Responsive: Loopdeloop Animating

After rigging both my characters and making a small storyboard for my loop, it was time to start animating. I wanted to start with the big sister walking forwards, ready to grab the ice cream from her little sisters hand, so the audience can kind foreshadow the mischief, but this was harder than I anticipated.

I followed the five step walk cycle like I have always done, in 2D and 3D Maya animation, but it was slightly more trickier this time because I wasn't drawing the position each time, and my characters aren't 3D models, therefore After Effects was bending and stretching the body parts so I had to try and do it without it looking too abnormal and out of place. It took me several tries to do this, especially because all the separate layers were linked together, so there was constant follow through that the software did itself, but it wasn't cohesive so I had to reanimate it after each pose. 

As you can see in the first test, the big sister's walk is very uneven and irregular. It does not look natural, like how any normal person would walk, but I guess this is just a test so it is okay for me to do this. At this point I was very off put finishing the loop because it was taking me so long to key each body part, only to find the results were not successful. However I kept at it, and with each test I did, I could see slight improvements, it just took me a lot longer than I had anticipated.

This time I added in the little sister so I could see when the older sister should stop walking, along with when she should start to grab the ice cream. For the first part of the walk cycle, the hands and feet do match well, I just lost it a bit at the end and again, it started to look unnatural. I also forgot to animate the gloves, so up close they are still in the primary position, and make her hands look like they are constantly being bent backwards. 

I then started to see some better results. I moved some keyframes so that the spaces in between the steps were much more quicker, natural and smoother. And I also rotated her hands. Simple changes make such a difference with this type of animation, so even though it felt tedious at times, I feel like it was necessary for me to have better follow through. I did encounter a slight problem with the little sister however. I really wanted her to walk towards the older sister as she grabs the ice cream away from her, however even though I rigged her body and her legs moved great, I must have connected/parented the legs to the hips incorrectly, as when I went to key her legs, they moved but the spine warped awfully. I then went to unparent and reconnect to the leg controllers to different joints, but this only resulted into me breaking the controllers, which meant they were unusable and I could not animate with them. I found this out after much research as I didn't even know it was possible to break controllers as I had never experienced this in Maya either. This has taught me to think about what I am connecting more, and not assume that two softwares are the same. This meant that I could not move the little sisters legs even though I rigged them, so I had to make do with moving other parts of her body instead.

But this is the main animation for my loop that I ending up coming up with. I am proud of it in the sense that I tried something new and learnt A LOT. I really enjoyed the technical aspects of Maya, and I did enjoy them here, in After Effects as well, however I found it much difficult to problem solve here, for example when I broke the controller, it was unfixable and this was very frustrating for me as I usually find solutions to most of my problems. But I think it resembles the theme of sisters quite well and it is my first attempt at loopdeloop so I shouldn't have set such high standards for myself.

Then it was time to add in a background that I could loop, and I started with this one. I made this in Photoshop using colours that I liked, adhering to the graphic design-esque look that my two characters had themselves. However I thought that it distracted from the animation, and it looked too big and loud for the few seconds of the loop so I went back to the drawing board.

I then decided to make a little town so that I could loop it continuously without having to worry about what place it would stop at. By doing this I could have the two characters walk along with the town, and the audience can still see what they are up to, whilst flicking through the rest of the loops on the home page.

And this is my final loop! This was the hardest brief out of the ones that I chose I think, because making an animation loop but still have allow it to have content, is hard in itself! There is so much to consider, and for my first loop I think it is okay. There is a lot I would change for example the speed of the panning, however if I had more time to submit it, I would definitely try and fix this. But I am glad I can say that I attempted to rig characters in After Effects! I would like to try this again because practice makes perfect, and I have seen some great results form it, so I know it has potential, so I am not completely ruling it out. I think experimenting is a good thing, so I know what I would change in the future and what I will keep the same.

Responsive Loopdeloop Character Rigging

With this responsive brief, I chose to do something that I had never done previously, therefore I knew that there would be complications that I would come across and have to solve independently as we were not being taught this in class, however I wanted to take the risk so that I could learn something new and take a big step out of my comfort zone! I decided to use After effects to rig my character for my short loopdeloop! I came across several videos on Youtube that offered tutorials on this process, and the one I opted for was this one:

          

I felt like the man who voiced this tutorial was very patient and easy to listen to so I followed his instructions and was successfully able to rig a character (successful for a first timer!). And I was also able to look in the comment section to see other artists who were having similar problems to me, and then seeing more experienced users solving these issues! So I feel like during this whole process, I was never alone. 

