BA HONS Animation Year 1

Uclan University

[jollyfoxanimations]

This short documentary by Andrew Saladino is quite impressive, it explains the different styles of how director Brad Bird shoots his scenes and the camera styles he employs.

[jollyfoxanimations]

This is a short rought storyboard i have drawn up for my E4 final sting project, i am keeping with an indiana jones / explorer theme, except i am going change the human character i was originally going to use for an anthropomorphic animal character, not only because this is where i feel more comfortable when character designing but it might give me an added advantage when creating extra expressions and movements which i would be limited by a simple human character. 

[jollyfoxanimations]

Here is my finished character rotation project after cleaning up the lines and adding the colour. Annoyingly there is a little wobble in the midsection of the chest also the legs part at the front facing and behind shots weirdly. Overall i am quite pleased with the final animation but there is still much room for improvement with my design style.

[jollyfoxanimations]

After adding a few more inbetween frames to the animation it is much slower, it took me a while to figure out the angles and draw them each just using onion layering on Toonboom now i have to clean the lines up and add colour.

[jollyfoxanimations]

This is my rough turnaround for my character rotation project, as you can see i used different coloured lines at the beginning of the animation, these are so i can keep all the perportions for the different aspect of the character the same, the different colours represent different parts of the body like the face, shoulders, waist, hands and feet. i do feel there are not enough inbetweens in the frames so i shall ad a few more to slow the animation’s turning speed. the most complex thing i have done so far in this project was drawing the character from a side view as this is the first time i have drawn a character from this angle.

[jollyfoxanimations]

Multiplaning images was the requirement for the next project, the idea of multiplaning is that there are multiple layers on which different images are drawn onto and when the camera is panned toward or away from the scene the collection of images will appear to have an aspect of depth. This is done by moving the images on the X axis while in Toonboom’s perspective tab view, then the layers can be moved toward or away from the camera. I collected images of the internet that I felt might be most effective for this. I used various brush techniques to create the colours on the scene it has been a very fun and helpful exercise as I have learned many new things about the Toonboom’s brush software.

[jollyfoxanimations]

For my next project which is connected to the cube rotation assignment, i was asked to create a character and rotate it frame by frame in Toonboom. Here are a compelation of rough designs i created when trying to create a suitable character design. i looked at different heights and builds but i was more drawn to a slim character as i felt it might have been easier to animate, i was also looking at suitable attires which will be easy to animate and most imporantly due to time i tried to keep the character as simple as possible.

[jollyfoxanimations]

Here is my finished animation for my Bentley Sting, I am quite pleased with the result, I had originally planned on creating this with CGI 3D animation on Maya but because of complications with my course I had no choice but to complete the project in Toonboom. Although I had limited time to complete the project I feel I did a reasonable job. I kept my design simple and not overly complicated I didn’t follow other peers in my class by designing complex Bentley car designs or over complicated scenes, personally I felt that the advert itself needed to be simple and elegant; Bentley is a prestigious company. I believe that this may be what the Bentley company may have liked if I was requested by them to make a 10 second advertisement, not over complicated or cluttered with crazy over-elaborate animations. The only thing I would have changed would be some shadowing on the wings to create a little extra depth.

[jollyfoxanimations]

Just watched this stunning animation by an animator named Casey McDonald (aka Goth frog on YouTube). I love everything about this; the awe-inspiring background designs, the loveable characters, the story, the audio and of course the beautiful animation. The level of detailing of the two characters motion and secondary actions makes this is as good as a Studio Ghibli piece. I mean this because of how Studio Ghibli understands the importance of the finer detailing in actions and motions; the importance of creating easily distinguishable character idiosyncrasy which inturn develops a deeper story for that character.

[jollyfoxanimations]

Jib Kodi on Twitter

“Lil did the wolves know, Great Fort Toilet Paper has more than toilet paper at rdy for the pandemic :P Voices in the animation: 🐺🐺🐺🐺 - @T

I watched this short comidic animation by an animator named Jib Kodi. He is a Canadian animator who's work I have been following since he submitted his very first animation many years ago on FA (furaffinity.net). I love his querky line style and character designs plus his animating skills are very inspiring. (FYI. This is the first animation he has created that includes voice-over actors and sound)

[jollyfoxanimations]

Tyler Pacana has created the best flour sack animation I have ever seen, very clever use of sound aswell.

[jollyfoxanimations]

Another animation by Tyler Pacana, although this one is short and rough it is none the less beautiful, I am amazed and captivated by his design style, I really like the scene and the characters are extremely likeable. I feel the style is very remenisant of Disney's Robbin Hood, Once again Tyler is truly a highly inspirational animator.

[jollyfoxanimations]

Just found this amazing animation by Tyler Pacana, it show the process of his animation from the rough sketch right through to finished animation. His animation and character design style is truly inspiring.

[jollyfoxanimations]

This is the final animation for my rolling cube project with out the arc and line guides..

[jollyfoxanimations]

My next project i had to create a cube that rolled in a square shape back to its original position putting into practice everything learned from the last project, i actually found this proect quite difficult as it demanded that i thought 3 dimentionally when animation the cubes movements, the thing that i actually found most difficult was creating the guide lines on the floor, i added arcing guide lines to help me to ensure; not only the cube stays in perportion while it moves but also allows me to see where the side of the cube will be positioned when moving, once i had established these the rest of the animation was reasonably straight forward to finish, my only dissapiontment is that im not totally happy with the way the shadow follows the cube.

[jollyfoxanimations]

For the new project for my introduction to animation classes, we have been asked to create a rotating cube that holds shape while it rotates, then it had to be coloured/shaded and finished with a shadow on the bottom, i found this project quite fun and easy. First i started by creating two oval shapes on the top and base of the cube these act like quides to ensure the cube stays in the correct perportions as it rotates. I started by creating some keyframes and then created the inbetweens till the cube appears to moved round one full rotation. the only thing that i found difficult was distancing the inbetweens so that the cube rotated at a constant speed, personally the only thing i would changed would be that i should have added 2-3 more frames to make the cube rotate at a slower speed as i feel it rotates to fast.  

[jollyfoxanimations]

This is my finished submittion for my Nik Nak advertisment sting, overall  i am quite pleased with the end result. obviouly there is great room for improvement but my only self critique would be that i should have adding a few more inbetweens to the characters movements because i personally think the animation is a bit cluncky, i also would have changed the audio leveling on some of the sound clips as i find they are a little loud for the animation (splash noise and bubbles).