i have found that most people still havent read my other animation blogs. go to my profile and you can find the rest of them

http://www.blogger.com/profile/15443504679326228672

about my last project

1) was working in a group fun?

yer i found it enjoyable but very stressful as i found that my role in the group kept on changed as to what i was meant to be doing.

2) did i think that the producer was communicating well with the others?

in deciding on who was going to be the producer (which i had also wanted to be) no one else got a say in on if they wanted to be producer or not. when i said at the beginning that i would like the role of producer i was told that i wouldnt be up to it as im always ill with me CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) i felt this was un fair as this was now the second time this has been told to me. how can i prove that i would make a good producer if no one will give me a chance. our producer did sometimes listen to our ideas but would not do anything about it. i made 2 versions of the ball bouncing on the ground and said the the one that he wanted would not look right unless i could animate over the top of the moving back. he said that it would all work out if i got it done. i also told him that the non moving back ground with the ball comming in and bouncing off the walking stick should all be visable (like in the ruby part with winnie running across the scene)

after they chose the one i said wouldnt work then found that moving the background made it jumpy and so the had the back ground stationary (like i said would happen) but with the animation for a moving background. this ment that winnie would instead of not moving and waiting for the ball she would slip it to meet the ball.

3) what would i change about my animation if i could do it again?

i would keep with my first idea unless i got the moving background BEFORE i started the animating

4) did i think the end result was what we were all aming for?

in a way yes i do. little things we added as we went along but our end result was quite alot like how i imagend it would turn out.

I am so bad at keeping up to date with this >_<

after the chewtv thing that went well in my eyes despite what was going on in my life, i decided to get stuck in with the new project.

Hayle history animation project.

i am working in a team with 4 others (yes thats right im not updating after this has been compleated......ok well the 'hand in' date is this friday so im nearly at the end of this all) it has been an intresting experence i can tell you. working in a group i find great fun but at the begining things were off to a bumpy start. we all agreed on which sound file we wanted to do so that was great, the problem was how we were going to go about it. im a 3D animater and wanted to use what i have learned over the year into the final piece, which was fine cause the plan was to use 2D and 3D. i was going to be making a 3D modle of Winnie (our character) in Maya. after a few days though this was changed. that is it was changed the friday before the presentation on the monday. i was told that i was not going to be doing her in maya but as a clay modle. so i went and paid for some modling clay and spent the weekend making her. during the presentation on the monday i was told that i was going to be deciding the colours for winnie to be in, and then two days later i was told that two of the other people were doing that after i had spent most of my time doing it as well as finalising the 3D modle that i was then told we were not going to be using it at all!!!

i was then showed the timetable for what needed to be done. i was then told that i would be doing the 2D cricket scene (i wasnt really ok with this as i do not like working in 2D that much apart from drawing and animating in a Japanese anime style which this was not going to be).

i got around my problem of timing with the help of Maya (oh how i love you maya) i played around with the directions of the ball and then when it was right i traced over it on paper to make it 2D.

this is what it turned out like



after i showed this to them they said that they wanted the camera to move tracing the ball. this i found was alot harder cause i didnt have the background work with. anyway after alot of time on it i managed to get it done. i also managed to get winnie in as well.



after this i moved on to the over head view




after that it was all put into Flash (which i do NOT like) and coloured, as well as edited and extended.


this is what it looked like in colour

first part, with colour and background;



second part, with colour and background;




after this scene was placed in to the sound with the others it started to look more like an animation story then when it was just on its own.

as we were waiting for some of the others to be finished i drew and animated 2 other characters that would be placed in the background of the ruby scene.

as we were getting to the deadline things started to go wrong one after the other. one of the hard drives was whipped clean which was the MAIN hard drive. luckily one of the others in our group had backed up all the work from the days before that day on her computer so we didnt have to do that much again only the stuff that was done on that day. then two days later while it was nearly complete other then adding in the sounds effects, premier (the program that we were putting it all together in in stead of after effects) decided that it could not find the folders which we had saved it all in as well as saying that some of it didnt even exist, which we all new was not possible as we had saved it all to 2 hard drives as well as the desktop. we went on to the desktop and re put everything that it was asking for into it and then after a good hour or so of trying to get to work it just did on its own. >_< i hate computers some times because they have more mood swings then a pregnant bipolar woman.