Because I only have Photoshop which I pay monthly, I did have to download the free trial of After Effects in order to make this loop. I also had to download a 'plug-in'. I had no idea what a plug in was, but they are like add ons which you can download and install, as extra tools to use within the software. The plug-in that I had to instal was 'DUIK'. This was an extremely complicated process for me because I had to rewrite a script to get it to work and although I am quite computer savvy, I am not that savvy, therefore it took me a while to find out how to do it. After an hour, I was able to install it and enbark on the rest of the learning journey!

                               

Firstly, I imported my whole .psd (Photoshop) file into After Effects. The tutorial called for an Illustrator file, but I feel like I am much more comfortable and experienced with Photoshop, so tried importing it to see if it could work the same way, and it did so I stuck to staying within my limits. By importing the whole file, I was able to pick each body part of my character separately, but whilst also keeping them in place and in proportion. Whereas if I had saved each body part as a .jpeg or .png file, I would have had to manually place each limb where I think it should have gone and resize them instead of the way I had originally placed them in Photoshop! 

Then it was time to rig my character. I started off by using the 'puppet pin' tool which is placed at the far end of the toolbar in After Effects (image 1). I then chose the part of the body I wanted to rig, so I started with the torso. This was very similar to using the skeleton tool in Maya, because the result of each tool was to create 'bones' for the character in order to be able to move the limbs. I used three pins for this part of the body, the shoulders, the spine and the hips. This is essentially the 'core' of my characters body, where everything will end up connecting, therefore it was important that I started with this, and connected it correctly (image 2). Once I had my pins in place, I then went into the deform option, opened it up and found the three pins unnamed (image 3).

This is where the plug-in comes into place. I opened DUIK up, and chose the 'Bones' section, whilst highlighting all three of my pins (image 5). This then made my torso look like image 5. At first I was a bit worried why my torso had red squares, but this was just so that you can see where the bones are in place. When it came to animating, I could uncheck the visibility of the bones so that they disappeared, but I could still move them and key frame them, so it wasn't really a problem at all. But to make things even clearer for myself, I renamed the pins that had become bones, so that I would be able to distinguish which body part was which, something I learnt from when making and rigging my character in Maya! (image 6+7).

Next was another stage that sounded familiar and this was parenting. I had to parent my bones to each other so that they would be able to move naturally, and be influenced by one another. Therefore I parented the hips to the spine, and the spine to the shoulders. More parenting is important later on, but this was the first time I had done it here, and after a few tries I was able to see where I was parenting my bones to and why I was doing it (image 8). The last step then, in order to get my torso, or any other part of the body really, to move was to make an ik handle. I wanted the back to be able to bend if I needed it to, and at least try it out, so I used the hips as the starting point and built a controller to connect my IK handle to (image 9). I feel like this is like a 2D version of Maya and I am really enjoying learning new technical aspects of rigging! 

I did this exact same process for the legs and was able to do it successfully, and almost not have to refer back to the tutorial video. I did encounter one problem however, and this was when it came down to adding an IK handle. When I connected my controller and added the handle, the leg would flip horizontally in the sense that it would bend the other way it naturally bends. I kept repeating the process to try and try again just in case I had missed a step out or pressed the wrong tool, but it still kept happening. I had an idea of what it may have been, so I redid the whole process following the steps in my head of what I thought could have gone wrong and I ended up solving the problem! Basically when I put the three pins in the legs, the middle pin was more left that it was to the right so when I added the IK handle, it assumed that the leg was bent the other way and therefore that was the reason it flipped. By adjusting the middle pin to the right a bit more, the IK handle followed through and I was able to bend and stretch both of my characters legs! 

I did ALL of these steps with my second character and had a much more successful time. I have learnt from my previous mistakes and the steps have all become more concrete in my mind so I was able to use all the tools cohesively and effectively in order to create another rigged character. I really enjoyed learning this new process and I feel like I understood it much more because I had practiced it in Maya previously. Knowing what IK handles are as well as parenting, made it easier for me to process the information, and it also makes me excited to think about what else I can learn and understand if I keep on pushing myself! 

