I am very very jumpy right now about the assignments handed in last night... they're the last of the year after all... and i was reading through everyone's blogs and it seems i am the only one who didn't use a polished cartoon character looking thing.... my character has joints showing, climsy shading and no clothes or hair since i thought those would make it harder to identify the walking movement. But it seems in my judgement i was wrong -_- And i was so pleased with my improvement too.
I think i did a better job than the last time by far... at least it has joints now instead of peices of spaghetti.
3d however i am not pleased with. The model was complex far beyond my abilities, and i needed the graph editor badly on this one... but the complexity of the model was waaay too much for me to manage in it. The walk is jerky, clumsy and looks nothing like an anything walk, let alone like my walk. But time and time again i tried, and time and time again it came out the same -_- until i ran out of time and had to hand in.
I hope very much that someday i'll be able to handle something like this... but such a huge step made me stumble. I will do battle with Andy-rig again... some other time.
Man... i thought the last journal entry was depressing, this one took the cake. I guess i'll update when i know what my results are.
Oh and i drew another person. So i shall add it in for no reason at all really.
As the title says, we got to make our real first steps this week XD Actually animating things walking :O Well... when i say things, i mean a person and a sphere on legs.
My 2d one was terrible, by far the worst thing i have done yet, and i deservingly got my butt handed to me about it. If there was one time i could have put my head through the desk so far on this course... it was then. But i will bounce back... and model my walker much better next week. I don't think it's as wrong as it looks animated, but it's too fast and as such it's impossible to tell that the legs are colour coded as back and front. But everything else is wrong with it.
Anyhow... here it is.
I've already modelled my walker for next week with actual joints and shading on the back limbs... i can only hope it animates to my walk well enough. This is just a first sketch of it, and i know it's primitive and one leg is too long, but it's the joints i'm working to get right this time.
Anyhow, on to 3d now.
This was... a little better than 2d, the sphere on legs that's actually kind of adorable ^_^ Burt.
I think i got the basic idea of a generic walk, though it's by no means good -_-
I think Derek was right at the start of the year when he told is 'No animation you ever do will you be completely happy with, there will always be things you hate about it' Well he certainly hit the nail on the head right there XD
Anyhow... for this week... nothing else to report... But because this journal has kinda been on a downer... here's a rat :D This is my baby Morenwyn ^_^ My youngest ratty. But yes... that was simply and sheerly for the purpose of cuting things up in this entry.
Well everyone else seems to be away in bradford, so there's very little to be said here really... i've done a little bit of playing with Maya using rigs i found online and things like that, but since Maya and myself are still looking upon each other as mortal enemies, none of that ended with successful animations, just silly little things that weren't worth uploading XD
So instead i thought i would fill an entry with talk of the past ^_^ What i did before this stuff and how bad it was XD
My animations Prior to the course were... bad. Primitive little frame by frames done in MSPaint and GIF Animator 1.0 because that was all i had access to really. Well i had better art programs but anyone who has used old GIF animators knows what happens when you put a good quality image into it. It looks like a mess.
This one stemmed from my friend making a joke about how you can injure someone on the other end of the internet...
This one stemmed from someone wisecracking on the previous one that they would rather someone thre pudding through the screen at them.
That horrible thing was an avatar for someone -_- i hate the way it's done but it was a number of years ago.
I have done other small animations, but they are all much the same as these, primitive and old fashioned.
The again i say that but i still play Monkey Islands one and two... in their gigantic pixels of dooooooooom. Feh, i guess i'm just strange in that i will judge animation not by how shiny it is, but by what is contained within it. It's why i cling to films and animations from years and years ago, ones that everyone laughs at because they're old. Then i like to point out that things like Akira are not exactly stonking new and that generally makes them realise how judgemental they're being. That's how it is... animators work with the times, and when new times roll around they leave the old ones behind. Kinda sad when the old ones contain such artistry as they often do... rather than having a computer do all the work.
When people ask me what my drives are to do things like that, what inspired me really to go into animation, i can name the exact moment for me that it happenned.
It was the second year of my film degree course. We were studying out Postmodernism unit, which had until that point had strictly real action films. But today as i approached the classroom i heard something that made me look up in surprise. Something i had never heard anything like before, something so eerie and unusual that it actually gave me shivers.
We were studying 'Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence' that day... and the sound i had heard was the theme music that was on the DVD menu as the lecturer set up the film for the screening. I knew then that i had stumbled onto a film that was going to change something in me. And it did.
As a film it was not that groundbreaking at all really, but i had never seen a film acheive such atmosphere before this one. I'm not sure what was different about it at all, but something was, and it made me realise that all of the studying i had done of real action films had paled in comparison.
Here's a youtube vid of the theme responsible.
The re-edit and such are not my work, but it's the only vid with the full song in good quality. It's still just as eerie for me as it was when i first heard it.
Anyhow... i feel i have waffled long enough, so i shall call that it for this week.
Last night i had a nightmare about animating Mr Cubie -_- i think i am taking this too seriously. No more Maya before bed for me.
