Animated Short: Character Bio – 14/01/21

In this session we started to come up with some bio’s for our flour sack character in our animated short. After watching a couple of videos from animators based around this, I went for the first things to pop into my head. The results are below, obviously I stuck with my original character aswell.

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So profile 1 is Eddie Flourerro, which is my basic wrestler profile based on the late great Eddie Guerrero, the second profile is named Dylan, who is an 84 year old delivery driver who is currently running in an aggressive way. The third profile is Santiago, Santiago is currently cooking and works as a plumber in the sahara desert. They’re good at jumping and are often scared.

What I’m going to do is take parts from all three of these profiles to create the ultimate profile. I think I’ll keep the name and age from Profile 1, I’ll take the emotion and location from profile 2 and everything else from profile 3.

So we have a Flour Sack named Eddie Flourerro, who is an aggressive 27 year old from the big apple. He is currently cooking but works full time as a plumber, Eddie is very good at Jumping. This helps transition himself from a plumber to his dream of being a professional wrestler!

Idea 4: LeFlour

LeFlour is a young energetic entrepreneur. He owns a takeaway business that specialises in Pizza. He is very good at running so delivers the pizza’s himself.

Idea 5: Bullet Time

Bullet Time is an animated short where our Flour Sack, currently unnamed is on the run from a group of people who want to hit him with tomatoes and potatoes. He is very good at free running and jumping and has awesome reflexes.

January 14, 2021May 6, 2021 by nextgenjordan Categories: AnimationTags: Animation Leave a comment

Animated Short Ideas – 07/01/21

In this blogpost, I will detail a few ideas for my animated short featuring the Flour Sack. Once I was shown the model I had a few ideas but the one I want to run with is that this Flour Sack is a world class wrestler in the Flour Sack Wresting Championships.

Wrestling

I’m going to have the Flour Sack do a Frog Splash onto another Flour Sack. I will be looking at videos of the late great Eddie Guerrero to animate them from.

With all that said and done, I would love to have multiple angles of the animation within one video which is part of the beauty of wrestling and the frog splash in general. Designing a basic wrestling ring should be easy with primitive shapes, the animation in theory should be easy.

Other idea’s I’ve had would the Flour Sack doing ‘The Worm’ dance move down a busy street in sync with some music, or perhaps a super-hero Flour Sack, like Spiderman, able to swing from building to building. We could also go for something a bit more generic, less action packed, where the Flour Sack is a business manager at a failing business.

I think Eddie Flourerro is the best idea from these, but as I come across more, I will be considering them but at the moment its Eddie Flourerro vs Seth Raisin for the Flour Sack Championship!

LeFlour

LeFlour is a pizza delivery // takeaway owner. In this animated short, LeFlour could be creating a pizza or delivering a pizza to a customer.

Bullet Time

In this idea, the Flour Sack could be Neo from the matrix and jumps across a big gap between two buildings before turning around and then dodging some projectiles such as tomatoes or potatoes.

January 7, 2021May 6, 2021 by nextgenjordan Categories: AnimationTags: Animation Leave a comment

Animated Short – 07/01/21

In this animation session, we looked at a Pixar short film named Presto. A film about a magician and his mischievous rabbit. The rabbit is hungry but the magician will only reward him for doing the show. By looking at this short film, it will help us understand more about the 12 principles of animation.

The first one I noticed was at 0:54 in the animation, where there is a glimmer in the magicians eye. This indicates the magician has found something he is looking for. The glimmer is a good use of the animation principle, APPEAL.

Secondly there was another animation principle a few seconds later on 0:57. This one is a follow through action. The magician blows into one hat and smoke comes out of another hat, this explains a link between the two hats.

The next animation principle I noticed was an ARC at 1:14 when the magician pulls the bunny back by its tale. Its legs are moving in a forwards circular motion. This helps create the illusion that he is being pulled backwards. I suppose in a way this also includes ANTICIPATION.

At 1:20 here is another example of FOLLOW THROUGH and OVERLAPPING ACTION. Once again involved the two hats, again showing the link between the two, I also think this involves some STRETCH in these few seconds.

At 2:51 there is a good use of EXAGGERATION. This involves the rabbit unlatching the ladder from the latch to make it fall through the hat and come up through the other hat. The ladder is continuously used after this showing no limits.

At 3:26 we see a use of ANTICIPATION and some rapid POSE TO POSE. The bunny electrocutes the magician on a nearby switch and it sends the magician into a stomping fit. The musicians near stage see this as a count-in and start playing music which in turn sees the magician start dancing unwillingly.

At 3:33 we see some more APPEAL and some STAGING. The use of particle effects and their direction, accompanied by the sound indicate a small explosion as if a fuse had blown.

Finally at the end of the movie when the Magician is falling, he SQUASHED and STRETCHES into one of the hats.

Following this short scene that is pretty much most of the animation principles I could find within this short animation. All in, this animation is fairly funny and impressive, I feel like where it includes so many different animations, it feels longer than what it actually is.

