Tuesday 22 April 2014

Title Sequence: Animation Feedback

I had to finish two of my animations early because I was going home for Easter, so I thought that it might be a good idea to get some feedback on them in time for when I got back, so that I could fix any mistakes along with finishing the animations. I found it helpful, and something that I will definitely do again.



These are comments from Tumblr and various other forums;

You seem to have a pause, or a slow in between where her foot touches down and the final settle. I’d take some frames out of there and add more to the final settle.
[Blue animation]
----------------------
egg-noodle asked: Hi, uh, you said you wanted help with your America animation. I'm not really qualified to give you any proper help, but I thought I'd try? I think all you need to space your drawings differently. They should be further apart the closer she gets to the ground. Also try switching your two last drawings, so she lands heavily and then her body rebounds a bit. Her feet should be completed still by the last two frames. (Unless she's using her magic floaty powers, in that case, ignore all this) :)
-----------------
THAT HAIR MOVEMENT IS BEAUTIFUL <3 when she lands, need more frames for the arms and the legs and feet :)
 [Blue]
------------------------------
i THINK one right before her left foot goes flat, her foot angle also sees a bit off when it bends :)
 [Blue]
------------------
Hmmm I'd say for the blue one, I think the movement would be stronger if both legs were straight until the landing and the arms were held higher, like so. I'm mainly looking at the fall picture and the recovery picture since I think that's what you're focusing on in the first animation. If you extend the body more (ie, arms up, legs straight) before hitting the crouched pose (on the ground, knees and arms bent) it'll give it impact, IMO.
The green one... I'm assuming is someone growing super muscular. I like that the posture subtly grows more upright, but the arms look off to me, maybe they're too short. Try drawing the arms' outlines and seeing if that helps, because what it looks like to me is that the forearms grew but the upper arms shrunk.
I don't know very much about timing, so I can't say anything about that u___u I hope that helps anyway! //And yeah, foreshortening is tricky, but even trickier with silhouettes.
I think she'd land the the same way...? Even with legs straight and together, she'd probably land on one foot first and then throw the other foot around to balance herself automatically.
Sorry, I don't really do animations u__u
--------------------
Hello! I'm not a student, just a hobbyist who studies a bit in their spare time (and also, I have no idea how to word things effectively so apologies in advance), but anyway.
For the blue one, to have your landing more impact you should either speed up or remove some frames, so that the landing feels sharper/harder and keep her front leg straight and directly under her before she hits, right now the frame rate and the position of her leg makes it looks like she's slowing down before she makes impact which is weird. You've forgot her line of gravity, her front leg needs to be under her body to catch it, or else she'll be off balance.
(There is one animation principle that is good for animating impacts, and that is skip to the aftermath rather than having a frame on the impact, I'm not sure it'll work here, but you may give it a try. At the very least, make sure the the impact frame is a shorter one.)
When she lands, carry her core/body through the fall a frame or two longer and then have it bounce back up to her final resting position, so it's more natural. When her leg stops, her body will keep going a bit longer before she can brace it. Again, keep it fast and sharp.
I'd also plan out her trajectory a bit better, because it looks like she swerves ever so slightly while falling. Make sure, if you're not having her fall in an arc which it doesn't look like you are, to keep it straight, then. Her back leg and foot is all over the place, always map out the arcs of a body part before hand.
(You might also experiment with squash and stretch, like lengthen her body and remove frames in the fall and see what sort of effect that has, but that's more style I suppose.)
For the green one, again, make sure to map the arc he'll be moving in. There's a bit of wiggle which is awkward. I would map out his head and make it a smooth arc to make sure it's not going in a zigzagged path (which it is doing ever so slightly.) The whole body in the few frames leading up to the last one make it sort of rock back, which is kind of awkward when it suddenly snaps forward again on the last.
Also, I don't know if this is what you're going for, but once you start bulking up a certain body part, make sure to keep up the momentum, or it looks like it's bouncing or shrinking. Like, there is no growth on the left calf in frame 7, which kinda disconnects it from the rest of the legs.
Anyway, sorry if this is unhelpful or I didn't do a good job explaining, but I hope it helps at least a bit.
 ------------
I think that I definitely have enough points to work on here, and I'm glad that I have been told this while I still have time to change them.

Friday 11 April 2014

Ceramics Induction: Claymation/Stop Motion

Since our Ceramics induction gives us the opportunity to make a model that could potentially be used for stop motion if we had time, we had a little task to practice changing shapes made out of plasticine that would help get used to changing and remolding characters used in stop motion/claymation.



I went from a sphere to a round based pyramid to see how easy it would be to change from  both a round shape to a flat shape, and from a round shape to a pointed one. I found this to be more fun than I thought, but I think that it would probably be a very painful experience to change stuff for every single frame. If you mess up, that would most likely involve redoing a lot of the animation. I do not like the way that a lot of claymations look, and I am not particularly interested in stop motion. I wouldn't mind trying it just for the experience and a chance to change my mind, but I can't really see that working out.




I do think that Lee Hardcastle's animations are quite entertaining, and the crude style of it does work well with his crude sense of humor. The style has improved throughout his videos though as has his animating and camera work. I do think that this would maybe be a fun thing to try, but I think that they do work a lot better as comedy animations, which is something that I would rather try first with a more controlled method of animating.