Animation Fundamentals
WEEK 0
Despite being absent this week, I went back on worked on a the bouncing ball task in week zero. The bouncing ball is a simple task to get familiar with animating moving objects, it considers not only the movement of the ball moving up and down but also teaches about spacing and squash and stretch. Through this task I learnt that the closer frames are to each other the slower and object moves whilst the further apart and fewer frames the faster an object moves. This is displayed in my first attempt at the bouncing ball. The second attempt includes squash and stretch which is an exaggeration of what natural occurs with a bouncing ball due to the physics of gravity and pressure.
I also included the Harriet walk cycle below as was my personal first attempt at creating a moving object and moving body, needless to say there are many things inaccurate with the first attempt.
Bouncing Ball (No Squash and Stretch )
Bouncing Ball (Squash and Stretch )
Harriet Walk Cycle (Attempt 1)
WEEK 1
The first week was about further understanding Fundamentals of human/biped movement in animation. Introduced to frame rates , key frames and inbetweening. There was no better way of learning than to animate a walk cycle on traditional medium.
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I began by replicating the walk cycle in Richard Williams Animation survival Kit book, I then inbetweened the down and up pose to use as a reference. The only issue I found with the following book was that the key frames are for a walk cycle of a character moving from position A to B and not for a looping walk cycle (which was what we were trying to achieve). I struggled with feet shifting on my first few attempts however I eventually produced the walk cycle seen below; I stencilled the body and head of the character then proceeded draw the arms and legs accordingly.
I found the arms to be a little too rigged so I went back to the drawing board and began to breakdown the movement digitally as that was what was available to me at the time. Bellow you will find the traditional Front and side medium walk cycle as well as a more fluid second attempt at the side walk cycle.
Research
Side view walk cycle (Traditional Medium)
12 frames Leg movement Research (digital )
Arms movement study
Front View Walk cycle (Traditional Medium)
Digital attempt 1 (Rough and Jittery)
Side Walk cycle (Attempt 2 )
WEEK 2
Week 2 was by far the most difficult task that I had to attempt. The movement of a body up and down the stairs, for two characters of differing personalities. I began by collecting reference material of my self moving up and down the stairs, and turned it into slow motion video to more easily capture the movement of the key frames (as seen below). I then proceeded with key framing and in-betweening the up movement and down movement respectively. I notice that the torso does not move drastically so in creating the body and to more easily maintain the proportions I decided to stencil the head and torso and change the arms and legs accordingly. My first attempt on traditional medium shows a complete up movement and down movement that is partially in-betweened.
Video Reference
Character 1 walking up (Traditional Medium)
Character 1 Walking down (Traditional Medium)
The Process
Legs
Torso
Full body
WEEK 3
We finalised our knowledge through incorporating element of balance and understanding the centre of gravity with the sit up- sit down task in week 3. Using the same strategies learn in the other weeks, Reference and research were the first pit stop followed by rough and Cleaned up attempts. ( I care to mention that I did not find my initial sit up sit down attempts done on traditional medium hence why I all the final attempts are digital).