January 7, 2021 by nextgenjordan Categories: AnimationTags: Animation Leave a comment

Animation Fundamentals: Reflection – 10/12/20

In this post I am going to be reflecting on the quality of my work and seeing where things could possibly be improved. I will start in the order of the animations created, so the Bouncy Ball is first.

Bouncy Ball

The bouncy ball is probably the easiest of the three to animate, In my animation, the ball does have a nice bouncing effect to it, however, the problem with the ball is that it doesn’t look real at all, partly down to the fact that the ball has no spin on it and when you have such gravity and angles in an animation, the spin on the ball either makes or breaks the animation.

Although the animation uses some of the core principles of animation such as Arcs and Squash and Stretch this could be way better, I’ll have a go at making an animation where the ball spins.

Pendulum Swing

I don’t know what was more frustrating? The lamp jump or the pendulum swing, either way I don’t like it. This particular animation was very frustrating, trying to capture the momentum and the weight of the pendulum as it swung backwards and forwards and how gravity might affect its weight. In the first Play Blast, The pendulum swings left to right, even though the swing is a neat arc, it doesn’t look true to life.

The second playblast is a slightly tweaked animation, with the addition of the pendulum hitting the cube. This does help add some weight to the pendulum but again, doesn’t seem true to life. I think I might revisit this one and make an animation where the pendulum slows down.

Lamp Jump

In this early Playblast, the animation idea is there, I’m happy with the lamp jumping off the diving board but in the build up you can kind of see it slip and slide. As it leaps up into the dive, the change of direction could be smoother and also the lamp moves at an incredible speed on the way down. Like I say it is an early Playblast so improvements are yet to come. I think with the idea of the diving board wobbling, it also adds some anticipation in some aspects, it definitely helps accompany the animation.

UPDATE – 12/10/20

December 10, 2020December 10, 2020 by nextgenjordan Categories: AnimationTags: Animation Leave a comment

Animation Fundamentals: Lamp Animation – 3/11/20

Today I started to animate the lamp, based on my obstacle course storyboard. I started by placing a few platforms in a root position and then set a keyframe. Following this, I then went to frame 120 and moved the platforms along to the final position.

Next, it was time to start animating the lamp, I need to make it look as if the lamp is jumping from platform to platform, as a stretch goal, I will attempt to make the platforms fall in accordance to real physics. My first step in this was to move him to the platforms so the timing was there.

Then I started to tweak the base of the lamp so that it was the same angle of the platform.

Finally it was time to start making it look like a jump.

UPDATE

I am deciding to change to my diving board storyboard idea, the obstacle course one is not working out very well at the moment and is very challenging in my early animation studies. Jumping from platform to platform does seem easy in the mind, but getting it into software is a different kettle of fish. Will update the post accordingly with a complete playblast of the lamp on a diving board.

I set the stage up and put the lamp into a prime position, ready to leap up into the air and into the pool, I can almost feel the anticipation myself!

Now it was time to start animating. I will work on the diving animation first and then work on the animation of the lamp jumping up the stairs.

I started the lamp off in a crouched postion and made the diving board angle a little bit at the front.

Then for my next pose, I stretched the lamp up towards the sky and moved its base position, this created some anticipation in the jump and some elasticity in the lamp, I also made the dive board wobble after the lamp jumps up.

I started to make the lamp lean forward and arc to show its change of direction, making it then fall into the pool.

As the lamp is falling, I pulled its base away from its head, once again showing some stretch.

Finally, the lamp ends up in the pool. Now it was time to start animating how the lamp got to the end of the diving board in the first place. I went to the very first frame and placed him on the first step.

Moving forward, I would make the lamp jump using pose to pose animation, going from step to step.

upon arriving at the diving board, I wasn’t sure as to whether I would make him waddle or hop over to the end. In order to create some build up, I decided on the hopping method. The full playblast of the animation is below.

As a result, I score the lamp a 8 / 10 in the diving board olympics. This project gave me a number of feelings but mainly frustation. It was nice to have multiple ideas though because like we have seen here, if one idea doesn’t turn out the way you hoped, you can keep trying until you want to rip your eyeballs out of their sockets or we can move onto a different storyboard. I am happy I changed to the diving board animation, although it isn’t perfect, it is somewhat enjoyable to watch… if only Playblast Quality was better..

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Lamp Jump V2 – 10/12/20

After spending some more time tweaking the timings and animation, the end looks like it is in sight. Few things to fix such as the timings at the beginning of the animation and the stretching as well when the lamp jumps.

December 3, 2020December 10, 2020 by nextgenjordan Categories: AnimationTags: Animation Leave a comment

Lamp Jump Storyboard – 26/11/20

Before jumping straight into the lamp jump animation, some planning is required and that comes in the form of a storyboard. A storyboard allows you to plot key moments in the animation so we can go point to point and animate in between.

