Personal development portfolio.

There where challenges and things I had to learn, such as the way to improve my work and fill my skill gaps.
I found my most obvious skill gap was my lack of knowledge on animating only digitally  and not from pen and paper then advancing to computer programs for editing.

In doing this I needed to increase my understanding of Flash animation and other digital animation programs. I also learned to improve my digital drawing and animations technics.

My first animation was also filling a skill gap in integrating 2D and 3D animation, this was a test as I had never done this before and as a first time still needed a lot of improvement but my topic was changed and I began to concentrate more on what was important.

My original knowledge of flash animation was very basic, I knew about making keyframes and drawing with the pen tool. But threw this year I have learn about changing the layers property to effect the others layers, for example burn layers or overlay. changing opacity and frame size as well as the advantages of creating symbols and why they are so often used. The stylized Cinderella animation uses the majority of these flash tools, especially layer effects to give a overlay of a soft paper technic.


I Researched common animation technic used in animations then tried most of them my self to see how effectively they work.
one of the first things I researched was why shows liked loony toons use smudge/zip lines in animation, There are where a Characters body zips out of a scene or quickly grab an object in one or two frames of animation. This is used to save time in animation and make the movement higher passed and comical by using less frames it also save animators time rather than drawing a person walking on and off screen.
I did thing in my animation of a girl picing up coffee and It was proven very effective and good practice as animating digitally, this only took me one day to animate and had respectable results.

Japanies animations (or anime), substitutes movement and animation for high detail background and characters  only animating what is necessary, majority of the time this is all driven by speech rather than movement  They also use the graphic novels there shows are based of of as a beginning to there story board and lay out. Following there's rules I animated a comic strip from one of my Favorite graphic novels  using movement only where I thought it was necessary.

The next challenge I faced in my project was coloring an animation in a stylized manner, as-well as finding a way to paint this style digitally.

My style was chosen to be a light pastly colors with a chalk/water color texture for my two main male character and scribble pen for my wolfs.
I followed Photoshop tutorials on how to remove my hard edges and make my work look more organic like chalk and water color.

this was my result. How ever this took a long time so I tried this again but taking shortcuts to make it more realistic for animation.

After doing more research I found that I would be unable to color my characters like this on flash, however Photoshop cs6 had a time line much like flash. I learned how to use this tool in the newest Photoshop but it was unfortunately not as useful as I had hoped as I had to still render it all together in flash or premerpro. However this was a first for me animating in color and I fond the Photoshop time line useful to see errors ahead of exporting.


All together I feel more confident in my skills with flash, a program I  was organically  intimidated and infuriated by I now find more enjoyable. this has helped my improve my digital 2D animation and techniques used to some time and improve its quality. how to color with a more natural or traditional look on Photoshop  coloring animations using Photoshop time line and collaborating them all in to my final animation.

Final animation Submition

Basic animations : Review and Feedback fixing

01
Make the fether Off screen befor he gets up.
 
 More shake on the branch More preparation to push branch up.
Run and Hide Behind first tree get ride of the pause
 
 Have feather spin round him to stop in the ground more naturally (Updated feather spins round him now)
More scaird and clumsy run. Longer time seeing wolfs head
wolf smaller to stop the tail from being cut off screen
 
zoom out more to help wolfs porportions Add more ups and downs to run.
 Cut hand slighly quicker to line up with next scene
  (newest eddit zoomed out)
 
(Newest eddit wolfs triping)
 
needs more frames for turnarownd for more struggle.
 
 Reusable wolf run.
All together in timing.

NEW New animatic

here is Number 3 with most errors fixed to help flow and understanding. How ever still need to edit the second runing seen, need more distance between wolf and the 2 boys. ether a longer shot where the camra dosnt crab along with them or one that moves for a little.

Concept art:

Good but need to think more about how lighting will atchily effect the envirom ment. maby more hilights here and there with more detail.

It was also sigested t add a vignette (shaded edges) maby with a charcoal texture to help with an eirre feel.

(this is a Vignette I didn't know that till now haha) 

Positive And Negatives of Photoshop timeline cs6

I have been playing with cs6 photo shop as I was told it has animation sketchers much like flash and time lines.  This was a Grate help as I want my animation to be sylised and sketchy this would save time in production jumping back and forth from flash to photoshop. Make sure the frame arnt so jump and so on.

How ever when looking at CS6 I notes some complications.

The possitives are:

1. Much more painting options than flash
2. Im more comfortable drawing in Photoshop than flash
3. can Import music
4. Basic production animation add-ons, eg. dip to black, cross fade ext.

But the Negative are: 

1. Hard to flick between
2. frames do not have onion skin (but can get around with layers and opacity)
3. Eatch layer is a frame of animation (thats a LOT of layers, may cose slow prosesses and need good orgnisation) 
4. Difficult to eddit the time line

There may be more tatorials im still to find that will help with some of the ishus that I am having but from the tutotials I have seen, it looks like CS6 photoshop timeline is mostly for very basic animation. so I would be best makeing the basic animation in flash then clean up animation in Photoshop. 

It still has its perks and shall be used. I was also thinking of using after effects for the glow on the falling fether.

So Programs being used so far: 

1. Photoshop CS6
2. flash CS3
3. Premier Pro
4. After Effects (possibly) 

New story Fist take story boards and music

This is my new story based on symbolism and pressers felt by same sex couples.

(original consepts are good but to anime like and the blond boy is to young looking)

(tryed to make blond boy older but still to anime) 

(simplifyed style to get ride or anime feel also helps in style and characters more heavenly influenced by body language) 

(the Enemys)

I did reserch in to common problums same sex couples face being together. and the most common where, Religious Ishuss, here represented by a snake, linked to the bible and what is considered a sin. 

