Sunday, December 7, 2008

Tweening Art Has Been at a Stand Still



I know things have been slow around here for a long while, but it is not intentional. In all honesty it has just been a matter of complete instability in my life. First off I had no choice but to leave my wonderful job at Mada design and move away from the east coast. I moved in with friend in ohio with the hopes that we would be all working together to get ourselves going and back on track after school, but what actually happened is I ended up freaking drawing pinups like there was on tomorrow and selling them like crazy online to go to an art conventions as well as to pay my rent and so forth. I had basically been doing all I could to stay afloat. I got a job doing caricature over the summer, but it didn't pay very much and I was not making enough to live on and was making more drawing pin ups sometimes than I did even when working like 20 - 30 hours a week because of the fact that I was on commission and we just didn't get enough traffic at the caricature stand. Honestly it started to get frustrating. I made plans to leave and go to KC for a visit with family, but the bus ticket was so high I had to cancel and just keep drawing till I raised the cash.

So now I am in Kansas City MO and I am not even sure I will make the money to go back to Ohio. Not to mention the heat got cut off in my Ohio home cause the gas bill from previous people living there was so High ( they refused to pay), that my friend that owns the home can’t get it turned back on so I would have to go home to work in the cold anyway.

I have had a frustrating 6 months or so. You think things will get better when you try to take steps to improve your life, but they get worse, At least for me. Stupid recession. Anyway, I wanted to upload a few things because I have made up my mind to make it a priority to get back to animating again. I worry the stupid intermission might have hurt me but I think I am ok. On my next post I will show a few flash things I did. I also want to get to work on my demo reel. I want to have something within the next 4 weeks that is worth looking at.

I applied to work at a art store here in KC with the hope it will give me a bit of income until my project is done so I can focus on what is more important. I am tired of my portfolio filling up with PIN UP ART and not ANIMATION the way I would prefer so I plan to take a job and stop my commissions for a while after this last batch. I pray to god they hire me I really do.

So here are a few things I found online to look at and that I want to explore when I get time.

HOW TO DRAW BETTER:
http://www.floobynooby.com/pdfs/Composition_Storyboards_Brad_Chris.pdf

http://www.floobynooby.com/pdfs/gesturedrawingforanimation.pd

http://www.floobynooby.com/pdfs/EricLarson_Notes.pdf

BOOKS:
http://astore.amazon.com/floonoob-20/

TIPS TRICKS AND ONLINE RESOURCES:


http://animationtipsandtricks.com/

http://www.davegraphics.com/

http://pyatyletka.blogspot.com/

http://www.licensing.biz/news/2295/Nelvana-content-goes-online


http://floobynooby.blogspot.com/

http://canadiananimationresources.blogspot.com/


http://www.drawingboard.org/viewtopic.php?t=66129


http://www.drawingboard.org/viewtopic.php?t=66017

http://www.drawingboard.org/viewtopic.php?t=62936

FREELANCING:

http://cedrichohnstadt.wordpress.com/

http://www.creativefreelancerstore.com/home.html

http://cedrichohnstadt.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/the-cons-of-freelancing/

http://cedrichohnstadt.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/the-pros-of-freelancing/

http://cedrichohnstadt.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/schoolismcom-character-design-assignments/

http://cedrichohnstadt.wordpress.com/2007/09/21/john-k-on-character-design/

http://cedrichohnstadt.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/basic-business-tips-for-illustrators/

http://cedrichohnstadt.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/re-post-making-the-most-of-your-website/

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0823001431?ie=UTF8&tag=cedsblooram-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0823001431

http://kylebaker.com/

http://gorilla88.blogspot.com/

http://cedrichohnstadt.wordpress.com/about-cedric-hohnstadt/

http://kylebaker.com/www/book/How%20To%20Draw%20Stupid.html

Here are a few old flash things I did as well. I did this crappy e card but when I looked at it recently I realized I didn’t do to bad on my lip sync. Might cut out parts and use the sync on my demo reel.


http://mainasha.deviantart.com/art/Babs-Easter-card-final-52385510

This other I did for fun. It was good pratice for intertwining and follow through.

http://mainasha.deviantart.com/art/crapy-flash-beginner-62068911


I plan to do some serious walk cycles in the next week and a few other things as well. I will be uploading more.

If you are interested in seeing over 200 pin up girls you can view them here.

http://mainasha.deviantart.com/gallery/

I should put them all in a book and sell it.














Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Flashed

Just thought i'd put this link up for a good flash site. It's www.keyframer.com and while it's a blog primarly related to flash, it has a lot of good information and tutorials for those starting out. Hope it's useful for anyone who wants to bone up on their flash skills.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Ollie Johnson 1912-2008


I just found out that the last of the infamous Nine old Men from disney, Ollie Johnston, has just passed away at the age of 95. For those few who do may not know, he was one of 9 of the original animators who were around at the very beginning at disney working on some of disney's finest and memorable movies such as Snow White, Pinoccoio, Peter Pan, and many more during his time at disney. His passing is truly the end of an era where Disney animation was at it's finest and most rewarding and he will be truely missed.


For those who wish to know more, here is a link to numerous information and videos concerning his time at disney.


Thursday, April 10, 2008

Naruto fighting Venom?



This is a rough animation I did a while back. Just wanted to post up something. It's more I wanted to do with it but ran out of time. I have other projects that I want to work on and post up here and then I'll get back to this one. Alot of people want to see this finish. Let me know what ya think!

Saturday, April 5, 2008

My first Post, Sorry i'm slacking!

Hi all, Here is my first post I created the following 2 sec animation using 3DMax the program is pretty smooth and I really had no major problems with it. I edited the piece in Permiere and added audio there as well. Both the audio and the tutorials for the animation I got for free on the internet.
http://www.revver.com. The link is to get there, once there type in "3D animation tutorials" in the search box, you'll get tons more and for various platforms. My animation was short due to time deadlines and the fact that I only had 2 days to work on it. Well I hope to put up more than just this post in the near future. I have to give credit where credit is due, thnks Mainasha for keeping the torch burning this site is full of info I just hope people are taking advantage! If you have any questions hit me up!

April 5

I am done with this series of walk cycles. the whole post of this exersice is to show how by changing the middle extreme of a walk cycle you can get a big variety of different types of walk. On some of the passing positions I had to add a hold so you can register the change. I should have just inbetweened the poses so that I could get a smooth transition and really show how different it could be but I decided not to just for the sake of completing the exercises. Anyway you will see 5 different walk variations here.

More to come.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/4508walk.swf


another one of the point made in the richard williams book was the use of squash and stretch on the figure of a fat guy walking so I took what he had and exaggerated it giving him a floppy sloppy mound of belly fat. I played with what I have learned about anticipation as well. They say you should hold a pose to the very last second before adding a drastic change in order to get good snap and to help the audience really feel the action so I had the fat rise up and hang at the top of the movement and on the down position I it all falls down. I like it. I am starting to really feel the timing of things more naturaly so that makes me happy.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/40508fatwalk.swf

Thursday, April 3, 2008

April 3 walk cycle

Here is todays walk cycle. this time with a squash in the passing position. here you can see that is takes the earlier walk cycle further in movement by accentuating the downward movement so that is snaps up into the new position. I could easily smooth these out by adding some inbetweens so that there is more fluid motion in the up and down but since these are only for the purpose of learning I am choosing not to and will just move onto the next cycle. It would probably even look cool if I added some anticipation to the head and shoulders as he rises into the upward position But oh well. Again these are coming from the Richard Williams book.

I find myself really watching people to see the different types of walks while I am on the way to work. I noticed men seem to have more of a side to side bobbing in the upper torso when they walk where as women, especially in heels, walk with a much smaller steps and less up and down. but it depends on the girl. the really girly uppity types take it much more to the extreme walking with there head high. The more relaxed chicks have a bit wider stance but still not nearly as long a stride as what men have. I also noticed some men really walk with a lot of pep in there step and have a great deal more up and down than side to side.

And then some people walk like they are just plain exhausted. But I know where they are coming from.


http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/4408walk.swf

april 2 walk cycle

Here is another one this time with a slight change. instead of going up higher in one of the frames he goes down and it causes a nice snaping motion as he rises into the passing position. It is kind of nice cause it gives him a little pep in hie step.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/4308walk.swf

Monday, March 31, 2008

New walk cycle

reading the richard williams book. read it more closely this time and it didn't take nearly as long to do this walk cycle. he was saying the walk cycle is one of the most difficult things in animation. I can belieave it. it is easy to get arms and legs confused. I notised in the art of disney book I have they pust arms and legs in 3 different colors when working on diffucult walks and movements so they can keep them from getting confused. Williams also talks about using different colors when you start out with the walks. so I went ahead and did this acording to the book. the first of many.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/33108walk.swf

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Back to the hoop roughs

So I allowed myself to get so intimidated by the paper that I couldn't seem to draw this. The problem comes from me not having a whole lot of animation paper to start and not wanting to waste it on testing and testing to get this right.

