Extended Practice: Another Walk Cycle!

After experimenting with improving my walk cycle in After Effects, I took a break and decided that I wasn't liking the result. The walk looked too clunky and robotic, so I opted to draw it in Photoshop instead. Normally, I wouldn't have done this, but after talking with Annabeth and thinking about using both After Effects and 2D Photoshop for my advertisement series, I think this might be a great place to start.

Using the same references as last time, I planned out key frames and then drew the in betweens. I sped some of the steps up, for example, I still wanted the foot/leg to 'snap' as it touches the floor, but I wanted more of a stretch as it is lifted up. To do this, I simple did more in between frames when stretching, and less for the 'snap'. I am so much more happier with this result. I think the walk looks so fluid in comparison to the After Effects one, and this may be because I took the time to sit down, plan it out and draw it frame by frame. It did take me a good while, because I would often make mistakes and the whole motion would look off, but I really like it do far. (It is slow in the .gif above, because it is a .gif and not exported to a 24fps .mov yet).

I then began with adding other body parts and animating them separately so that I could carefully think about the placement of each one. Here, I did the torso first which was simple enough as I didn't want to really animate that, just get the placement right. Then I did the left arm. I like the motion of the arm, but I thought it still looked a bit stiff, so in the next edit, I animate the hand for some extra 'secondary action'.

As you can see, I animated the hand some more, as well as the right arm. I am very happy with the motions of the walk overall, but at this point, I did feel like the right leg snaps too much as it hits the floor and the leg is too straight. I am not sure if I was being too picky or not as animation is supposed to be exaggerated, but I went ahead and altered it anyway in the next .gif. This is the first time in a long time that I have had to think about the secondary principle as well as timing and spacing in such detail, but I am enjoying the process so far! 

However, when I added the head to the walk in Photoshop, I found it hard to keep it steady. This was the most difficult thing for me with this exercise and I began to try and think of other ways to improve it. Obviously, doing it frame by frame in Photoshop was too messy and there was too much shaking around for my liking, so I added the image sequence without the head into After Effects and tried to add the head as a .png there.

Again, I thought something was completely off! First of all, when exporting the image sequence as a .mov, the walk was way too fast! This made the head look too smooth, in comparison to the body. I therefore needed to add a little bit of the shaking back in, but not as much, to make it match the rest of the hand drawn animation.

Here I added some more frames (doubled some up) so that the animation was slowed down, as well as key frame the head every three frames instead of 6! This meant that the head wasn't floating around as much and it looks like more cohesive. I am much much happier with this walk cycle, even more so that the one I made the other day in After Effects!

And to see how it would look in my animation as a whole, I added one of my wider backgrounds to create the illusion of walking, as well as including some cars for a more realistic idea of how the animation would look! I am really pleased with this result, and I will be using this walk cycle within my animation instead of the previous one. It took a few days to complete, but it was worth it, and defintely shows in comparison to the rigged walk cycle. It is also a lot more rewarding creating work in both After Effects and Photoshop, and I hope it will look great together in the end. I am looking forward to animating the other elements now for this scene! 

Extended Practice: Walk Cycle Test

For this project, I knew that at some point I would have characters walking, whether that be across the road or through a city, it is going to occur at some point. Therefore I needed to practice animating a walk cycle since I do struggle with this in After Effects. I think my main reason for this is because my characters appear head on, so when they are walking forwards it doesn't look natural and I therefore needed to change the character design so that their body is rotated slightly and one leg (layer) is in front of the other! 

I began by using the references in the 'Animator's Survival Kit' book by Richard Williams which I purchased for first year! This book really helped my with key framing and placements of arms and legs so that the character would look less forced, and more fluid. I rigged my character as always using DUIK in After Effects, making IK handles for the arms and legs. This took an hour or so to do, but after that, I was ready to get testing.

These are two of my influences which I found that I really like. I think that they are so smooth in motion which I now know is so hard to replicate, but they gave me inspiration and were good to look at for reference and understanding different types of walks.

This is the first 24 frames (ready for a loop) that I did. I know that it isn't as fluid and smooth as most walk cycles, but it was my first time so I am not being too harsh on myself. I like that you can tell the character is walking, but I did feel like hit feet don't stay in one place, so this was the next thing I wanted to amend.

