This is me in my seventh week (inspired by De'Von Stubblefieldem). Here the purpose was animate a character with a tail. Although the concept of overlap has been presented in week 6, knotted in my head when involved arcs and respect the character rig. Different from the pendulum, here there is much more personality to transpire. Also, we learn to animate in layers!

"Wait a second... Layers? Are you saying that is like photoshop?"

Okay, let's talk about it first.Well, do you remember that one way to animate the effect of an overlap is to animate part by part? Basically that. Overlap is about a single member. Layers are used to animate parts of the body separately.
To better understanding, know that there are some ways to make an animation. Let's talk about them.

Straight Ahead  as it is called when you start doing your poses frame by frame, sequenced behind each other. This will give a natural flow, you will know improvise and your scene will become a box of suprises. You can see the advantage or disadvantage asthey often do things that you did not expect, and do things beyond what it should. Remember: you usually have a pre-determined time for each scene, andwith this method you can easily blow.

To avoid these problems, there is a method called Pose to Pose. Here you decide the most important poses of your character - your keyframes. Then their breakdowns, and finally their inbetweens! This will give a clear and calculated scene. But you can lose the fluidity of your animation...

The third is a Fusion of the previous. Planning your scene, do a lot of thumbnails and try to find your keyframes on that. Dont run away from the center of interest. Put anticipations and other things. Work with your straight ahead based on this. If something is wrong, change your keys or replace them. You will see the importance of planning more than ever.

Try everything. Just Keep it Simple and find the method that will best fits you!
Layer animation is more or less it on this assignment: First animate the ball. When it is working good, we animate the tail!
Reminding the Wave Principle, the tail will behave more or less like this:
When the Primary Force is moving, the tail will follow the arc in different orders, one joint at time, giving the effect of Overlap. For a good overlap, ensure a good dragging motion.

Below is my assignment of this week. See ya!

Hello! Long time...

After half class achieved, this post will be a little different. Is not about my exercises or animation theory, but animation in general. Many friends don't even know what I do and what is needed for a final product in the movies or series, commercials, or their video games, then this post is directed to it.

Animation consists briefly of imaging and representanting action. You will represent a sequence of events! It all depends on who and how you want to tell the story. Norman McLaren once said "how it moves is more important than what moves". The basic ingredient is the storytelling, design and how it will move. This means: you need to have a good solution in your story with a beginning, middle and end; a nice design that makes sense to relate a scenario X with characters Y and Z, with good color palette and all of this can talk among themselves.
Sounds easy when you think of doing but is not. The making of animated film requires a large volume of work and technical processes of some complexity.

Below, a simple process that I will talk about is the 3d animation.

Yay! This week I reached the half way. So much learning! In the previous week we understand the importance of planning and doing a block before you go to refine your animation. When you have a lot of information being transmitted, you must first understand how it works. Sometimes the head is in a way, but we do not have the maturity to put that into practice at once, so you should follow the steps of planning.


The topic of this week is Overlapping. Believe. It sounds simple, but is not in practice.You will be confuse of what you are doing and their animation becomes a mess. You will see below why it's complicated.

The concept is: With overlapping, things will move in parts. Where everything does not happen at the same time. 

"What are you saying? Take it easy! We just left the balls!"

Yes, you're right. Think that the ball has only one part. Let's talk about something more complex. For example, a tail. Will there be a movement when some force applied to the movement exists, may be gravity, a weight or wind. The tail will follow the movement. This is called Follow Through.

  Imagine the tail broken in joints. Think of the owner of this tail is the primary force. If he run out and stop abruptly, the tail will take longer to stop. If it is hard to imagine, swing your arm like a pendulum and then stop abruptly. Let's say your shoulder is 1, the elbow is 2, your wrist 3 and your fingers 4, as figured in the picture above. These parts will stop gradually. When the sholder stop, 2, 3 and 4 continue to follow the arc of movement until finally the fourth stop moving.

"Okay ... But how it will move when a side to side?"

Good question. Then comes an essential part of the overlap function. When the first part to the other will continue to move, right? This movement is called Drag, or Wave Principle. Tipically it forms a "S" because the effect of overlap. 

When stops, the rest will drag as he turns, then will follow through on next frames.

Usually there will be a Slow In and a Slow Out of the top must position. In the case of an appendage coming to rest, it may still be doing it's thing after the initial force hasstopped moving. 

My assignment had two difficulties. I chose to deliver the simplest because it wanted to better understand the effect of overlap. But I'll post the two that I did.


   

Hi again!
At this stage already made more than a month I'm doing Animation Mentor and I feel that already evolves LOT! Not only with the lectures and notes and tips supplied by Mentor... But with their peers. More than ever I realized how important it is to criticize and see the work of others to enhance your eyes and try not to make the same mistakes. And be able to see these errors! The community is fantastic and very helpful. Critique their work... And they will criticize yours! Sometimes you're so tired and lagged that for you may seem perfect, but there are mistakes easily seen in the eyes of other students... Which is great! As a friend would say: Falcon eyes!

 Now let's talk about Squash and Stretch.
 This can be used whenever an object bends or straightems. The use of this tool can give more life in your scene. 

