Task 6: Secondary Action

Secondary Action:
- An action resulted directly from a primitive action

In this task, we were to explore the principle of secondary action in our animation; on top of that we had to include the previous taught principles in our animation. Moreover to illustrate development from staging and appeal to storyboarding and animating the story board. 

For this task, I decided to use my character created in task 2; Timpy. My initial idea was for a short battle scene, however I changed that idea to something more simple as I believed that my initial idea might be too ambitious for me to create at this stage. My finalised idea of this task is of Timpy's experience with food; the reaction of him after he eats a warm bowl of 'ramen'.

I started off create/designing backgrounds as I did not have to change anything with the character developed in task 2. The background(s) that I went with depicted a ramen stall, isolated in the night. 

Background 1

After that main background was set, I then created other backgrounds for the animation revolving on the first background; with a change of perspective and angles to fit the animations.

Background 2


Background 3


As the main goal was to depict Timpy's experience with eating 'ramen' I tackled this with a more abstract perspective in mind. To contrast the abstract visual, I included cut scenes of Timpy's experience with more humane actions in the ramen stall; picking up chopsticks and breaking them apart. 

Utilising the backgrounds and my character, I created the story board to guide me during the animation process. 

Storyboard

Through the animation process, I used the straight ahead technique to create my animation as it was easier for me to create a smoother animation compared to using the pose to pose technique. 

After animating, I decided to add some sounds to the animation. Other than using iMovie/GarageBand sound effects, I explored with medium that I had to recreate some sounds in the animation. 

Bowl to table contact 


To create the 'clink' sound between the bowl and the table, I used a mug filled with water to create the sound; the water adds a bit of weight to the 'clink' sound.

Timpy grabbing chopsticks


As I did not have any bamboo chopsticks to recreate the sound, I had to improvise that by using various markers and pencils. 

Chopsticks breaking apart (1)


To improvise on the 'snap' of the chopstick, it was a bit more difficult than the previous sounds as the 'snap' of the bamboo has a unique sound to it. I tried using rubber band and pencils; pulling them apart and realising it to create the snap sound, however that was too flat and was not ideal. 

Chopsticks breaking apart (2)


Then, I tried using this bubblewrap keychain to create the 'snap' sound as the initial 'pop' that the keychain creates has a snappy aspect to it which works better than the rubber band and pencils. 

Task 6 Animation


The outcome of the animation captures some aspects that was ideal to the plan, such as the monster giving Timpy his 'ramen' and the scene of Timpy grabbing and breaking the bamboo chopsticks apart. However I believe the initial zoom and the ending could be done better in terms of including more dynamic actions. The initial zoom of the first scene could be more smooth, and the ending part could have had Timpy inhaling and exhaling to express his sense of fulfilment.

Task 6 PDF: Secondary Action

Task 5: Anticipation & Exaggeration

Anticipation:
- To create tension
- An action that lets the audience know that an action is coming
- Character or object ready to undertake an action, forethought which proceeds the action

Exaggeration:
- Overstatement of physical appearance or reaction to enhance character, emotion and appeal

In this task, we were tasked to create an animation that is able to demonstrate the principles  of anticipation and exaggeration. On top of that, we had to show the use of 2 mediums in the animation and utilisation of sound. 

My idea for this task was to create a jack in a box animation short; as I thought the anticipation can be shown by the crank of the box handle paired with jack in the box music, and the exaggeration would be the object in the box jumping far out to the screen; essentially a jump scare. 

Reference 

I started off creating this rough animation to see how I would zoom into the box to create the anticipation action of the animation. Moreover, this would benefit me greatly during my creating process as I would get a scene of how I can create a zoom that can feel natural; further creating tension. 

As for the second media, I originally wanted to create the zooming part using the traditional animation technique, however that would take too much time and would not look well when it transitions to digital medium. With the time I had left, I decided to use the second medium as a chance to explore how I can infuse the markings done with gel pen, and water colour, and infuse it to the animation digitally. 

Created using gel pen, and layering water colour on top, I used this to give the animation a static like effect when the exaggeration is shown.

From this task, I learnt the importance of sound in animation; as its essential in creating a foundation for the atmosphere and tone of the animation and setting. Moreover, the significance of anticipation and exaggeration in animation; creating a more dramatic and effective action and story.

