Second post of my snakehound walking. This is continue from the first post.
I had another go of redoing the snakehound walking (14/1/13), on the pervious attempt I started off by looking at Richard Wiliams theory of animating a dogs walk cycle. This time I used Steve Robert’s theory on animating a walk cycle, which I found easier to understand to animate with. Got some feedback, one opinion was that the back leg once again didn’t look smooth with the upper rear leg and the upper front leg as-well. However, this was an improvement from the pervious attempt.
Then later in the week (16/1/13), I had a first attempt of doing a basic rough snakehound run cycle as-well.
As I said in a previous post, I have decided to develop the snakehound creature. So I started off doing some basic walk cycles.
But instead of doing a dog cycle first, I decided to try a horses walk cycle for an exercise. I started of by drawing a simple horse by looking at ‘How to draw animals’ by Jack Hamm, which I have looked at the book before perviously how to draw a perfect bear for my research.
Then, I started to draw down a horse doing a walk cycle on the lightbox. Got some feedback, the feedback was a good walk cycle but the rear top legs need to be more smooth while walking.
Then, I had a go of doing a dog walk cycle. I started off by looking at Richard Wiliams theory of animating a dogs walk cycle in ‘The Animator’s Survival Kit‘, in page 330-331 how to do a basic animal walk pattern. I used his version of the walk cycle because I have use this perviously in a pervious project.
After I looked at Richard Wiliams theory of a dog walk cycle, I started to drawn down the snakehounds walk cycle down onto the lightbox. After I got down in Flipbook (animation below is taken on my iphone due to give you guys looking at the walk cycle for a few more seconds to give a feel to it). Got some instant feedback, one was I have gave the snakehound some attitude, just like a model going down a runway. An other opinion was the back legs in one frame was doing a moonwalking instead of walking.
Overall, need to improve on the rear of the dog walk cycle. A lot of work to go, although a good start nonetheless.
Here is a selection of sketches that I have drawn down since December for up coming project for the start of next year which I have to create a four legged creature that can be based on either a real or mythological creature. I started off looking at real life animals in videos and in images such as bears, greyhounds, rats, tigers and so forth.
Then I started to read the book How to draw animals by Jack Hamm. After I read the book, I started to drawn down what’s in my mind. These are my sketches what may possibly what my creature could look like as these sketches shows.
Continuing from the walk cycle and mood changes exercises. I concluded that I will use the Steve Robert’s walk cycles theories rather than use the Preston Blair’s theories. As these was simpler to draw and to walk for my character to animate rather than using Preston Blair’s theories and time is not on my side and the Preston Blair’s theories takes more time to understand in my opinion.
Then after a few tries on how the character will walk and what mood he supposed to walk in the scene in a certain way, see something that makes him react and go out of the scene walking in a different way (happy walk – look at sign – angry walk-end). I got out an X-sheet and started place were the happy walk goes, the reaaction and the angry walk goes in frames.
Then, I got the happy walk out of the way onto the lightbox and put onto Flipbook, however I needed to tidy up the walk cycle in Flash to look convincing.
Then, I got the second walk done within the end of the day. However, due to I got an on my iPhone called iMotionHD. Which is similar to Flipbook, but on the iPhone instead and exported the movie onto YouTube.
Next, I needed to do the mood change in-between the two walk cycles. I started by acting it myself so I know what keyframes I need. After that I drawn down the keyframes which will connect to the two different mood walks.
However, the first attempted I felt it need to be acted more and added more keyframes, so I added the extra keyframes in, which worked better.
Then, I added the in-between frames that were missing for the completed mood change. Got the remaining images and scanned into Flash to finish off the mood change with my character.
Overall, a touch challenge to animate my character, nether-less enjoy animating the character. End of first term work.
The third and final post of the followthrough tests and the final animation. I redrawn and developed the followthrough of the shark fin as these two animations below shows.
However, I need to go back and develop more on the followthrough because of the stark fin isn’t doing the followthrough right. Even I got onto a lightbox and draw it down rather than using Flash. Saved the file onto Flipbook to export as a Quicktime file.
