It's been captured using a Rostrum Camera, a specially designed camera used in filmmaking to animate a still picture or object. In other words I took a picture of every one of my drawings and joined them all together on the computer to get a moving image. It's not the regular 25 frames per second as is normal animation but instead is 12 frames per second. This is to get me introduced to the traditional world of animation.

Life Drawing

This is my first life drawing class since A-Level and I used a few of the techniques I picked up from previous classes to get various results.

These are the quick two minute sketches just as a warm up. When I do fast poses like these I leave the head as an oval and concentrate more on the body. That way I can get everything done in the two minutes and if I have time left I move back to the head and add detail. After analysing these sketches I've noticed the drawing far left has a body that is too elongated in the back however the drawing middle right has good perspective on the legs and is in good proportion considering these were two minutes.

This one was a ten minute pose and I revised a technique I learnt in A-Level by drawing the figure using only straight lines. For me, it feels like he is a statue, similar to "The Thinker" by Auguste Rodin as it conveys a muscular, chiselled style.



In order to truly understand the human figure it was necessary to complete an exercise whereby I could not look at the paper and instead I was forced to focus all my attention onto the model. In all fairness I didn't do a bad job! I employed the continuous line technique for this one in order for there to be some sort of shape at the end! In a strange way it reminds me of the Abzorbaloff from Doctor Who.

 

Here are some of my sketches of Mr Power Ranger in various locations around Falmouth and the University Campus.

I like to sketch mainly in pen because I enjoy making very rough, sketchy images. Using pen has also taught me not to be too precious with my pictures.

I can easily point out errors with the image above: the keyboard isn't quite to scale with the toy and doesn't show enough perspective. The keyboard should get smaller the further away it gets from my eye.

 In the past I've used pencil and spent hours perfecting an image and constantly rubbing out lines that are out of place. With pen I am forced to keep the lines I don't like. It's important especially in animation as storyboard artists must be able to draw very simple drawings at a fast pace no matter how bad they may look.

 

 

I kept the toy at the bottom of my sketchpad this time to emphasise its small size so my eye towers above it. Why is it looking to the left? Is it climbing upwards towards its past and attempting to meet and conquer it? Its aggressive stance suggests it has a brave character and no matter how small he is, he will rise up above his problems and fears.

Welcome!

Post number 1: I've been given the task of drawing a toy on my adventures around Falmouth for a week. I can draw them detailed or as a quick line drawing or with colour added. So far Mr Power Ranger has been in my bedroom, to Falmouth Pier, in the animation studio, Gylly Beach and hanging off a fence on campus. I will post my pictures on here soon.