Animation practice: walk cycle V2 [clean]

Annnnd here's the clean version. Less clean/refined than the previous cycle, owing mainly to the fact that I made all corrections to the arms on the new "clean" layer, but there you go. Rather less pleased with this one than the last but it's quicker and more careless, so I'm not too upset about it. It's really just me playing around, trying to keep fresh, doing different things, etc. etc.

I seem to have a morbid fear of heads — again, he loses it in a few frames.

Animation practice: walk cycle V2

Another walk cycle, did this one pretty quickly and pretty much just made it up as I went along which explains why it's a bit squiffy. I think I've pretty much got a good grasp on leg movements now but I still seem to be having difficulty with the arms — practice makes perfect as they say! Going to try and fix the arms slightly on this one — there's a bit of a jump as he brings them forward and they extend to the furthest point too quickly so they're kind of delayed too long at the front... I know what I mean!

Animation practice: walk cycle V1 [clean]

Made some slight corrections to the arm! I think it's a bit better now but I'm not entirely satisfied; it seems, to me, as if it goes back too far. If it went back a little less I could possibly have delayed it at its furthest point for just a little longer which would probably have looked better, but hey ho!

I also did a very quick cleaned up version:

I'm actually surprised by how it turned out — looks better than I thought it would! I forgot the head in some frames, because I am a big stupid face. The arms look a lot better in the clean version but I'm not at all sure why — I didn't change them at all?

Still, it was great practice and I feel that — looking at this compared to my early cycles — I've actually made some sort of progress and, dare I say it, I may even begin to be getting the hang of walk cycles. Which is a nice feeling. Let's hope it lasts...

Animation practice: walk cycle V1 [with inbetweens]

Lazily working away on this. Got the inbetweens done; think I'm mostly happy with the legs at this point, but the arms could use some further tweaking. Need to delay them slightly so there's a bit more of a pause before he brings them forward. I think it's too fast as well; 24 frames on 1s. It just seems really really quick to my eye, though I could just be used to shooting on 2s after AP?!

I always seem to mess up on the keyframes as well, never spacing the limbs far enough apart so that there's no room for movement when it comes to inbetweens. I think it's because I don't consider the timing enough — I tend to forget I'm doing keyframes sometimes so I start animating the limbs so they're nice and smooth... then realise, oh shit, I still need to inbetween this.

Er. That all made sense in my head. COMIC TIME, BYE.

Animation practice: walk cycle V1

I'm still really lacking in confidence when it comes to walk cycles, so I thought I'd do some more playing around!

Only keyframes thus far. It's pretty simple but it seems to be mostly working. I need to adjust the arms very slightly and the hips need more of a defined arc, but it's getting there... I think!

Gotten a bit behind with the comics; planning on finishing them up this afternoon after I'm done playing around with this.

Sketchbook: 23/01/2012 and a quick animation test-thing

I barely got anything done today. It seems that somewhere between tidying my room, going shopping, arguing with the pharmacy and trying to fix my phone that the day has drifted away. I just wish I didn't feel like such a failure every time this happens. It's just one day and I don't have anything pressingly imminent to have achieved, but I feel like I've wasted my time and that I've let myself down. I that, unless I'm eating or sleeping, I should be working all the time, or else I'm not working hard enough. This makes me feel like crap, which causes me to do even less. It's a vicious hate spiral.

Bleh. Anyway. Things!

Wanting to do some quick experiments/tests/practice animations just to start getting back into the swing of things, so I thought that I might try doing a short sequence of somebody waiting for a bus, or something... for some reason. I filmed myself for reference and to get some basic ideas, kinda came up with a guy leaning on the wall, drumming his fingers and looking around. He straightens up, puts his hands in his pockets and swings from side-to-side a bit, before checking his watch and throwing his arms down in impatience. Looks very nice in my head, but in reality this is all I ended up with:

Again I demonstrate my complete inability to finish anything.