Anyway, so I posted the old hula hoop animation on Drawingboard.org and someone over there said they took a long good look at it and decided to try drawing it out themselves to help me out. He did it in flash and published it out as a animated gif to if you want to take a look at what he/she did here it is.



That is when I got the bright idea to rough the movement out in flash and play with it till I get the timing and spacing right. I started out with way to many inbetweens but I figure hey I can always take some out tight. Here is the first test. This was done mainly to get the movement I wanted worked out.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/hooprough.swf

This next test was done after removing some of the frames to speed up the motion and get the timing better under control. I was trying to put more emphasis on the main poses cause I thought those were important for the viewer to see.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/hooprough2.swf


test 3 I added the hoop. it looks so bad. I need to go look at the video I have a lot more so I can see how the hoop is really supposed to look on the body. I am still tweeking this animation. I will try to finish it soon. after that I will move to paper. any feed back would be good. I was trying not to look at his version to much cause I didn't want it to influence me to much. I want to make sure I am using my own ideas and not taking from other peoples but at the same time it helps a lot to I may take a look at his drawings. see how many he has, and try to play with my timing some more until I get it right but I want to reference live action first.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/hooprough3.swf


Anyway that is what I have for today.I know I haven't been posting a lot but that is cause I have been spending time looking at animation reading and well being intimidated. I also want to post up a walk cycle today. So I guess I will be back later.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

UPA (United Productions of America)



These Guys revolutionized animation. Because of this group (company) animation was brought into a modern era, in the paraphrased words of Dan Haskett. I called him today to question him about the group and he gave me lots of information. it is funny cause it wasn't till I started digging for info on the animation industry that I found out about them and even then the info was sparse at best. These are the guys that are responsible for Mr. Magoo. And a today change in design and mood and feel of cartoons after Disney had his rain of terror on the industry and people were getting tired of talking fuzzy animals that sing and dance and follow women around.

Apparently UPA came along not to long after the very BIG Disney strike where a whole lot of Disney animators that were really unhappy with Disney Studios and the state of the industry stood up and started refusing to be mistreated and taken advantage of by business execs taking all the glory like they did most of the work.

It if funny how us artists just want to draw and not deal with to much of the politics of things only to realize that we are giving away our control. Anyway, Dan gave me a few things to look into. And he said if I had more question he would love to tell me more so that is really exciting to me. When I asked him about it to start he was curious to know why I was asking and then gave me lots of info on the history! He also suggested I look up UPA and a few artists that did work for them so I will post some of that here for those interested.

One of the Guys he told me to look into was Jack Schnerck. There are some demo reels on Youtube of his work in commercials. I remember some of these from when I was a child.







I also wasn't aware that UPA was still around but they are! so I found the website and started looking into how they view there history! so check it out!

http://www.upapix.com/pages/history.htm



SEMPE!


I am in love with a new artist. He is a french artist named Sempe and I wanted to post up some of his art so I can come back to it easily. I love french artists!! The Temple Of Seven Golden Camels is really excellent that is were I found info on the artist.

So if interested check it out! http://sevencamels.blogspot.com/2008/01/second-look-at-semp-and-some-blake-and.html


The other cool thing they have is an article on drawing Cluter and designing it so it looks interesting and doesn't tired the eye and I loved that article as well!Anyway if you wanna learn something new go look at these things. They will brighten your animation world!

Friday, March 21, 2008

Temple of the seven golden camels


I found an amazing blog, basically it is everything you want to know about story boarding film making and animation. sO i PLAN TO SPEND MANY OURS STUDYING FROM IT SO i CAN START WORKING ON MY LAYOUTS FOR MY 2 SHORT FILMS. i KNOW THEY ARE PILING UP ON ME. THE OTHER DAY i WAS DRAWING DRAGONS AND WATCHING LOONEY TOONS AND i THOUGHT (Opps hit the cap lock.) How awesome would it be to draw hula hooping dragons and man my imagination just kinda took off from there. I am crazy. forgive me. anyway check it out if you wanna learn something new.


http://sevencamels.blogspot.com/2007/02/tom-oreb-draws-ward-part-3.html

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Candy Peters


I did a full body character study of candy. She has no hands and no feet cause I designed her that way. I like her final design I think she is funky but of course she won't be hula hooping in this when I start animating her. Actually I had several Ideas for her out fits.