To make this a bit more precise, I created a 'solid' which I used as an imitation for a path so that I would have some idea of where his feet could stay grounded. This did help me a lot, but for some reason I couldn't get it to work perfectly, but I kept tweaking and tweaking. The next thing I didn't like was the pace. I felt like the walk was a little bit too slow for my liking which meant that it was obviously not natural and reminded my of my COP3 practical, where sometimes the character's walking was too slow!

I therefore moved some of the key frames along to create a faster walk which I am MUCH more happy with. I also make his feet snap to the floor which is more natural than before! I did notice that his left leg sticks out from behind his back which I just cannot fix for some reason, but I can clear this up in Photoshop later if I decide to use this walk cycle.

Then since because this is a test, I imported the cycle into one of my backgrounds that I had created just to see how it would look. I don't think it looks too bad for a first try. It is a little robotic, but it is a vast improvement from my other walk cycles, so I will continue to practice, but I am happy with the progress! 

Extended Practice: More Testing

Since I was pleased with my previous testing, I decided to do some more but with different aspects of the animations, for example the environments. In the beginning of my second animation, I knew that I wanted to open it up with a nice city setting with loud ambience and vivid colours. I also knew that I wanted some strobe lighting in there, but had no clue how to go about it, other than making transparent looking beams in Photoshop and just changing the position of them.

Therefore after looking online and on Youtube for other ways to create more realistic and interesting beams, I decided to try out masking. Behind all of my buildings, I created a solid the dimensions of the screen and then used the mask tool and created a thin oval shape for my beam. Once I had done that it was very opaque, so I blurred it and changed the opacity.

It therefore looked something like this, and I was able to manipulate the shape even more, as well as make it longer and move it around so that it acted and presented itself like an actual light beam! I did this a few more times and my first attempt looked like this:

In this test, the beams are not as obvious, there isn't really a shape to them, they are very blurred. You can still get the impression of what they are which I like, but after rendering it and watching it full screen, I thought it needed something more. I also animated the windows of each of the buildings so that they were able to glow and intermitting times.

I remade the beams this time, making sure they were less sparse and more shapely, and I also made more of them. I think they are more obviously light beams now which is great and they move naturally. I like both tests, but I think I prefer the second one. I also changed the gradient of the background as the scene goes on so that it gets a bit darker, as it would in real life!

Extended Practice: Panning Camera Test Without Characters

Before starting to animate, I wanted to have a go at testing the panning shot which I might repeat throughout the three animations. Since this is a key scene, I really wanted to try and see what way I could go about it before actually adding characters and lighting into the animation. 

I began with making a wider version of a background I had made, making sure that both the left and right side of the image were symmetrical, so that when the camera pans and I repeat the image, it will look effortless. 

I imported this image into After Effects and began trying to create the 'pan' camera effect with the After Effects camera layer itself. I made sure to make the background a 3D layer so that it would be effected, but it was just making the image 'flip' instead of moving it along the x axis. I couldn't figure out why it was doing this, so I ended up deleting the camera layer, and manually moving it across the x axis myself. This turned out to be more effective because it means if I want to simulate a 'bump' that the car goes over, then I will be able to through manually moving the position of the background up and down! 

This is what the simple panning looking like with just the background. At first I thought this was moving WAY too fast and I wasn't happy with it at all, but this was because there was nothing else in the animation. When I import the car later and it moves in the opposite direction, the background in fact, needed to be faster to create the illusion of speed.

Like this! With this next test after importing the car, I really wanted to try and make the car look less static. I didn't want it to just pan to the right as well, I wanted it to look like it is being driven (even though there are no characters in it, this is just a test!). Therefore, I made sure to move the car's position ever so slightly now and then, thinking about spacing as well, in order for it to look more realistic. I made the background pan faster to increase the illusion of speed and think it looks a lot better.

Lastly, I added in some clouds which were really difficult to incorporate. For some reason, I could not get my head around which way they were supposed to move, and how fast. Every time I animated the three of them, I didn't like the outcome, so this may be something I need to look closer into. However for a test, and with added snow, I think that the scene looks okay. I would be happy to extend upon this, adding characters and shadowing, with perhaps some more gradients! I didn't know where to start with these animations, but for now, I am liking the look of them. Also, with added sound effects, I think they could be even better!

