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.

Principles of animating a Bouncing Ball - 2

Slow-In and Slow-Out

The next principle of animating a bouncing ball is Slow-In and Slow-Out. This is the action the ball takes on the Path of Action. In the case of the ball, the beginning of the arc is called Slow-In and after the ball does its bounce it goes into Slow-Out, this is because it loses some of its momentum so slows as it approaches the top.

A great tip I was recommended to do when planning your Slow-In and Slow-Out is to put marks along the arc so you can easily work out the balls position and timing. For Slow-In you want the marks to be quite close together and gradually have more space in-between and then the opposite of this for your Slow-Out. Here you can see I've added some marks to my drawing to explain this.

REMEMBER - The closer together the marks are the slower it will move!

Principles of animating a Bouncing Ball - 1

Carrying on with arcs I will present to you my research on how to animate a ball, one of the first places to start animating and is made up of arcs! It does also use some of the other principles such as timing, slow-out, slow-in, squash and stretch.

Path of Action

Firstly you need a path of action. This is where the ball will bounce and is just arcs. We will just focus on doing one bounce for now as once you know how to do one you can do more.

If you wanted to do more bounces, the arcs would need to stay in line like the red line shows with the arcs in the bottom drawing on the left.

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.

Film Review of How to Train your Dragon in Q&A

At the end of this weeks second Q&A, Said went on to do a film review of 'How to Train your Dragon' but not like a normal review, this was a frame-by-frame look at parts of the movie to show arcs and not using symmetry, anticipation and staging.

Some of the comments Said made: -

• Hiccup would move his eyes and then his head would follow to look at Toothless.


• 'Keep it simple, keep it stupid'. What he means by this is to keep backgrounds unbusy so the characters are the main focus.
  


• Characters move in nice arcs. Whether its their arms, tail or head. A good example of this was near the beginning where Gobber is having a drink and he slams it down and turns. Or how Toothless moves and swishes his tail.
  


• Don't keep things symmetrical unless your looking for seriousness. Like when Toothless is staring at Hiccup in a serious manner to make him eat the fish but when he bites into it, Toothless relaxes and sits back and his pose is not symmetrical at all. Like one ear was higher than the other and even his eyes were different sizes!


• Said also explained how Hiccups father, Stoick is all powerful, big and manly so when he was sat in the dark in his house in front of the fire and Hiccup tries to sneak in he was filling most of the screen (the animator had also nicely posed him in an arc but still not symmetrical). Hiccup is small and weak so when he comes in he is small in the background to represent him. It's easier to explain when you see it, sorry I should of taken more screen shots.

I love How to Train your Dragon and it is one of my favourite movies! If you love it too or even just love dragons or concept art then I recommend this book. The Art of How to Train Your Dragon (How to Train Your Dragon Film)

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

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?

Lecture with Mark Andrews from Pixar at CalArts

Here are 2 videos from a lecture at CalArts with Mark Andrews from Pixar. I went to a course where he lecturered with Escape Studios once. He was really good and I learned so much about storyboarding. I will post some of the notes I got from that lecture at some point too.

Video's of advice from John Lasseter

Here are some videos on YouTube of John Lasseter giving advice to students and how to animate an inanimate object. After each video I have put notes from it. This is also the first Tip Jar post!



Don’t forget to study the basics, even for computer animation.

• Basic drawing
• Basic design
• Basic fundamentals of animation
• Film grammar (how do you stage things)
• Story/writing (3 story act)

An inanimate object was made to do something so it would want to do it so anything that prevents it from doing that job would make it sad and full of anxiety. What would it be feeling? Try and not put a face on it. Consider the movement the object does in real life. Make the audience believe it is that object.

This blog design

Well, I hope you like it. I've never done it before so I found a template and then changed the images in Photoshop and then changed the coding.

I also got a little bored and made a can of Animation Mentor. Think I may use it when I post about something new AM has done and I love, so its like a can of AM awesomeness! For instance, Orientation. I got access to about 20 videos about how the AM website works and how to do the course and what to do if I have any problems. This would get an AM Can as it is brilliant although it would be a smaller can image :P
I also made a Tip Jar so if any posts have any animation or career tips that I think are good I will post the Tip Jar there. I will also tag these with either "AM Can" or "Tip Jar".

I hope Animation Mentor doesn't mind that I used some of their logos for the can and tip jar, thanks if they don't mind me using them and they do then please let me know and I will change or remove them.

Oh and if your wondering, the cat is based on my cat, Remus. I designed the cartoon version of him for my final year animation at university and hes sort of turned into my logo. Remus is rather mischievous and you may well hear about him in this blog and in other AM places.