I read the blog of my colleague term, Brock, who heard from his mentor the following definition:

 Awesome definition.

In both you must be careful not to overdo it and make it vicious. You sometimes already anticipated, must be careful not to anticipate the anticipation. The same for squash and stretch. You must take care not to use all the time. Pay attention to use only when it really seems necessary, otherwise it will warp and you forget all the time even as it was in the original format.

For this assignment we really put in proof our learning about all the principles we have already learned. Arcs should be visible and fluid. The ball reaches different spots during the entire time, so different arcs and some inconsistent disrupts the animation. The timing and spacing are more than essential. The ball must have different speeds and different heights for each point of the obstacle.

Here's my assignment for this week! See ya! 

 

 

Hey boys and gals!

This week we return with balls... But now they have different weight! To recap what we talked about in the last post, timing gives the meaning of the movement and spacing place your character, objetct, or whatever in a certain space determined by you. Remember the "Boink" Richard Williams!

With a good timing, the movement is interesting, makes sense... And there physics applied! 

"What? I need to know physics??" 

... Calm down, I have not finished. But yeah, you need the basics! You need to understand behaves as a body with some factors. These factors are: the gravity, weight, inertia, momentum, acceleration and deceleration. Laws of motion determined by Isaac Newton.

"Whaaat?"

 You will not make accounts. Stay calm. But you need to understand just how bodies behave in our world. 

"Hey! I thought you'd be animating different animation scenes! Take action scenes like Kung Fu Panda! Can not wait to see!"
Sometimes we think that is how it starts. But no. Many people underestimate the power of the bouncing ball! And believe me ... It has power. The power of learning! It's the best way for you to see and understand what is happening, after all, it uses different principles to make a jump ball from here to there or anything else!

Timing is basically the number of drawings that you have in your animations. The use of math here is simple. How much more frames, longer the duration of your scene.  This principle walks hand in hand with Spacing.
Depending on the number of frames that you have a pose between A and B a pose, there are different ways of placing drawings between A and B. This will depend on how you space them. Norman McLaren once said "It's not important what goes on each frame of film, it's the spaces between the frames. That are important."

Richard Williams shows in his book a visual example of how this might look like:
 
Simply put: The "Boink" is the timing with the rhythm. And the rest is the spacing.

The path that the ball is also an Arc. In a ball is easy to see, but in real life, almost everything moves in arcs! such as the bouncing ball trajectory following an arc in the air.

Anyway, beyond the ball, also have more to do a pose. The trick is drawing is based on shapes. Most of the problems that are eating up when a character or a piece of that character moves enough so it can not be inbetweened. As the 3D animation here is not necessarily due to get the drawing. But we know that good planning is important (as Bobby Beck would say "50% planning, 50% now doing"). So make poses clear! Poses that you understand what happens when you hit with your eyes! 

Here is my assignment for week 3! See ya!

Principles?! There is such a thing in an animation?
Yes! And they are the key to a good animation. You can not escape these principles as you can not escape the summation and multiplication in mathematics, for example. They were created by nine old man, legendary animators who worked and made ​​several classic Disney films.
Most of this on recipes below should appear in all scenes, for the comprise the basis for full animation:

   
- Timing; 
- Solid Posing; 
- Slow In & Slow Out; 
- Arcs;
- Squash & Stretch;
- Anticipation;
- Follow Through & Overlapping Action;
- Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose;
- Exaggeration;
- Secondary Action;
- Appeal;
- Staging.

Take a look on this video created by Panop Koonwat presenting all the principles of animation.


In assignment this week we don't animate yet, but also discovered the importance of pose. Whether or not an animation is a set of extreme poses and their intermediary! Dan Graham called extreme poses as "a story-telling drawing". An animator must certainly be sensitive to poses and gestures that portray the various moods and emotions that story telling demands. 

It's also good to know about line of action. 
As described in the book by Preston Blair "The line of Action is the basis for simplicity rhythm, and in animation directness. Start your animation with a line of action. Then draw the Skeleton and the details."

Anyway ... Here is my assignment for week 2.
 ... See ya!

 

I was so busy and adapting to this new process in my life that I hadn't  time to organize my ideas in this blog where I want to keep works and learnings along the road of my life. Anyway I started!

In my first term (Basic Foundations), me and the other nine amazing classmates are being mentored by Mathew Rees! In addition to a very funny British and willing to teach, he is senior animator on Aardman! I feel very lucky and excited to be in his hands this first part of the Animation Mentor!

In the first week we getting familiar with people on campus and learned how to use and make use everything the site has AM. And aren't few things... Every week we have a lecture with a different goal recorded for funny founders: Bobby, Shawn, Carlos and guests. We have access to a library with a looot of material... Since the Maya tips until designing drafted to get the best use of our abilities! 

Here there is already a lot of emphasis on practicing a lot, draw all day and don't be afraid to fail... On the contrary, enjoy the mistakes! Because has no better way to learn than missing. And the mentors and colleagues on the campus are there to criticize and correct frame to frame everything you do!

In coming posts I will try to show my experiences learned by every week :).