Drawing for Animation 2: Assessment Blog

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KNB 122 Drawing for Animation 2: Assignment 2 - John Everitt

Turning Head

For my first pass at the turning head, I kept features such as nose and ears relatively basic, as I’ve often had trouble rendering them with detail and perspective. I made sure to give the head an arcing, accelerated motion during the turn, which really added a sense of life to the character.

Pass 1:

I then added hair on my second pass, which helped greatly in keeping perspective and form.

Pass 2:

I then realised I made the mistake of placing a blink before the turn rather than in the middle. I tried testing a version with two blinks, but I found it to look awkward and ultimately decided to remove the first blink and keep the one on the turn.

I fixed some issues with the ‘face-squashing’ as she looks down in order to keep consistent form, while also adding detail to the eyes, nose and ears. In the case of the latter two, this task helped me greatly in figuring out the correct look and perspective for detailing those features. As the head completes its turn, I decided to add a flick on the ponytail to give it some extra life, which worked out excellently.

Final Pass:

The one issue I still have is the perspective of the neck. I tried drawing it multiple times to keep consistent form throughout the turn, and while I can’t decide whether this final pass still looks off, it was the best I could manage.

Weight Lift:

For the lift, I decided to have some fun with the characterisation. For reference, I used a clip from a championship weightlift (below), and designed my figure based on that example.

Figure design:

I studied the specific method to which he lifted the stone weight and applied it to my thumbnails.

Thumbnails:

Pass 1:

Pass 2:

Pass 3:

Modelling the motions after the clip proved to be difficult, due to both the perspective of the image, and applying said motion to the cartoonish proportions of my figure, but I feel I managed to work it out. As with my previous flour sack task, placing pauses in the action helped greatly to convey force, weight and effort. During each pass, I made sure to correct areas where the body would shift out of place to keep consistent form.

Final Pass:

On my final pass, I added both a squash and stretch to the figure as he falls back on the ground, while making sure to give the ball a light bounce as he does so, once again conveying weight and force.

Rotoscope Dance:

For the rotoscope clip (frames 5880-6024), I wanted to create an interesting and interpretive design for the dancers. While searching through references, I came across one very interesting image of a vector-style illustration of African tribal dancers.

Something about this image appealed to me and I decided to apply a similar design to the thumbnail sketches bellow. 

Thumbnails:

I placed them out along the key poses in the sequence, along with my gesture drawing to end the clip.

Key poses:

I found the process to take a lot longer than expected, so I took to completing the middle segment first before focussing on the gestural and transitions. The female dancer’s skirt I had to animate by hand, which was an added effort, but I feel flows nicely.

Pass 1:

An interesting observation I found was how far more difficult it was to animate a slow moving object or character, as opposed to a normal or fast moving action. This made attention to detail very important for where I placed certain lines.

After a talk with my tutor, I found that I needed to add a sense of form to the animation, so I decided to apply lighting and shading around the different segment of the bodies, giving a more three-dimensional, mannequin-esque look to the dancers. I also re-drew and re-sent my final gesture image to better match what was given to me.

Shaded dancers:

New final image:

The transitional drawings turned out to be both a challenging and fun experience for me, especially as the male dancer turns his arms over towards the end. I kept the dancers’ hair unshaded, both as an artistic choice and to distinguish it from the rest of the body.

Transitions:

Final Animation:

I am very proud of how the final animation turned out, even though certain instructions were difficult to interpret. I feel I could have perhaps exaggerated the body proportions more for my design, but as this was my first time rotoscoping, I decided to keep the body shapes fairly close to the clip.

Life Drawing:

I didn’t take much life drawing practice between semesters, so the process took me a little time to get used to again. I started on A3 as last time and found myself getting back into certain techniques, such as shading. I then decided to move on to the larger butcher’s paper, which took me a little longer to get a handle of. The larger canvas definitely forced me to use my arm more for gestural strokes, and made detail a lot harder to crack down.

I still have a lot of trouble with anatomy, especially with the placement of the ribcage and shoulder blades, hence why they appear a little off in some images. Proportions and measurement techniques are also a challenge (foreshortening is still a pain), though I feel I’ve managed to make it work regardless.

I still definitely find the female figures much easier and more interesting to draw due to the greater emphasis on the gesture, but I think my skill at the male figure has definitely improved as well. I still keep away from faces and (for the most part) fingers and toes, as once again these prove to be the most challenging aspects and I decided to keep most of my focus on the body.

Overall, I definitely feel an improvement. I’ve become more comfortable on the butcher’s paper, though only when time allows me attention to detail. I have a better understanding of shadows and shading now, although anatomy is still something I need to work on to improve my skills to the next level.

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KNB 122 Drawing for Animation 2: Assignment 1 - John Everitt

Bouncing Ball/ Bouncing Head

The following exercises were created in Sketchbook Pro’s Flipbook mode, which I’ve come to find the most intuitive and responsive of the 2D animation programs I’ve used thus far, despite some limitations. My first pass at the bouncing ball exercise was relatively easy,  with the help of a 13 frame spacing chart for reference (all animations are 12fps).