Personality is a very intensely hyper happy girl. She is a day care instructer and she like to get her groove on at night. she has a passion for dance and is very good natured at most times just don't make her mad or try to steal her spot light.

I have a full story behind her. but I want to star by just practicing animating with her.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

My hula... ok... not!

mainasha got me on this hula thing and I tried my hand at it. I didn't have enough time to really put some work into it but it something. You know it looks more like a dance... hmmmm...



Revival of the Blog!!!



Well it looks like the blog is finally up and running so I thought i'd put my little contribution. I ran accross this site awhile back called character designs which is basically a site that has alot of references for life drawing and a profile area on individual artists. It's pretty useful to research posing or to just look at others artwork. I plan to try to update more on the site so even if no one else sees it, it'll at least be something for me an arie to bounce off cool links from one another occasionally. Just for fun i'll put up some character design stuff i'm doing for a future animation. The design is pretty rough but it's basically how I want him to look. Still expirementing with it. I'll also throw in some darkstalkers art just for fun. It's not completely finished but it dosen't seem like i'll get back to finishing it anytime soon so why not.

Here's the link: http://www.characterdesigns.com/



Walk cycles

Walk cycles are a pain in my ass. I get the arms and the legs all confused and stuff. This will be the first of many. i think this took ma about an hour cause I get confused. Grrr... I am not even trying to maintain volume or anything. It is all about just doing it and working through them cause walk cycles are kinda laborious to me.


http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/walkcycle1.swf


Anyway, here is the first one. I think the goal will be to be able to do these with my eyes closed in the end.like they say 99 percent practice 1 percent theory.

I also wanted to post up some links to a few really cool blogs I found today. some of these people are act not animators but the work is undeniably amazing. So please visit them and enjoy the wonderful art.

I might do more of these tonight so I might add some to this post. Have a good day.

~Arie

http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com/
http://canepabarbara.blogspot.com/
http://shojinstudios.blogspot.com/
http://characterdesign.blogspot.com/
http://gorblat.blogspot.com/

http://derickbrooks.blogspot.com/

http://john-nevarez.blogspot.com/
http://tropicaltoxic.blogspot.com/
http://joshuamiddleton.blogspot.com/
http://pacodesiato.blogspot.com/

http://ohranny.blogspot.com/
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
http://lambey.blogspot.com/

the last of this hula test

ok here is the last edit on the hula hoop from the rear veiw. I don't plan to work anymore on this animation cause I want to move on to other practice things.

enjoy!

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/hulatest3.swf

Saturday, March 15, 2008

the transformation

One of the story boards that I was working on thumbnailing had the flour sack transforms and grow arms and legs,and then eventually growing a head. so here is the arms and legs popping out of the body for ya. the sack gets bigger when it jumps in the air but that is cause it kinda changes size once it grows arms and legs.

Anyway it has problems but that is ok. It is practice. I do feel I am getting better. the studying I am doing has helped a lot cause I am finding myself thinking about things and trying to apply it. I love the Richard Williams book so much. It has been a great help. The illusion of life is also a great help cause they animators discuss having strong poses and what it was like when they first started animating. Once my character gets a head I will start my walk cycles and stuff. I will get back to animating on paper a little later. I get intimidated cause A. I don't have a whole lot of animation paper and B. it takes me a while to get things scanned so I can test it on the computer in flash. Flash frees me in a since cause I can test things immediately and tweak it. I think it will speed up the learning process a great deal.

anyway here it is

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/floorsacklegs.swf

Hula Hoop Obsession





So as you know I was working on drawing a big girl hula hooping! I am moving on from the other one. I just need to add a few things to the original and then I will start on this new one that I have almost all the poses for.

The other one I did one day after this idea of a Phat girl hula hooping against a skinny girl in a contest. I posted the mini thumbs of that earlier this week. So I did the first animation that you saw a while back and that was fun but it wasn't really there in terms of movement. So now I am trying to take it a step further. So what you will see on this post is the thumbnails and the pose planing that I have been working on for my girl. Oh and by the way her name is Candy Peters. I thought I would post these cause today I am working on hula hoop observation. You tube has a wealth of videos. I actually didn't use these for these poses though. These poses were done about a week ago in the bus on the way home. and not all at the same time. I even found a video of a phat girl that hoops and she gives very good instruction on how to move the hoop up and down the body and how you have to use a bit of foot work to really get the motion going. She is awesome. So enjoy. I will be back later.




