Extended Practice: Car Turnaround

Before I started to animate my adverts, I wanted to make a car turnaround so that I would always have something to reference back to. I am not the best an envisioning certain angles, and since one of my main aims this module is to incorporate more compositions, I needed to not be afraid of doing so! One way to get rid of my fear, was to create a turnaround of a car so that whatever the composition or angle, I would always be able to animate, as I would have already drawn the car in every angle! 

I knew this was going to be challenging, so I gave myself a few days to complete it. I am on time so far with my schedule and since I knew this would really benefit me, I slotted it into my timetable. 

I began with googling over and over, all the different car angles so that I would be able to envision it in my head. I really enjoyed doing a turn around in first year, so I always went back to that when I was feeling stuck. Once I began sketching out key frames, I realised that I only really had to draw 12 frames for the 180 degree turnaround, and then I could just copy and paste those frames but flip them horizontally. This meant that my turnaround would be even and symmetrical. I began sketching really roughly with pencil, and as you can see it is very rough and barely a turnaround, but it was great at giving me an idea of where to start! 

I decided to do the turnaround very rough on paper first, and then more refined in Photoshop but just with lines. I didn't want to commit to colour just yet in case it went terribly wrong. As you can see, it is not the most even turnaround as it is quite jumpy and doesn't look centred, but that is okay! I am just creating it for my own reference and I think it will serve me justice when I come to animating. I took me a really long time to do because of all the different cars out there, and when I was Googling 'left side, right side', etc, all the cars were so different in shape. I kept it really simple, and I like the result.

I then added some colour to the turnaround! And I made the spin more even which was easier to do after a few times! I really like the outcome, and even though it is jumpy and very minimalistic, I will be able to draw all of my car designs at any angle because I have 24 of them to look back at! I know this will be really useful for me in the future, and it was also great to practice my turnaround skills from first year! 

Extended Practice: Artbook

In the studio, Annabeth brought in her Studio Ghibli artbooks from Toyko to give us a reference for the layout of our own artbooks. I loved the style and template of them as they were mainly full of pictures with simple descriptions so it looked interesting and easily accessible for anyone of any background which is perfect for the exhibition. I was influenced a lot from these artbooks as I followed some of the templates from the book to try and keep it concise, symmetrical but still visually appealing. I also really wanted to have the front and back covers match, even perhaps try and use one image across both of them as this is something I did for Responsive last year and the Penguin book cover brief. I found that when the front and back covers were cohesive, the feel of the book as a whole is more inviting and looks put together.

I started with this aspect, trying to get the front and back to look as if they are one image. I did this in Photoshop and then imported it into Illustrator on a 'master layer' so that when I sent the book to print, it would be exactly symmetrical. I did wish that I was able to create the artbook horizontally, as all of my images were 1920 x 1080 pixels meaning that they were horizontal. Not just with the cover, but with the layout of the book inside and as a whole, I found difficult to put together because of how I had to change everything to portrait images to fit the a5 size.

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However this is what I ended up creating. Despite it's difficulty in organising the layout, I did really enjoy putting this together and seeing all of the design work for pre production. I now feel like I am getting somewhere with this project which is exciting.

And this is what the book looks like printed! I used the printing facilities in the print room at university for the first time and was surprised at how simple it is to create an artbook. I think I will defintely be going there again in the future, for other aspects such as business cards and posters perhaps. When talking with James, who is in charge of all of the printing facilities, he recommended me to use matte paper for a sturdier feel and use 120gsm for the inside and 200gsm for the cover. I really liked the outcome so I was happy with what he recommended. I think if I update my artbook, I will fix the saturation and darkness on some of the images, as they seemed to have gotten lost within the matte paper. But other than that, I am happy to show the book at the exhibition on Thursday! 

Extended Practice: Chat with Annabeth and Progress So Far

Today I spoke with Annabeth about where I am up to with the project so far. I have all of my preproduction done except for some tests, so I will get to doing those in the next two weeks so that I am able to animate confidently. I made sure I had everything done by the first artbook deadline pop up show/deadline, so I feel on track as of now. 

