Grimal

Animation exercises pt. 2

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 05:36:17 GMT

I made a very basic timing sheet just to give me an idea of what i wanted the head to be doing expanding on the original keys:

It's hard to read, but I basically decided what kind of movement i wanted for the head, because as I myself proved with my last animated icon (LOL), it's pretty easy to just move a mouth a couple pixels and loop that forever. But moving the head a bit, making things asymmetrical, turning, and working physics into it is what gives animation the magic to be more than simply trying to copy reality.

With this in mind, and once I had my keys imported into Flash, I placed the keys on their own layer at more or less the frame where I expected them to appear, and traced them with the pencil tool. For a 2 second animation at 24 frames per second, that translated to frames 1, 18 and 30 or thereabouts.

I also made a couple more frames to fill in the motions of what I wanted. The last one is a stretchy one as GT's head turns back to its initial position quickly.

I'll spare you the details of laying down keys and more keys and inbetweening. After a few hours, this is how the animation's looking like so far. I'm not lip-syncing to any audio (other than the voices in my head), so that might be sketchy. And of course the hair and the lines still need a lot of work at this stage.

More soon, with hair and maybe whiskers.

Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 07:47:44 GMT

Ok, so if you ask your average person on the street what they know about Sherlock Holmes they might tell you something like this:

"Uh.. so he was some kind of private investigator... had a pipe, a violin, a funny hat... had a friend who helped him, I think he was a doctor... and he solved mysteries I think?"

This is what guy Ritchie must have known of the character. After seeing the trailers, you may have figured this movie wouldn't be in any way faithful to the original material, and you wouldn't have been mistaken. If you're a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle books, you shouldn't go see this film. This is basically an average serial killer chase movie with a huge dose of fist-fights (more like slap-fights) and explosions, a bluish filter, and not a whole lot of detective work. It was as enjoyable as Guy Ritchie movies usually are, charismatic anti-heroes, one or two hot broads, lots of flashbacks and lots of music-video style action scenes, complete with the setup for a sequel. Twice in a row, Ritchie, really?

If anything, Robert Downey Jr sure is gonna be raking in the dough with the follow-ups for this and Iron Man. He's as charming as ever, even with his crappy british accent.

Animation exercises

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 10:09:15 GMT

So I'm working on GT Skunkrat's animated icon for 2010 using whatever little I have learned this past year from Dick Williams' book The Animator's Survival Kit. I just got Eric Goldberg's Character Animation Crash Course as well and I'll be going through that this upcoming year.

I think the number one misconception that people have about making animation is the same one about making comics (and imagine, about making movies as well): that you just sit down and slap something together and if you're a god of art then it comes out looking perfect. And that may work out for limited animation flash funnies, but the truth is that for any project that's relatively long or complex, you need a fair amount of preparation and planning to get things right. In comics and animation, you have to write the script or storyboard before you can start properly.

So for this icon, which I estimated to be 1 to 2 seconds of animation, I set out with some small goals, mostly making GT turn while saying something, which translates into some practicing easing in/out, timing, and mouth-movements. Once I determined what I wanted him to be saying, I had to think about what kind of head movements would make sense and look right in a tiny icon.

I made three basic keys. Something I heard repeated again and again by Disney animators in the Animation Podcast is that all your frames must look fantastic, but the keys must be the best drawings you can do because everything hinges from them. This is more relevant when you're developing in an animation team and you may have in-betweeners that will follow your keys-- and if they look bad, they will follow that as well.

Now these aren't the best pics in the world, but they're clean enough to start roughing out movement along a timeline. Enter Flash.

I have been trying out some animation tools trying to find a workflow that suits my personal creative style, and I haven't been able to find one that does everything I need and is easy to use. Since all I needed for now is a timeline tool, Flash does the job without much fuss and I've used it in the past so I feel comfortable enough in it in a way I don't with ToonBoom or with more awkward tools like Pencil and Flipbook.

More tomorrow!

Avatar

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:33:33 GMT

Well I went in the theater actually expecting this to be a trainwreck and it was quite enjoyable. Entertaining in the Hollywood sense, if a little longer than I would have liked. Well-written story, solid but nothing groundbreaking. Very pretty those CG mountains and trees and flying lizards. And it's got Sigourney Weaver. Worth seeing it in the theater!

Princess and the Frog

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 03:20:49 GMT

Princess and the Frog, the latest (and some say last) 2d animated movie from Disney is out, and it's actually pretty excellent. I had low expectations going in and I enjoyed it thoroughly, me who hates musicals. And naturally I loooooved Louis. A little too Jello at times, but regardless, the animation was spotless. Definitely worth watching in the theater.

Random Street People

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 07:58:24 GMT

Ah, setting.

The Claw - Part 2: I Don't Believe in Love

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 08:11:29 GMT

This is the beginning of the story, proper. Mostly whininess, for sure.

Incidentally, I'd like to remind you you can purchase the printed version of the comic, including the full story and some extras, at Amazon or Lulu:

more doodles

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:03:26 GMT

The kind of shadow you want to see in your doorway >.>

TV stuff I've been watching. V, and Warehouse 13...