Task 4 - Self Development [Reflection]

Brief: -
After learning 4 principles in animation, we were tasked to create an animation that implements those principles. Moreover, we were to identify and justify as to why we chose to use the animation technique of Pose to Pose or Straight Ahead for our animation production process. This task does not have a set context, giving us the freedom to create an animation based on anything we want.
Although the context of the animation can be anything, we were given the choice to create an looped animation that were based on shoes; mainly giving us an opportunity to participate in an animation competition that requires us to create looped animations according to a set theme.

Concept(s): -Thinking about the theme of shoes I had various ideas in mind;

1. Sports; a character with broken/worn out shoes that relays memories of him at his peak at different sports.
- Starts off walking and him hearing people playing basketball at the opposite side of the fence
- Looks down at his worn out shoes and sighs > flashes back to his youth where he played sports                       
- Character runs and has a tennis attire; swings racket to hit the ball. Transitions to Basketball where he jumps up and slams the basketball into the hoop; finally transitioning to football; kicks ball into goal                                     
- Flashback finishes and he smiles as he looks down at his shoe once again; revealing that he has a prosthetic leg; continues to walk down the street (off-screen) replays in loop.

2. Dance; a character hears music down the street and starts dancing to it; music changes and along his attire
- Character starts off with a sad sigh as he walks down the street and pauses; hearing music at the near park; he walks towards it
- As he walks closer, he starts to get in groove; he taps his foot and is surprised; smiles and stares at us
- Music transitions; with each transition of the music; character dances and clothes changes
- As he gets closer to the music, he gets blasted away by the music; flies through the sky and lands at the street of where he started; gets up and sighs

3. Late; a character wakes up realising he's late, rushes to get ready only to be stopped by his indecisiveness as  to which pair of shoes to wear.
- Alarm sounds, causing the character to get up from bed; he reads the clock and in a state of shock realises he's late for school
- He gets out of bed and cuts to him brushing his teeth; transitioning to him wearing his clothes; finally transitioning to him putting his socks on and proceeds to walk out the door to get to his shoe rack
- Looks at shoes (first person perspective) and starts to rush, checking the clock once more, he realises he is over an hour late and faints and thumps onto the floor blacking out. Scene resets to the start; of him in his bed.

After having a total of three concepts thought out, I decided to work on the first concept. However as I started to sketch out the key frames and scenes for the animation, I had a feeling of overwhelmingness; although I have a clear image of the animation in mind, I couldn't figure out nor sketch out each frame for each scene. This resulted me to abandon all of the concepts about shoes and branch off into creating an animation that would reflect on my process of struggling of this task. 

Branching off: -
Starting fresh, I decided to create something more abstract that allows me to illustrate my struggle towards this task as I wasn't able to sketch out or figure out my fully fleshed concepts that I had thought out. The animation technique that I used was Pose to Pose as I was able to work easier by just making minor changes to the previous frame. Animation principles that I used were timing; to try and make sense of the timing of the movement mainly to depict acceleration and deceleration and I also implemented a small section of squash.

Designing: -

Heavily inspired by my character created during induction week, I used that as a representation of my inner self. However for the animation, I decided to just use the head as I believe that is able to illustrate the idea of 'that head is my inner self' strongly. In terms of the choice of colours, I mainly used the indigo - purple range, as I believe that is able to give off the impression of it being a subconscious character.
Separating the animation in to 3 different stages of my struggle, each stage illustrates some change in the character, each being more dramatic than the previous.


Insanity
- Subconscious starting to awake; alerted by something that would eventually be a difficult barrier to overcome
- Eye starts to move frantically, illustrating the concept of insanity

Agony

- Subconscious feels overwhelming struggle, it tries to get rid of it's vision, to be 'blinded'/lose sense of sight so it won't have to deal with the struggle
- Mouth opens and it tries to 'eat' it's eye representing the sense of overwhelming struggle and that it is trying to get rid of it


Crisis

- In last ditch effort for trying to get rid of the sense of struggle, a hard reset occurs, allowing it to start over again
- It gets overwhelmed by the sense of struggle and it gives out; in the state of where it is trying to get rid of the struggle and where the pain and stress is overwhelming, both forces create a hard reset
- Goes black and white to illustrate the overwhelming force of both it trying to get rid of the sense of struggle and the overpowering sense of pain and stress of struggling

As it resets, the loop of these three stages creates a cycle, illustrating the endless conflict between how my subconscious will try to avoid hardships instead of facing it; however if I face any hardships that I can't overcome, the overwhelming sense of struggle surfaces resulting in an eternal cycle of conflict.