It's barely more than keyframes and some really shoddy inbetweens right now. It's a bit scruffy and terribly lazy, with some obvious problems — not too pleased with the standing up (think he needs to move his weight forward a bit more before straightening) and there's a kink in the swinging where he goes back and then suddenly forward then back again. I think there needs to be more of a pause as he looks at his watch, and I'd like the arms to have a bit more weight as he drops them, maybe sag his shoulders a bit more to emphasize his frustration. I think the looking up/back just before the watch check is a bit fast too, bit lifeless.

I don't know if I'll keep tweaking it. I'm going to maintain that it was just a loose exercise, nothing too serious, just something to freshen up — but I need to start dedicating myself to these little practices. It's a good habit to get into and I need to work on my attention span/focus. I get distracted too easily.

Animation Principles Completed Sequence

 

Well, here it is, the completed sequence. I've actually had this done for almost a week now but I was too embarrassed to upload it! 

I'm really not at all happy with how the cleanup stage turned out. I feel a lot of character has been lost in the process and the animation just looks a lot stiffer now than it did before. The stair climb, especially — I originally animated it on ones but shot it on twos and it's really suffered for it. I can still see so many mistakes — missing inbetweens, dodgy arcs (particularly on that angry walk) but I think there comes a point you just need to say "I'm done working on this." Have I said that on my Digital Skills blog already?

I opted not to add the bannister on the stairs. I found it difficult to draw without it completely getting in the way and it just looked sort of odd, floating there — plus I quite like the idea that the character is almost a kind of mime — though that excuse would work better if I'd not drawn the stairs ;]

Still, it's nice to see it finished after so much stress and strain. The sound isn't too sophisticated... a bit hastily slapped on but I think it adds a nice little finish. It sounds a bit squiffy when burned to a DVD for some reason so I may need to look at tweaking that a little.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm typing at the moment. Feeling pretty tired, so forgive my incoherence!

Whilst I'm here, behold my DVD/menu designs:

I'm secretly quite pleased with these. Normally I'm horrendous at this kind of thing; design and presentation aren't usually my strongest points (gulp) so it was nice to see these come together fairly well. Simple but effective I feel! Not yet gotten around to the box design but it will be in a similar vein — I'm thinking of using the scene with Gustave at the bottom of the stairs or something. We'll see what Mr Photoshop conjures up...

Sad character walk V4

In between coughing up the contents of my lungs, I finally plucked up the courage to re-tackle the dreaded sad cycle! I want a medal.

I'm still not totally happy with it (as always) but I think (or hope) it's better than before. Still needs a few more inbetweens to get the timing right — mostly where he picks his feet up, I just feel it needs to be a little slower.

There are some arc problems with the hips, especially on the front leg's up positions. It should be easily fixable, I think I just need to bring it back a little bit. I don't really think the arms are working either. The swing seems a little excessive for his mood — I wanted the lower arm to appear really heavy and swing very loosely from the elbow to give the feeling of weight but I don't think it really worked. I animated the arm separately and it looked fine at first, but adding it to the body really changed the way that it reads. I think I need to drop the shoulders a little lower as well, to make him seem a bit more sad.

The more I look at it the less happy I am (dammit Alex) but hey-ho, they're all things that can hopefully be fixed fairly easily...

Happy walk draft scribbley thing

Blogger's stupid video upload hates me. Arrrgghhh. It doesn't really seem worth waiting in Vimeo's 30 minute processing queue for a silly scribble like this. Ah well! Enough moaning.

Volume problems! Volume problems everywhere!

Still desperate to avoid looking at that sodding sad walk cycle for what feels like the fifty billionth time, I decided to have a crack at getting something drafted for the happy/confident/strut after Frenchy kicks the ball. This is what came out. As I was making it I was astonished that — gasp — I was really enjoying myself. I felt fairly okay about knowing the rules of walk cycles, and almost-but-not-quite feeling confident in breaking them. I was enjoying seeing my character (to quote Withnail & I) "prancing like a tit."