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:52:47 GMT

I was kind of excited about hearing they were remaking V-- I watched the original in the 80's and I was always a fan-- the original even had pre-Nightmare Robert Englund, flying ships, blue laser guns, and mice-eating reptile dominatrices ^.^ . When I learned about the cast, that was also a pleasant surprise-- Inara and Wash from Firefly (that guy just keeps getting bad-guy roles- must be the face), Juliet from Lost, Bailey from Party of Five... They are faces I enjoy looking at, at least. And it's actually not bad, even if the adaptation seems to have gotten rid of the campiness the original had in droves. They're taking the story in interesting directions and Morena Baccarin is awesome as the leader of the Visitors: Her model-like, cosmetics ad elegance sure is an interesting contrast to 80's big-hair Jane Badler in her red and black leather uniform. I'm glad she's back on TV in a starring role.

I really wanted to like Warehouse 13 after watching the pilot (which was decent), but after some 5 episodes I conclude it's just bad : ( Making a new X-Files is definitely not as easy as putting a mismatched guy cop/girl cop team together and pitting them against the "supernatural". They were saying this was inspired by the old Friday the 13th series from the 80s but since the focus of the writing is less the artifacts and more the laaaame dynamics between bossy nerd girl and cocky comedic jock, it's totally uninteresting. The "science" behind the artifacts is also garbage-- I think the key to make these kinds of stories work is the Gaiman approach, where you have unusual situations that have one foot firmly planted in reality, or at least plausibility, or at least they are so beautiful you can't help but wish they were true yourself. This show has neither, and it's kind of low budget, true to SyFy heritage.

Sunrise, sunrise

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:27:14 GMT

In a way, the voyage ends. In another, it is just beginning. Keep reading-- Part 2 starts next week.

aaaa doodles

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:47:22 GMT

aaaaa faces faces everywhere.

The Beauty of Dying Markers

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:12:07 GMT

Not much to say here, other than I did the night backgrounds with a dying Prismacolor marker, which allows for some interesting fading fills. When I was a kid it was reiterated to me that I had to use my markers until they had not a drop of dye left. Only in the last few years I have been able to learn to simply let go of things once it is time to do so, whether or not they have been drained of all potential usefulness.

Pete doodle

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 09:37:00 GMT

So I am really disappointed that my legally purchased version of Painter IX doesn't run on Windows 7 64bit on my machine. I've been using Painter almost exclusively since 2002, enough that I had all my custom brushes and my settings exactly the way I liked them... And now I'm facing the possibility that I won't be able to use them anymore. They don't even work in newer versions of Painter, so upgrading won't solve my problem.

So, in the spirit of learning new things, I went though a couple tutorials on painting with Photoshop CS4, I got the trial... and shockingly found that it has no blending brushes! Have I been too spoiled by Painter in expecting at least a rudimentary 'water blender' type brush? Blending by hand somehow makes me groan in laziness, but maybe it's not so bad. I made this doodle (for it is a doodle, and I don't plan to add more detail) on the PS CS4 trial.

I recently discovered the House of Mouse series from waaaayyyy back in 2003 actually had newly animated segments, so I've been watching some. Pete in a suit. Mm-hmm.

Transitions

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:11:07 GMT

Later in this book I got more subtle at my transitions. This sunny-day into thunderstorm thing doesn't read all that well, but I still like it.

The more we change, the more we stay the same

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:46:13 GMT

Contrary to popular belief, I didn't invent Krad and Hans a couple years ago. There are a lot of ideas for stories and characters that I've been developing since forever, forever postponing their moment in the spotlight while I invest time in a future that I hope will be worthwhile.
The art sucks, but Krad is here in all his ridiculousness, circa 1995.

We've Come a Long Way

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:42:14 GMT

The daily routine makes most events seem dull and unimpressive, but looking back, those everyday troubles can appear to shine.

Let's Make it Count

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 05:56:59 GMT

And celebration.

Oooold chimera

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:06:09 GMT

Looking at old art (this one, as conveniently noted, from Jun 1996) always triggers a mixture of feelings. Mostly annoyance at the lack of technique -- no sense of anatomy or color. At least I gave him 5 fingers (or tried).

More dragon stuff

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:39:33 GMT

Dragons get exasperated easily :C Hey I'm keeping to my schedule!

The Last Trip

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:58:21 GMT

OH NO REVELATION.
So many things that just don't matter.

Girls, dragons and snakes

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:13:39 GMT

More oooold doodles. Random toony dragon, couple freaky-eyed women, and snake-scale patterns.

Tropical scheming

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:04:17 GMT

I visited some tropical place once, or more than once. You never think that when there's less noise, and less company things that are normally put away can come out of a closet in a hurry.

Scheduling....~

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:21:36 GMT

Like I said before, I think a schedule is in order to force myself to post and do doodles. However, my current job has been wrecking my off-time motivation for art.

So I present my awesome schedule of hopefully posting stuff every day!

Tuesdays: Deo
Wednesdays: Classic pic from the vaults
Thursdays: Deo
Fridays: New pic
Sundays: Maybe GT will post something...

So let's start tomorrow, shall we?

Gloves and cartoon characters

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:29:58 GMT

I got another Cintiq. I sold my old one back in March when I thought I might end up leaving the US, and I just had to get another. Doodling and painting was getting kind of hard on my old 6x8 wireless Graphire.

But now I totally feel like out of a 40's short, cause I got some cotton gloves to use so i dont smudge and thumbprint all over the Cintiq screen. I was trying to find the ones specifically made by artists, but at $15 plus shipping, i thought just plain old white gloves with the fingertips cut off would work just fine for $5.

Subtle changes of tone

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:24:01 GMT

After you've known someone for a long time, these things become easier to detect.
I really need to figure out some sort of schedule for htese new posts. Maybe comic two times a week, and one classic and one new pic as well, I dunno. Work has been keeping my mind power exhausted lately so I haven't given this much thought.