Drawing Silhouetted Creatures in Photoshop - Tutorial

Blender Cookie on Facebook just posted this video and I had to share it! Such a wonderful style of drawing and I love the generator idea! I'm definitely going to have a go at it, about time I practice with my graphics tablet any way and the generator sounds like a wonderful challenge. Although will have to wait till I've finished practising my 3D tracking.

To view the video go to - http://cgcookie.com/concept/2012/02/23/drawing-a-creature-part-1-silhouettes/

Principles of animating a Bouncing Ball - 4

In-betweens

The last step is to do the in-betweens. In-betweens are the drawings/frames between the key frames which help to create the illusion of motion.

When doing the in-betweens using traditional animation you need to remember to transform the ball from its round shape to move of an oval shape but using 3D such as Maya it will do the in-betweens for you but you will need to use the graph editor to make sure the ease-in and ease-outs work and that the ball is stretching along the arc and that the transitions work. Your ball bounce with in-betweens should look a bit like my drawing below on the right.

The best way to work out your animation is to PLAN! You will hear this over and over again but planning is very important. It may seem at the time like you know what you want and can skip it but trust me when it comes to it you will end up animating and reanimating until you end up doing the planning any way.

Below is the ball bounce that I made in Flash to show what the final thing should be like. Sorry that its poor quality. Something that happens in the uploading to blogspot I think.

Principles of animating a Bouncing Ball - 3

Squash and Stretch

Now onto something you hear a lot about in animation - Squash and Stretch. You also see it in the real world (a funny picture of this is shown on left). Actually the starting place of learning about it for all animators is with a bouncing ball. A basic explanation of it is that the ball is round at the top of an arc and as it travels it stretches as it speeds up and when it contacts the floor in squashes and as it bounces back up the next arc it stretches again and then back round and the cycle continues until the ball comes to a stop.

To start doing this use Key Poses; for our bounce it is going to be when the ball is a circle and when it squashes on the floor as you can see in my drawing on the left. This is all done to give the ball weight and is very important but you must make sure you keep the same volume area when squashed as it is round.


The speed the ball is going also depends on the amount of squash you have; in other words the faster it's travelling the more squashed and stretched it will be. I made the image on the right to explain this with squash on top and stretch below.

Next up you need to add the stretches which are the main breakdown drawings/poses, in a sense they are really in-between drawings that explain the action the ball is making. In-betweens are the poses that are between the Key Poses. Below is an update of the image I made with the Break Downs added in yellow.

As you can see, the marks we have used so far have all been in the centre of the poses so you can now see how they came in handy ;)

Any way, back to stretch; unlike with squash that mainly shows weight, stretch shows the speed a ball is moving although you do also need to take in its weight.


A great blog that has some posts on Squash and Stretch is HERE. It has some great examples and really explains what it is and its principles so if you want to know more I strongly recommend visiting it.

Found an awesome blog full of line drawings/animations!

Today I came across an awesome blog! www.livlily.blogspot.com

The Living Lines Library is a blog made by a guy who is an animator and collected line drawings and animations. The are amazing pieces of work in it and are really inspiring. I strongly recommend checking it out.

Moving Picture Company - Cat's Pride

People who know me will know that I love cats and that I am a fan of the Moving Picture Companies work so when I saw they had made TV spots for Cat's Pride cat litter with animated cats in I was happy and impressed. It is done wonderfully and is the type of thing I would of loved to of worked on. They even used 2 real cats to ensure the right actions and reference; and they were trained for 4 weeks to make sure they got the right actions. They went with the concept of both ‘Pass Out’ and ‘Massage’ and it means the cats are anthropomorphic and perform amusing actions. They didn't go with drastic anthropomorphism and I think it's done wonderfully with just the right amount of humanism. I hope MPC bring out a 'how they did it' video/podcast like they have with some of their advertising and movie work, its fascinating.


To view the article by Moving Picture Company and the 2 tv shots they made please CLICK HERE.

Q&A With Dhar Jabouri and Meet the Staff Q&A

I couldn't sleep so I decided to stay up and go to the Q&A's that were on in the early hours of Friday morning. The first was Meet the Staff! where we heard about the experiences and the job of this weeks guest. It was a bit interesting with the odd bit of advice and seeing how she got to where she is now.