I dunno, I was kind of happy with how it was going at the time (despite obvious problems which I'll discuss in a moment) but I may have just been on a bit of an 'animator's high,' but looking at it now I'm not so sure. It's not really what I'd planned for the walk initially, and that's not so much what bothers me — if I keep working at it, it will definitely still work with the scene I have planned. I'm just feeling iffy about whether I should continue it or just re-do it another way.

The first step looks alright so far, aside from some arcing problems with the hip that I need to go back and adjust. His hip rises up on the front leg as he drops down — I think it should go back and stay at the same level, before rising back up and over as he brings it forward. I think. I'm not sure? The second step I just need to completely re-do — I think I need to add a little more drag to the leading leg as he swings it forward to give it a little more life.

I think the body overcomplicates matters with its changing shape and volume. I keep getting lost as to where the hip should be — I think if I make it a basic circle (as I did with the stair climbing) it will be easier to consider things like rotation/tilting of the body and help me track the position of the hip more accurately.

Stair climbing V1

Hopefully I'm not going to jynx it, but I had a much better day today. Managed to get the stair climbing all drafted out and ready to go!



I'm not sure why but Vimeo appears to have skewed the frame rate/overall duration very slightly but hey-ho. It took me a while to get the hip rotation right (major thanks to Ron for suggesting it!) but I'm actually fairly pleased with the results.

It's far from perfect of course, I'm sure there are still countless things I could fix, but I think it's working. I'm satisfied that I've managed to actually do something and get results. Dare I say it, I might even be a very teensy-tiny bit proud that I managed to keep working despite how crappy I've been feeling.

Anywho — unfortunately he's just an egg with legs at the moment... next I have the challenge of the arms and head. I'm actually quite pleased with the little drawing at the beginning of him standing at the foot of the stairs. It sounds daft but I'm hoping that it might help me to balance out the first walk cycle a little bit!

Touch wood that this good streak continues...

Sad character walk Flash test

Deciding it might be a good idea to try working in Flash for this project as opposed to Photoshop. Despite the lovely textures and lines Photoshop gives you, the lack of anything vaguely resembling an onion skin is a complete deal breaker. It's making things pretty complicated for me, so I'm currently trying to convert my sad walk cycle into Flash:

I don't think it's going so well. Flash has considerably less options when it comes to frame exposure (in Photoshop my frames were set to display at 0.06 of a second but played back at 25fps, creating smooth movement and rather nice timing) In Flash it's literally singles or doubles which has jarred up the timing on my walk cycle massively. This was shot on 2s and it looks jerky as all hell, so my only option is to whack in more inbetweens or just leave it as it is. Aggghhh. The hips are problematic, especially on the front leg when it comes forward. I know it should be coming up and forward (shouldn't it?!) but...

I'm really not happy. It's looking so awful so far, I just cannot seem to get this to work. I'm having such difficulty with the arms and I don't even know why. I've tried acting out the walk myself so many times and really paying attention, but I just can't seem to nail it. I think I'm being blinded by panic again which is stopping me from working consistently.

Sorry, I can't even type a coherent blog post at the moment. I think I need to take a step back from this bit for a while and try tackling something else. I'm feeling very conscious of the time constraints and though this is something I can comfortably tackle over the Christmas period, I'm feeling frustrated by my lack of progress.

Assorted character tests

I was getting really quite stressed and upset over the stupid walk cycle so I took a step back and moved onto something else to give my brain a break. I ended up knocking out some very quick tests in Flash which made me feel a bit better.

I found that animating in Flash is distinctly less stressful than Photoshop. I think because it's actually an animation software — the onion skin makes things much easier in terms of figuring out movement and such. In Photoshop you lack the ability to view previous frames at once which makes things significantly more difficult.

That being said, these are still pretty crude but at least I'm beginning to sort of get somewhere.

