Bouncing Characters (Week2-4)
As bouncing ball is the first practice I did in TV Paint. I find online tutorials and practiced before I start my bouncing character. I also started to read the book, The Animator’s Survival Kit, which helps me a lot in the following practice. 6th October
After got reference from online video and the book, I started my experiment. 9th October
Finally, I am quite happy with the whole movement, then I added some meatballs beside the main character. At first, the meatballs were not work well as the main one. After presented it to Ko before Charismas break, I adjusted them. They are all good now! 16th October-10th December
Character Lift, push or pull (Week5)
I took reference video of all the three movement. I tried to draw both lift and pull and decided to do the lift. 23th October
Character Design (Week5)
Mood change walk (Week8)
In the lecture, Pat mentioned contact pose, down, passing pose and up, etc. this is how walking cycle works. I did different walking animation in MAYA for experiment. And asked Pat to act my character for reference video. 21st November
Quadruped walk (Week10)
I tried horse walking in 3D and dog walking in 2D. 28th November
I tried to use the contact and passing pose l learnt. I found they work on the animal walking as well! 1st December
Silent Movie – Body acting (Week12-14)
I did my first test after shooting reference video. Then I realize the facial and body acting in animation are quite tricky to preset well. They must extremely exaggerate. 20th January
My first thought is the chef using knife, sword and shaver. However, this story cannot let the audience realize that he is trying to shave his beard. Then I change it to shaver come to the first. 28th February
Lip Synch (Week15)
The movement of this is hard to catch. It has complex movements and uneven timing. At first, this really annoying me. 8th February
During the research, I found start with a rough character and draw the movement line out could help me. 15th February
Reflection
During the unit 1 practice, my drawing skills and software skills have been improved to different degrees. I also have a deeper understanding of the steps of animation production. I am quite satisfied with the final product. I tried different methods, steps and software to create it. Constantly revising and asking my tutor and classmates for their advice has improved my work a lot. However, I still feel that some parts of my work could have been better, for example, I could have added more details. Due to time constraints, some of the exercises could have done with more frames. In the coming future, I would like to learn more about animation and refine my skills. In the next project I can do better and have more time to perfect the animation and character details.