Update to blog

As you've seen from my blog menu the is this page with my posts, then my sketchbook which also contains any sketch animations I make and then links and contact pages. But soon I will add a new page that will be for reference footage that I either find or make myself. The idea is that I will eventually have enough to study the movements of people and animals. It will come in handy when I get an assignment that includes any reference I have or if I fancy working on a specific animal or human action.

A great book Creature Animators or Artists

As you all should know I dream of being a Creature Animator and recently I came across a book that is great for anyone looking for advice or tips on drawing, posing and animating animals. This book is The Art of Animal Drawing: Construction, Action, Analysis, Caricature by Ken Hultgen. It was originally published in 1951 and reminds me of the old Disney cartoon animals and the drawings that are in the example portfolio for applying to Disney. Next time I'm in Chester I'm planning on taking it with me and heading to the world famous Chester Zoo to use some of the stuff I've learned from it by drawing the animals there.

Below is a link to Amazon UK where you can buy it. It's cheap and well worth the money :) I will try and do a flick through video and post it on here too so you can get an idea what the books is like.

Awww love it!

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

Career Development Loan... denied... for now...

I heard back from the Career Development Loan and they said that they have denied me it so I called them and they said its because on the statements I sent I had once gone overdrawn by £2 and received a £25 bank charge but if I applied again once it is off my statements the would be no problem in receiving it but that means waiting another 2 & 1/2 months. I'm totally gutted about it and was angry at first because the thing that made me go overdrawn wasn't meant to go out that day and its such a small amount. After that I was depressed for quite a while, hence my silence on here recently. But I am going to do what they suggested as learning is important to me.

You may ask why tell you this but I figured that if anyone else is thinking of applying they can avoid the pain I've been through because you know you will fail if you any bank charges on your statement. I am also now applying for an account with Barclays so it will be quicker and easier to apply as they can tell you over the phone there and then if you are accepted or not.

I still want to be on the Winter term though so I asked Victoria for an extension for the payment date and I am allowed till December 16th. I'm selling what I can to fund the first term and hopefully I'll hear back from the AM loans adviser, Amiko to see if they have any other ideas as to how I can raise the funds for it.

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.

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.

Nice arc reference

I came across this image last night of an Elephant Seal. It has flung dirt over itself and the photographer has caught the arc of dirt it left in doing so. If you look carefully enough in films, animation and real life you will see examples of the 12 principles everywhere. I've decided that I will start saving any references I find of these that I think are good and will help me in the future. If you are looking to be an animator too then I'd suggest doing the same, reference is always handy and try drawing or animating from them too; practice makes perfect :D

Loan didn't arrive in time :(

Sadly my Career Development Loan didn't arrive in time for the Fall term so I have been transferred to the Winter term. I was gutted at first but then I decided to look at the silver lining. By doing the Winter term I can still go to Coffee Talks with Victoria and her guests, its something I look forward to as its always a laugh and I find out some pretty cool stuff during them. Also, I will graduate when its the Animation Mentor BBQ so I can fly over for graduation and the BBQ, which is supposedly a brilliant event that loads of people go to.

While I am waiting to start, I am going to practice animating by doing tutorials and reading books. I will also add to my sketchbooks by going out and drawing people or by drawing people on the TV while I am watching any way. I will post these in the sketchbook section so make sure to keep checking that to see them.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Got my Certificate for Maya Springboard

Sadly, we didn't get a last Q&A so I never found out what Said thought of my 1 leg animation but I did get a new news item which was a link to my certificate and here it is!

I'm sad that Springboard has finished and that I won't have any more lessons with Said but I am excited about going onto Class 1. Only thing is... I've not heard from my loan company yet and I'm worried that I won't get it before class starts and will have to wait another 3 months! That feels like a lifetime to me! I have been trying to look at the plus side though, for instance, if I go into the next term I will graduate when it is the AM barbecue so I could go to that and graduation. It will also give me 3 months to practice and do more pose drawings.

Wow 2000 views!

Wow, I just looked at this blogs stats and it just hit 2000 views! I hope that means your all enjoying it and finding it helpful. Please leave feedback by leaving comments below posts and let me know what you think about my blog, my work, advice.etc. I would really appreciate it and I'm sure other people who view the blog would find any comments helpful too.

Any way, thank you to everyone who reads my blog :D

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.