Welcome to my animation blog
The 12 principles of animation were first introduced by Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas
1: Squash and Stretch,
2: Anticipation
3: Staging
4: straight ahead action and pose to pose
5: Follow through and Overlapping action
6: slow in and slow out
7: arc
8: secondary action
9: timing
10: exaggeration
11: solid drawing
12: appeal
There are uses of squash and stretch, arcs and slow in and slow out in animation.
In this little animation there are uses of squash and stretch are used in moments when the little birds are laugh and get pressed together when they slide towards each other.
The Stepped animation it a few step by step key frames which paint a rough movement of an object that is being animated such as in this case a bounce ball which uses arc and squash and stretch to create and animated object moving across the screen.
The graph editor allows for more fine tuning of the animation and to keep everything in a level position to make everything look like its landing on a ground level refining the animation in general.
What I found most challenging originally was the leveling out of the animation to keep everything on one level to make it look as if it was colliding with the ground but it was constantly off position until i use the graph editor.
Overall i have created a complete stepped animation of a bouncy ball.
using
Pixar animations as an example of where the animation types such as exaggeration, appeal, anticipation and follow through/overlapping action. an example of an animation with appeal and and anticipation is Pixars ‘Luxo jr’
anticipation and appeal are shown through the animation with the movements and reactions creating personalities to the lamps.
below is my lamp jump animation. in it I have animated the lamp jumping and some other extra little animations that it performs during it to attempt to create a successful animation.
3D Bag animation project start 29/1/20
bags name: Agent
age: 20
job: Secret Agent
personality: Livly
The Plan: he drops down from the ceiling into a room full of traps.
from there he performs multiple flips across the traps to a floor with a podium on it.
he gets to the podium
and falls flat on his face on the first step.
gets up and sulkily climbs the podium to collect a glowing crystal
The idea started with he just dropping down from the ceiling performing a few flips and then falling on his face.
Then it developed to have him jump across traps such as bear traps or laser then for him to get past all of that then to just fall over when he is past every thing.
It then developed for him to still go across all the traps but for him to go to a podium for a crystal where he would fall on the first step.
So far the planned idea of the environment seems do able as i need to model the bridge type walkway that it takes place on and i will need to model the traps, podium and gem and i believe most of these things are do able. I have thought quit heavily as to how I want the environment to look but most of that is going to be on my ability to model the area. i believe as well that the plan i have is viable and that i will be able to pull it off.
The character will able to interact with the environment just fine as it is based around a relatively small area since it is a bridge and platforms.
Plan:
week 1 storyboard
week 2-5 3d modelling
week 6 animating.
05/02/20 FAS2
with progress on the animation project the thumbnails have been completed in preparation for the actual story board. this is the first parts of the animation projects.
There was supposed to be a seventh thumbnail but i didn’t have enough tie to start it but it would just be where he sulkily grabs the jewel shown in the 4th thumbnail.
Continuing with the project i have developed the story board of the animation. it still looks very similar to the thumbnails but wit more details and more accurately made as i could get them with my current ability to draw. I took a little bit more time with the drawing of the frames to get them a little bit more accurate as i could get them.
the quality of my storyboard to be i feel is a relatively low quality as i still need to develop my skills more in that department but i still did what i thought i needed to do with it.
the challenges i faced in this where actually trying to give depth to my images. giving depth to a drawing is one of if not the main thing i need to improve on with drawing.
26/2/20
the current development of the animation has lead to its block out in which a block out is where you gain a general idea of what your wanting to do for your game or animation environment such as creating the general layout or look of an area with just some other basics to see how it will look.
for the project i have also been creating a block out of my stage for the animation.
I believe i may have gone over the top with the block out but that’s just me as i like to get a good definition of how i want it to look.
