After weeks of researching and animating my final piece for the BPMA (British Postal Museum and Archive).
One big change was the audio for the animation. A few weeks back I had to change composer, due to scheduling problems. So I got a new composer and got the track down. But, the final piece had the sound effects remove due to it didn’t match up with the audio below and after a few times listening to it, I decided it to remove the sound effects.
For now, I won’t be uploading the animation for the moment, due to some technical problems. But for now here’s some screen-shots below.
Final bit of my animation I need to do is the pissed off horse scene were my lead horse is pissed off by driver fixing the wheel and horse thinks his stupid. So I started off with the key-frames into the main animation first.
After that, I gone onto the lightbox and started on my drawing the in-between frames, then jump onto Flipbook, to check out if the in-between frames worked.
Also, I played around with some frames and delete them as I felt the animation could be too smooth and too slow.
After some feedback, the first option was better than the second option. So I scan the images and jumped into Photoshop to paint the scene. Place the frames into After Effects for the final animation.
Rough Cut Review of the animation so far, with the Key frame animation so far in for review for the 22nd May meeting with the British Postal Museum and Archive (BPMA) as the video below shows.
For feedback and the main one I got to do, is to add a final scene to the animation. And the final scene I ask for feedback is the St Martins-le-Grand building in Central London, as this link shows.
So I used the St Martins-le-Grand building above for my final scene as reference, as the image below shows.
Finally, another bit of feedback is to make the animation a bit more gritty in style or more old fashion. This can be easily done with filters in After Effects. And that is all with feedback so far.
Now I’ve started to go into development mode for the forth coming project with the British Postal Museum and Archive (BPMA). I have started to work on animating the horse, I went through the internet and books to see how a horse will look like and how to draw a horse.
After that, I gone onto YouTube to look for horses in animation. I looked at a few Disney films which has horses in such as Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Mary Poppins to name a few.
Also, I looked at Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, to see how they would have draw a horse in each film.
Then, I gone onto the lightbox and started of by drawing a rough simple horse and mail coach carriage for practice.
After that, I properly gone onto the lightbox and started on my drawing of a simple horse walk-cycle’s and run-cycles by looking at ‘How to draw animals’ by Jack Hamm.
Walk 1 test
Run 1 test
Walk 2 test
Run 2 test
Walk 3 test
By looking at the results above I felt that portions need to looked less more of a Pony then a Horse walking a few times and also with the run-cycle the back legs needed to be stretch out.
So, I looked at Richard Wiliams theory of animating a horse walk and run cycles in ‘The Animator’s Survival Kit’, in page 356-359 how to do a basic horse walk and run patterns. As-well, I looked at Steve Roberts ‘Character Animation Fundamentals’ for horse walk and run cycle’s. Then for a formula I taken out the real like drawings of Horses from ‘Jack Hamm’ and added the simpleness of the walk-run cycles’ of Steve Roberts and Richard Williams on how they did it as my Walk and Run cycles below shows.
Third post of my snakehound walking. This is continue from the first and second posts.
I had another go of redoing the snakehound walking (13/2/13), this time I scanned the frames into Photoshop, then put into Flash and trace over the frames in Flash.
And then in Flash, I colouring in I added a grey-snake skin texture to my snakehound walk.
After, that was completed, I opened up After Effects. Got the footage of my friends acting out what I wanted to with my creature such as walking it and running with my creature. I remove the background by Choose Effect > Keying > Keylight (1.2). Then in the Effect Controls panel. In Effect Controls panel, I clicked onto screen colour to remove the green in the background.
After that was completed, I imported the snakehound walk then place it onto the timeline, then save the file export the file. Got some feedback, there was a few things to improve on as the footage below shows.
I went back into Flash, improve the walk once again, the back on the snakehound was the main improvement to the previous walk.
Then I got the run-cycle drawn and imported into Photoshop, then put into Flash and trace and coloured in the frames in Flash. And exported as a flash movie to be improted in After Effects.
Then I got all the files into After Effects, which includes a new background. Placed them onto the time time includes a dog leash, which is been done by using a png file and using the pin tool in four different places.
After this was complete. I exported the file as a quicktime file, got some feedback, I needed to added a shadow.
After I added shadow and then soften the shadow, I exported the file as a H264 quicktime file for the finished video below.
Overall a touch challenge to complete the walk and run cycles, did take more time as I planned. But, I felt that I done a good job with the walk, run cycles and green screen overall within seven and a half weeks.