1 hour later a Q&A with Dhar started and I really enjoyed this one. Dhar was really helpful and gave me lots of advice. We talked about AM doing a Short Story course and I told him how I find it difficult so he recommended I read Story by Robert McKee. Charlie was also there and he said I should read both of Nancy Beiman's books, which Dhar also agreed with. One is about storyboarding and the other is about making characters feel alive. http://www.amazon.com/Prepare-Creating-Characters-Animated-Features/dp/0240808207

We then went on about how I want to be a Creature Animator and Charlie asked if I had seen Deitrich Magnus' tiger animation, who is an Animals and Creatures AM student. His reel is below and it is really good!

Another bit of advice that Dhar gave was to not try and skip ahead and want to work on the final characters. Concentrate on where you are now and don't compare yourself to other people in your class. Talk to your classmates and ask if you don't understand, keep asking until you get it and ask more than one person.

Animation Arc Tracker

During our class yesterday, my classmate Charlie told us about a plugin for Maya that is an animation arc tracker. You can do the following with it: -

1. Track an object with an auto-update option
   (Works in cases where the object has its owns keys, sometimes without)
   

2. Slow Thorough option
   (Works in every situation at price of not updating and taking longer)
   

3. Time range works off maya time slider range but able to override
   

4. Change colours for path, key tracks, in-between tracks
   

5. Zoom controls for active camera/viewport
   

6. Attach To option for moving cameras
   

7. Dockable UI

To download the plugin go to - www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/animation/c/arc-tracker

Critique for Robot Arm assignment

I had my critique for my Robot Arm now its been constrained and I think I did ok and Said said it was good but he had a few suggestions to make it better.

1. Ease in and out when it is sniffing the can and speed it up a bit.
2. When it is wiggling its bum, ease in when its at the sides and out in the centre so its quicker when at the centre.
3. Make pounce quicker as the is a big build up of anticipation for a slow grab.

I was also having a problem with the constraint making the can roll not work as you can see in the video below so I asked how i can fix that and my classmate Sophia suggested copying it and turn the visibility off the original until the 2 meet up when its stopped rolling and then turn the others visibility off and the original back on.

Said suggested using a different way of parenting called ZV parenting and suggested we watch this link - www.paolodominici.com/vid/parent.php

Robot Arm Blocking Assignment

This is one of the assignments I've been really looking forward to but I hate that were only meant to do 100 frames (a little over 4 seconds)! The assignment is to make the arm turn around, pick up the can and turn back around and set it down but 4 seconds isn't long to do all that and to add real character to it, still I gave it a go.

This week we are just meant to be blocking our animation so at least I can come up with the idea with plenty of time. Click here for a definition of BLOCKING. Below is what I have come up with so far. The Robot Arm is meant to be surprised by the can bumping into him so I wanted the quickness really to show that.

Principles of Traditional Animation applied to 3D Computer Animation by John Lasseter

I came across this paper by John Lasseter, which describes the basic principles of traditional 2D hand drawn animation and their application to 3D computer animation. After describing how these principles evolved, the individual principles are detailed addressing their meanings in 2D hand drawn animation and their application to 3D computer animation. This should demonstrate the importance of these principles to quality 3D computer animation.

www.stevepaul.com/John%20Lasseter%20Animation%20Principles.html

Frame-by-Frame Blog

I came across a really good blog today, which shows clips from animation along with frame-by-frame shots of it so you can see how it was animated. I am sure it will become very helpful but at the meantime it is interesting to look at and make some notes about.

framexframe.tumblr.com

1 Week to go!

I've been put through another 3 weeks of orientation and it was killing me as I am really excited about it but as I've been kept so busy for most of that time its distracted me from the waiting! I have heard from my mentor though! His name is Said Abdul Ghafoor and his website is www.saeedag.com I have also found out that my Q&As are Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6pm GMT (10am PST) and that my first lecture is next week.
I'm actually really nervous now but I'm sure I'll be fine and its just my excitement. I want to work harder than I have ever worked before, I want to be one of the best and most committed students Animation Mentor has ever had and I will blog what I do as soon as I've done it.

Please give feedback on my work; good or bad... don't worry about what you'll say, I can take it and I'd rather know if anything looks wrong or could be better so I can learn but please give a reason, don't just say 'its rubbish', please say 'its rubbish because...' or something along those lines. I'd really appreciate it :)

How to Succeed in Animation by Gene Deitch

Here is something I came across thanks to another Eager Beaver. How to succeed in Animation It is an online book... that is a great read. It is by Gene Deitch and he made it to guide you to creative success; to make the most of every chance you get, and to give you some grisly tours of the desiccated remains of some of his own shot-down productions.

So if you want to have a look go to www.awn.com/genedeitch and start readinga. Oh and the book contents are listed on the left :)

The 12 Principles of Animation

The best place to find out about them is in the book, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnstone but below I have given brief descriptions of what each means.