Idea 1 – The Diving Board

In this first idea, the lamp quite fancies itself as a bit of an olympic athlete. The animation will start with the lamp approaching the diving board, before compressing its frame and leaping onto the diving board.

The lamp will then shuffle along about half way across the diving board before jumping on the end of it, causing it to spring into the air. When it hits a suitable peak height, it will then arc before plummeting down into the water.

Idea 2 – Frank Lamp-ard

Frank Lamp-ard is a more complex take the lamp jump animation, and it will feature a couple of lamps. Leaps and arcs will feature as Lamp-ard bounces towards the ball before sticking its base out-wards before tilting it forward and hitting the ball.

The camera will then follow the ball as it flies towards the back of the net, forcing lamp in goal to go for a save. The ball hits the net and Lamp-ard celebrates in style by jumping around to the tune of house of pain.

Idea 3 – The Obstacle Course

In this thrilling adventure, Lamp will make jumps to different platforms from other platforms, the end goal for this one is to make it loop so it can be pleasing to watch, fairly simple and fairly fluid, the character will be springy but also hesitant to plan his next jump.

I think the most exciting storyboard is probably Frank Lamp-ard but I also like the way ‘The Diving Board’ and ‘Obstacle Course’ are playing out inside my head. The trouble of course is animating it to achieve the idea. I think for simplicity, I will go with the obstacle course and jumping point to point as this will show off the lamp jump the best. If I have more time to spare, I could also work on the diving board one, the Frank Lamp-ard one is a challenge in itself.

November 26, 2020 by nextgenjordan Categories: AnimationTags: Animation Leave a comment

Animation Fundamentals: Bouncing Ball – 19/11/20

FAS1

Today we learned about Bouncing a ball in Maya and using the graph editor. The graph editor is an interesting component within Maya that allows you to see the distance over time in animations, so in theory, just by placing points on the graph, you can see a line view of the animation.

To begin with the animation, I would get the basic position every 12 frames and then tweak them after wards. So I made a keyframe every 12 frames just moving the ball from left to right and moving up and down. This is also known as pose to pose animation.

As the ball would go down, I would then squash the ball to replicate a bounce animation and then two frames before and after the squad, I would stretch the ball in the corresponding direction. This creates a slight motion blur

I then rinsed and repeated the process of squashing and stretching before tweaking my timing. When it came to timing, I looked at the graph editor, as I said before, I feel like this is a line view of the balls motion, so if we want a clean arc for a bounce, we could refer to the graph editor for more control over this.

Below is the playblast of this. I would like to try and add some rotation to the animation to make it more life like. I would also like to tweak the start of my animation as it does seem a bit janky at the moment, However so far, I am pleased with my progress and the result.

November 19, 2020December 14, 2020 by nextgenjordan Categories: AnimationTags: Animation Leave a comment

Animation Fundamentals: Pendulum – 12/11/20

Today we started to learn about animating a pendulum, making it swing left and right. The idea I had in mind for this was to have it be slow when reaching the highest point before swooshing down to the middle where it would pick up speed and then slow back down before reaching the high point. Trying to recreate a pure momentum.

A pendulum in a grandfather clock would normal tick every 10 seconds, I want my animation to be half of that, so naturally I set my animation to be 120 frames long as it was 24 frames per second. I created my starting position and then copied the keyframe to the end position. On frame 60 I created the opposite pose and added a keyframe. Playing this back, the animation was looking pretty good, but it didn’t look lifelike, it didn’t have any physical momentum.

I started to then tweak the frames in between and I have had a few issues , as I placed my points in my animation, the pendulum would move to a different point, despite there being no keyframe to tell it to do so. So with that, I will continue to play about with the pendulum in my spare time. I have managed to piece together an animation.

As previously mentioned, I will attempt to animate the pendulum once more to try and create the effect I want, To make it seem more lifelike and have some weight to it.

UPDATE:

November 12, 2020December 14, 2020 by nextgenjordan Categories: AnimationTags: Animation Leave a comment

Intro to Animation – 05/11/20

In todays session, we started to learn to animate primitive shapes within Maya. To begin, I created a simple scene that includes a few platforms, training cones and two competitors in the form of a sphere and a cube.

To start things off I animated the cube. The first frame to the first motion is a stretch and slide before stopping to jump onto the platform.

Moving on from that, I made it then squash before jumping up to the platform. I added a keyframe of the cube in midair and rotated forward slightly, this helps create an illusion of an arc. As it lands, it squashes so that it can anticipate the motion of the next jump. It was then a case of rinse and repeat before sticking the landing.

I then went to work on animating my sphere. As you physically can not see the sphere roll without a texture, it was just a case of moving it to the location and adding a key frame. I did this every 12 frames to navigate the cones, and then in between each 12 frames, added a middle point so it looked like it curved around the cones.

Finally for a bit of fun, The sphere then jumps on top of the cube. The full animation is below.

November 5, 2020November 6, 2020 by nextgenjordan Categories: AnimationTags: Animation Leave a comment