This week my 2d animation was a lot of trouble, the speeds were wrong, the frames didn't seem to go in the right order even though they did. And if that weren't trouble enough someone hadn't taped down the peg bar on the stopmotion Pro computers and it came loose at one point... inconveniently D: So at one point yes it does appear to be spazzing out. But anyway. Here we are:
I think my dislike for Mr Cubey came out in this one ^^;; since i did knock him about a little... but Cubey Jnr is only a little better. But if you think what i did to cubie in that one is bad... well... check my 3d out.
I really went all out on this one, and up until the last superslow ball bouncing into wall phail... it's actually okay... Or maybe i just think that because i had fun beating up Cubey. It was like Maya agreed with me for once!
Perhaps we can learn to get along after all.
Oh and this week i got the most amazing photo... of sunrise over the ugly end of Penryn XD please to look beyond the hideous buildings.
Oh yeah and since we had a halloween of course... i leave you with a picture... of the alright and terrifying... STEVE.
Yes, this week we met Mr cubey for the first time in his digital form :O
Again facing off with the mixed blessing of Maya, we did battle, and it was long and hard... and at the end... not really worth it. The animation isn't bad as such... it's just... inadequate feeling. Especially when i saw some of the amazing things other people had been doing with their cubies D: Blimey, some people had been able to animate entire scenes and scenarios, but i apparently stuck too closely to the breif of 'make Mr Cubey jump' ... and did so.
It was not a good one... and when i told Maya that i wanted to animate his antennae using the control it promptly responded with the computer language for: 'AHAHAHA YOU WANT TO DO WHAT?!' *crash* Gritting my teeth and trying again i got the same response, and a third time too. By this point i was ready to put the computer through the window and so decided that it would be unwise to continue with this in this way... and left the animation as it was.
Myself and Maya... are not getting along.
Oh and those who might be wondering... why have i got a rat in my title image/thing....? Well... it's my Fabian. Everyone needs something to give their life a little bit of sunshine... for some it's other people... posessions... money... etc... for me it is my pets. Three rats, a mouse and a hamster... kinda like my inspirations ^_^
Well, second week ^_^ Scary stuff now we're facing Maya, something i've never even heard of before this course, let alone had experience with.
But before i go off on that subject, i thought perhaps i should work to back up my earlier claims of being an artist ^_^ So, i shall put a few examples in here.
Those are all characters of my creation or commissioned peices.
Some cute little... rat... adoptables i was one commissioned for:
A collaborative effort to create this lovely beastie... Alphonse.
He comes in many colours and markings and is part of an ongoing project XD
Some of my tribal creatures:
You know what XD Go to http://kimerawolf.deviantart.com/ for about a ton more of my old art XD
Anyhow, that out of the way and moving on.
Maya >______> it feels like a best friend and a worst enemy at the same time... one that schizophrenically speaks the same language as me one moment and then the next it's shouting foreign at me whilst beating me with a pool cue. However, bouncing balls on it was apparently within my ability ^_^ here: Heavy Bouncy.
Light Bouncy.
Nothing special or interesting... and i do kinda wish we'd been allowed to play with making them pretty colours, but oh well ^_^ I'm sure there'll be more than enough of that to come.
Now the 2d one was a terrible letdown this week. I was most displeased with the way it worked out, with it's lodgic defying bounce powah... -_- But we make mistakes to learn from them... so here we are:
Unfortunately, gravity defying bounce powah was also the curse of the Mr Cubey assignment.
More mistakes to learn from and make new mistakes instead of XD
Anyhow. That's about all i got for this week, onward to week 3 :D
Well, here is it... University. A big step, well, not so much for me. I've already been here two years... Film Studies is what i came to do but when i didn't get to get my hands into the actual filmmaking a change was needed.
In everything i have done i have been a practical person rather than a theorist... an artist, a writer, an amateur photographer. For a couple of examples on that one you can see a few photos here: http://arianwyn.deviantart.com/ It gets updated from time to time. Anyhow, back on topic. Practical things, creating things, making things happen, has always been my love, and studying films with hollow words and theories felt dull and not what i had hoped for. It was an amazing step to move over to animation, and a huge step towards what i want to do.
Ever since i was young i have adored film, wanting to be able to create like that, to tell stories and teach people in the most amazing medium yet created by mankind. Even as a small part of a filmmaking process, it was what i knew i wanted to do. It became something of a goal for me, though it did change and develop a lot, eventually deciding on a focus, something i wanted to be in the industry. But that doesn't matter at this point. I am at the start with a fresh new course and fresh new coursemates.
The first impressions of the course are great! And we've already gotten well into our animation practicing in only the first official week, a pencil drawn 2d circle morph! Actually this proved to be interesting and educational for me... i'd never used a lightbox before, and all my previous animations had been on the computer, despite being a traditional pencil artist.
It came out... not quite as planned or expected... given it's less than perfect but it shows what it is... i'm slightly proud of it as a first attempt but i'd go no further than that. Let's see if i can embed it shall i:
If that worked you should be able to see the animation ^_^ I hope it did.
I guess with introductions over and the first week's work shown... i can only move on and end this first installment ^_^