Happy Feet




Yes I said happy feet. You know how you think a movie is just a repeat of many things you have seen over and over so you say I am not going to bother. Well I wanted to see some cg today and I sat down to officially watch this film and I have to say I was very surprised. The message in this movie is progressive and loving. Being the animal lover I am and my interest in animal rights. The film actually caught me off guard. As the movie progressed I found myself wanting more and more. It was like mumbles was the ghandi of the penguin world. It was a good film. I really enjoyed it and I was happy to see a film that offered more than a cheap laugh and a few dance steps. i know I am late on this one but as they say. better late than never. I think I will buy the dvd.

Anyway I owe you guys some animation. I should have some done today. I have spent the last few pays studying and doing character design stuff. I will upload later today. It is crazy cause my mind feels so open. So many things I didn't understand last year make so much since now since I have been studying on my own. Anyway if you are like me and you never gave happy feet a chance. I am here to tell you to give it a go. Even if you rent it. you may be pleasantly surprised and it has a great message for both children and adults which I love a story that has meaning and I hope you do too!


Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Thumbnails are important!!

Today I want to talk about the importance of thumbnails. As a comic artist thumbnails always came natural. you draw the lay out of how you want the page to look and once you get it right you can blow it up or redraw it at a larger size and start adding your details to the drawing. Then you tighten it up and whala finished pencils ready for the next step in the process. But in animation Thumbnails can serve both the same and a different purpose. You see in comics I never thought of doing thumbnails as that important cause they can change. Heck if you want and some people do, you can just work rough on your paper and skip the thumbnails all together.

I mean really there isn't a lot of details you can get in on a tiny page layout other than where you are going to put your boxes. But in animation it can be extremely important cause you are planning your actions and your timing all at once. You have to plan your acting out so that it fits the dialog and you have to know how the character will move so you don't waist to much time trying to fix things when you actually start the animation process. Heck I even read that it is important in 3d to other wise the process can take longer. Especially when working pose to pose.

Anyway I saw a wonderful video the other day where Andreas Deja is showing off some of Frank Thomas work. And the thumbnails he did for the scenes he worked on. all of the lined up neatly in a row with the dialog underneath the poses. Andreas goes on to talk about how Thomas often did multiple pages of thumbnails before settling on how he wanted to act out the scene.

If you check out a little website called Animation Meat

you can find a great little resource in the notes section that talks about some of this. Anyway I did some thumb nailing and planning of my own yesterday but I didn't get to post it last night cause I forgot it and left it at work. I planned out the action for my next flour sack animation which I talked about yesterday and I also planned a few story board ideas. anyway I hope you enjoy. I should have some finished animation to post tomorrow.









Just for fun here are some scenes from sward and the stone.





Tuesday, March 11, 2008

I draw on paper!




Yes I do yes I do. lol. It was an interesting day. I thumb nailed some actions out for my next sequences. I have to scan them. non the less I started planning ideas for a short film. It is the type of thing I would have done had I went back 3rd year to the kubert school only better cause I don't have the constraints of school to limit me.

I took one of my old ideas and decided to expand on it and do a short film. maybe up to 5 minutes or so. All the characters are designed for it but I have to redraw the story boards cause I am changing the BG and the location. The original idea was more for a e card idea I was doing cause I was determined to do it in flash. This time though I plan to do all hand drawn digital colored animation. I haven't decided on the final look yet though but I want it to be kinda rough and lively.

I also thumb nailed out the actions for the next part of my flour sack animation. So I have a lot of things to work on. they seem so small though.

I recently became obsessed with Richard Williams. I always saw animation as a way to play God cause you create and give life to things that exist only in your head. Then I found those movies about him and started to just fall in love. He really sees animation as a true art form and not a kids medium for advertising toys and games. I love how he described how much he loved art as a kid and he kinda abandoned it for a little while for Rembrandt and when he discovered animation he saw it as the ultimate art form like what if Michaelangelo or Donatello or Rembrandt were animators.

To me it really is the ultimate art form. I mean it requires the study of all life and movement and habits and then translating it into a believable medium that tells stories and even effects peoples lives on levels beyond what people may think. I mean think about it. Disney is a house hold name. we grow up with it and we share it with our kids. it can teach as well as torment society. And though 3d animation is beautiful there is no beauty as great as hand drawn crafted animation.