Eternal

Through this task, I wasn't able to create something ideal that I had in mind due to lack of direction and physical planning I had. Instead this animation illustrates the struggle I had with the concept of not being able to create something I had so clear in mind, in the end having to abandon it. However, this enabled me to create something that was more personal; allowing myself to develop and create an animation without having being constructed by any requirement in context.

Task 4: Pose-to-Pose vs. Straight Ahead, Squash and Stretch, Easing and Arcs

Pose-Pose - Key frames are produced first before the in-between frames 

Straight Ahead - Linear production of each frame, (1-2-3-4...)
Stretch - A form of exaggeration when an object stretches, without breaking or tearing, when it reaches high velocity
Squash - A form of exaggeration when an object impacts with a surface, deforming from force|
Ease - Illustrating an object's speed; acceleration/deceleration 

In this task, I had to produce a stop-motion animation of a straight ball bouncing. The goal of this task is to illustrate the stretch and squash elements of a ball; when the ball is falling/bouncing back up, the ball would stretch and when the ball contacts the ground/surface, then the ball would squash. Both essential to illustrate the energy of the ball.

For reference, my partner dropped a ball from chest height to see how high the ball will bounce from it's initial height. We discovered that it bounces to either 3/4 or around half of it's initial height. Using that as a reference, we created our straight ball bouncing animation using the Dragonframe software. 

 

The unedited version of the animation had two copies of each frame for good measures. The issue of this was that the speed of the ball falling was not as fast as it should be, therefore it was edited to make the ball fall faster, more realistic. 

 

After editing it, the easing of the ball falling is more clear, introducing weight and gravity to the animation.

After illustrating ease through the straight ball bouncing animation, we explored the concept of relief; the concept of illustrating the decreasing bounces of the ball. Using the same software, my partner and I created another bouncing ball animation through stop-motion.

Reference

From the straight ball bouncing animation, to this more dynamic approach, the exaggeration of how the ball stretches and squashes effects the animation significantly as it makes the motion of the ball more dynamic. Moreover incorporating easing also creates a sense of realism as the speed of the ball falling and it bouncing back up at 3/4 of the fall speed does make the ball seem more weighted and more believable.

Diving into the topic of arcs, arcs describes an trajectory of a natural motion; motion that does not more linearly rather in curves. In this task, we used rotoscope technique to animate a pendulum done in Photoshop.

Reference

After creating the pendulum through using the rotoscope technique on Photoshop, we then had to use stop-motion animation create an animation illustrating arc using a pencil.



After gaining feedback of this animation from a class critique, I learnt that there were some mistakes in my animation. Some common ones were that the vertical frame of the pencil could be removed so that the easing of the pencil would be smoother. Furthermore one of the starting frame; of the pencil's starting position can also be removed so that it would be loop-able. After gaining feedback, I made changes accordingly.



To conclude utilising the rotoscope technique to animate can allow me to easily illustrate ease as the motion of the object has already been captured, and all there's left to do is trace the object. Whilst by using stop-motion animation, the movement of the object is in your control and each frame is decided by yourself; therefore the outcome would not be as natural as the rotoscope. However, by using stop-motion, I am able to control the placement and the easing of the object more easily as every placement and frame is controlled.

Task 3: Timing

Timing

- The timing in animation in which specific actions/movement happens in specific amount of frames to create emphasis, exaggerated movements or realism in relation as to how it would've happened in real life.

Blinking Animation

The blinking animation was done through 6 different frames. To make the motion of the eyelid closing quicker, less frames were used and more in-between frames were used to make the motion of the eye opening seem slower.

Challenges that I faced with this specific task was the outcome of the animation; it looked a bit static as only the eyes and eyebrows moved during the blink. Applying the motion of blinking to real life, blinking in essence only requires your eyes to move, therefore I have applied that concept to the blinking animation, however the outcome wasn't as what I would've hoped for as it seems a lot more static and unnatural.

To improve upon the animation, I believe making the mouth move will greatly improve the current issue of the animation, as the direction and the pose I have the character shown in the animation really focuses on the whole face of the character and not only the eye aspect of it. Therefore having a small area of the character move whilst the other stays still greatly impacts the outcome of the blink as a whole.

Storyboard Animation

                                     

For the second task, I chose to use scene 2-3 in my storyboard done in task 2 to make the animation for this part of the task. The motion is of the character getting up from the floor; lying down to upright state. I chose to use this scene as it shows a simple movement of the character.

