The Advanced Animation skills workshop

There are all sequences of the advanced skills workshop combined on one movie

 

Reflection report

The Advanced animation skills workshop was a good challenge for me to see how much still I have to learn. It was a great experience to gain some skills and understanding of the basic things through research and put that knowledge into my animation, making it more realistic.

The quadruped walk and run cycles were my first experience and at the beginning I had some troubles to make the movements smooth. I did some research through videos of the real horses and some animation books to understand the basic for animating my pony sequences.

The weight lifting exercise was my second experience. The first experience wasn’t so successful two years ago when I watched it now, but analysing it I saw and learnt my mistakes. I tried to avoid them while was animating the heavy box lifting sequence. As far my sequence works more realistic for me, but still in the moment when the character finally lifts the box the more effort needs to put into her movement.

The pull and push were easy to animate to compare with the lifting, but I had to make myself pull the box and push the wall to understand the basic of movements. It would be better if I could animate them more detailed and a bit longer, but I didn’t manage because of my problem in time managing.

Also the obstacle sequence animation caused by that problem of time managing, I rushed it to finish. As a result, the animation looks rushed, but the climbing moment worked well for me. Still there are many in-betweens needed to make the sequence look smooth.

Animated obstacle: week 4 and 5

For the obstacle exercise I watched plenty of different videos to inspire myself of creating my own. At the end I sat down to the table with no clear idea what I'm going to draw. I just started drawing from the still standing character and only then I decided to make her climbing. I didn't have a reference exactly for that, so I had to put myself in that situation in my head to realize how would I act and my movements would be. I think if I would use a reference,  the animation sequence would be more smooth and developed, but I'm happy of the climbing part because I used my imagination and my experience.

Weight, Pull and Push: week 3

The reference for the weight lifting exercise. I took an idea from this  example and developed into the weight lifting sequence.

(unknown picture found on the internet)

(two last pictures above, from Richard Williams "The Animator's Survival Kit", p. 257 and 258)

It was my second time of animating the heavy object lifting sequence.There is my first animated sequence, which I drew for my old animation story 2 years ago.

Animating second time, I tried to analise my previous mistakes to create the realistic struggling of the character this time.

The Quadruped Run Cycle: week 2

My pony run cycle

Creating the galloping cycle was more complicated for me than walk cycle. The body of the pony is constantly moving, so it was a challenge to present it in the correct way so it could show how much effort the animal puts into running.

The main reference was example from Richard Williams book.

(picture from Richard Williams "The Animator's Survival Kit", p. 359)

Also this video reference with stop motion of the run was helpful.

The Quadruped Walk Cycle: week 1

There is the walk cycle diagram and the developed pony walk cycle

 

It was my first experience of creating the quadruped walk cycle. As the main reference I used the horse walk cycle example from Richard Williams "The Animator's Survival Kit" book for my own pony walk.

There are those examples, taken from the book.

 

(pictures from Richard Williams"The Animator's Survival Kit", p. 356 and 357)

To understand and create more realistic body movement of pony walking, I watched many videos, but there are some, which helped me  a lot. Also later  I watched them to analise the movement from standing still to the run cycle.

Tuesday 9 OCT' 2012

The observational drawing of the dog skeleton, from my sketchbook, drawn in the class.