Snowman and the heavy thing

And here is my very simple snowman, picking up a heavy object and dropping it on his head. I added a little jump in the to push myself a little further again. I also inbtweened a lot of this, i think i drew around 90 all together, which still isn't nearly enough. I may have to do some more over the holidays. Give him a face and detail too.

This ones a little dark... after he drops the ball he drops to the ground. I REALLY wanted to do this as it involved me trying to work out the perspective as he fall towards the camera. I very happy with it actually! Im a terrible person.

Short character walk

I am sooo pleased with this one! He is so bouncy in his movements and his actual body. His belly moves up and down a little as he bobs with each step. His steps aren't as large as the tall characters but still proud like steps. The eye is a bit freaky though, i have just realised...

Now then, this one took me WAY longer than i expected. I tried out a different technique this time....

I animated everything in sections! The legs were animated first, then the body, the arm, head and then the tray.

How i did this was creating a coloured layer ontop of the others, and then cloning it on top on key frames. Like when the legs touch the ground, and then come back up. The body moves up with it, so i would get a basic jerky movement on the coloured layer. Then i inbetweened that with black!

With the arm, i animated around 8 frames with the desired movement, then placed them all on the key frames moving them to where the body would be. And then i inbetweened that. This way i could get each part moving as a whole... but also having its own movement.

Heres how detailed the inbetweening was on this part!

Again, some inbetweeing of the legs.

And here we have the amount of frames i drew, by hand, each different. So lets see thats 5 X 36... 180 frames in total.

Tall character walk

With my tall waiter i wanted him to have proud, long sweeping movements. So i made the steps quite silly in length, and adding a big bounce to them to emphasize the length in his legs. I was going to animate a try for him to hold, thats why is arm isn't moving in a natural way.

I just wanted to get the movement and the timing right for this one. I'm happy with it.

Tough ted excersize

Here we were given 3 pictures to inbetween, Here its the 1st, 4th and 7th you see here. The rest are inbetweens done by me.

I was happy with them at the time but now i look back on them i see more and more wrong with them. I think for this to be fair... i could have done with a turn around of the character its self. To see what shape the head is and how his features move. Because its very hard to replicate a style your only seeing 3 pictures of. But apart from that I belive i did rather well!

Character development

First i was taking notes and brainstroming different ideas. I decided on two waiters, a fat short one, and a tall thin one! They would be butlers in a very large mansion to the family, who would be the main stars of the show. These two would be a comedy couple, but background characters. The tall is very proper, and high class. He likes to keep appearances up and wont let him self slip in front of the public. The short on the other side is very polite and proper, but very laid back. isnt afraid to have banter and let himself go in front of others. He could embarrass the taller one, putting him into silly situations. Thus creating a comedy scene where the tall one would have to control himself and his partner.

I had to think about this very carefully, because their roll in the show, their personalities and qualities would shape how they look. I couldnt design two characters by look, and then shape the personality around that. It would be very hard. Its best to think it through first.

Hear i am trying to work out the face of the short fat one.you can see how it starts to evolve. The ones that really work are more developed drawings so you can probably tell which ones were the main break throughs.

These are the first sketches of the tall one. you can see i didnt really get anywhere very quickly, this dude took a lot of working out.

I decided to the crooked snobby nose and long thin face. but to make him look more friendly i gave him a charming smile with nice dreamy eyes.

Working out the structure of the tall one. I thought i may need to do triangles but that quickly looked very evil and strange. The square, sleek shapes are the way forward with this one.

Working out what the clothing would look like.

My first turn arounds of the characters.

After some feedback and thought. I made som adjustments. The small fat guy got rounder all over and in the legs. A smaller bum as it was rather big for a male character. I was thinking of the comedy aspect of things. He looks a lot better this way!

I made his shoulders thinner and slope downward. He looked rather large and a little out of proportion with those huge shoulders. I also made his bum a lot smaller, his shoes longer and bring them upwards to a point.

So those are my two butler characters! Im so pleased with them, i may draw up some little action scenes and things the could get up to. I know i have developed them well, because i can think up of antics they could get up to, and how they would react to certain situations.

bouncing balls: Ping pong

With this one i played around with speed, momentum and the bounces a ping pong ball would make. I planned it out again with the lines, half way for each bounce, getting approximately smaller by 50% each time.

I had to make sure the ball rolled really fast down the ramp, and slow down ever so slighty as it reached the ramp. Then i had to slow it down quite a bit as it lost momentum going up the ramp... then speed it up again when it started to fall down!

the ball gets smaller too, i tried to make it look like its bouncing away from you, im not sure it works that well if i'm honest. The bouncing coming to a stop works well! I had to zoom in really close to get the movement that fluid and slow. Tiny movement inbtweening!

Overall i'm pretty happy with this one!

bouncing balls: Coconut

Here i wanted to get the feel of heaviness, along with the bouncy tree. Rather difficult to do as a coconut isnt bouncy at all, rather brittle. I particularly enjoyed doing the sand effect as the ball rolls to a stop. the momentum from the bounce is heavily stunted by the sand, but the ball isnt heavy enough to stop dead.

Bouncing balls : soft bouncy ball

With this one, i wanted quite a soft, squishy bouncy ball. So i put lots of squash in when it hit the floor, added another frame to the floor contact too. So you really get a feel of the energy thats about to ping upwards in the extended squash.

Here is my line of motion, the working out for my ball.
Might i add that i animated every single frame, no 2 frames were repeated in any of my bouncing ball animations!

Very pleased with it actually, although there's something a little wrong with the first bounce, i just cant put my finger on it. Spent ages on that bit trying to get it right.... Although i did do this without a reference or a video of a ball actually bouncing. again i wanted to test myself on figuring it all out. First time on flash too.

Walkcycle: werewolf

Werewolf! At one point these were my favorite thing to draw. I decided to animate this right after i completed the human walk cycle. I wanted to challenge myself at animating animal like legs, where there are 4 joints to really pay attention too. Hip, knee, ankle and toes.

While animating this i thought i could add an object to his arm, he could be dragging something very heavy. Thats why his arm looks a bit funny on its own. But again i was focusing on the legs mainly, getting those to look right. And i am so happy with the result!

walk cycle: human

Using some references, I started to draw out the key frames in flip book. It look me a while to figure out each movement. The hardest part for me is the bending of the leg as it moves forward, and where to put the foot. I might put the foot too high, or drag it too low across the floor.

I resorted to getting up and walking around a good few times to get it right. And i'm rather pleased with the result! Ill admit he is leaning back way too much, which i didn't notice at the time. My tutor pointed that out too. But in the animtion my main focus was on the legs, getting the movement rightand figuring that part out. Next time ill pay more attention to the center of gravity.

Simple head turn

Here i drew each frame on paper, using the light box technique for the first time.

I chose to do a dog like character to really challenge myself, as i have to think about the position of the nose, and of course the ears. The whole head in general is a lot harder to picture at different angles. As my first go at doing a head turn i'm very pleased with it!

The expressions are meant to be shock, and then a shy happy look towards the other side.

Edited the slides together in photoshop which was a pain to do as well.