But i degress, I always liked his book, the Animators Survival Kit
I bought it last year and started reading and enjoying it. It is like reading a story it isn't so much a text book. It is like someone is speaking to you in clearly explaining there experiences in life and showing you what they have learned rather than the text book approach on straight ahead technique. it reminds me of the animation podcast on occasion cause he talks about his experience learning from great animators of the past that are now retired or have passed away.

Anyway i found nice article on what he is doing now that he has released his book ans started teaching. you should check it out. Enjoy!

http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=1291&page=1

Hula test 2

So I was walking home yesterday and decided not to draw the actual hoop out by hand. I can do it in flash and it will be faster cause I can test the secondary movement until I get it right. This isn't cleaned up yet so i might look a bit strange. I am going to clean this up today. I did the animation last night but didn't post it.

I have the new poses for the next sequence. it will be more of a 3 quarter view. I was trying to work out the action on the bus in my sketchbook but I don't think I will really be able to see it till I sit down and animate it. Emil had a lot of good suggestions on this. like that the hula hoops movement needs to be more constant.My other friend also said it needed more settle. and he sent me a example of what he ment. I will give it a go tomorrow non the less. I also plan to start re exploring some story boards I did very soon and taking some photos so I can really do some nice BG for this. it will be my first short film and I really hope to god it turns out nice. It won't have any words. it will be all body language and some of my music. I plan to see the entire animation process through from beginning to end. should be fun. and even better it should be a nice portfolio piece.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/hulatest2.swf

Sunday, March 9, 2008

hula hoop test no hoop

hula girl test. I scanned this in photoshop and created an swf. I am annoyed with this though. I need to do some editing. I still have to complete the secondary action on this from the actual hula hoop I will do that this week. i assembled this in photoshop and then had to export a swf. Then I opened that in flash and made it into a movie. such a pain in the ass doing this. I was forced to so it this way cause either way i would have had to fight with assembling it and making sure the animation lined up right wether in flash or photoshop. I originally wanted to make a gif but it played to slow and I couldn't get the right frame rate.

it was fun even if it is kinda crappy. so much to learn.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/hulatest.swf

hula girl test

I shot this using my acanner and combined them in flash. 72 dpi for the images makes the process go faster.

I wanted to share this documentary on art babbit. It seems like there is a wealth of infor on the life of animators on there.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Hula chick done

I finished up the last of my inbetweens on the first part of the hula chick. I have to do the secondary action now for the actual hoop. that shouldn't be hard though cause I plan to use a circle template. it would be as organic as the figure nor will it have much squash and stretch but it is mostly an exercise so I am not to worried as long as the timing looks correct. Because I missed work on friday I have to make up for that day as well. tomorrow I will scan stuff and try to squeeze in the last part of the other flash animation. I will animate the girl in flash. that is all I have on my computer. probably on twos. I still need to finish my flour sack exercises to and then I will start walk cycles. I am trying to keep things varied cause these drills are a bit boring in comparison with animating something that has a story. the hula hoop was fun cause I gave the character exaggerated proportions. I think she is pleasant to look at.

I figure since I haven't got anything to show for this post I will share a video. i thought this was fucking awesome when I saw it on Youtube. it is animated but it is kinda like when you play a first person shooter video game. the song is cool but the animation is just amazing so I hope you enjoy it.






the animation is done by maverix studios so I am posting the link here cause I want to come back and get a look at more of what these guys have done. http://www.maverixstudios.com/

Today is me B - day

yep I turned 29. I was siting on the toilet thinking to myself. God I am 29. If I go back home now I will be a 30 year old living at home with my mom. Gross. Anyway, I didn't get time to animate yesterday cause I was to busy drinking rum and coke with my friend victor and playing video games and watch cartoons on the internet. It was fun. I haven't realy relaxed like that in s a while. today me and sherry are celebrating our B-day together and then she invited peple over to the house to eat and I am cooking the cake.

so today I will find tome to animate a bit. be back later to post it.

here is some awesome animation to tide me over till I can get some stuff up. I really love this you can tell that he could have taken this farther. in some spots the animation is super smooth. other times it feels like he is using cleverly done strong key poses to communitate the actions but in the end it all loooks very clean and tight and finished! Enjoy

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Woo Hoo hula hoop!