Responsive Loopdeloop Character Designing

Because this was the third brief I chose for Responsive, I wanted to do a lot more experimenting with character design. This is something that I don't do a lot of because I don't think i'm very good at it, and I wanted to use responsive as a chance to improve and also do something different. From what I had brainstormed, I began to draw characters I thought could work for a 'loop animation'. I thought about twins, big sister and little sisters, to animals and toys. I really likes the idea of having mischief in my loop and I also liked the idea of having the little toys that get smaller as you open them up. I was still unsure of what characters I wanted to develop, so I went and added some colour to my designs, and had another think.

Again, I really liked the three toys, but I wasn't sure how I was going to animate them and I was leaning more towards the big sister/little sister companionship. I had also found out that you could rig characters in After Effects and because I really enjoyed rigging in Maya, I thought perhaps I could have a go at this new learning experience as I wanted to really push myself. I knew this would be a risk because I was trying something new for a competition brief, but I really did love the technical aspects in Maya so I want to find out if doing them in After Effects is just as satisfying.

Therefore I stuck with my instincts and went with the big sister/little sister characters. I was able to develop these really well, and I improved them a lot from my original drawings. I really like how illustration-like they look whilst also being digital. I made each body part on separate layers however, as to rig characters in After Effects, I learnt that you need to have every body part that you want to move on a different layer. This way, when you import the whole .psd (Photoshop) file into After Effects you can keep the layers independent from each other, allowing you to rig them.

                                    

I named each layer appropriately however, making sure that the left arm and right arm were easily distinguishable with 'R' and 'L' at the beginning of each layer name so that I wouldn't get confused like I did sometimes in the previous module. By doing these steps, I was able to think about what parts of the body I really wanted to move, and what were not very important. For example I didn't need to have the shoulder separate to the whole arm, as I could just create a 'bone' for it instead, saving time and layer space.

Since i had my characters designed, before I want to rig them I went ahead and made a quick storyboard of the narrative that I wanted to create. I kept it relatively short, just enough for me to follow and last for 6 seconds. I also wanted to see who would be taking what from who. I also carefully considered how I was going to make the animation 'loop'. Because that is what this brief is all about I really struggled with finding short ideas that would have a never ending loop but I came up with two. The first was to have the starting frame as an image in a photo album and then it starts to move as the person remembers it, and to make that loop would be through page turning. However the second idea I had was to do a pan of a city scape/town scape and then once it reaches the ice cream shop, the animation of the sisters will play and then the pan comes back and it repeats itself! I thought this would look much more appealing so I decided that was the one I will be going for! 

Responsive: Loopdeloop Visual Research

Follow Ciara's board Character Design on Pinterest.

For my Loopdeloop brief, I know I am going to be creating two characters to play off each other, and this is going to require some character design. Preproduction is not my strongest point, nor is character design, so I had a look at some inspiration on ways I could draw my characters. I specifically wanted to draw them side on, so I did look out for characters like this, but in the end I ended up grabbing inspiration from all sorts of artists, who were too inspiring to miss out! 

Rob Bailey

Rob Bailey is an artist from Manchester (local!) who I found out about. Though a lot of his artwork is forward facing, I was just so inspired by the simplicity and beauty of his character designs. What I found brilliant was that he has no line work at all! I always have to draw my character's in pencil, then in pen and then fill these in, in Photoshop to create a somewhat decent character, but Rob just uses vector shapes! I found this so captivating that for my own characters I am going to try and not use line work either and see how they look! I also love his muted/pastel colours, as I think they look so complimentary together, which I want to take influence from also.

Riccardo Guasco

Riccardo Guasco is another artist who I found out about and want to take influence from. What I particularly enjoy about Riccardo's work is that for corners or joints, he uses sharp edges to emphasise where a part of the body would naturally bend. Every shape on his characters have a purpose and this is vivid and exciting to look at. I admire the sharpness of the nose, the knee and the elbows and I think I will try this technique to see if it works with my own characters. I am not sure it will look as nice as Riccardo's but it is worth a try! 

I also think I am going to take influence from these .gif's that I found on Pinterest! These are very stylistic characters which have so much personality but don't even have facial features! The artist has over accentuated certain body parts to give them an extra animated approach, but not only that I love their colour schemes! I feel like I am attracted to a graphic design like aesthetic naturally, and I feel like these are so lovely to look at I hope I can use After Effects to create something which involves the same concept! These are also great references for a walk cycle, which I must remember to note down! 

