Animation and Character - Updated Life Drawing Movement Animation

Life Drawing animation, updated to show a process of refining the drawings a little from very rudamentary sketches to more refined figures, through the turn/dancing poses.  

new Life Drawing Movement animation from Pip Harris on Vimeo.

Animation and Character - Updated Abstract Taste Animation - Caramel Coffee

RE my feedback in the Showreel and my own thoughts too, I have removed the caramel blob tween as it was just distracting, and replaced it with small speckles to show the light, sweet caramel flavour. 

Caramel Coffee new from Pip Harris on Vimeo.

Artist's Toolkit: Animation Showreel #1

It's not all there as my voice clip animation isn't quite finished yet, as when I arrived at uni today to finish things up I found my premiere at home is a more updated version than the one here, so it wouldn't let me open the document, so I had to completely remake my showreel, but I didn't have a copy of the elegant cactus animation, so that's missing as well. These of course will both be present in the final submission.

  

Animation and Character - Elegant Cactus - Planning

For my short animation assignment I was given the character of an elegant cactus. My initial thoughts were heavily influenced by Disney's 'Fantasia', in particular the walking animation of the mushrooms, and before I had decided the look of my cactus, and the dancing movements of the hippo ballerina, as I initially planned to use a much dumpier cactus.  

My cacti's silhouette mimics that of a woman in a dress, with a bud/flower for her "head" and a leaf growth on her torso acts as an arm. Originally I wasnt sure how the cactus would move, as having it in a pot would need hopping motion, which in itself is not very elegant, or the pot would have to have similar feet motion to that of the mushrooms in Fantasia. In the end I decided my cactus would up-root itself from the pot, the bottom leaf walking similar to the mushrooms of fantasia, and would have a few roots acting almost as a trail for the dress like shape of the plant.

  

Initial planning sketches for the elegant cactus assignment.

 

My initial plan for this animation was to have it dance along a conservatory windowsill, however after extensive searching, not being able to find a suitable windowsill and becoming afraid the animation would be too boring, I found myself looking at other rooms, trying to reflect elegance in the setting as well. I had found an assortment of images to use as background and after talking to Meg, we decided the below image would be the most successful because of the many areas present in the scene that my cactus could interact with, before exiting the shot and moving to a different scene. Originally the image had a brush in the pot the cactus is planted in at the start of the scene, which I photoshopped out to give the cactus an included feel to the scene.

Starting pose of cactus in the bathroom scene.

 

  

I chose this photo for the next setting as the colours are similar and it has a very cubic feel to it so the setting flows, plus the large front on window was perfect for the continuation of the cacti's dance, but I had to remove the hare ornament and wanted to lighten the image so it better matched the colour scheme from the first setting, so again photoshopped the image to work better for what I needed. 

Original 2nd scene image

Photoshopped 2nd scene image

Animation and Character - Abstract animation of a taste - Caramel Coffee

Finally finished my caramel coffee animation! Had a lot of issues with trying to get the movement tween to work, but it is now at least, although I'm not sure if the caramel blob really works, might have to work back into this. 

Caramel Coffee from Pip Harris on Vimeo.

Animation and Character - Abstract animation of a smell - Pine Fresh

Pine Fresh smell abstract animation, had fun experimenting in a more relaxed style of animation, and getting to know tweens a little too. 

flash abstract smell from Pip Harris on Vimeo.

Animation and Character - Life Drawing Movement Animation

In todays animation class we were taking our movement life drawings and converting them into animations. I chose the below 7 images as my key frames for the animation, creating a spinning effect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I drew over the images in Adobe Flash, exaggerating/slightly adjusting some poses, and added in a few linking frames between some of the images, making the short flow a little better. Obviously this is just a very early start to the animation, I feel this animation will end up being quite long as I'm rather enjoying creating this sequence and I think Ill end up working into it quite a lot.

 

 

 

Animation and Character - Ball Character Tweens

This week we were putting basic classic tweens onto our ball character animations. I also experimented a little with changing the colours of the cats, and found I could make them change colour across their movement.

 

 

 

Bouncing Cat Clouds from Pip Harris on Vimeo.

Animation and Character #5 - Character from Bouncing Ball Animation

In today's tutorial we came back to our bouncing ball animations we had made previously and were tasked with turning it into a character/s. Obviously, I chose to make a cat. A fluffy cat.

Animation and Character #4 - Bouncing Ball Animation

 

Initial bouncing ball animation. I think it still needs some work on adding some more frames when the ball reaches the 'top' of its bounce, at the moment it seems quite chunky around that area - something to work on for next weeks tutorial.

Animation and Character #3 - Refining and Reversing Morphing Flash Animation

In todays tutorial we came back to our morphing flash animations we created last week and added more frames between the original to smooth out the transitions of the morphs, and also duplicated and reversed the frames to make the morph then go back on itself.

 

Animation and Character #2 - Morphing Flash Animation

Today we were tasked with creating morph animations in Adobe flash. This was only the 2nd time Id ever actually used the program and I hadn't drawn in it before, so of course I was a little scared, but I actually really enjoyed it and found it quite easy, (drawing in flash is definitely easier than Photoshop). I'm pretty proud of the outcome, but in the future I'll probably come back to it and add some more frames to make the morphs transition a little smoother, and maybe play around with adding colour. 

Behold, Piccoliat. (Pip/Broccoli/Cat).

Animation and Character #1 - Flash Animation

Also in the animation and character tutorial I was introduced to Adobe Flash for the first time, shown the basics of inserting new frames and creating forms, and we were given some time to make a short animation of whatever we wanted. 

I created some sort of bubble growth...? 

Animation and Character #1 - Zoetrope Animation

Today I had my first Animation and Character tutorial. We started off by looking at zoetropes, which were the very beginnings of animation, created in the 19th century as an optical illusion toy, long before video cameras and the animation we know today. We created mini zoetropes of our own - I made a little raincloud sequence (below). 

Here is a video of my zoetrope animation in action. Its not that easy to make out but you can get the basic idea of it. I think on a larger scale it would work better.