B.Dodds' Blog

Welcome to my student blog! Here you can find what I'm getting up to for the next few years. He/him

[cowboyyhours]

Dance Animation- Linework

Finally, I lined the animation. I used a textured brush to make it look like a doodle dancing around a page and I am pleased with the result. The hair movement and body movements are fluid despite the low frame rate and the character appears stretchy which is the look I was going for. The character has good weight to it. There are a couple of glitches but to a general audience I don’t think they are noticeable.

I utilised squash and stretch throughout, as well as timing, anticipation and overshoot. The whole hair uses secondary movement, though the flick is the primary example of this. 

[cowboyyhours]

Dance Animation- Secondary Movement

The next stage in the sketch layer was to animate the secondary movement of the character. I decided to opt for hair to keep the character design relatively simple. There are points in which the volume of the hair morphs slightly but for the majority of time it keeps consistent and moves with the character.

[cowboyyhours]

Dance Animation- Inbetweens

The next stage was animating the inbetweens. I also fleshed out the skeleton of the character so they had solid limbs and some facial features. To begin with, I animated on 2s as this was something I was used to doing, but it quickly became clear that this would still be too quick for this type of dance. Animating on 3s is commonly used in anime such as Dragon Ball. 

In animation, 1s are used for quick motion, and 2s and 3s are used for everything else. It is common for people to mistake animations with faster frame rates for being superior, when it’s really down to how they’re used. 

[cowboyyhours]

Dance Animation- Key Frames

Listening to the music and with the help of reference videos, I created a simplistic video of the key frames in the animation. I used a basic skeleton for the character just to have an idea of his proportions and the way his body will move. 

[cowboyyhours]

Semester B Life Drawing- Week 8 

The final task was another attempt at gesture drawing. For this task, I used a standard HB pencil, just so I could focus on the shapes of the figures rather than being distracted by shading. I think that my fluidity in drawing has greatly improved since the first time I attempted gesture drawings, and the figures are a lot less stiff. 

[cowboyyhours]

Semester B Life Drawing- Week 7

This task was drawing figures interracting with fabric. I really enjoyed this exercise as I was able to create long strokes and shade the material fluidly. I also was able to draw a different female body type which is on the other side of the spectrum to what I am used to drawing and I thoroughly enjoyed it and think that I managed to capture proportions well. I feel like the weight of the fabric is captured well through shading in the folds. 

[cowboyyhours]

Semester B Life Drawing- Week 6

This week’s task was drawing a laying pose. I feel as though I really struggled with the perspectives, and by extension the proportions. The shading was kept simplistic as the lighting wasn’t particularly intense in the reference photo, but I feel as though this comes off as flat in my drawing. I believe that I could greatly improve this by taking more care with the shading to add to the depth.

[cowboyyhours]

Semester B Life Drawing- Week 5 

With this task, I drew multiple figures in one piece. This was an interesting task as I experimented with how the weights interract with one another, and how the lighting is effected by the presence of two figures. I am happy with the shading in these pieces and the outer linework as I feel like they appear soft and fluid, rather than brittle and stiff.

[cowboyyhours]

Semester B Life Drawing- Week 4

This week, we were tasked with drawing the light on a figure. As I didn’t have dark paper, I highlighted the light with a different colour of charcoal. I took very little care with the shading as the focus of this piece was the lighting. I feel as though I could have attempted to exclusively draw the light without the safety boundry of the figure drawing, but overall I am happy with the piece.

[cowboyyhours]

Dance Animation- Research

Our last task in the ‘animation principles’ module is a 30 second dance animation. Dance is something I may find challenging as timing is very important, and poor secondary movement can ruin the motion, so research for this task is imperative. 

In class, I have looked at drawing gestures from dance without stopping the video, as they move from pose to pose quickly and so capturing the movement was a challenge but was good practice for drawing gestures in a short amount of time, while still conveying correct proportions and fluidity. 

Looking at the choreography in the ‘Grow As We Go’ Music video, we can see that the movements are quite sharp to emphasize drama. The timings between each motion switch between being fast and slow to give them this effect. To replicate this in animation, I would add more frames where the movements needed to be slower, and fewer where it needs to be faster. 

During my self-directed study, I looked at the movements in figure skating as the dance in the sport has a nice fluidity to it, so for this task I looked at animated figure skating in the Japanese animation ‘Yuri on Ice’. During production, they created their own routines and filmed in a way where they could not only be referenced, but also rotoscoped, which is where live action video is traced over to create realistic movement. This may be a route to go down, however the proportions stay realistic and I will be going for a more ‘cartoony’ art style. 

I also looked at the dance animation in ‘Aladdin’ during the ‘Friend Like Me’ scene. These movements are highly exaggerated and the character almost looks as though he’s made of dough and is being stretched around. I like this style of animation, and would like to incorporate principles such as squash and stretch and smear frames to exaggerate some of the movements in my animation. 

All content for this task will be under the principles tag, as well as #dance . 

[cowboyyhours]

Self-Directed study

I completed a study on the structure of a human skull, adding shading to emphasize the countours of the bone. This is rather assymetrical and I should take more care to ensure the sides mirror eachother. I then sketched my flat-mate using the proportions I had learning in this study.

[cowboyyhours]

Self-Directed study 

Here I did a focus on hands and their structure, particularly paying attention to the way that they are shaded. I used two different people’s hands for references, hence the different sizing of fingers between drawings. I feel that i was quite effective in portraying light and shadows, and emphasizing hand details in these drawings, but some of the proportions could be improved.