More Pinterest .gif influence! 

Responsive Loopdeloop Product Proposal

LOOPDELOOP:

The problems I aim to solve are:

1) Firstly, I am going to have to tackle a theme/topic that is quite unfamiliar to me, which is 'sisters'. I am an only child so my immediate challenge will be to find other ways to represent this theme that will somehow relate to others with sisters, or even those like me, without. 

2) Another problem I aim to solve, is having a sufficient narrative that will be distinguishable within the six -10 second time frame that I have set myself. Now that this course is progressing, I am used to extending my time frames from thirty seconds, to a minute, so going back to six seconds will be a challenge.

3) The next problem I am going to have to face is tackling a new part of the After Effects software which is "DUIK", as I want to expand on the build in puppet tool! 

In order to solve these problems I am going to...

1) I am going to have to think of unique ideas that relate to sisterhood, but aren't the obvious. I might do this through portraying a strong, solid friendship, which is like being a sister, or I might choose animals as my vehicle to represent this. 

2) To solve my six second problem of not having enough narrative, or having too much, I will have to choose something that is easy to figure out, is fun and simple. Nothing complicated or complex will work as I want the audience to flick through and be humoured. 

3) I will have to watch a good few tutorials in order to understand this software, which I am prepared to do! 

I will be aiming to communicate the main ideas/themes/moods of...

1) Sisterhood. I need to keep with the brief's theme of course.

2) Mischief and trust. I think trust is what sisters are all about as well as unconditional love. However I want to choose the more cheeky side to being a sister, because to me that is more comical and easy for me to think of ideas for.

3) Humour. I don't want to be too serious for such a short animation.

This will be to an audience of... 

1) ANIMATORS. For the first time in responsive, my demographic will be other animators, as they will be judging my work. So far I have made pieces for children, adults, teens and now my audience is more niche which is also scary! Animators have experience so know what to look for therefore I am going to have to consider my work more carefully, but still be open to constructive criticism.!

Responsive Loopdeloop Research & Idea Generation

For the final brief for responsive, I chose to do Loopdeloop! I wanted to do at least one animation for this module, therefore I thought loopdeloop would be a great brief to go for because I have not entered it yet and I think it will be a big challenge to get something to loop.

                               

The theme for this months challenge is 'sisters'. When I first saw this theme my heart sank a little bit because I don't have any sisters, in fact I am an only child so I felt like I wouldn't be able to tackle this loop as well as other people because I don't know what it is like to have a sister. However I then started to think that sisters don't have to just be biological, you can have best friends who are like sisters and I have cousins who are like my sisters also, so really i'm not that left out. If anything, this brief will allow me to have to think out side of the box more and take more risks! So I went straight to brainstorming!

Surprisingly, I had LOTS of ideas for this loop. I thought about sisters I have seen being portrayed in animation, television and in real life. I thought about animating twins, a big sister vs a little sister to other aspects. I thought about trying to portray an emotion within the loop, so centring the sisters around rivalry, an act of kindness or even just plain mischief. There were lots of things I could have chosen from once I began to write them down so I feel silly that I thought of choosing another brief because of this. I circled the ones that I wanted to go for more prominently in red. These were the best friend as sisters idea I had, or the big sister vs little sister. I quite like the latter because I think it is more versatile, and sometimes when you make something personal, like I would with the best friend one, people don't always get the point you are trying to make, therefore the second option seems much more open to me.

                            

Since I didn't know much about Loopdeloop other than it is an short animation competition that is monthly, and has screenings across the world, I decided to do some research on it. I know a lot of my peers enter this competition, so that is one of the reasons why I wanted to have a chance as well. But I didn't know how it started or what the purpose of it was. I found out that Loopdeloop was made to give independent animators a chance to come together, to refine an idea and make a short loop, then connect with other animators who have done the same and network with them! Instead of the isolated practice that animation can sometimes be, loopdeloop was made to bring people together, online and offline, through sharing the same passions and ideas! 