Squash and Stretch
This action gives the illusion of weight and volume as a character moves. The best example of this is with a ball.

Anticipation
This movement prepares the viewer for major action that the character is about to do. You do it in real life. Think about how you jump. Do you just do it or do you bend your legs and swing your arms back in anticipation for the jump?

Staging
This is where you use props, characters and camera angles to help tell the story, direct the eye and create a feeling for the scene. For example, here Woody and Jessie are either side of Buzz creating a triangle that points down to Buzz as he is the main focus of this scene but the triangle falls towards Woody creating an uncomfortable space to show Woody’s feeling at this moment.
Straight-ahead and Pose-to-Pose animation
Straight ahead is used for actions where spontaneity is important. Pose to Pose animation you plan out your animation using poses. The best way to do this is by drawing thumbnails to work out your scene.

Follow through and overlapping action
When an object or character comes to a stand still you get a follow through and overlapping action. For example if a character stops running their hair will go slightly go further than the character.

Slow-out and Slow-in
This softens the action. Making it more lifelike. A good way of doing this is by making sure no movement is totally linear in the graph editor, that way you will avoid a robotic look.

Arcs
Most actions follow an arc or circular pattern rather than being constrained to one axis. Arcs make actions more natural action and helps disguise inbetweening that 3D software makes.

Secondary Action
This is to add more believability. It basically reinforces the main action. An example of this is when a cat is walking it might be swaying its tail or twitching its ear. If you look at a real cat it won’t just be walking it will be doing other stuff with its body too.

Timing
An important piece as if timing is wrong the whole thing will look wrong. To get better at this, watch reference footage and repeatedly playblast and watch your animation to make sure your getting it right. Also, get views from other people, they may spot a flaw in the timing that you may not.

Exaggeration
One of my favourite as I grew up around cartoons such as Tom & Jerry and the Looney Tunes, where they sometimes really exaggerate their characters actions. Sometimes exaggeration is necessary though but not always and you shouldn’t really over exaggerate as things can get silly… well unless that's what your after ;)

Solid Drawing
Are interesting with well-proportioned shapes and a good sense of weight and volume. Apply these characteristics to 3D models and poses.

Appeal
This is the visual quality that makes a character or object attractive, interesting or inspiring. Don’t just think cute or beautiful though, this can be applied to monsters and villains.

The best website I can recommend for finding out more about the 12 principles is the website for the guys who came up with it! Frank and Ollie so check out this link - www.frankanollie.com/PhysicalAnimation.html

Book Recommendations

Here is a list of books that I have found helpful or have been recommended to me by AM, Mentors, friends and other students.

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Wait before buying 'Acting for Animators'
as a new version is coming out soon_

• Figure Drawing for All it's Worth


• The Art of Animal Drawing


• Simplified drawing for planning animation

Emotions and Facial Expressions

This is something I've always struggled with and I am hoping Animation Mentor will help me to learn it too but I have stumbled across something amazing! I'm even going out and buying a new ink cartridge especially for it so I can print it out and put it on my wall. I know it is something I will refer to over and over again and here it is.


This image I found is too small to read though so I used tineye.com to do a search for it. If you haven't heard of it before; it is a website that does a reverse search for an image so you put the image link in or upload it and it will search the internet for that image. Any way, by doing that I found a version that is 2.5mb so better quality and big enough to read. To get that image click here.

7 animation planning and timing tips

The following is a excerpt taken from "A System For Planning and Timing Animation." It has been around for years and you can download the full pdf document at AnimationMeat.com.


1. Make a Positive Statement

• Do not be ambiguous in your approach.
• Thumbnail until you have that clear approach and conviction.
• Be bold and decisive.

2. Animate From the Heart

• Feel your drawings.
• Let your action be an extension of how you believe the character feels.
• Put yourself in the place of the character your animating- associate.

3. Make Expressions and Attitudes Real and Living

• Focus on the eyes and eyebrows- mouth and cheeks.
• Always lead with the eyes.
• Be sure the eyes are solid and placed securely in the head.
• Study your own attitudes. Ask yourself, "Does this drawing feel the way my face feels?"

4. Draw As If You Were Sculpting

• Describe the forms in dimension.
• Understand the character design in 3D.

5. Animate the Forces

• Allow the momentum of and already animated movement to suggest the next drawing.
• Draw the leading edge of forces.

6. Visualize and Feel Dialog

• Be sure you are truly capturing the inflection, volume and tone of the dialog with proper mouth shapes.

7. Simplicity

• What is the essence of your scene, your action , your expression- what is indispensable in communicating your thought?