Society opinion, quick to laugh and mock but do not see the real pitcher, because of this I drew them as hyena shaped wolfs, sitting up right and bold, with no eyes to see but mouths to laugh.

Family Ishuss, this is based on the hunched over wolf the larges and most intimidating, it has large eye to judge. 

Legal Ishuss, being seen as an american eagle at first, Protscting , regal and strong but slowly turns in to a volcher when you learn the legal system is not always on the side of same sex couples. 

I desided to take out the egale in the end, because the main character also has a link with birds but in a more angilc and free meaning but this confused the audience. I also did not wont to give the impretion that this is somthing only for america or based there. 

This was a practice with digital painting to see how I can paint a calky/water color looking drawing for animation. as this is the style I want for the to partners and the enemys to contrast with harsh black pen. as a first attemt this worked well but took a bit longer than planed. 2h for one frame? unrealistic.

Tried ageing later after I knew the steps to digitally paint but make it look hand drawn this only look me a min or so. This is the final character designs of my 2 main characters.

Fist take animistic.

Second take better with music more in timeing.

Cinderella Concept art to animation.

Based on the concept art from Cinderella ( a little lower on my page) I used that to animate a part of the movie. the fameus part where the clock stricks midnight but usething there pritty consent art style like most limited animation, instead of Disney fat and frumpy stereo typed style.

Test animation Smeer line

This is my first try at smudge/zip line it worked very effectively to keep the moment very snappy and quick. it also didn't take long to create a good looking animation.

Simple shapes test

Test with simple shapes to make a walk cycle. Not perfecxt but easly made and easy to add details

Limited animation: anime

This comic is by HamletMachine http://www.starfightercomic.com/chapter_01_page.php?page=Chapter_01_Page_01.jpg

I took this an inspired from Japanese limited animation, made this page in to a animation keeping it as similar to the original as possible. 

playing with ponys

I manged to find and download a fan made My little pony friendship is magic flash file with all the ringed characters and preset animation much like the data base for the show. 

I played about with it to better understand how they work and how they help shorten the animation production. 

I did this by picking apart the animation of this talk cycle and chanced it to a completely new charictor i designed ..... this one :

Just looking at all the characters walk cyclical in the show you can tell that they refresh the walk, just changing the color and hair for each character. I changed the color of the character and edited the symbol for the mark on there rear and hair. and this is what i made i made

It may look like a lot of animation has been done, but I done no animation at all. I just changed the symbols that define the character (like the hair and mark in the back leg) and the preset animation was all there for me. This is how a show like this can have so many background characters all animated quickly.

From further research and plating with the animation I learned that they first make the basic movements like this then draw nececery keyframs ontop, for example blinks and facial animation. (even then they save almost every expression they use to expand there library) This fresh look on prescripted and frame by frame animation keep the series looking fresh and very details for a children program.

This is the same animation as above, but with a frame by frame blink I animated on top.

Looking more at the model

I found the Charater was split in to difrent parts. In this animation, everything apart from the legs, are one image only slightly eddeted by squing or rotation. whill the legs on the other hand are 3 sepret frams, being the Contact, Lift up and bring down, then all slightly detected to blend together. Also the curcals in the bottom of the feet have two drawings, the contact and in air.
The legs glosest are also the exact same as the back, just moved in the timeline and moved up slightly.
As you can see they tryed to use all there shapes efectivle and only drew new frames when nessesery, to concentrate on more inportant things.

Animations and there "short cuts"

In animations for Television I have notests that there are a lot of things they use and do to make there life'seasier in there animation.
Here is a list of the ones i have seen and studdied so far.

1. Still frames :
   More common in thing like Japanese anime, this is where a animation hold a single frame, some times up to a few seconds with out any animation or movement.  
   Naruto also took it one stage further by designing the migratory of there characters with face masks so would also talk on these still frames, and no need for talking animation.
2. Smear drawings:
   The snapping Quickly from one action to an other and drawing these smeared looking drawing in between.Used a lot by chuck jones and loony tunes. this makes key actions quicker and easier to animate. 
   Also gives it a nice feel or rushing in the animation, also  Running with smugged/blurred lines, just look at sonic!
3. Zip Line!:
   Animation of a character walking can be long and expencive so to save time and animation they used a zip line. this is a smoke and a line of them going out of frame. here a good video explaining
   
4. Halfing the frame rate:
   Not as common on English television but more on internet videos. they half the frames needed from 24 to 12 frames, making animation a lot quicker.
5. Library animation:
   More common in digital and most recent animation, this is where they have a library of pre-made animation, sutch as walk cycles , butterflys or anything used commonly in the animation.
6. Rigd animation:
   Also more common in recent animation, This is where a character is rigged even in 2D to help it to be moved easyer frame to frame.
   
   this can make an animation look quight static tho.
7. 2 frame animation:
   I don't know the name of this, but its where what would be a still frame flicks from one drawing back to an other giving an ilushion of contusion animation. I notest this most in things like Bill plympton animations.
   
8. Simplified color/shading:
   A limmited amont of colors or no color at all. and also no shading used migratory of the time.
   
9. Simple/limited backgrounds:
   most animations, ether reuse more complicated backgrounds and scenes so they dont need to keep recreating them. Or simple backgrounds just showing key elemental needed. s
   (simple background)
   
   A more complicated, reused background
10. Added Camra Effects
    done after animation to make it feel like it has more moment they shift the camera movement in post production.
    
11. More talk less walk :D
    You notice in older animation they talk about everything. its a lot cheaper and easier to animate them animating all the actions if they can just say whats happening instead.
    

First try, Composting animaiton

My first try at mixing 2D and 3D animation....it is not easy at all.

I have the key frames so far. but the mixing of the 2 media is hard to keep in line and on time with one an other.