I then had a look at last months winners from around the world, to see what people were voting for and noticed that actually all of them were digitally made, and 2D. I was going to create something in Maya because I really loved the Character and Narrative module, but seeing as how no one won with a 3D animation, I think I am going to also stick to digital 2D. I am think of using After Effects this time to ease back into animating with 2D but push myself with character rigging and also trying new things. Also, the timings of each loop varied, some were up to twenty seconds and some were as short as four so whatever narrative I choose will dictate the timing, but going from the past winners it doesn't seem like length effected their chances which is quite comforting.

Final Full 1 Minute Animation

           

This is Hayley and I's final animation with sound! We decided to not include the sound effects that we created in the sound booths because Hayley was unsure about whether there needed to be voices as well as the sound effects to make it look more cohesive. She preferred that it looked better as a mime and I didn't mind, I enjoyed both therefore we decided to go with this one. 

Overall I am extremely happy with what we have achieved and think we have come so far, working as a team. We disagreed on a few things, but we learnt to compromise and I am thankful for that because we were able to make a full animation that looks smooth and has a successful narrative. I am also glad we got to include the rule of three in there, illustrated through the three ball throws and also we included a gag, and a loop, of continuing on to the next stand with a prize. I thought this was important because Sara explained for short animations, there needs to be more substance and I hope that we have achieved that with this animation. Overall I am very proud! 

Adding Sound & Using the Sound Booths

For sound, Hayley and I had thought about this a few weeks ago and had found some different types of audio that we could use as a backing track for our whole one minute piece. However, I had really been thinking about using the sound booths for this module because I didn't get a chance to last year, and I since I was working in a pair I thought it would be a great opportunity to get familiar with the software and just have a chance to explore a new way of emphasising parts of our animation. Sound can be really successful and highlight certain scenes and in general, intensify the viewing pleasure, therefore I couldn't wait to get started. 

We did both agree on this song that we found on the Youtube audio library, which was free for us to use so that we could possibly enter it in competitions or use in our showreels. We found it by searching 'fair' into the smart finder box and we loved it instantly. It adds some comedic factor to our animation as well as emphasising the fun fair/carnival theme, and once we put it to our one minute piece, it just felt right! 

We then got to experiment with the sound booths! The sound booths were very effective, and allowed Hayley and I to record some small sound effects to go with out animation. After a quick induction, we decided to play our animation on the laptop in the room, at the same time as acting it out, so that we could pick up sounds that way, as well as doing other actions individually, for example cracking knuckles. Sadly we lost some of our audio files due to how the software recording the audio worked. We saved some files and then recorded some more, and saved again, but the newer files saved on top of the older ones and unfortunately we lost some substantial audio.

That is not to say that we didn't get some great effects, because we did! And we had a lot of fun doing it! We decided to make a lot of things up on the spot, so for cracking knuckles, I could only do so many fingers, so we improvised with crunching my water bottle. This allowed up to get a more rapid cracking, which we could use for the back bone, where as my actual knuckle cracking could serve for the big brothers neck. 

We also improvised the ball sound effect because we didn't actually have a bouncy ball with us. Instead we rolled up my gloves and used that to bounce around and hit of things. This gave a much softer feel, but the harder we hit it, the louder the effect so in the end it served us well.

I put together a small compilation of the sounds I will definitely be using in the video above and love the quality of them. Though these were small effects it took a long time for us to do and then filter through. But I think that I will sue the sound booths in the future because the quality is so great and it means you can make everything from scratch!

When starting to apply our sounds to our animation we noticed that our animation actually looked great as a 'mime', without any added effects, but since we had gone and recorded a good few of them, I put some in anyway! I like that there isn't too much of the extra sound so that it doesn't detract from the real audio and the movements from the characters themselves, there is just enough for a bit more excitement and detail.

For the inter titles, Hayley and I just made these in Photoshop as .png files and added them into premier so that we could change placements and so on. I love how our animation looks and I am so proud that we have come this far! We have really worked as a team and I think that it shows and I have really loved this module.

My Final 30 Seconds

This is my 30 seconds for our 'Sibling Rivalry' animation, character and narrative module. I am so proud with how far I have progressed with Maya, and I am actually quite excited to use it in other projects in the future. I feel like I have learnt so many skills from technical aspects with the software, to the physics of animation, such as weights, fluidity, and realism. I hope that I will be able to remember all of these so that I can continue to strengthen my 3D modelling abilities and only improve further. 

