Walk & ball exercise: Further character development

Spent a little more time with Mr Frenchy today, trying to get a feel for his personality and how he should move. I toyed with giving him a face but I thought it looked stupid and didn't really work, so I'm probably going to scrap that.

I wasn't too sure how old he should actually be — after being briefly inspired by George Hautecourt of the Aristocats fame I toyed with making him a bit of a crazy old coot with a walking stick.

Though I kind of like it, I started worrying that adding props was venturing too far into the realm of 'overcomplicated.' I'm not sure if props are 'cheating' and take away from the movement? Or do they add interest? It's a grey area. Or maybe I worry too much.

Not too sure how well I could work this guy into my initial idea so I played around with it a bit more.  I want to stick with being a bit down to begin with, so he's kind of shuffling along, dragging his feet. Maybe he gets hit in the back of the head with a ball, staggers along in pain — reaches a flight of stairs, and he's afraid of heights, so as he's getting higher he starts getting more and more anxious and keeps looking behind him.

Then I thought that maybe he reaches the stairs first. He climbs up them, slowly, slowly, then reaches the top and he's standing there, peering over the edge, gripping the rail for dear life. His knees are quaking and he starts inching his way along, hand-over hand on the rail. Then he pauses, takes tiny shuffling steps forward to catch up with his arms. If that makes sense.

Then, a ball rolls past him? His fear forgotten, he follows it, gives it a good kick and is really pleased with himself, starts strutting, swinging his arms, swaying his hips?

I'm not too sure where to go from there. I'm toying with the idea of the puddle again. He's not looking where he's going and just walks straight into it. Then he gets wound up 'cause his good trousers are all wet and just kind of storms off. 

I wasn't too sure about this idea at first, but now that I come back to it I'm starting to see potential for little bits here and there. Rather than being a generic, super-deep cartoon puddle, maybe it's just a little one — but it's muddy, and he puts his foot straight into it, and he's standing there staring at his sopping leg in disgust. 

I'm still worrying though — is this too complicated? Is the design okay? Personally I don't feel he's too complex; he's quite fun to draw and I'm having a bit of a laugh with him so far. But the movement — will that be okay? How will I animate the shuffle? 

Just gonna keep playing around and seeing what happens. If there are no crucial adjustments I need to make I might start rolling ahead and seeing if I can start getting to grips with some of the movement.

Character walk & ball exercises — initial concepts and designs

It's been one of 'those' days.

The new part project kind of got off to a bad start for me. I don't know whose hands these are, but the drawings coming out of them certainly aren't mine. It was weird — I was talking to Jazzy and there seemed to be an endless flow of stuff, but as soon as I sat down to get them onto paper, everything just went. Proper idea constipation.

I got a few sketches down — including one with a flamingo that I actually quite liked — but as Andy rightfully pointed out it would have proved to be absolute hell to animate.

I started running loosely with something using the balloon, puddle and football — my idea was to have the character enter, a bit down in the dumps maybe, then to have a heart-shaped balloon with a letter attached drift by. He reads the letter as he walks along; whatever's written there really cheers him up and his whole demeanor starts to change. He maybe starts skipping, totally overjoyed ——

 

—— doesn't see the puddle approaching and falls right into it (ridiculously deep). He clambers out and is sopping wet, so he's kind of swinging his arms, weighed down with water, really angry and fed up. He encounters a football and boots it out of anger. It ricochets off the side of the screen and smacks him in the face, knocking him to the ground.

It sounds fairly fleshed out on paper but I didn't really manage to get too far with it. The character design tripped me up a bit.

I was really grateful to have Andy floating around today — he was really helpful and introduced me to a little yes/no game that I initially struggled with. Once I stopped overthinking everything I got much more into it!

As a result, I ended up with a fat old French man who can blink and is quite athletic, but doesn't like Mexican food.

Started doodling a few things to try and get a feel for the character. He still feels alien to me but I'm going to keep ploughing through and see what I can come up with. I'm definitely not there yet — still feeling a bit frustrated and lost, but it's definitely progress and certainly a vast improvement over the horrors of the morning. The character idea is definitely fun and quite exciting!

Sketchbook: Shoot me again (re-do)

Andy gave me some great feedback on my lip syncs so far and suggested that my "shoot me again" was a little at odds with the sarcastic tone of the dialogue, so I'm having a bit of a crack at re-doing it to better reflect that. Rather than moving forwards, he suggested that the character should pull back.

