Life Drawing- More Boxes and Shading

Todays lesson continued with drawing more boxes and then using different shades to colour them..  it was litrally going back to basics, and abit annoying but but hopefully building up to something good! .. anyway .. Flip festival this time in two weeks. woop! x

Its not that I didnt take care with these the whole point was to draw fast and roughly sketch.

Life Drawing- Drawing Boxes

The correct process of drawing still life is to draw the base line  and then use the angles of the lines comming away from that base line to depict the rest of the box. This process will give a realistic view of the sides of the box, how much is shown and what angle its shown at. I learnt from this process exatly what an artist is focusing on when he holds out his pencil at an arms length from his eye. It is tto use that pencil as the base line of the object he is drawing.

Module1- Illusion of life- Directed Study Activity

I was quiet excited about this project because it was going to be the longest animation i had created. I actually started this animation before the previous one but stopped, because it had a longer deadline. The objective of this project was to learn morphing, pause, spacing, straight ahead and hang time. I also love this animation because it was the first time I designed a character, and the way he walks by research and then developed him using small gestures to anthropomorphisize him. I watched  videos on Youtube of ducks walking and discovered that they bend forward and streach there neck out to observe new things. and I then animated my character doing that smoothly this can also be seen in my test sheets were I plan the motion in change of body the duck has. I know this is only a small thing but for my first time I think its a good way to learn for later works. Also I really like the morphing of the head when the duck turns his head and also the squashing of the body when its about to fall into the puddle, the exaggerated eyes give him that sense of fear which quickly turns to shame when he looks around to see if anyone is around before moving back. I enjoyed animation the step back because of the slow step  but quick shift which gave the character a bit of life, as if hes thinking about how to move and were to move. This is again seen when my duck wiggles his tail before jumping off and taps his feet together before jumping into the puddle. I definately think this has made me more confident to experiment with character movment. I thought the story was also a big part of the whole thing, heres a young duck who finds a puddle and thinks its deeper than it is. I really do love innocent stories like thins where things happen to cute characters simply because they dont know any better.

 

I did take a look at real ducks and studied definate features that mine should have but I felt the simple and imagionative version ment less could go wrong. e.g I realy needed was a recognisable beak an and body shape, but wings and feathers were not necessary unless they are in use because they almost camaflage against a young ducks body when there folded in.

 

Below are videos i looked at for research to my final video on this module.

 

The video above, I slowed down in order to see clearly how the duck moves. My observations show that it leans forward and although it looks slow in the video the feet move quiet quickly. I also looked at Disney's Silly Symphonies - Ugly Duckling (not the black and white one).

Module1- Illusion of life- timing and spacing, squash and strech (part 3-final video)

Above is the every frame  my ailen character is in  put one on top of the other .. this shows the path he takes in the animation which is the same as my origional plan.

The final video looks quiet good I think. It may not fufill the objective exatly but I believe I made a good animation which has tought me alot, for example, how I can put a background to my work without continously drawing it, how to twist and bend lighter areas on a characters body to balance against heavier parts. I certainly learned to squash and streach my character and use timing efectively to show different emotion. I did this when he stops in mid air and waves his arms around because hes scared.

I believe i need to work on making the animation look a bit smoother and my ease in and ease out techniques.

Module1- Illusion of life- timing and spacing, squash and strech (part 2- mid work review)

Ok, so from my practice animation  which was part 1 of this project I have now created a small character and have started animating it using the techniques in the title, I think I give a believable bounce to my character but not much of a realistic one. This is seen in the extended period of hang time when hes waving his arms in the air and the dead stop at the end when he manages to do some flips and land square on to the rock. I quiet like to keep it this way because its rather imagionative and daring way to approach the project.

This is the test animation which I think goes rather quickly but slowing it down would make it look odd.

I will talk about the  background issue on  part 3 of this post.. there is a reason this animation has no background.

Module1- Illusion of life- timing and spacing, squash and strech (part 1- testing)

This video is simply a test video for a much more interesting animation I want to do with this bouncing technique.  but I had to do this to:

A. Makesure I was timing and spacing correctly.
B. See if my squach and streach is believeable.
C.See if I can use photoshop effectively to use the same background for the whole animation also allowing me to make sure the background dosn't move about.
Photoshop allows me to bring the back ground together with the action infront  (see two frames below)

Action frame

Background

My test has tought me that when the ball falls down after hang time it should be its origional round shape  and that I may need to give it a bit more hang time and difinately draw an accurate arc guide line for my ball to bounce believably.

Module1- Illusion of life- exaggeration

 For this project I took  photo of a friend, drew a quick sketch of his face and then developed that into an easy-draw cartoon character. Simple features made it easier to animate facial expressions in an exciting and effective way. I then chose two expressions I was happy with and used the straight ahead and inbetween technique to morph from one expression to the other.