Of course there are things that I would like to change if I had more time. Looking back, though I loved finding new camera angles to portray each scene, perhaps like the feedback I got on CGSoicety, I could have used less of them and focussed more on switching between a few. However in saying this I can only learn from my mistakes and now I know what works best for me and what doesn't! I am also glad that I put my work out there and got an outsiders opinion on it and it has made me want to continue this because it is extremely beneficial and allows me to see things that I probably wouldn't have seen before!

Animating Scene Seven - My Last Scene!

Scene six was my last scene to animate before I went and made changes to my other scenes from the great feedback that I got. This scene was important as it was the 'transition' phase from my 30 seconds to Hayley's next 30, so I tried my best to get it to look like one whole animation and not two separate parts that were filmed by two separate people. I also had to consider where Hayley's starting point was, so that this transition would be effortless, and show continuity within the narrative. Since Hayley started off with the second throw, this meant that I would leave my 30 seconds, with her character picking up the next ball, ready for her scenes of action!

I also had to consider the fact that I had made the older brother's hat fall of his head, and Hayley had already started animating her scenes with his hat on, therefore I had to find some sort of way to place the hat back on, so I chose this as my starting point for the next scene. 

I couldn't think of anything imaginative, yet realistic in terms of ways to get his hat back on his head, so I ended up going back to basics and animating him so that he picks his hat off the floor and flips it onto his head himself. I wanted the moves to be effortless, and full of determination, as he has another throw to go through, and there is nothing stopping him from trying again. I also wanted to experiment with panning since I had seen a few of my peers do this in the final crit and was extremely inspired to try this myself. I had to space the frames a lot further than I first expected, but I think it creates a nice effect and I am glad that I at least tried it.

One problem I did encounter quickly, was that I made the mistake of keying my perspective camera whilst animating previously, so when I went to animate in the perspective this time around, to move all the different controllers without my view switching to the single camera angle, I couldn't because I had already keyed it, and so when I went to animate the older brother putting the hat on his head, it was extremely difficult to achieve, and as you can see in the video above, it ended up looking dreadful. To fix this I had to go back and extend my timeline so that I could delete all the key frames on the perspective camera in order to remove any set positions that it may have had, and this allowed me to move the perspective/world view freely along with moving the timeline along and not worrying about the view snapping to certain angles!

Therefore I was able to animate the older brother picking up the hat on his head, placing it and then turning to get another ball! It was a challenge to animate the hat almost 'flipping' onto his head as like the ball, I had to key it separately to the characters. This time it was much more complex because the hat is not just a simple sphere, and it has different curves and edges, which meant I had to pay more attention to what way it was facing and where it was about to go in conjunction with his hands. Because it flips quickly this allowed me to spin the hat more easily as there were less in between frames for me to think about. I think I ended up doing the best I could, and I like the part where he fixes it with his other hand, my only downfall I would say is that it is a little fast! 

However this is what I ended up rendering! I am quite pleased with it and where it leaves Hayley to start her 30 seconds. I think I have really pushed myself with this module and tried everything I possibly could, especially in terms of movement. When I went to render this scene however, it started off rendering the first two frames fine, but then it started to render black images? It kept doing this over and over and I was really struggling, but it turn out that between key frames my camera would move behind the tent (hence no light and therefore a black image), therefore to solve this I had to reposition it and I was therefore able to render the scene just fine! Now that I have a week to spare I will be going back and tweaking parts of the animation that I have given feedback from, now that I have m 30 seconds! 

Tweaking the First Scene

Since I had some time before the hand-in session, I decided to apply the feedback that I received from both Mat and my peers from the final crit session. The one that stood out to me the most was the introductory scene where the camera swoops into the environment, so I decided to start with that first. The feedback I got from this was that it looked quite jagged and forced, and to improve this I could perhaps put it on a curve. I decided to take this onboard and apply it to my animation because it is the beginning scene and I want to leave a good first impression! 

I could not actually remember how to put a camera on a motion path, so I did get it wrong a good few times before I finally got the hang of it. I used the 'CV Curve' tool to 'draw' my path, and then clicked on the camera and attached it so that they would work together. As you can see in the video above, it went horribly wrong.

I realised that this was due to the directional axis that I was attaching the camera to. I had just used the settings that were already set by Maya, and I hadn't realised that you have to alter them accordingly. I ended up using the ones in this screenshot as I found that they worked for me best, and the option that really worked for me was 'inverse front'.