For this project is lip Syncing, this time is two different animation. One lip sync is randomly picked from the British Library sound achieve from the speech from Lord of the Rings creature J. R. R. Tolkien. And the other lip syncing is our choice.
For the J. R. R. Tolkien audio, my audio was: “one of my friends Hue”
I started off and got an x-sheet put the speech down I which frames I need to animate the audio.
Afterwards, I created the character in Adobe Illustrator.
After I completed designing of the character in Illustrator, I went into After Affects to do the animation.
After I placed the lips are placed in the animation, I exported the animation for feedback.
For feedback, I needed to make the chin to move more with the vowel characters and play more with the shape of the eyes. Got back into After Effects and emended the problems which need to fix.
After more feedback, I need to slow dow the pace of the lips, so the audience will know what his is saying.
For my personal lip sync, I used the Budd’s speech from Kill Bill 2 were he says:
“That woman, deserves her revenge and… we deserve to die. But then again, so does she.”
So I started off with the x-sheet put the speech down.
Then I gone into Adobe Audition to tidy up the audio. Then afterwards, once again I gone into Illustrator to create the character.
After the character was created I gone into Flash to do the animation.
Got some feedback, I needed to slow down the pace of the lips and also silhouette the teeth and keep the rabbits front teeth throughout the animation for the animation below for the finish product.
This project is similar to the fashion project, this project is only two weeks long. Were we had to think about a character receiving a box, taking something out of the box, reacting to it through facial expression and then passing the box.
I started of by filming someone acting by picking up a box reacting what the present I picked up through facial expression and then passing the box.
Then I started off by drawing my thumbnails/storyboard down, this was basic drawn down due to I didn’t know the style and the design of my character will look like. I scanned in the thumbnails anyway to do an animatic.
Then I went into Flash, to do another animatic, this time for timing reasons and get the timing right.
Then I figured out what the character will look like, I based the character similar to the lost boys from “Peter Pan” (1953) and Bloodhound Gang music video “The Bad Touch”.
Then what the character will look like, I went back into Flash to do the keyframes and create the animation as-well. Got some feedback, but it was more of styling rather than the keyframes which was the main problems and also adding a neck to the character.
After I got the styling right from the feedback and added a neck to the character, I completed the animation with the remaining in-between frames to completed the animation.
Personally, I enjoyed this project much more than the last fews projects overall.
I showed off my rough edit, three things I need to improve on, one was make the crack sign more larger, the other was make the fall faster and thirdly add another frame for the impact when she hit the floor
Day 6: 28/1/13, Day 7: 29/1/13 and Day 8: 30/1/13
After this, I went back onto the light-box to draw the whole of the animation with a few cheap blue biro’s instead of using a blue pencil, which will give an edgy style to my animation.
This took around three days to draw the whole animation. After I drawn all of these I scanned them into Photoshop. However I wasn’t satisfied with the last few frames with the laugh. I felt that the head needed to move more. So therefore I jumped back onto the light-box re-edit the last few frames, then re-scanned into Photoshop.
Day 9: 31/1/13, Day 10: 1/2/13 and Day 11: 2/2/13
After all the images were scanned in, I went back into Photoshop and retouched the images and delete the backgrounds which had white in. After this was complete, I took all the images into Flash and place all the images onto the timeline. After that was done, I exported the movie as a quicktime file. Here is the animation below of the final piece.
Overall, great challenge to do within in two weeks to animate.
We were given two weeks to animate a short five to ten second piece related to fashion. My task was to show a catwalk model takes a step a step and her heel breaks, she falls over and reacts.
Day 1: 21/01/13
I Started off going into Youtube, looking at catwalk model falling over to get some ideas done.
Then after that was done I started off developing the character. Someone reckoned my character look familiar to Spanish actress Rossy be Palma looks.
Day 2: 22/01/13
After I got an idea what the character will look like, I gone to rough storyboards, to show what the story will be.
Day 3: 23/01/13
After I done the storyboards, I went to the light-box and draw down a few model walk cycles of the model in rough form.
Day 4: 24/01/13 and Day 5: 25/01/13
Then once again I went back onto a light-box and this time I draw down the keyframes in pencil. After that was finished scanned into Photoshop, then put into Flash for the rough keyframes below.
For the first time in a while, I haven’t done any animations in Adobe After Effects. But, last week (22/1/13) I went back into the program for the first time, did a few animations to back to grips with After Effects. And here they are a few animations below I did in After Effects through the day.
Jonathan Hurlock 