Disney Archives

Awww what I would give to have access to those archives!

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/

MPC's Cheetah Super Bowl Spot for Hyundai

It wasn't long ago that it was the Super Bowl. I only actually knew about it after when my American friends on Facebook were raving about it and when some amazing advert spots that were shown during it were appearing everywhere! For those wondering... in Britain the Super Bowl isn't at all big, hardly anyone watches. Could be because its on during the night here or because Football (yes Football not Soccer) is the game most loved here.

Any way, Cheetah is a collaborative effort between MPC, Innocean and Rattling Stick Director Daniel Kleinman and I must say, WOW! I know cats really well and this has to be one of the best example of a Cheetah I have ever seen. The run and leap are all accurately done and you can tell the animators researched the animal well.

MPC created the photoreal cheetah by photographing a real specimen on set and capturing high-dynamic-range pictures of the lighting conditions, then combining both of those elements in Furtility, the studio's in-house fur-and-hair tool. To test the efficacy of their project, the studio produced an image with three cheetahs and asked in-house artists and producers to identify the real one. On all but one case, they missed.

I wish I could see that image and see if I could tell, I have a sharp eye for detail and as my friends always point out; a canny ability to see something that doesn't belong. (For example, I'm quite often called out by my boyfriend to find a tiny nut or something that he's dropped on the gravel).

"Creature work is difficult at best, but creating an animal that really exists and is in the preceding shot is particularly demanding," noted MPC LA Managing Director Andrew Bell. "Our in-house experts had to do just that in Cheetah. Between Furtility and fur gurus such as Dominic Edwards, producing this spot was not only possible, but pleasurable."
I so want to do Creature Animation. This whole comment just adds to my reason why. It's a challenge. You have to create something that is believable and in this case already exists which I think just adds to the pleasure! You have to research the animal, study it and find its quirks and small movements that make it alive and then reproduce that but doing what you want it to do.

Awww love it!

I came across this the other day and had to share it. It made me smile so much.

Cool! Another Simon's Cat drawing video!

I am a fan of Simon's Cat on Facebook and it was announced that a new video had been added for drawing the new kitten character! Its just as good and interesting also. I'm amazed that he can draw them so quickly but I guess he has had a lot of practice. Proof that practice makes perfect.

How to draw Simon's Cat!

Everyone who knows me knows that I love Simon's Cat from the style to the humour but last week Simon Tofield the creator and animator of it made the below video. It shows how he draws Simon's Cat and I found it fascinating to watch and how he always uses the same method of drawing him. Start with the eyes, then the nose and mouth.etc. Have a watch and you'll see what I mean :)



The is also a video of the Kitten Chaos Premiere which sadly I didn't win tickets to but I can imagine would of been an amazing experience but at least I got a glimpse of it from this video.

Brilliant Reference Video of a Kitten

After a busy week helping with the university motorcycle club at this years Freshers' Fayre, I am spending the day looking at reference footage and drawing some pose sketches and as my most recent posts have been about cats, I have been drawing cats. While I was searching for reference footage I came across this brilliant video of a kitten that is filmed in slow-motion. I'm loving slow-motion videos at the moment. Its so much easier to see every little detail of how an animal moves, from pose to how the muscles move and tighten. Fascinating stuff!

My new Showreel

As I have finished Maya Springboard I decided to update my showreel with the stuff I did on the course and also change some of the old stuff I had on it to show my process of animating in 2D. I think its loads better and what I've learned with Animation Mentor has improved my reel loads! I am so happy that I decided to do Animation Mentor and take the Maya Springboard course, I'd recommend it to anyone. It's good even for learning your way around Animation Mentor and how to do things right.

My 1 Leg assignment

Well, Here is what I came up with. It still needs a bit of tweaking and I think the is something wrong with the rig as when I rotate the body to a certain point it randomly moves the knee out to a strange angle so if you look closely while he is flipping up side down you will see this. I've tried playing with it but still can't work out how to make it stop it so hopefully we will have a Q&A or 2 this week so I can ask Said what's happening.

I'm really sad that Springboard has now finished. Said wasn't sure if we got Q&As this week but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I've just enjoyed it so much and learned a great deal. Said is really helpful and always goes over the hour and gives us a bit extra. I'm hoping that my future Mentors will be the same but I will miss his Q&As.

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.

Week 10 - Make '1 Leg' jump!

Now this week's assignment is our last and one I've been looking forward to for a while so sad but happy too.

This week we have to make a character jump but he only has one leg, a ball for a body and no head or arms, you can see what it looks like below. I didn't want to make him just jump so I decided to make him do a backflip. Below is the storyboard I made as my plan for how it will look and an animatic to show you the timing :)

Wacom Inkling

Came across this today and wow! I have been hoping for ages something like this would come out but Wacom took it further than I had thought. Like the button so your sketches and designs can be on separate layers! Pure genius!

This new Wacom system combines a digital sketch pen (it makes like a pen or pencil) with a clip-on receiver, which digitally records each stroke of the pen. Your drawings can then be rasterized or vectorised, uploaded to your computer and imported to either Photoshop or Illustrator or saved as an image file!