I also thought to draw my path in the side view perspective, as there was no way I would be able to create a smooth, effective path in the global perspective. This way I could keep it at 0 in the Z axis, and therefore my camera could be stable and fluid for the viewer.

Though this allowed me to keep the camera stable in the Z axis, it was then down to me to try and fix the pace of the camera path. I had trouble previously trying to make the camera look slow enough to be realistic, but for some reason I found it much harder when working on a motion path. I had to do LOTS of tweaking with the 'Control Vertex' option, moving the points around so that the curve would be smooth, but a lot of the time, it was a case of trial and error.

I did however, end up tweaking the camera path so much that it ended up looking nice and smooth, much more than I had done to begin with. My only issue on the other hand, is that you cannot see my character walking anymore. I wanted to establish the setting in this sequence showing the whole fun fair, however as a consequence of the swooping, I have cut the little sister out of the shot. 

                                              

To counteract this, I tested moving some of the control vertex points to the right, in order to get that rotation element in, like I had previously. I noticed that I could not set keys on the camera once it was on the motion path, otherwise the motion path would not be in effect, therefore I made another camera in the exact place where I would have wanted the rotation to start and keyed it that way. This seemed like a lot of work, so this is when I tested out moving the points. I found this to be extremely effective, as the camera swoops through the entrance, establishes the scene and then rotates to the point of action and just in general I like to overall aesthetic of the scene. All of this experimenting has allowed me to create a better looking opening scene, as well allow me to find new skills that I can incorporate into my future work!

Asking For Feedback From Strangers

 In my one to one with Mat a few weeks ago, he suggested that I post some of my work onto some Maya forums if I have time to get even more feedback from people who have the same experience as him and a lot more than me! I was really skeptical of this idea to begin with because I get nervous showing my work to my friends let alone a bunch of strangers. But after the final crit session and getting some positive feedback as well as some advice, I thought I had nothing to lose and decided to go for it! Plus I may have gotten some extremely useful and helpful tips! 

I went to 'CGSociety' and found a section that looked appropriate to post a new thread. I chose the 'WIP/Critique: Animation' section and found so many other people were looking for advice and tips on how to improve their work. A lot of people posted some amazing pieces, so of course I was nervous but I had made an account and gotten ready to post so I still went ahead with it.

This was what I posted. I didn't really know what to say so I tried to keep it casual and inviting so that anyone could give me ANY feedback, good or bad! I had to wait for the thread to be given the okay by the website monitor, but I felt proud of myself that I had the guts to post my work online! I had linked the youtube file of the 18 seconds that I showed in the crit because I didn't know how to embed a video into the post as I am extremely new to forums! So I hoped that it wouldn't put people off! 

A few days had gone by and I hadn't heard anything, but then I finally got a reply off someone named 'Phredrek'. I was so pleased that someone had taken the time to reply and had essentially been able to give me some feedback. He gave me some well wishes and some great critiques. There is a lot that I might not have the time to change, but I am going to take his feedback on board and of course do the best that I can. 

He mentioned that my camera moves are too jarring. I am not sure if he is on about the opening scene, which others have mentioned before and I am currently in the process of changing, but if he is on about the angles a whole I am not sure how I would go about changing that because both Hayley and I's sections switch angles frequently to keep consistency, so I will see if I can make some changes later.

I also didn't notice the leg popping from my character around the 8 second mark, but now that Phredrek has mentioned it, I can and so I will also go back in and change this, just in case it becomes more noticeable to other people also!

He also raised an issue that I had had all along about Hayley's character just 'appearing', he advised me to make Hayley's character walk but his legs aren't rigged so I can't physically do that. This was an issue I brought up in the crit and my peers and Sara had not noticed until I mentioned it so I am torn on what to do at this stage. I had been conscious of this problem from the very first time I animated this scene so I definitely know where he is coming from,  and if I have time I will try and think up other creative ways of Hayley's character establishing his presence in the scene.

Overall I am so grateful that Phredrek replied to my post and gave me some great feedback. There are things that I am going to change and others that I physically cannot or don't have the privilege of time to do so. But I am going to try my best anyhow! 

