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.

Sketchbook: Thumbnail storyboard 21/01/2012

Following on from yesterday's comic, it occurred to me that despite my very obvious discomfort and what, at the time, felt like an onset of a seizure, nodody appeared to pay any particular attention. I don't go out expecting attention, per se, and to be frank I'm quite glad nobody did, but this is certainly not the first time it has happened. On a number of occasions I've been walking down the street and witnessed somebody having a seizure, or falling, or in some other form of trouble, and the amount of people that simply walk on by or — even worse — cross the road to avoid the situation is quite startling.

That's a bit of pointless preamble, but anyway — it got me toying around with a bit of an idea that I decided to very quickly storyboard as practice. It's unsophisticated, unrefined and just generally quite crap — but it's more an exercise in habit-making. I need to start jotting down everything and developing stuff. I tend to fool myself into thinking I have no ideas, when I do — it's just that I haven't learned to recognise them as such. I'm rambling again.

At any rate, here are my terrible thumbnails (my sketchbook is tiny and there was no space for annotations, so forgive me as I type my ramblings. Do yer best to follow along)

Scene opens with a figure waiting at the bus stop. The bus pulls in and scene cuts to inside, showing a side-view of the seats. The figure, a woman carrying a purse, settles herself into a window seat. She glances idly around — out at the aisle and up at the ceiling.

Cut to a front view and she opens her handbag, reaching inside.

She pulls out a small tin of mints/packet of gum and pops a piece into her mouth, chewing.

Cut to side view. Still chewing, others begin to make their way onto the bus. She casts a wary glance at each one as they pass but appears ultimately at ease.

Cut to first-person view, looking towards the front of the bus. There is a pause and a strange clunking sound. An old man with a walking frame (making the clunking noise) hobbles into view and purchases his ticket. He turns and begins to hobble, very slowly, towards her, his walking frame clunking rhythmically with each step.

Cut to side view again and she shifts in her seat slightly as the old man shuffles past. He comes to a halt next to her and, reflexively, she tightens her grip on her handbag. There is a pause, and she slowly turns her head very slightly to glance at him. Cut to first person view.

We see a comically graphic close-up of the old man's incredibly wizened, wrinkled face as he turns his head to smile broadly, ancient skin stretched taut and revealing a large number of missing or discoloured teeth.

Cut back to regular view and the lady recoils slightly, eyes wide. The old man turns and settles himself into the seat next to her and she hurridly looks away, sitting slightly straighter. Cut to front view as the bus rumbles into life and begins to pull away.

There is a moment of slightly awkward quiet between the two, the only sounds are of the bus's engine and the chatter of fellow passengers. The old man is smiling good-naturedly to himself and the lady continues to stare straight ahead, drumming her fingers slightly on her handbag.

The old man turns his head and smiles sweetly at her. She returns it, weakly. Delighted, the old man begins to chatter away,

Cut to side-view. She glances desperately over the old man's shoulder as he waffles away. There are a few cuts to other areas of the bus — ordinary conversation, but gradually everything begins to change very slightly. People leave faint motion blurs behind as they move and the conversations become slightly muted.

Cut to side view, from the opposite side (looking out into the aisle). The lady leans forward slightly, turning her head towards the window, fingers on her temples. The old man is seemingly unconcerned and continues chatting away.

Front view. The old man is laughing and talking and the lady rubs her temples, casting a sideways glance at the old man.

First-person view of the old man. He, too, is leaving motion blurs and appears very bright, almost over exposed or with a "bloom" effect — and something about his face is off. His mouth is moving out-of-sync to the rest of his face, slightly delayed as he turns and moves his head so it slides across his face to catch up with the rest. His voice is muted too, a faint ringing/humming sound begins to creep up.

The next series of shots are choppy, cutting between random snatches of conversation, the old man and various other parts of the bus (the ticket machine printing etc.) These random shots are repeated, getting faster and shorter and louder, interspersed with the lady gradually leaning further and further forward, hands clutching her head, the ringing noise growing louder and the motion blurs increasing as people move. Her vision becomes clouded and colours get distorted — eventually reaching an almost thermal-vision-like effect. It grows more and more rapidly intense until —

cut to black, and silence.

There is a pause, and we hear the squeak and rumble of a bus. We see the side of the bus as it begins to pull away, revealing the lady standing behind it.

She is outside her house again, and all is still. There is a faint wind, birds are tweeting. She pauses for a moment, takes a deep breath, then turns, adjusting her handbag over her shoulder. She walks up her garden path, fumbles with the lock, pushes it open, and steps inside. She closes the door behind her.

As I said it's not at all a sophisticated or clever idea and I'm concerned that it would appear as a shallow or needless representation of this kind of thing — I dunno? I can see the whole thing very clearly in my head and I wish I'd put a little more into representing it visually, but like I said, this was just an exercise in catching an idea and getting it onto paper quickly before it escapes.

A lot of the visual/sound ideas I'd pictured came from an experience I had in primary school — I still don't really know what happened, I just had a really funny turn and everything got extremely bright, I couldn't hear and everything looked like I was seeing it in thermal vision. Not exactly a broad representation of the entire spectrum of such panic/anxiety/etc attacks but, I dunno.

I sort of knew what I wanted to say to wrap this up but unfortunately it escapes me. Best just leave it here.

Sketchbook: 19/01/2012

Didn't get nearly as much done tonight as I'd hoped, owing primarily to my mother managing to get lost twice on the way back home. Subsequently, a journey that should only have taken an hour and a half ended up taking three. Ho hum!

Continuing my quest for perfect posing, I tried using a big red pen to very loosely capture the flow of the action through the body, giving myself more of a starting point. I then built on top of that, trying to start by looking at the tilt of the shoulders against the hips to keep things in balance. Certainly still far from perfect, but I feel like I'm beginning to understand it a little better - though I don't yet entirely feel the weight that I'm supposed to be drawing. That'll come with time I suppose.