I went back into CelAction last week with a character that I’ve made in Illustrator. And created this animation below.
I got my influence from current UFC fighter CM Punk and Family Guy’s Stewie Griffin.
Then I done a few rough sketches of the character.
Then, I went into Illustrator to create the character, then export it to a Photoshop file.
Then in CelAction, after the character was rigged, I played around with the character and went back into Illustrator and alter the character that needed to be altered with such as the body. And went back into CelAction until I got it right what I wanted to do such as getting the punchline right which was vital.
Then I exported the file and added some titles in Premiere for the final animation.
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.
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.
Third week on my MA Character Animation course. This week was how to animated a jump in a cartoon style. I was influenced by the fall of Hardcore legend and WWE wrestler Mick Foley (who was playing as Mandkind) from an 21 feet cell onto a table back in 1998 in a match called Hell in a Cell against the Undertaker.
Then, I roughly planned out how I am going to plan the jump.
Then, I jumped onto a light box and then use the Flipbook program on the mac, to drawn down the frames to test if the jump worked well and placed right to hit the table.
Then, I finished off the animation with the last few drawings and also add a few more frames in-between.
Then, I tried out again with a new jump and added some comedy styling to it such adding a broken head to the end of the animation.
Overall, I was satisfied with the exercise. But, I could have improvement the jump on both animations above. But for now, end of this exercise.
Did some shadow puppets during my first week on my MA course. A quick day project in random groups. I had six people in my group (included myself in the group of six). Got the idea done within 20 minutes. Got the characters drawn and cut out in no time. My drawn and cut-out character is the picture below.
So, we had more time filming the story until the day was finish. I did do the post-production part, that was someone else. But, I would have done it, I would have deleted the audio and put in a better audio, to give it a more hunted feel to the video. So here is the final piece below.
And that was my first week over on my MA Character Animation course.
Jonathan Hurlock 