24FPS 

Edited

The outcome of the animation again, didn't come out as what I thought it would be. The scene chosen has a simple action, however the animation did not really illustrate that smoothly. I tried to use 7 frames of drawing, 3 from when the character is lying down to the mid-getting up position, and using the remaining 4 frames to animate him getting up to the upright position.

What I found challenging for this part of the task is to get the consistency of each frame of the character right. Reflecting upon my process, I believe drawing key frames helped, however I believe the consistency issue occurred due to the lack of in-between frames of the animation, which made each frame's movement different enough so that it was difficult for me to refer each frame back to the previous state.

To improve upon this, I would make more in-between frames fro each movement so that it would look a lot smoother and that I would have less tough of a time to get the character sizing consistency right.

Task 2: Appeal & Staging

Appeal:
- A drawing or character design that can attract and plead the audience 
(A design that can communicate to the audience of the character's personality/motive) 

For the first section, we had to sketch out various designs of character elements, which included eyes, mouths, ears, limbs, and torsos. 

This task was somewhat difficult as creating various designs for each character element with distinctive characteristics was challenging with the amount of time we had for each character element. 

After this practice, I was aware that my range of variety was hugely lacking and somewhat uninspiring, as a lot of the elements were generic and not really stylistic. However, after reviewing my designs, and coming up with the character face/head, I simplified my character facial designs to create a simplistic and more stylised character.

After finalising my characters' design, I experimented with various colour schemes of the character.                             
                 

Originally, I planned on using the grey/purple colour scheme, however after comparing it to the other colour schemes, I decided to go with the purple/pink colour scheme as I believe it is a more unique colour scheme compared to the rest.

Further into the task, we had to draw out the designed character with various poses, and a character pose chart which featured the view of the character in the same pose in various angles; front, back, side and 3/4 front/back.

Staging:
- Illustrating a narrative which presents a clear direction of the actions of the character and tells a story/action with the designed character

In the second section of the task, we had to create a simple story through a storyboard with the designed character. To help with the story board, a mask was created so that we can get into character and create poses that we wanted to help with the drawing later on.

In addition to the sketch of the character in the storyboard, camera shots had to be added that would help direct the story visually.

Utilising and visualising how the story could be delivered visually was extremely challenging as I have never learnt or looked into what the purpose of the shot types were in film making. Moreover, creating a suitable background for each scene was also difficult to visualise as it had to make sense along with the shot types that were used. 

Task 2 PDF: Appeal & Staging

Task 1: Solid Drawings

Line of Motion:

- Visually depicts how force is applied to a character/object

- Illustrates the direction of the pose

Line of Action Motion Drawings

We had half a minute to quick sketch a total of 10 poses given by our course leader; we then had to use a pen/marker to depicts the line of motion in each pose.

Fleshed-out Motion Drawings
From the 10 poses, we had to choose 5 and create a character / scenario with the poses.

Refined Motion Drawings

Our course leader then gave out some more poses, using them we had to create a refined drawing of the poses through inking techniques.

Developed Motion Drawings
Wanting to draw more dynamic poses, I used online resources for this section of the task. Instead of fully inking the drawing, I added watercolour to the finelined drawing. This gave me a sense of how lighting functioned and how shadows and highlights can be depicted through colour.

Rendered Motion Drawing
Wanting to explore more upon digital medium, I used Photoshop to paint my fully rendered drawing. I used the same online resource for the model as I did with the developed motion drawings, however I picked a female model as a reference this time. 

Having a better understanding of lighting and colour, I did not use the existing light source on the reference image and decided to create my own. Deciding to fully focus on the essences of the pose itself, I decided to not draw out the hair nor apply as much detail on the face itself; and mainly focused on the structure/composition of the female form.

Using the pencil tool, I traced out the main structure of the model; then started to apply the main colours that depict the light and dark shade.

Going more in depth with the colourisation, I added two more layers of colour in which depicts the highlights and the middle tone of the structure. This gave the pose more depth, making it more realistic. I found the mix brush to be a huge advantage in blending and smoothing out the gradation of colours.

Overall, this task was somewhat challenging as I did not have a lot of experience with digital medium, nor was I that good at illustrating the human figure. One thing I could improve on is exaggeration; in the aspect of still poses, I could push the arches or bends more and aim for exaggeration instead of accuracy. 

Link to PDF file → 20 Solid Drawings