Caelum Beckinsale - KNB122

Secondary blog for Semester 2 2017's Drawing for Animation 2 class at QUT KG. Student number: n9962735

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Well this is it, my final rotoscoped sequence! I’ve added some blurring effects to the transition to make it look a little bit nicer. Overall I’m quite happy with how smooth this all looks, especially when the style transitions between gestural to structural, structural to rendered, etc. Not tooting my own horn but I’m just personally fairly happy with how it all turned out in the end.

So I think that’s everything! I’ve got all my life drawings further back on the blog, I’ve got my weight lift and my head turn done.

If you would like to see the original video, it is the scene from 1:23 on this video - https://youtu.be/0N6MG8xb2B8?t=1m22s

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Well I guess my weight lift sequence is done now (?)

It’s certainly at the point where it would take me a long time to make any more changes to it, since I basically made my final key poses and then redid all of them with smooth lines. 

Honestly, I don’t think this final sequence is “great” or anything, but it’s certainly a massive improvement from the original version I uploaded a week or two ago. In future I would record a reference video of somebody else performing the action and use those frames for either rotoscoping or just for visual aid. 

For a sequence that started quite weak, and only really had four key drawings from a life drawing session as reference, I think I did alright with this. But, it could have been a lot nicer with some better reference material to work off of.

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Improved the leaning back in-between frames, now I’m going to work on the final clean-up frames for the weight lift. Get that done today, and then polish up any remaining parts of the rotoscoped sequence. Tonight is the final submission cutoff so I’m going to do all of this today and then be done!

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I’ve improved the weight lift some more with a few more frames. It looks “better”, but the biggest problem is still the part where he is supposed to be leaning back to support the weight as it kind of looks like he’s rolling his shoulders or something at the moment (???)

I’m going to try and redo these frames to make it look more like he is leaning back. It’s hard to convey him leaning back when at the perspective this is drawn from, and I drew it all this way because it was based off my life drawing poses.

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Made some basic changes to the transition sequence so it acts more like a morph. It’s still really quite simple, but the core of the idea is there. I don’t want to change the part with the guy running on and slowly forming, so I only really have 8-9 frames to work with from the frame of the figure skater. I’ll make some more changes before final submission, no doubt.

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Did another 40 minute life draw today and I think this came out pretty alright! This is easily my favourite life drawing that I have done, as the rest of them I have a lot of problems with. 

I used the first pose I found off line-of-action.com for this, so maybe the fact that it was a still photo and I couldn’t accidentally move my head and change perspective, the final drawing came out better. Who knows?

The hardest parts are still little fingers and toes, I have a lot of trouble getting those to look nice, especially when they’re so small. Broad elements of shading is pretty easy for me, and smudge sticks certainly help with that, but all of the small details when it comes to shading muscles and bones is still very tricky for me. I think I have improved a lot since the start of life drawing last semester in Drawing for Animation 1, however.

So yeah. This looks alright. I think. I still need to polish my weight lift and 1 second transition animation for my rotoscoped piece, as well.

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Added some more in-betweens to my weight lift sequence. It’s still quite rough and basic, and I have a few blank keyframes that I still want to add drawings to. Overall it looks better, sure, but it’s still not great. I’m hoping I can get it looking a lot better before Saturday night.

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264 frames of animation DONE. Finally, and I still have until Saturday to polish up the introductory transition and my weight lift sequence. MP4 version above, link to an imgur GIF version here: https://i.imgur.com/rq64N2w.gifv

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240 frames! 240 frames completed (although I do still want to redo my introductory transition piece), and now there is just one second of gestural frames left to draw. The due date is now confirmed to be Saturday night and not Sunday night, so it’s good I’ve been working every single day on rotoscoping because otherwise it may have snuck up on me.

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REUPLOAD of my 168 frame sequence complete with the two seconds of rendered drawings from the post below. Looks like I’m going to have to upload in video files from now on because Tumblr not only doesn’t like showing my attached GIF files, but doesn’t like displaying Imgur ones either. Stupid.

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EDIT: Click here for an Imgur link again. For some stupid reason Tumblr doesn’t like my GIFs anymore. Maybe the file size is getting too big? Who knows. https://i.imgur.com/CFADAT2.gifv

It’s looking like the rendered stuff is done now! Just another four seconds (96 frames) of structural and gestural drawings and the full 11 seconds will be done, and I still have an entire week to do all of that. I’ll probably try and do some touch-ups, of course, along with fixing up my weight lift sequence if possible. But I’m happy I’ve gotten as much done as I have, this entire process has been ridiculously time-consuming, far more than any of my other subjects have been.

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EDIT: The GIF doesn’t seem to work on Tumblr and it won’t let me change the file with an Imgur link so you’ll just have to click here to see it: https://i.imgur.com/z0GTM4j.gifv

168 FRAMES DOWN! ALL THE “RENDERED” SOURCE FRAMES ARE DONE. It’s also 2am. 

Over the weekend I’m going to finish the shading on the rendered frames and hopefully begin the last 4 seconds (2 sec structural, 2 sec gestural). And then I’m basically doooone. I still have until midnight Sunday to finish all of this, so I think I’m doing alright for time. I’ve been prioritising the rotoscoping work for this subject above all my other subjects because this is soooo time-consuming, and thankfully I’m pretty ahead with the rest of my work in other subject areas.

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140 frames down!…except frames 130-140 aren’t finished yet because they don’t have any shading on them yet for rendering. I’ve finished the transition from structural to rendered (which is when the shading appears) and then I’m going to draw the rest of the rendered frames WITHOUT shading FIRST, and then go back and add the shading all in one go after all the base shapes and lines have been drawn. That’s why the shading suddenly disappears from 130-140. Hoping to get the rendered part fully completed over the weekend, meaning I’ll have a full week to finish the rest of the structural and gestural frames (4 seconds), and polish everything up, along with touching up my weight lift sequence if I get the chance. Oh yeah and I also have three other assignments to work on, should probably do those, too.

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More progress on the rotoscoping! The structural sequence is only a few frames off from being done, and then it will start transitioning into fully rendered (yikes!)

I might skip to the next structural part and the last gestural part and leave the rendered for last, or maybe I should just keep going straight ahead and get the hardest, and most time-consuming part, done now.

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More progress on the rotoscoping! 90 frames done so far, from the very start with the 1 second transition from the last person’s frame, and to the structural sequence. The part where the skater leaves frame is quite...simple, I’ll be honest, but the walk back on-screen looks pretty good, I feel.

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Added some more to my rotoscoped sequence, with the first two seconds of gestural frames being completed, and the transition from gestural into a more structural, detailed form. The fully rendered part still TERRIFIES ME because structural is tricky enough to try and get right with a digital tablet, especially with the source frames I am using that lack some detail up close on the human model. I’m sure I’ll manage, I’m just concerned about my own skill, or lack thereof. We shall see!

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I’ve started today on my 10 second rotoscoped sports sequence now, and here’s the first second of gestural frames that I’ve done so far. I think it’s looking alright, but I am getting a little worried about having to do two full seconds of “rendered” drawings, along with the structural ones. I’ve got two weeks from today to hand this in, so I hope I do alright. I should probably aim to do a second of animation every day, since I have 14 days left to draw another 9 seconds of animation, along with a 1 second transition, and then I’d want a bit of spare time to fix everything else up and work on other assignments.