anyway the final thing after putting it all together editing it (as well as putting together the folder needed of pre-production work we also needed to had in along side which i did after going through each photograph and re sizing the file size to make it as small as i could with out loosing the quality.) im really glad its now done. it took alot of time but was worth it to be working along side other people to come up with this;

the final thing;


(i LOVE the bird hehehe)

UPDATE AT LAST

WOW I havent updated this in a while. well now what have i been getting up to since last time. well in Feb and March I had a project for ChewTV. this was to make an Ident for their website.

i had my idea from the film Slither. i wanted to do a gag Ident as well though so i thought that having something "chewing" on the snake slither thing.

I also had to work on this on my own which i felt was the hardest thing cause i couldnt get all that i wanted done in the time that i had. Such as making mini models of them, other input of ideas, people helping with sound and the animation.

The last few days i found i couldnt concentrate on what i had to do cause i found out that one of my friends died and he was all i could think about. this was another reason that i would have liked to have worked in a group so i had someone else who could concentrate on the project.

the pre-production i thought went very well the only problem was writing it up but that has always been hard for me to do. i cant seem to get my ideas onto paper, i never really have been able to and that shows in what little there is that i can show to people about my ideas and planning. i know what i need to do and what im doing cause i have a good memory for that kind of thing.

In the end i felt that it went well despite what happened. The final thing came out slightly how i wanted it to but i came across i problem with the texturing and that was that the models faces along the body were back to frount and some were at an angle to the others.

This is what i finished with

Live @ 5

Live @ 5 is a news brordcast that the university does every week. we were asked to do all of the animation that is needed for it. We were split up into groups of about 8 ( 4 groups) i was in the first group but was ill on the monday we were ment to do it so i joined the 3rd group. i was working on the weather and surf chart. we were told what they needed it to show and created it as they wanted it. they being the jurnalist department who were doing this.

i belive we all worked well in the group to put this all togeather. these are some of the stills of the weather and map that i created (the final thing was all animated though)

tonight



tomorrow



high tide



surf report



i was unlucky as that the day our one was meant to air i was very ill and could not get out of bed to see it all put up and played in live with the live at five reporters.

wow i havent updated in a long time. well lets see ... hmmmm ... oh yer for christmas i got a graphics tad so have been using it alot and im starting to get better with it. MAN it takes a long time to get used to it and get the settings right.

here are some of them
this is Catman and this is Dobinn
these two charactors im illustrating for a friend of mine who is publishing a book.


other then starting to do this i have also started my own drawings such as this one called anime pirate

as well as playing around with colour to make this



playing around on the tab is alot of fun :)

Getting to were I am with 2D animation

To get to my last blog entry on my 2D walk I started with drawing and animating this simple looking ball.



I found this to be quite enjoyable to watch after all the drawings I had done. It looked a lot better then i thought it would.

I then went on to add some stretch and squash to the ball and this is what I came up with,



Adding the stretch and squash to the ball and slightly exaggerating it I found that it looked more life like as a bouncy ball.

After I got the hang of this I started to try and animate a more 'person' like object. using a box with arms and an oval as the head. first I made them jump from a height.



after this I added weight to the 'person' this adds more squash to the landing and a faster drop.



Moving on i made my character jump from one spot to another using anticipation and over lean.



after finishing this animated clip i found that one of the frames was incorrect, because of this it made it look like the 'person' on the jump up got hooked on something when on the way up. I found that taking out that frame made this a lot smother in watching. (this is the one with the miss placed frame)

After getting to grips with one character I moved on to have another in the frames that interacts with the other.



i found that after watching this animation that there should have been more frames in the beginning to add to the anticipation, the drawings needed to be clearer and that more stretch and squash would have made this animation work better. what i thought did work was that i tried to only animate one of the characters more at one point then the other. in doing this the viewer wont have to watch to things at once and gets all the details as to whats happening.

moving on i started to do walk cycles. adding legs to the boxed body was the easy part. making it look like the character was walking was a LOT harder then it looked. i knew it wasn't going to be easy i just didn't think it would have been THAT much harder.



I tried to draw it all as one lined person and found it not to my liking so changed my way of drawing it and just started with the legs to get the walking motion. i think after doing this that walk cycles are the hardest this to do so far in animation.