Click for full size

Sarcasm is quite a tricky expression to convey in any case, but it's even worse when your character doesn't have eyebrows! You don't quite realise how much dimension they add to a character's face until you remove them.

I had a shot at drawing some 'regular' expressions first, before attempting to translate them onto my character's significantly more simplified features. I've always felt that the aim of animation, and indeed drawing in general, is to convey as much information with as few lines as possible. You need to make each and every line count — if it's not contributing anything to the expression, remove it!

Also trying to pin down his body language at this stage — I want him to shift his body weight backwards, shoulders and arms up in an almost defensive shrug. "Shoot me again — I enjoy it!" I'm having some trouble getting the balance right.

Click for full view

So far I've not liked the way that adding eyebrows completely changes the structure of my character's face, so I'm leaning towards keeping them off. I'm trying to figure out a way of shaping his eyes to suggest the existence of eyebrows. I'm finding it quite difficult, though I think the inclusion of his lower eyelid into the expression helped a lot.

I still need to really pin down the expression and body language. I don't think it'll do too much good to keep working on them entirely separately. I need to start trying to combine them properly to see how they work together.

Lip sync version 1 (unpolished)

First attempt at a lip sync! I apologise for the most uncreative selection of dialogue...

I basically just drafted out the vague mouth shapes on paper and whacked it all together in Flash just to see if my timing was right. There's absolutely no expression or emotion just yet and the mouth is all over the shop in terms of volume and consistency. I plan on doing something more exciting later, but I really just wanted to make sure it synced up correctly.

It doesn't really look quite right to me but I'm not entirely sure why. I'm worried I might be using too many shapes for each sound?

Aggressive ball — 4th attempt.

Variation on the previous attempt, using roughly the same timing and spacing but with a freehand ball. I also applied a little more squash and stretch to the ball as I did quite like the 'gummy' feel of earlier attempts.

Once again, I also did a slower version, but I think it loses a lot of its personality:

Ball bouncing, take 4

Fourth attempt at a ball bounce, reverting back to a larger ball and again trying to really keep the arcs under control. I tried to emphasize the bounce by using two 'squash' frames instead of just one. I think this one's a bit too fast so I shot it again in 2s, which I think looks a bit better but unfortunately it really emphasizes all the mistakes and inconsistencies!



It's really wobbly right at the end — it was supposed to be a series of smaller bounces as it rolls away but it came out looking more like I just couldn't keep it straight. I think I'd just need to have it bounce a tiny bit higher.

I think I'm beginning to get the hang of a basic bounce so my next target is to have a go at playing with physics, mass and weight a bit more.

Ball bouncing, take 3

Spent the morning working on a few more tests, the first using a smaller ball than before. I managed to get my mitts on a lightbox for the whole thing, meaning it was much easier to keep control of the size of the ball and its movement through the arcs. I think the angle of the bounces look more natural as a result.

More balls

After recuperating from my headache I had a little play around in Photoshop to try and get the hang of arcs and things:

It's fairly basic, but I think it came out a bit nicer than my previous attempt! I probably should have squashed the ball at the very end just a tiny bit as it finishes bouncing. I think it's a bit too fast as well?

It's kind of the same basic process as animating on paper, but using Photoshop did allow me to cut a lot of corners and save a considerable amount of time. Generally, I tend to avoid taking too many shortcuts and re-using objects as it can often make things feel a bit stiff, but here the arcs were my main focus.

Weighted object — 1st attempt

First and very quick attempt at expressing the weight of an object.



I don't think I considered the timing of this one carefully enough. There's no depth or feeling of mass. I need to increase the spacing in each frame as the ball drops. As it is, it's too uniform and doesn't really carry any weight.

I can't really use squash and stretch in this instance as I don't want the ball to appear floppy and soft, so I need to figure out how to really emphasise the drop and impact with the ground.

Ball bouncing and other assorted excitement

Was awesome to get back to working again after such a long break. Left with one hell of a headache though — those lightboxes get into your skull a bit.

It's funny how complicated something like a ball bounce actually is. My ball kept shrinking (must see a doctor about that) as the path of the arcs got smaller — ended up just drawing around a coin to keep things consistent.

The angle of the first arc seems a bit unnatural to me — I think it probably should have started dropping a bit sooner. The arc on the second bounce looks a bit too high as well, and I didn't keep an eye on the ground level so the ball lands too far down at the end. Overall though, I think it's passable as a first attempt.

Might try a smaller ball next time and see if it makes things any easier in terms of keeping the size under control.