This is a test from the scene after he reaches the top of the stairs. Originally I wanted him to sort of scuttle along the rail but I figured that a slow sort of sliding-creep thing would be more fitting.

I shot it again on 2s which I think looks a bit better:

Still needs inbetweens and cleaning up, but it's mostly just a test for the movement and such.

I also started messing around with the ball kicking idea:

It's little more than a few quick scribbles but I'm just trying to nail the poses and rough movement. It's very difficult — I'm having trouble working out how to get the actual kick to have any power. I want the kick to be pretty exaggerated and then have him come forward, back down onto his kicking leg, straight into the next walk cycle. Don't know how easy that will be.

I dunno. I'm still feeling pretty crummy about the whole thing. I really don't even know what's wrong with me — I'm just having such difficulty finding my feet with this project. Feeling very overwhelmed with it all!

Shoot me again — version 3, take 3

More slight adjustments, mostly cleaning up lines and adding in a few little details here and there. I think there's still a bit more I could do to it but I think it's mostly at the stage where I'm happy with it (maybe I've just gone blind to the faults!)

Had a bit of fun making the hair flap around again — it's not terribly realistic but I think it adds a bit of interest and keeps things from looking too staticy. I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it at the end when he pulls right back. I tried a few different things, like having it flop back a bit before bouncing back up but it didn't really make sense. Having it flop over his eye was more of a happy accident — tried it out of desperation and ended up pleasantly surprised with how it looked.

Shoot me again — version 3, take 2

Started cleaning up the lines a wee bit and trying to fix some volume problems. I added a couple of inbetweens and removed a few duplicate frames to help smooth it out a bit. I think it's looking better now but where he pulls back at the end is still really bothering me. The action just doesn't look right — he doesn't seem to move in an entirely natural way and his height is a bit inconsistent. Scrubbing through it frame by frame is helping to pick out the problems, but I'm having a bit of trouble with it. I think I'm worrying too much which is clouding my focus a bit.

There're some details missing (tail doesn't move and entirely vanishes in some frames) but I'm going to work on refining what I've currently got before I start trying to polish it too much. I need to look at refining the mouth shapes a little more.

I've also managed to finish the walk cycle from the previous posts, but unfortunately some slight technical problems (water + laptop = BAD) have gotten in the way. I don't think there was any lasting damage done and my computer's been drying out for the past couple of days so hopefully I'll be able to get that up tonight.

Shoot me again — version 3

In-progress retake of the "Shoot me again!" line. This time, I tried to keep the character's expressions and body language more angry or explosive. Originally I wanted him to draw backwards, sort of sarcastically, but I was having terrible difficulty in pinning the body language down. Instead I opted to have him throw up his arms as if shouting the last part — "I ENJOY it!!"

Admittedly I quite like the beginning part — I feel that the little detail of having his eyes blink at slightly different times helps to give him a bit more personality! Overall though I'm not entirely happy with it so far. I think it's more in keeping with the tone of the dialogue but I may have overcomplicated matters with having the entire body involved. There are a lot of proportion and volume problems — keeping the character looking the same from all angles/directions is something I struggle with!

Finest wines — version 4

Working on this one a little more. I tried to fix the mouth on "we want the finest wines[...]" and I think it looks a bit better, but it's way too fast. It's quite a complicated sentence and I'm finding it difficult to figure out where to put each keyframe, which sounds to stress and for how long. I think the last part syncs up a little better now though.

Not too pleased with the gestures and facial expressions either. Seems a bit artificial and stiff and doesn't have much personality. I can't put my finger on what it is. He's a bit tipsy so he should probably have some spontaneous eye spasms or tilt his body about a bit more or something. He wasn't a particularly impressive character to begin with but he doesn't seem to have quite as much character as my pencil drawings. That's the only problem with Flash, it can tend to make things a bit 'clean.'