We also spoke about what way I am going to animate. I told her that I couldn't decide between frame by frame in 2D Photoshop or simply in After Effects. She brought up the idea of how about both? I didn't really consider this, because I thought there may be a visual disconnect between the two methods, but the more I think about it, the more I would like to have a go. I like animating both ways and it will be nice to use some sort of mix media in there. I think this will be useful for when my character walks and does more complex movements, however I just hope that there isn't too much of a discrepancy in the final product between the two.

Extended Practice: Artbook Idea/Inspiration

Before going straight into designing an artbook, I tried to find some examples of existing artbooks so that I had some knowledge of how they are supposed to look and be set out. The only artbooks I know of are from big companies such as Disney and Laika (I own the Paranorman artbook so this was also useful!!), but I wanted to see how smaller projects make artbooks and if there were any. 

I took to Pinterest for this task, and did find many ways I could lay out my own book. There were several styles, digital, pencil, watercolour, etc, so these were great at allowing me to see how I could set out my rough sketches and pre production elements. I decided that I preferred the more minimalistic looking artbooks as this meant that style could be consistent throughout all of the pages, and I didn't have to worry about being over complicated. There were some designs that looked like actual illustration books, but I knew that this would take up so much time for the popup show, so if we are allowed to make another artbook then I may spend more time intertwining the pages and sections. For now, I will try to overlap some images on the double pages, but for the most part, I am aiming to stick to a minimalistic style with a white background so that the final result with be clean cut and look professional.

Some of my favourite designs that I will be taking influence from:

Extended Practice: Final Animatics

These are my animatics for the three animations that I am going to attempt to make. I kept them relatively simple because there are a lot of components to make and a lot of scenes to keep up with. I hope that I will be able to reuse some of them, which I think that I will so that should help me with some time saving.

Texting and Driving Animation Treatment:

This advert is vibrant and loud, as it illustrates the connotations and negative effects of drink driving, the one road safety law which is neglected the most. Though a well known offence, it is still a common practice among many drivers, new and experiences, hence why I wanted to include it as one of my animated adverts.

In the animation, the driver who is the same character in all of the adverts has had too much to drink. Through particular sequences, the audiences can tell that their eye sight is severely effected. They cannot see the road clearly, or any road signs in the distance, and therefore when attempting to get a better view at a sign across the road, due to their impaired vision, they end up in a collision.

Using No Headlights Animation Treatment:

This animation is an example of what happens when a road user does not only use their lights ineffectively, but does not use them at all. This is another extremely dangerous way of causing accidents, especially during the night time, therefore I wanted to highlight it as it gets less media coverage than the other two topics I chose.

The animation is set at night time to emphasise the true need of lights when driving.The driver sets off waving goodbye to his family before making his way across the town without alerting any pedestrians or other road users of his presence. Because of this, when the driver stops at a traffic light, the road user behind him cannot see him after turning a corner, because he has no lights on and it is very dark outside.This means that the second road user crashes into the back of the protagonist as he failed to use his car lights appropriately.

Texting & Driving Animation Treatment:

This advert highlights in particular a very important and relevant subject today, texting and driving. With the new rules earning you 6 points on your driving license if you are caught with your phone whilst driving, I thought it would make perfect sense to include this topic in one of my three animated adverts to raise awareness on the different areas of road safety.

The narrative of this advert is very short and simple. The driver of the vehicle already opens up the advert by being distracted by his phone. Throughout his drive he continuously picks up his phone to reply to his text messages, which eventually provokes him into running a red light as he is so focussed on his phone. Inevitably, running a red light means that he misses the car turning into the road on his right, and therefore results in a car collision.

Extended Practice: Animation 3 Storyboarding

Not using lights effectively.

Treatment: Father leaves his house and waves goodbye to his family. It is night time and very dimly lit. He gets into his car and does not put his seatbelt on, waves to his wife and children and drives off. He forgets to put his lights on. He drives around fine and does not make any mistakes. His concentration is perfect and he follows all of the road rules he is supposed to. He decided to take a left at the next junction but does not see the pedestrians about to cross the road as he has no lights on. They also do not see him. There is a collision and a cut to black. Sound continues for a few seconds longer.

This animation is set at night time too which allows me to play around even more with darker colours and shadows. Again I tried to use more interesting camera angles, but I have to be careful since there is no illumination from the cars lights as the driver forgets to turn them on, so I have to consider how to highlight certain aspects of the animation without light. I am excited for this animation because I have experienced first hand this type of hazard and how dangerous it can be, so I really want to do it justice.