4/3/20
the goals of this session is to fully 3d model my environment for my animation project.
the way i plan to do this is to further detail the level and its assets including the traps that i’m going to have to model and extra details regarding the world in general i also need to fin a way to create an interior look from round the out side as im going to need to make it look as if it is underground. currently still deciding on how to do that.
over this session i have laid out the plans for how i want to develop this with detailing the level more and by designing a trap that is involved with the level which i will be making more of one it has been textured to cover the bridge. the walls of the area will have a darker texture than everything else but im mostly planning on a dark grey for the environment with the secret agent theme to it.
11/3/20
So far i have finished the modeling of the area and now i just need to finish the layers and texture the environment from there i will begin trying to animate the sack but i feel as if this is where i’m going to struggle since animating isn’t my strong point and as much as i’m going to try my best with it i still feel i’m going to have a hard to with it. When it comes to texturing i’m probably going to take a while with it as there are quite a few objects that i’m going to have to texture but the colour scheme i’m going with isn’t to big in variety as its theme of being in an underground vault means i don’t need to be to heavily concerned about what colours i use. There are a few other little details i will have to take care of while going through this but those shouldn’t be to hard to deal with. when i begin to animate i’m going to have to see what i can do about about both the camera angles and the lighting of the set up
18/3/20
A hierarchy is series of ordered grouping in 3D animation otherwise know as a parent/child relationships this relationship can be summed up as if the parent moves then the child moves with it but if the child moves then the parent is not moving.
31/3/20
I have texture most of the environment but i’m confused about why the textures are there on the model but when i haven’t selected a certain point on the model it fore some reason doesn’t render the textures properly
If i can’t fix whatever is causing this texture glitch to happen i may have to animate around the textured level.
1/4/2020
The animation environment is almost complete all i need to do is texture the last parts of it being the window, the traps and the area containing it but apart from that the reason for the glitchy textures was because for some reason some of the models were overlapped. i don’t know when the models duplicated but the issue is fixed.
3/4/2020
the animation environment is finished all that needs to bee done is figuring out the lighting positions, animation the sack and figuring out how i’m supposed to do the camera positions.
I’m most likely going to start off by doing the animation so that its done and out of the way as i’m pretty sure that’s going to be the hardest part especially with the sack we have to animate, just trying to move it around is arduous enough as it is, but ill still try to do what i intend to do with it although its probably going to take me a while to do that.
when it comes to doing the lighting i’m probably going to have to make certain lights disappear at certain time and even make some of the move but for now i’m just going to focus on animating it.
28/04/20
the animation is progressing slowly. it may take me a while to complete but i will try to finish it to a decent quality.
6/5/2020
the animation is almost finished all i need to do is the last parts of it then i can focus on the lighting and camera setups that follow.
I must admit though the animation ended up being a lot smoother than i expected it to and although its has been relatively difficult to pull off i have gotten the hang of animating the rig we are using.
7/5/2020
The animation has been completed. looking through it I’ve noticed that the animation get a lot smoother the further it has been progressed.
My next steps for this Animation Project is to position the lighting and create camera angles.
13/5/20
Animation is finished lighting is set up and i have created a quick playblast. ll that needs to be done is the camera. what i think i’m going to do for the camera is im going to animate it so it moves along the level to keep about a medium shot that pans back as the character moves forward.
14/05/20
The camera has been sorted and i have created another playblast for it.
Now the last thing i need to do is to render the animation. Using only one camera will make it simpler as its wont require multiple play blasts. once the rendering is done i will have finished the animation.
19/5/20
The Animated short has been rendered and finished.
overall im pleased with this animation as it has been quite fun animating during this project.
At the beginning of the project i was actually quite concerned considering my ability to animate at the time. my plans at the beginning of the project manifested rather different from what i initially intended as if you look at the storyboard the animation has gone in a mostly different path but still sticking to the ninja flips theme jumping across a bunch of traps.
the reason i changed the plan was because of how the animation started out as i found it a struggle to get a hang of the rig and i thought i was going to run out of time if i went with the initial plan, so i deviated to one camera moving with the sack during the animation and im satisfied with how it turned out.
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