2D Head Turn and Take

Next in 2D we were tasked to create a head turn, followed by a surprise take, with an attribute such as hair or long ears with which to demonstrate overlap and followthrough. To begin with, we had to create a turnaround showing front, profile and 3/4 views of our character. I decided to revisit my character Noelle, previously seen in A Walk Cycle, But Not.

Noelle turnaround.

First I worked out the basic movement of the head as it turned, and then recoiled in surprise.

I then added detail with the face and eyebrows, giving the character expression.

Next I drew out Noelle's hair, giving it drag and followthrough separate from the movement of the stiffer head.

Finally in the roughs stage, I sketched out the pupils, exaggerating their shrink to emphasise the character's shock.

I then inked the animation:

And lastly I added colour.

I am pleased with this work, however I know it is not as good as it could be - there are a few slightly odd movements in the top of Noelle's hair, particularly as she first comes to a stop after turning, and some inconsistency in the size of her eyes and the edges of sections of hair. I am most pleased with my final sketched version of this piece, and may revisit the inking and colouring stages in the future.

2D Hand Turn

This week in 2D we have been animating turning hands. We started by creating rough sketches of the front, back and side of a hand, using our own as reference, and decided on the timing.

We then created a new layer and drew a traditional cartoon hand, like that of Mickey Mouse, still based on our initial sketches, and inbetweened the turn.

When I was happy with my rough animation, I moved onto my lineart.

Finally I added a little colour to the finished animation.

2D Flour Sack Weight Lift

Our next task in 2D was to show weight in an object by having it be picked up by a flour sack.

I began by sketching out key poses and adding some inbetweens.

I then finished inbetweening my rough animation and got the timing to a point that I was happy with.

Next I inked the animation, creating clean lineart.

Finally I added colour to the animation.

2D Flour Sack Hula Hoop

This week in 2D practice we were tasked to create a cycle of a flour sack hula hooping. To begin this exercise, we went out into the courtyard to record reference videos for our timings:

From here, we created a few basic key frames for the flour bag and the hoop, before adding more inbetweens.

From there, I wanted to smooth the movement of the hoop, as the 'corners' seemed to have a jagged and uneven movement. Taking in mind the movement of arcs, I experimented with following a pair of ovals as guides.

I found that the ovals, although smoothing the movement of the hoop, also caused it to seem to move from side to side rather than around the flour bag. To counter this, I created a timing chart and marked out the places on the flour bag where the hoop should be making contact in each frame.

After a little more experimentation, I began inking the animation, beginning with the flour bag. As the hoop remains in the same spot throughout the cycle, initially I used the same section of lineart for all of my frames, only drawing the top of the bag afresh for each frame.

I found that this technique had the opposite effect to what I had hoped - making the bottom of the sack look unnatural and the movements look strange, so I restarted my line work, drawing the whole frame from scratch with the lightbox tool. I was happy with this line work, and finished up by colouring the bag and hoop.

2D Flour Sack Jump

In 2D practice this week we have been exploring more anthropomorphised movement, with particular emphasis to anticipation and follow-through. To this end, we have been animating a a flour bag jumping over an obstacle.

To begin this exercise, I created a page of sketches, exploring the range of movement of the flour bag and how it behaves under different circumstances.

This helped me to get a better understanding of the weight and form of the flour bag, so I could begin my animation with more confidence, starting by drawing out some basic key frames.

I then played around with the timings, speeding up the initial push up into the jump and slowing the follow-through after the bag lands.

From there I cleaned up my timings a little more and created the linework for my animation.

I then added colour and a dropped shadow to my animation in order to give it a greater feel of realism.

At this point I realised that I had made a mistake - what should have been the slowest part of my animation was on 1s, as opposed to the 2s of most of the rest of the animation. This was fixable by removing some of the frames and adjusting timings, making the final animation look less wobbly and more smooth in the centre of its jump.

2D Waterballoon Bounce

This week we have been exploring the twelve principles of animation, working with squash and stretch particularly. To learn about this, we were tasked with animating a waterballoon bouncing across the screen in TVPaint.

We also looked into using different fairings to increase and decrease the movement speed (as seen in the screenshot above), giving it a slow-in / slow-out effect to make it appear more natural.

Once I was happy with the basic flow of my animation in 2s, I inbetweened the frames to bring it to 1s, before inking and colouring the final sequence.

2D A Walk Cycle, But Not

Over the summer leading to my start of my university course, I wanted to set myself some small animation challenges. The first of these was to create a fully looping walk cycle - but with a twist. As a part-time wheelchair user, I decided that I would animate a character wheeling themself along in a manual chair, as this form of movement interested me greatly and I expected it not to be something that we would cover in class to any extent. I chose to use a character that I had designed previously for this project, named Noelle.

Noelle, March 2017

I started with a basic sketch of a wheelchair, changed slightly from previous designs, and mapped out the frames with a stick figure. I used my own range of movement when in my chair to get a feel for which parts of the figure would feature the most movement - these were the arms and spine.

After a few attempts to smooth this sequence, I was happy with the result and ready to flesh out the sketch a little more. I filled the stick figure out into a full person, and explored the ways that the head might tilt with the movement of the body, settling for a steady forward-facing gaze. I also payed close attention to the movement of the hands, as this plays an important part in making the movement of the wheelchair user look realistic.

From here, I added more details to my sketch, giving the Noelle clothing and hair.

Finally I drew the lineart for each frame and added colour to the animation. In the final version, I slowed the framerate slightly from the sketches as the character appeared to be moving unnaturally fast.

If I were to do this exercise again, I would explore slow-in slow-out techniques further, particularly at the end of the movement as Noelle lifts her hands off the handrim and pulls them back to push again, adding more frames to the sequence in order to make the animation more fluid and realistic.