Responsive Emil & the Detectives Change of Plan

After researching further into children's book illustrations and paper art, and how I wasn't really happy with how my design looked once it had been bound to an actual book, like it would on a shelf, I decided to redesign this cover because I had time. I wanted to be a little more adventurous and crafty, and cut my designs with some textured paper that I had used for birthday cards. I am familiar with this process but I don't do a lot of it, so I thought again I would push myself for this brief and 'get out there' a bit more so I can get more back from this module. 

I began with trying to get the design I wanted to create in my head, onto paper. I knew that I wanted it to look 3 dimensional, with having pieces of paper come out from behind the detective, and I also knew from all my other research, that I needed to have nice bright colours so children can interact with the cover and enjoy it. I decided to keep the design from my other cover, of the detective, but use it in a different way, because I still really did like the way he came out. 

To make the design of my book cover, I purchased some textured paper/card stock that had every single colour you could think of, which was a lot of help for me because it meant I had variety to choose from. It also allowed me to consider what colours go with each other, as this is something that I had been struggling with lately even though I love colour and colour theory.

And since I had my designs ready on paper, I began cutting them out! I drew my designs on the back of the textured paper, and then went over them with a scalpel. I had to buy a scalpel from the college library, because I only had a craft knife and it wasn't sharp enough to cut through this card stock as it was much thicker than regular paper. I really enjoyed doing this as it was sort of relaxing and satisfying because I could see the shapes come to life instantly. It was also refreshing to take a step back from doing everything digitally, which makes me motivated to do more of it! 

I also made my text with cutting out paper and this turned out a lot better than I had expected. I had planned to do this, but I was taking a risk because typography is not my strongest point, let alone making my own through cutting out paper. However I think the letters turned out fine. To save myself time and the pain of using a scalpel for too long, I only cut out one of each letter that I needed. For example, I cut out one 'E' letter when there are at least four of them. By doing this I was able to duplicate them in Photoshop, whilst keeping continuity within the typeface.

To create the detective and 3D effect, I used two sheets of paper with little sticky squares that allow you to stick paper together with a few centimetres in between. I cut a perfect circle out of the top sheet of paper, so that you could be able to see the detective pooping out from behind, as well as the previous waves that I cut out before. To make the background, I simply cut strips of different coloured paper out and layered them so that they made a grid like effect. This allowed me to have even more texture in my design, as well as some complexity and dimension. 

I then scanned all of my paper onto my laptop and into Photoshop ready to edit. I didn't like how my detective came out so in the end I ended up copying and pasting the one I had made from my previous designs, and adding a cardboard texture as an overlay on top, so that it would blend in with the rest of the cover designs. I think it looks much better, and colour wise, looks much more complimentary. I enhanced my card stock saturation a bit more as I found that it got lost a little bit in the scanner, and duplicated some, changing the hue to green so that I could tie the detective and the background together. I also altered the tone of the grid like strips of paper so that it wasn't as harsh. This taught me a lot as I obviously had to change most of the hues to get everything to look aesthetically pleasing together. I am grateful that I can do this in Photoshop, but I will have to think about this again in the future in order to get the right colours of paper first time around.

As for the text, I also changed some hues in this to make it look like it belonged on the same page as the design of the detective. I really love how it turned out though, because it looks handmade, but also quite polished so I am proud of myself for experimenting and achieving this. Last year I was told to experiment and take risks more, and I definitely think I am doing it with this brief, or at least trying to. I think duplicating the letters in Photoshop helped me a lot, because there is a lot of consistency in the letter shapes now, which I may have not achieved if I had cut them out them over and over.

Then it was time to put everything into the template from Penguin, and add all the required texts and information. I wanted to keep the rest of the covers simple because the design is so loud in itself. Therefore I kept my text for the synopsis white and minimalistic, and to keep the same font for the title on the side of the book, I copy and pasted it, but added a white colour overlay which I found to be so helpful and I loved the result. I then traced over the paper cuts that I had cut out and added them to the top left hand corner of the back cover and I think this pulls the whole design together and makes it so much more lively and exciting! I am very happy with how this design turned out, much more than my previous one therefore I am glad I took the time to change it.

I think this design caters more to children, as it is more colourful, exuberant and full of life. It is also hand crafted which is something that children love to do so hopefully I can connect to them on that level. This was such a challenge for me to create this cover, but I am so happy with it and I think it is my favourite one out of the three!