Bouncing Ball (pass 1)

When it came to applying a head to the ball, I had trouble keeping the ears properly formed, while the bouncing motion itself began to feel a little weightless. 

Bouncing Head (pass 1)

On my second pass of the head, I corrected the spacing of the bounce, increasing speed before contact while reducing it in mid-air (I also removed one frame off the contact). The difference of energy and liveliness between the two passes is noticeable and a clear improvement.  I also fixed the ears to have a more accurate sense of form and weight. 

Bouncing Head (pass 2)

The motion of the face itself was now the one aspect that still needed slight correction, in order to appear more fluid and natural, with my final pass below.

Bouncing Head (Final)

I’m happy with the final turnout, and the improvements through each pass informed me a lot on the weight and energy of bouncing objects. Once I was finish, I took that same spacing and applied it back to the ball.

Bouncing Ball (Final)

Walk Cycle

On my first pass for the walk cycle, I set out a spacing chart for the legs while following examples from Richard Williams (the way the leg bends as it takes the body’s weight really helped make the motion feel more natural). 

I added a swing to the hands as they swayed across the body to give a casual feel, however the right hand was becoming stiff as it came forwards.

Walk Cycle (pass 1)

In the second pass, I corrected the swing of the right hand, while also adding shoulder and pelvis rolls, showing a distribution of weight and giving the walk a sense of three-dimensionality.

Walk Cycle (pass 2)

On my final pass, I began to feel that the swing of the arms was looking somewhat uneven. So to help get a more accurate motion I drew up a spacing chart and found the right arm was swinging forward slower than it should.

I corrected this motion and the arms now swing far more evenly.

Walk Cycle (Final)

I wanted to play around with some more expressive walks, and with original walk as a model, I came up with this very lazy, almost zombie-like motion.

Alt. Walk Cycle (pass 1)

I like the motion of the legs, however the flopping body was becoming had to interpret, and with my second pass I corrected the motion such that the man falls forward on each step. I also added a head to complement the bouncing motion and help define the anatomy.

Alt. Walk Cycle (pass 2)

There was still the issue of speed (the timing was still modelled after the previous walk), and so in my final pass I stretched out the walk by adding frames before and after each contact, taking longer for the man to lift his own weight.

Alt. Walk Cycle (Final)

Run Cycle

I took two passes at the run cycle at first, one running at 12 frames and the other at 8 frames. Both turned out fine and William’s examples were a huge help in understanding the forces on each leg.

Run Cycle (12 frames)

Run Cycle (8 frames)

However the leg movements still came off a little stiff and too even, so I examined my own run and found that the leg moves fastest when pushing off the ground and when brought forward. On my third pass, I altered the run to 10 frames and adjusted the leg spacing. I also cut down the torso and fixed the bobbing motion of the head.

Run Cycle (Final)

Flour Bag

For my flour bag animation, I wanted to play around with weight and force, so I scripted the bag to be in the middle of a tire-workout, trying to heave the heavy tire across the ground, only to overestimate his own strength. I had done a flour bag animation last semester, but I felt as though I could have experiment more with form and emotion. So when sketching out the thumbnails, I would have the sack stop to catch his breath, before stretching and ballooning his chest for one last pull, only to collapse under his own weight.

I animated the key contact poses, with each step taking longer and bringing more weight with it.

Flour Bag (key poses)

I then added the extremes poses, which included the bag dragging its own leg on the fourth step, which I found I fun little escalation. 

Flour Bag (keys and extremes)

I then began filling in the in-betweens, which mostly involved working out the force of each step, and I found that holding frames between and after each step was an effective way of showing the bag’s struggle.

Spacing chart (step 1)

Spacing chart (step 2)

Spacing chart (step 3)

Spacing chart (step 4)

Spacing chart (step 5)

Spacing chart (jump)

Spacing chart (slip)

Spacing chart (fall)

However, issues began to rise regarding the definition of the bag’s form. I originally intended for the bag to be reach both arms over to one side as they pull the tire, but this became difficult to interpret by others.

With the help of the tutor, I then began experimenting with the bag pulling the rope over his ‘shoulder’ (I decided to look at the bag as having no head) which would rotate along with the rest of the body, and this turned out far clearer.

V1

V2

I wanted to add a bit more character to the sack, so instead of a simple step here, I had the sack comically run in place to pull the tire forward.

V1

V2

I also re-animated the breathing motion to better define the action (using the ‘bean’ reference helped greatly), while getting a more fluid stretching and reshaping motion as it ‘buff’s up’.

V1

V2

I then added the tire and the rope for the final pass below.

Flour Bag animation (Final)

I’m really happy the final animation, and I’m glad how well the simulation of weight and effort came across. There are some areas where the form perhaps loses some consistency, and I had trouble getting the bag’s slip at the end as comical as I was hoping, but overall I think it managed to convey the appropriate action and emotion I intended.