Basically this is how it works:

• You take the stylus and receiver out of the cool little box.
• Clip the receiver on the top of any paper, notebook.etc and start drawing. According to Wacom the receiver can store thousands of pages so very handy.
• Press the button on the receiver to create new layers.
• When you are done, connect the receiver to a computer via USB and you can see all your drawings. Export the one you want to use to Photoshop or Illustrator or any typical graphic format. ie. TIFF, JPG, BMP.

The Inkling will cost around £125 +VAT and comes with a pen, receiver, rechargeable batteries, four spare pen ink cartridges, charging case and the Inkling Sketch Manager Application, which is neatly stored in the Inkling receiver. It will be available from October 2011. When it does get released I will post a link on here for where you can buy it.

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 - Tided a bit :)

Well, I have tidied my Robot Arm a bit. Still not too happy with the robotic look at the end but as soon as I constrict the can to the arm it will be easier to fix. I really enjoyed playing with the arm, I actually based it on my cat, Remus and how he attacks a new object he comes across. I might add sound at some point too. I think over the break time I will go through all my assignments and make them more fun and maybe make new stuff too.

Blocking of Robot Arm (Longer Version)

Below is my blocking for my longer version of the Robot Arm. I made it with Step Tangents in the Graph Editor so it shows the key frames like a blocking should like to me... well, at least to me.

Oh and after Said telling me that I wasn't sticking to the video standardisation I have fixed that and started doing it. I just forgot about adding the Animation Mentor 2 second clip. I won't forget again.

Thumbnail Animatic for Robot Arm

Below is the thumbnail animatic I made for my Robot Arm.

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.

Fixed the ball

I fixed my ball. I noticed that the ball was stretching too early and that the bounces were like it was heading into wind so I checked the graph editor and i had forgotten to make the stretches ease in and out so I did that and noticed a missing stretch so fixed that too. I then changed the bounces in the graph editor too so now I think its lots better. Below is my 1 ball bouncing from a side view and below that is with a copy of it imported into the original but at a different angle so you can see both balls.

Please comment if you notice anything I have missed.

Some comments from my classmates

Charlie - Nice job Emma! Couple things that I noticed:

1. Turn off the grid for your playblasts, it'll make things easier to see.

2. Zoom the image in more. Don't forget you can Alt, L, M, and R buttons to make it fit better. You want to be as close to the action as possible to see it clearly.

3. For now I'd take out the stretch and squash and get comfortable with your timing and spacing. Remember each bounce the ground is taking away some of the energy from the bounce so it shouldn't keep bouncing full force.

4. The ball speeds up pretty fast then suddenly slows down as its traveling across the screen. It should gradually get slower along the way.

5. Each subsequent bounce should be around 70% less than the previous one give or take. Bow your curves out on the graph editor and break your tangents for more control.

Love how you thought outside the box by having the ball bounce down the steps, nice thinking! Good luck!

Marcelo - Nice!

Just watch out ball skidding on frame 94.

Said also did this drawing on top of someones work to explain how a ball should bounce. I thought I'd post it as it will be helpful for people who read this blog and myself in the future.

2nd attempt at the stairs

Well, here is my second attempt. I think its still slightly not right but Said did say that we don't need to do squash and stretch yet so I think I will just import the second ball tomorrow and move onto the Robot Arm! I've been looking forward to animating that any way :D

Ball Bouncing Down Stairs & Critique

I decided that I would make my bouncing ball more interesting so I animated it bouncing down some stairs. You can see it below.

I knew somethings weren't right about it but as I ran out of time I still showed what I had done to Said during todays Q&A and he had some points about what I did wrong.

Firstly a ball goes into a bounce quicker than it comes out so I need to move my first stretch of a bounce back a frame and not stretch the ball so much on the bounce out. I had thought that might be one of the problems but as my Q&A was starting I needed to upload what I had. Its good to have my suspicion confirmed too :)

Secondly, my bounces are too sharp. Said drew on my animation to explain what it should be like (See left), this was another thing I had noticed and was planning on changing. I'm thinking of missing a step too as it's unusual for a bouncy ball to hit each step. It speeds up a bit and goes further before it slowly bounces to a stop. Even Said in his drawing suggested this.

Thirdly was the view. Although I had planned on doing what Said had said but as I was uploading it quickly so just used the view I was in. Said said that Mentors can get annoyed when a ball just starts from the sky and doesn't roll to a stop or just go off screen. So I need to change it so its looking at the stairs sideways on, put the ball so it starts off frame and make it roll to a stop or roll off screen. Also, change the stretches and jump spacing.

Another point Said made was PLANNING! We were told that we must plan animations before we do them. Which, yes I know... if I had planned out my animation using thumbnail sketches I would of realised that the spacing was off and also the ball stretches so I have learned my lesson to not try and cut corners by not planning. Its actually going to take me longer to fix my mistakes than it would of taken me to of planned it first.