Storyboard with added text.

Extended Practice: Animation 2 Storyboarding

Drinking and driving.

Treatment: Establishing shot of the city skyline and then the camera zooms into the street where there is music, laughter and heavy drinking at a nightclub. Protagonist leaves the club feeling very intoxicated and not fit to drive but says goodbye to his friends and does so anyway. Once in the car, the driver feels a bit uncertain that he should start the car, but does so and very obviously does not have the best vision. Throughout the drive the protagonist cannot see signs properly from drinking too much, and deicides to reach over to see them better. Because of this and his bad reactions, the car steers to the other side of the road, without him realising. There is oncoming traffic and the light from the car in front blinds him. There is a collision and a cut to black. Sound continues.

Like the previous storyboard, I really considered camera angles and colour. I wanted this animation to be set at night for a new change in context as well as a darker colour palette for a more sombre animation. I rarely work with dark colours, so I know this will be a challenge for me but I am willing to take it on and learn from it. I am excited about animating the skyline because I have always wanted to work on environments and I am really happy with this one so far. I think this could be a really interesting animation and sound could really work well, especially inside of the car for a more eery feel!

Storyboards with added text.

Extended Practice: Animation 1 Storyboarding

Texting and Driving.

Treatment: Protagonist gets into the car and is receiving texts. He answers them, but puts his phone down so that he can begin driving. Once on the road safely, the protagonist drives well and is not distracted by his phone until he gets to a red light. At the red light, he replies to some text messages and puts the phone back. As he continues to drive, the pinging from the phone distracts him and he cannot resist picking up his phone again. Because of the lack on concentration on the road from his phone, the protagonist misses a red light, and instead continues to drive forward. There is oncoming traffic, a collision occurs and there is a cut to black while the sound continues.

When refining my storyboard, I thought about composition a lot as I know that I consistently animate straight ahead without any depth of dimension to camera angles. I really tried to incorporate many new ones into this animation but without being too drastic. I wanted a lot of POV shots from inside the car, as well as from the side of the road so that the audience can see the context of the animation and foreshadow what is about to happen. I thought about colour a lot too, as this is something I love doing, so wanted some warm colours (like yellow and orange) contrasted against some colder more solemn colours (blue and grey) to reflect the life of the characters and the downcast consequence of the animation. I want the audience to feel what is about to happen before it actually does.

And this is the storyboard refined with text.

Extended Practice: Vehicle Study & Final Designs

Before getting started on designing the cars, I did a small study of several makes and shapes to see which ones I preferred and which ones I wanted to develop into final designs. I really like the Beetle Bug model of cars, so I did some research into their form and thought they would be unique to draw as well as animate as they are so round and curvy. I then did a small study on trucks because in my third animation, there is a collision between a car and a truck so I wanted to see how I could illustrate one. There are so many different types of trucks that there is no 'iconic' one. I think as long as I keep the height large, especially alongside the ratio of the car, then my message will be put across. My final study was of an ambulance. I really didn't want to use the neon yellow and dark green appearance of ambulances, simply because they would not go with the aesthetic of the rest of the animation. I therefore looked at ambulances all over the world, Ireland, Japan, America, etc and found that aside from the UK, ambulances look quite similar elsewhere, with a white main colour and then red as the highlight. 

Looking at collections of photos of cars really helped me with my drawings because I am not a car person at all and have no idea on what make is what. Therefore I felt confident going into photoshop to design some assets.

Quick sketches/fine liner drawings

Pencil crayon drawings

Before going straight into Photoshop, I decided to sketch some of the images I put together to see if I could come up with my own cars. Since I don't sketch all the time as I mainly go straight into digital mode, I found this really refreshing. It has given me confidence for when I animate and if I need to do a scene digitally but hand drawn (not in After Effects), then I will be able to do so. This was a small task to brainstorm a few ideas before I refined them next!

I tried to keep the designs simple so that I could animate them and make them look 3D throughout the animation. I mainly wanted the audience to recognise the type of vehicle they are which I think I have done rather well, and combined with some audio, this will increase the realism. I am not entirely sure about the colour choices on the top left and right cars, just because in some of the animations, the scene is set at night so I will obviously have to tone the colours down in order for them to fit in with the scene. So far however, I really like how they look.