FMP Figure Skating

The tutor today suggested to push the project a bit forward. I talked to my peers to get some ideas and decided that in the end skater lines will straighten and then compose a spinning square. It will be an unpredictable ending. And also audience will throw flowers on it, like they usually do. Also I will add more audience in some places and applauses. I think the animation after these actions will look much better and not boring. 

I did just 2 frames with applauding audience. I like the motion and sketchiness, I think it fits the program.

I started to animate beginning of the program and it’s going well. About 10 drawings per second. I should be careful about technical score and put the right amount of points. I check program with the music all the time so they fit each other.

I solved the problem with steps: the skater will move out of the sheet of paper and then continue moving on the other. I put some Kazakh dance movements between two different spins. I like how it looks, although in the end it doesn’t look nice.

I did many frames for biellmann, and the preparation to it looks good. Biellmann itself looks a bit rough as other spins. Then I did steps that lead to spirals. One of the problems is to make the skater look like he moves during step sequences.

Finally finished combination of spins. It took much efforts, especially making it move without shifts, on one place, in clear position. Also it needs more frames, but I don’t think I have time for it. I spent much time making frames for changing positions between different kinds of spins, so it wouldn’t look rough. And I put music and watched everything I did with it. Some pieces didn’t go well with the music so I edited them.

Last Thursday I spent half of the day watching figure skating World Championships. Also I’m animating combination that consists of 3 spins. All in all it should take 15 seconds of the whole program. And much time to work on it. I won’t need many frames as there are several repeating turns

Today I finished animating combination of jumps. I think that amount of frames is good. But the first jump looks a bit low. May be it’s fine as the skater moves towards the viewer.  I’ll start to do frames for combination of spins, it should go easier.

Changed my mind again about music. Decided to take the first one as it’s not too heavy as the second one. So I will build the program with this music. 

I started to do my final piece with jumps. The short program contains 4 jumps, 2 of them are in combination. I did sequences of drawings for triple axel and triple flip. I had no problems with the first one, but still working with the second. I have problems with editing it as I want to create a sense that “camera” moves along with the jump, not just stuck in one position. I’m thinking and trying to do it properly. Also I did a score board for both jumps - it increases during performance. It’s a long and boring process, but worth doing.

 Figure skating championships emblems - was a help to understand how my animation will look like.

Second test piece

I started to draw audience faces. Actually, it’s one person, and I’ll try to show her emotion in this third test piece.

Final decision for music (not edited version)

Also I started to draw figure skater’s face (Mao Asada) during the jump. It will be my second test animation. It’s more funny part of figure skating - their faces as they do different elements.

So this is the first test itself