SO I did my key breakdowns yesterday of a fat girl hula hooping. I did them as thumbnails and I read you can blow up the thumbs and transfer them to animation paper to basically what I did today was transfer the thumbs and add the break down drawings for the action. tomorrow I was to finish animating my tae bo girl and this weekend I want to add the last of the inbetweens on the hula chick. I will upload something by sunday on this.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

I animated on paper

I animated today but I did it on paper. I thumbnailed out a girl hula hooping but I will post it later. I plan to transfer the poses onto animation paper tomorrow and do breakdowns and test it on the pencil test machine at sva.

Richard williams. He is a master that wrote I nice little helpful book called Animators survival Kit. He is known for his creation of the film Who framed Roger rabbit. his favorite thing to do is to animate on ones and to make animators be be challenged to push there abilities. soenjoy this little feature about roger rabbit.

















Tuesday, March 4, 2008

timing experiment2

so I went in and added the break down drawings but with no inbetweens to cuchion the movement. I noticed the arms come down really fast and that the amount of time it takes to kick the leg out seems kinda slow
essentially it looks like it was done from an aerobics video lol. which it was so no complaints. I was considering doing a different set of break downs that exaggerate the movement in places but I will see. to morrow I add inbetweens and I will make several swf files to test how timing changes when things are taken out or added in. Obviously things slow down when you ad inbetweens and the speed up when you remove them. should be fun.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/taebobreak.swf

Timing experiment

I went through some more live action and worked on identifying extreme poses. This one I pulled of a tae bo video because they use repeditive actions. What I am posting here is the extremes that I thought I was seeing last night. The next goal is to play with the timing of the kick. I will ad in the break down actions between the extremes, there are 8 poses all together, and go back and add in my own breakdowns this time without use of the video. then I will add the inbetweens in varying different ways to play with the timing of an action. I want to see how drastically a basic action can be effected by the placement of inbetweens and breakdowns between the main poses.


Anyway here is what I have so far. I am posting this late cause I got sleepy last night.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/taebo.swf

Sunday, March 2, 2008

motion2

So it is funny, not use to drawing things that move around in perspective. In this one the person jumps towards you. again I added in a little cushion in the landing. studying from the same music video.

Anyway more to come. I have some aerobics videos so I will try those too.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/dancestep2.swf

Motion study 1

this was a quick motion study from a music video. I really liked this cause the person was shifting her weight from foot to foot. especially in the last part after she jumps and swivels around to face the other direction.

I added an additional frame to add some cushion on the jump. That way it looks like she sinks into her legs more before she turns and it gives a little weight. also added a extra frame in the hight of the jump so that she hangs in the air just a tiny bit before landing.

I think the take off is a bit slow. where she pushes off from the grouund. probably to many in betweens.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/dance.swf

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Animation tests

I am going to start uploading some of my rough flash animations here. Mostly the purpose of them is so I can practice timing and character movement. I need to start building a portfolio and well I can't have an animation portfolio withouth finished animation. and considering I am a bit low on paper this allows me the chance to play around with things like the flour sack and different walk cycles while I would on planning out some other stuff to actually draw on paper.

Anyway, this first on is a few scenes I strung together with a revisit to the bouncing ball. It is very much a beginner assignment to help you get use to moving shapes around:

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/boxtest.swf

My friend Esteban Valdes took some time and coached me on how not to over act using that box animation. I am posting this with his permission. please visit his web site to see more stuff. http://enemyoftheindustry.blogspot.com/

Her is what he suggested, so I could reduce the amount of drawings and tighten up my timing a bit.


http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/timing_acting.swf



As a continuation so that all the tests would kind of run together I had the ball fall ontop of a box and turn into a flour sack. Then the floursack gets happy cause it realized how much more movement it has:

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/floorsacktest.swf



I had some ideas from here of it like kicking up its heels and walking around for a bit. The next phase is it sprouts legs and stands up. From there I will start a series of walk cycles based on the Richard Williams book, THE ANIMATORS SURVIVAL KIT. If you are looking to learn character animation it is a good guide.

After the walks I want to add some arms and have it run. then it will grow into a character and she will run for a bit and stop and pant. I think that will be the final of my tests
then I want to try other stuff.

Anyway here are a few other flash things I did enjoy.

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/babscard.swf


http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/wormanimation_Scene%201.swf

http://homepage.mac.com/drawlikecrazy/maindancemovie2.swf