Animation Principles 14

This exercise was to complete a perpetual double-ball bounce where the smaller, top ball overlaps the larger bottom ball. Unlike the balloon exercise where I had to try and work the timing and drawings out myself, everything here was pretty much laid out in the book. I'm going to mess around with it a little more and change some of the drawings, but the basic exercise is below.



Click image above to view animation

FAS Assignment 1

I received my first assignment back from FAS a couple of days ago. The point of this exercise was to demonstrate that I could use a few pencil and ink techniques to get different effects.


Pencil Drawing


Ink Drawing


Ink Drawing Instructor Overlay

Animation Principles Assignment 13

This was another weight/bouncing assignment, this time animating a bouncing balloon. The additional challenge here was to turn the balloon while it was falling. Originally, I did every frame manually. The results weren't very good - I over-tweaked the bouncing motion. The second version I did, posted here, used Flash's motion, inbetween and slo-in/out tools. I drew a motion path, plotted a few keyframes and then used trial and error to get the timing satisfactory. No surprise that the second version didn't take me anywhere near as long to do.



Click image above to play the animation.

Plan Of Action Update

As I wait for FAS to send me feedback on my first assignment, I've been doing some thinking about the non-animation part of my self study.

The FAS course isn't as intense as I imagined it would be so I'm also going to work through a book called Gardner's Guide to Drawing for Animation. The book will start as a refresher on basic drawing skills, especially where structure and perspective are concerned and then continue on to cover aspects of the human figure geared towards animation: simple poses, design and simplification, and storytelling. The book should also help prepare me for when I get to the figure drawing portion of the FAS course and can get some feedback on what I'm doing (wrong).

UPDATE 8/18:
After starting into the Gardner book, I realized that a lot of it is still life drawing. Not a bad thing per se, just not the sort of thing I want to work on now. So I brooded for a while and then did more research. Glenn Vilppu's Drawing Manual kept popping up as recommended and after seeing a picture of the cover, it looked familiar. No wonder, I soon realized I had bought the book a few years back but never used it (I can't remember why not)! So I anxiously dug through some boxes hoping I hadn't donated it. Found it! I flipped through it and yep, it'll be good for me right now. Better late than never.

Animation Principles Assignment 12

This assignment is to animate a bouncing bowling ball. My drawing of the table is a little taller than in the book so with the original timing chart, the ball fell too fast. So I experimented and added an extra frame to slightly slo-in the fall.


(Click image to view the animation)

Animation Principles Assignment 11

This assignment was a continuation of learning anticipation-reaction. I'm not happy with how this turned out and I'm still learning to tell at what point I need to stop perfecting a set of frames and just move on. Brian didn't provide as many inbetween frames on this action so it was a lot more trial and error to figure it out. It was easier for me to turn to pencil and paper to thumbnail some frames. Luckily he provides a Quicktime of all his exercises, so after messing with it on my own for a while, I can see where my shapes and timing are off.
Click here to view original animation.

UPDATE 8/10:
Well, I still couldn't let this assignment go yet. I examined Brian's example and the main problems I discovered were:
* the snapping action was too stiff, the 'wave' action was too weak
* the seaweed was straightening up too fast
* the reaction movement moved too far
* the end 'wiggle' lasted too long
I'm sure there are other problems too but these are the main one's I found.


(Click image above to view the updated animation)

Darn Barn

I still haven't received feedback from FAS on my first assignment. I think it's been a little more than two weeks since I sent it in. The course recommends that you continue onto the next lesson while waiting but not to do that lesson's assignments (so that you can incorporate the feedback).

Well, I'm too impatient.

Considering that these first 2 lessons are mainly about getting familiar with the materials, I'm not sure how relevant the feedback will be to this lesson's assignments. Perhaps, I'll be surprised!

Lesson 2 has another two-part assignment - create a transparent, black-only watercolor of a barn and silo and then create a black/grey/white gouache painting of a lighthouse. I'm posting the barn here, I haven't worked on the lighthouse yet.

One important lesson I learned while working on this assignment was how important it is to have the correct lighting in your workspace. I use a little tabletop easel on my dining room table. There is a hanging light over the table. It was a constant battle to keep the paper angled but not throw shadows on the paper. The barn roof and side aren't as smooth as I'd like because of this (I kept losing track of the puddle of wash). I'm going to look into getting a clip-on light to put on the easel.