[cowboyyhours]

Drawing Independant Study (cont.)

I feel as though my anatomy and proportions can be wobbly in places so I decided to practive some basic construction, as well as a torso muscle study for each sex.

I found some stock photos of some toned individuals and sketched from them, attempting to measure each section in heads. The man unfortunately took on a larger size and ended up being 8 heads tall, rather than 7.5. However, I am happy with his muscle study and think his bulk was captured well. The woman was a better height, standing at 7 heads tall. I feel like her muscles are not represented as accurately, particularly her chest area. I feel as though I represented the softness (or lack thereof) of the two body types on their outer linework and inner shading.

[cowboyyhours]

Semester B Self Directed Study

For my self directed study, I decided to sketch gestures from figure skating routings, as the skaters often hold interesting poses, as well as wearing skin-tight clothing to help me improve on my anatomy. It was a challenge following the video along without pausing it and capturing the poses but I feel like I did achieve this, especially in the poses with raise legs. I do, however, feel as though I could have improved the fluidity of the drawings as some of them appear quite stiff. 

I also feel as though drawing along to figure skaters allowed me to improve my knowledge of how the body moves in dance, which will benefit me when it comes to animating my dance animation during the animation principles module.

[cowboyyhours]

Gesture Drawings from Dance

Here we attempted gesture drawings from watching videos of dance. The movements were quick so it was a challenge to capture the pose at times but i feel as though I adequately captured motion in these drawings.

[cowboyyhours]

Semester B Life Drawing, Week 3

Long pose

For this week’s task, we had to draw one pose in a longer amount of time. I feel this task was not my best attempt, as some of the sizes and proportions are waped such as his right arm, and his left leg does not take the correct shape. I feel like it is too soft and effeminate and should be harder and more masculine. There is also little detail on the face and feet which takes away from the drawing overall. I feel as though the torso and shoulders fit well with the drawing, however, and take good shape, as well as following the line of action well.

[cowboyyhours]

CGI Principles- Coffee Grinder

The second model was a vintage coffee grinder. This one had more three dimensional, curved shapes to it which meant that I would have to learn more tools. Additionally, this task did not have blue prints so I took some artistic liberty on this model, regularly referring to the references provided.

To begin, I set a new project for the files of this task to be saved to before importing the clearest reference image into an image plane. I then altered the opacity of this in the attribute editor so that I could sketch over it and clearly see my lines.

I used the Bezier curve tool, a tool that is also used in graphic design (usually to create vectors) to draw out half of the metal housing.

Using the revolve tool, the software completed the rest of the shape. The direction of the mesh had to be reversed, as using this tool inverts it.

This same method was used for the handle of the coffee grinder.

Using modify > convert, I converted the NURBS to a polygon, which are easier to manipulate as I need them.

I then used mesh > fill hole to complete the areas that were not entirely filled in when using the revolve tool, as my mesh wasn’t originally connected.

I then had to reset the pivot point of the mesh’s, as they had unaligned when converting them to polygons. Afterwards, the detailing was attached to the metal housing.

I couldn’t see the top of the grinder’s handle very clearly in the provided reference images, so I found one similar and clearer to model from.

I returned to the method used in my elephant model, where I took a primitive cube and added edge loops, before modifying the vertices so that they took the shape of the handle.

This new shape was then bevelled and scaled down on it’s Y axis.

I then added primitive cylinders to the ends of the handle to act as connectors to join to the knob and the metal housing.

These were then bevelled, combined, and smoothed using the tools in the modelling toolkit.

All these pieces were connected, taking into consideration the scale of each piece. At this point, I heavily referred to the reference provided to ensure pieces were not over or under sized in anyway.

I then moved onto the wooden base of the grinder. The first element of this was quite simple, as it was just a primitive cube with divisions added to it, which was then bevelled.

I found the drawer of the base to be quite challenging to begin with. I bevelled a primitive cube and wanted to inset the face, so that it had a sort of lip to it as it does in the reference. However I found that selecting the main face and extruding was not working, so instead I selected the faces around it and used the transform tools to move them forward. This method broke part of the mesh, however this is hidden inside of the main block of the base so I feel that on this occasion it doesn’t matter too much. In future, I would like to find a better method to work around this error so that the mesh does not become broken.

I took the handle for the drawer from that which is on top of the metal housing, as this not only saved time, but I believe adds some uniform to the piece. I feel as though it made the model feel like a mass-produced item, should it appear in the real world.

For the lower base of the wooden section, I bevelled a primitive cube before adding a second cube and positioning it so it flattened the bottom. I then went to booleans > difference to remove the mesh that I did not need.

In the same essence of the handle, I copied and resized the base. This method meant that the grinder did not have the spectacular curves that appear in the provided reference as I found it difficult to make the CV curves tool to work, but I believe this method is still effective and is similar to that of other vintage coffee grinders.

I then separated the pieces as I needed them to add the individual textures. I made the metal housing metallic with a subtle sheen to it (to add to the vintage look) and ensured the wooden part was rough and had very little sheen to it.

Here is the final model after adding some lighting and shadows.

Overall, I feel as though I managed to achieve the main points of modelling this coffee grinder. I found the revolve and curve tools useful for creating symmetrical shapes and would like to experiment with these tools in the future. I would also like to practice more with shading and lighting, as I feel as though the wooden texture could be more believable.