Finest wines — version 3

I did a little more forward planning on the "finest wines" lip sync in the hopes that it might make things a bit easier. I really struggled to come up with a character design initially and experimented with something not human, as I thought that a less complex figure might be easier to exaggerrate.  

Click for full size

Click for full size

They all felt too stiff and uninspired as you can probably see. I couldn't picture any of them with the voice in the clip, so I ended up looking at some photos of Richard E. Grant [the actor to whom the voice clip belongs] for some inspiration. The character he plays in the film, Withnail, is a washed-up, drunken actor, so I felt it would be appropriate to try and capture some of that scruffiness.

Withnail is such a dirty character with a multitude of hilarious expressions. It's all in his twisted, gurning mouth and heavily shadowed features. I'm not entirely sure if I'd be able to replicate the sheer genius of his face!

Click for full size

I ended up reverting to a human figure, partly because it was easier; all my planning so far has been using a decidedly human-shaped stick man so it would be a bit more difficult to go back and re-animate everything to accommodate a completely different body shape.

I'm much happier with this design. It's simple enough to animate but with enough hlittle details that I can have some real fun with — knocking his beer glass over, swaying his tie around, etc.

It's still early stages, but I'm mostly happy with the body movement now. It could use some tweaking here and there — the fist slam still bothers me. It's not a terribly aggressive voice in the clip though so I don't want to overblow it completely. I'm half thinking I should simply remove it and just have him drop his beer glass back down onto the table.

I also changed the hand that's holding the beer glass as I quite liked some of the gestures he could make with it.

The mouth is all over the shop and I'm not at all happy with it so far. It syncs fairly well at the end, but "BALLS" just doesn't look at all right to me. "We want the finest wines available to humanity" looks completely wrong as well. I think I just need to make each mouth shape a bit more distinguished and perhaps cut down on the amount of different shapes I'm using, see if I can squash some sounds together. I think his jaw needs to move up and down as well. I can sort of get away with having the mouth just move when he's facing the front, but from the side his jaw is more prominent so it needs to hinge up and down as he speaks.

Finest wines — version 2

Mucked around with this one a little more, not changed too much, mostly just playing with the fist slam at the end. It's still not quite right. I don't really know if it's working with the voice clip — it's not really angry enough for him to pound his fist on the table like that.

I'm going to have a look at getting some sort of character design roughed out so I can start tinkering with the mouth. 

The audio quality is still horrible... can't seem to figure out what's wrong with it!

Second more refined lip sync

Done a couple of little things today; refined my "Shoot me again!" lip sync a little more, cleaning up odd lines and making some further adjustments to the hair. I also tried Ron's suggestion of keeping the eyes facing the same way rather than rolling back in the head at the beginning, which I think looks a lot better!

It's still far from perfect — the head keeps changing shape/size and the hair wiggles about a bit weirdly at the beginning but otherwise I'm reasonably happy with it!

I started playing around a bit more with another sound clip this afternoon and making loose plans for another lip sync. I didn't do any forward planning and it really shows. I really just wanted to have a bit of fun and get to know Flash a bit more.

Ron suggested that we try animating the body and head movements first and then work the mouth around that — hence why there's no actual lip sync yet! I want to keep working with this one so I'm going to try and refine the movements a bit more, especially the fist slam at the end. It's a bit lifeless at the moment so I'm going to try and loosen it up a bit before getting a face on there.

I'm not quite sure why the audio quality is so bad, it sounds absolutely fine during playback in Flash, just seems to deteriorate whenever I export. Very strange!

Slightly more refined lip sync

Ron gave me some helpful feedback on my work so far, suggesting that I work on making the hair flap about a bit more. He also suggested that I add a few inbetweens to cushion the snap-back between "-JOY" and "it". I've added just one so far — I'm going to see if I can get in another to try and smooth it out a bit.

The hair movement's a bit choppy and there are still a lot of problems with volume and such, so I'll see if I can fix that up and refine it a little more.