#ba1a

Charles character sheet Profile, front view, back view, 3/4 view.

The final week of animation principles.

These exercises were focused mainly on being able to draw your own assets, which I found very helpful. It was quite simple and easy to do in my opinion, and I could have spent more time making it prettier and more complicated, but... it’s 6:30 and I haven’t slept yet. So... probably not going to.

I know what I would do if I did, though!

Week 2 - to recap, this is the third Animation Principle Analysis on my blog, having already covered weeks three and one.

This one took a little more time to redo, and I had to figure it out a little bit again. I didn’t want to look at the videos, instead figure it out on my own with what I remembered and my problem-solving abilities. I’m speaking particularly about the “tail” exercise, trying to make all of the segments rotate individually within context of each other and end up in a decently loopable position took some time and a lot of fiddling, but I got there in the end without any help, which I’m quite happy with.

Last time I had to do this, I dreaded the last exercise (pictured above) featuring a tennis ball, a balloon, and a bowling ball. An animation of physics — not because I didn’t know how to or what it looked like, but because I was struggling to get the path of the bowling ball correct.

This time, knowing a little more about how the tools of the program work, I was able to use the vertex pen tool to make the paths straight and alter them as I needed to.

I’m going back and redoing my animation principles to make up for all the files I lost, so here is Animation Principles Week 1.

Going back through this week’s work was a good excuse to practice squash and stretch again. I had a lot of trouble with the three squares the first time, making sure the square didn’t overlap with the floor after un-squashing. This time was significantly easier, and it was nice to be able to come back and see that I’ve improved.

Everything was pretty easy, and it took a lot less time to get through the whole set of exercises than it did last time, understandably.

This is going to be out of order, BUT.

I just finished the week three of Animation Principles assignment. This is behind and out of order because I lost all of my progress save for some of Week 3 and have to do it all again.

As for Analysis:

Going through this week of principles was definitely the hardest, which obviously makes sense given these concepts are more advanced than what was covered previously. Doing them again was good practice, and I’m probably going to have to keep practicing them so that I remember them all. The hardest tasks were the snowboarder and the assault course — the snowboarder because I struggled to make his landing look natural to the point I want, and the assault course purely because of how much time it took, and the fact that my program crashed.

I think it was a good learning experience — I eventually got past my initial problems with the snowboarding via problem-solving, and pushed through on the assault course to make something I think that is unexpected but also fun. I might still go back and add more to it if I had time, but I like the concept and I know I could take it further if I find the time and motivation.

This is the final of six images for the photoshop compositing task. This is the image I plan on using as my final piece. This is the one I am most happy with. I am pleased with the balance, contrast and lighting of this scene. In my opinion the image has a good amount of detail without appearing too noisy. I am very pleased about with how the robots fit into the scene, but I am also very happy with some of the invisible compositing, like the Ivy, satellites and cctv cameras. My only problem is that some of the text stands out a bit too much and I think that this image is the one that looses the most from being cropped. 

As this is my final piece, I also included just the added elements to demonstrate all the changes I made. 

This is the fifth of six images for the photoshop compositing task. Although it is the firth image in the sequence, It is the first one I worked on so I consider it to be a little more experimental than the others. I wanted to try out the graffiti in this one first so I could perfect my method for the final piece. It was also the first one I attempted to add one of the characters to, again to try and work out how to make it look convincing in advance.