for my Visual Elements of Story class we were asked to develop a story of our choosing (one of three). I chose Zorro with an Asian-themed twist. What you see here are my first attempts at photoshop :\ Lot to learn, but considering I didn't even know photoshop could be used for anything but editing photos before this class, I'd say I'm pretty happy with what I got out of it.
Since the walk cycle we've been focusing entirely on our final animations, which included developing a story that could be told in 30-60 seconds, storyboards, character development and the actual animation hand-drawn.
Here are the rough storyboards for mine from oh so long ago:
Practice sketches:
The final product came out to be only 33 seconds. I know it's not impressive, but keep in mind that even a short animation usually takes animators months and months with multiple people working on production and lots 'o little animation bitches doing your in-between drawings for you (assuming it's even traditional animation). I made the mistake of leaving the end until the very end, like the day before it was due. Maybe someday I'll go back and finish it...but not likely.
Anyway, here it is.
I've fallen behind on my updates! I've been too busy to post anything this semester but now that I'm done (X-D)... I can finally show you what I've been doing.
This is the walk cycle that I did way way back in like, February. It was our assignment after the flour sacks. I didn't wanna do a person so I decided to try for a rat on it's hind legs. Studied youtube videos of people training their actual pet rats to walk to get it right :P
Apologies for the crap quality. I can only get it to play on a loop on quicktime, not as a uploaded video, so I just recorded it on my comp screen. As good as I can do for a non-tech saavy person :x
In my figure drawing class we've been getting assignments such as, "for the sketchbook, 20 arms, 20 legs and 20 hands, and for your newsprint pad, 3 detailed drawings of the torso two hours each." Which actually means "this is the bare minimum to pass with a C-. Draw about 3x that amount and make it hellah good, and I might consider giving you a B." Needless to say I am improving. Draw anything 20 times a week for four weeks and you don't really have a choice but to get better. Check out my arms, pretty hot ;)
So, like the million of animation students before me, I start with "the jump." The assignment: "animate a flour sack jumping on a box."
I decided to take liberties with a few things, all of which ended up being self-defeating.
1- I made it a stool instead of a box. Oh wait, I have to animate the stool 36 times? huh. Now, if I had known better at the time, I could've drawn the damn thing ONCE and edited into a background layer on flipbook. Or even if it was on the classic lunchbox, I could've put it as the under drawing and shown light through it. But this being my first animation, I unwittingly made my life a whole lot harder. And I just had to add shading...ugh.
2-I made my little guy do a flip off the stool. That was hard. My instructor loved it though.
3-I added a 2nd flour sack that applauds at the end. It ended up translating really poorly. Why is there a second flour sack? where did he come from? and how does one make a flour sack applaud? fail.
So what you see above I did on flipbook earlier today...before I had it on VHS on the the lunchbox, where it looked sooo much better. I tried to take a video of the TV showing it but it looks all crappy. Maybe I'll post that too when my internet connection isn't on the verge of crashing.
Again, not being adept at the flipbook software yet the timing's all off compared to the original I made for VHS :S This one took much less time to animate since I learned from my mistakes and drew only the one trampoline...
After the flour sack we graduated onto the walk cycle, which I will post next when I get time...
I thought it might be interesting to keep a record of my progress through art school by posting some of my work from classes periodically.
I'm now on my 3rd week as a first-semester graduate student in Animation and Visual Effects at the Academy of Arts University in San Francisco.
Here are my classes for the Spring '09 semester:
610 Figurative Concepts (intensive study of human figure)
611 Visual Development (visually developing characters and story)
612 Principles and Pipelines (animating basics)
Not having any formal art background I'm in all the basic foundation classes. Which is fine with me. My instructors are amazing and I'm loving it so far, despite the six-and-a-half hour class periods and resulting sore back and hand cramps :\.
So far I've animated a hand-drawn ball bouncing (week 1) and a personified flour sack jumping on a stool and doing a flip off, created thumbnails for my own asian-based female Zorro, and drawn a whole shit load of arms and legs. Not much exciting yet...
My animations so far have been recorded on a "lunchbox" which means they're on VHS. Not sure yet how to go about transferring that online. Maybe could take a video on my camera...
Will post things up when (if?) I get time.
What would you attempt to do if you knew you wouldn't fail?
Submitted by Beautifully Broken
If I'm allowed to be hugely self indulgent, which I think I am, I'd attempt to steal her away. "Who?" you ask. You're not likely to find out. I made a promise to myself to stop writing about my drama-enriched so-called-love-life after boring the crap out of everyone the last time.
So I'm struggling. I'm struggling with work, I'm struggling with people, and it's fair to say I'm struggling with life in general. I'd say it's the usual winter blues that I get hit with every year, but it's been particually worse this time round. I'm currently in free fall, pushing people away who probably don't deserve it, and becoming emotionally and mentally wound up by stupid little things that really really don't matter.
Tempted to just crawl into a hole for the next few months and hope it passes. I know that it wont though.
I'm still alive at least I suppose, despite my troubles I don't think I'd wish myself dead. I'm ill with flu/cough/something, I've had it for roughly 2 months, and it gets better or worse depending on just how run down I'm feeling at the time. It's currently manifesting itself as people blowing up ballons between my skull and my brain, and someone taking a chainsaw to my throat.
I think that's all I have to say for now. I may start using this more, mainly due to the fact I am finally sick and tired of LJ and all the bullshit drama it brings. We'll see.
What is your deepest, darkest fear?
Submitted by [Susan].
Being alone :'[
Much has been discussed and researched about the existance of the realm of Stormhold. Of course these days The Wall is nowhere to be found, but using the power of Google Maps and extreme boredom I have discovered 3 possible sites, the most hopefull being Wall, Staffordshire (Wall3). If this is indeed the correct location, it would suggest that the M6 Toll is in fact built exactly where The Wall used to reside, making it a magical gateway into another world, hmmm....
How many pair of shoes do you have? Out of those pairs, how many do you wear more than a few times a year?
Submitted by fightinggale.
Hmm, this'll take a bit of thinking about.
- 1 pair of trainers I wear ALL the time
- 1 old pair of trainers I used to wear all the time but never wear at all
- 1 old pair of fairly smart reebok classics that I've never really worn ever
- 1 pair of speed cats which hurt my feet so I don't wear
- 1 pair of black army boots that I very rarely wear now
- 1 pair brown boots for work
- 1 pair smart black shoes that I wear on the off chance I put a suit on
- 1 pair smart brown shoes that I got for T's wedding and only wear on the off chance I put a suit on that the black shoes don't go with
- 1 pair flip-flop/sandle thingies which I wear sometimes in the summer
- 1 pair welly boots which I wear daily
- 1 pair of muckers which I wear riding at the weekends
Ok, that's 11 pairs altogether. Out of those I only really wear 4 pairs: my favourite trainers, work boots, wellies and muckers.