However, that really didn’t work well, due to the followthrough didn’t work altogether. Then I redrawn the followthrough once more in Flash.
Which worked much better then pervious tries. And then I had another go in Flash to get the followthrough worked. And this time it worked well. So here is my final followthrough animation.
Overall, a difficult challenge to animate the followthrough. But, try, testing and try if the followthrough worked, some tries almost worked and some tries didn’t worked well. But, in the end I got there with a reasonably good followthrough animation.
So here are my finished character designs for “Iceman” in his old age, middle age and his young age. The young Iceman is very addicted to choc-ice. While the middle age Iceman is a bit of a playboy and a bit of a boozer. While the old age Iceman is more wiser than the young and middle age Iceman’s combined. So here’s the character designs below.
These sketches were done a few months before the course started. I did some sketches and a character design influenced by current WWE Champion CM Punk and Family Guy’s Stewie Griffin.
Then I done a few sketches of the character.
And then scan the sketches into the computer and then gone into Illustrator to drawn over the sketch to give this image below shows. Some of the styling is a bit similar to the Ricky Gervais show. Overall, a good drawing nonetheless.
The start of my character design, I am going to based my three characters, one young, one middle of his life and one old as influnce to 2007 Formula 1 World Champion Kimi Raikkonen.
I reckon this would work well due to Kimi’s characteristics such as choc-ice incidence in Malaysia 2009, some people say he could be the love child of James Hunt and saying things shouldn’t be saying in interviews and so forth.
I Started off to look at Formula 1 based animation and comic books, and the first thing I have find was Sennninha. Senninha is a Brazilian comic book character based upon the Formula One world champion Ayrton Senna. Senninha was launched in 1994 and was cancelled in the same year before returning in 2008.
Senninha (little Senna) was created by Rogério and Ridaut, and the reason this was created due to Rogério and Ridaut passion of Formula 1 and Ayrton Senna. So they decided to create a comic, which would be a copy of Senna, a little Senna and Senninha was born.
Senninha is the main character of the series, with characteristics very similar to Ayrton Senna, with unruly hair and red overalls (like the McLaren overalls Senna raced in that period). Also, Senninha was eight years old in the comics.
Both Rogério and Ridaut didn’t have the money to publish it, so they decided to go to Ayrton Senna. When they met, Senna loved the idea and he always wanted to do something for the children, he wanted to be educational as-well to help his charity work in Brazil. This was the best way with the Senninha character.
I started with the young character first, I wanted the character to be possibly be around the five or six years old mark. But, the first attemted I made him too old, I really wanted to make him cute.
Then I researched more on character designs with cuteness in them and I looked at Powerpuff Girls and Dexters Laboratory as influences.
Then I looked at a character designers web-site to get some influences such as look at some Bugs Bunny design sheet below.
Then I restarted designing the young character once again and this time I felt this design worked better more cuter and more younger.
So therefore, I continue developing the young version of Kimi, which I called now on “Iceman” (nickname Kimi Raikkonen is usually called by the fans).
Then I started some early development of the two older characters.
Overall, a good start to my character designs. Also I felt that the lessons with Vincent Woodcock from last time out really helped me out for this project. More to come from this project.
On beginning of week 7 we had a day lecture by character designer and animator Vincent Woodcock.
In the morning session, we started looking at the posture and the proportions of a human character by drawing it in a very simple way, which I felt this exercise worked a great effect way for me in my opinion. We looked at 3D shapes such as spheres, boxes and others to describe the different parts of the body.
Then he talked about the characteristics of face and how they change from every different person. So, we had a try drawing each other.
In the afternoon we created a character starting from some features the group decided. So we would design a 5 year-old fat and tattooed boy who got one leg and he fishes? We also tried to think about his opposite, so it could be an old, skinny who doesn’t like fish.
Then we had to look more into the proportions and try to be more detailed with the character designs and draw them in their poses.
Finally, we had to make the characters interact into a scene. We had to imagine their reactions were as-well.
Overall, possibly a very good day, exercises work well, now I can take it into my characters design and my animations as-well with the weeks to come.
Jonathan Hurlock 