Progress report

-October 2015

-December 2016



I think this version has more natural timing and spacing, particularly in the moment upwards to the shoulder I considered how the different parts of the arm move at different times to create staggered movement, making it interesting. I am also pleased with the arcs in this piece of animation, particuarly the more subtle ones when he brings his arms down, the anticipation has a very little arc which makes it feel punchy and weighted. I also think I have generally improved at drawing and my knowledge of anatomy.

Practicing animating rough from reference

This is a very rough animation I did to practice locating keyframes from video reference, I used terminator as my subject since it's a personal favorite and I've always liked how visceral everything in that movie is. For the sake of this exerciser I simplified the character into it's basic shapes and stylized him in order to increase how quickly I could draw the keyframes, but I quite like it as a style anyways, so I may finish this short piece.

Second attempt at 2d jumping box

One thing I think I did better here is tone down the squash and stretch elements slightly to make them move into one another, instead of feeling like separate actions, however I think the anticipation still needs work, and I could still push poses to give the box more character and appeal.

Jumping box & Bouncing ball in room [2d]

(bouncing ball begins 15 seconds into video)

For the jumping animation I was trying to understand the principles of squash and stretch, whilst it works to an extent I think I tried using squash and stretch so deliberately that it seems quite jarring and doesn't quite match the speed or velocity of the movement. I also think the timing is slightly awkward, the moments feel separate, rather than one smooth motion. But I do think I managed to clearly communicate the movement and action, you can clearly see that the box looks both ways and then jumps.
 For the ball animation I think I used timing and spacing quite well, the ball feels like it has physics acting on it, such as gravity bringing it to a slow halt. But I don't think the changes in size for the ball are accurate, it doesn't hold form, even if it is supposed to get smaller at it travels through space.

Stop motion walks

 I think this went fairly well, but it was almost more of a character walk because it's quite stompy, when I wanted a more vanilla walk. I think I could also work on my fairing to create more natural movement, it's quite janky at the moment, but over all a good first attempt at a walk I think.
This was my attempt at a character walk, one thing I feel went well was the timing on the triumphant hand in the air at the end, I think that looks quite smooth. But I think next time I do this I should try to do a consistent walk rather than one that shifts half way through. It was fun to experiment with emoting through acting though.

3d tasks

This is my first attempt at doing squash and stretch in Maya, getting to grips with the program. I think it looks okay but definitely room for improvement.
I think this animation came out well, I was practicing follow through, and staggering movement with the tail, different sections of the tail move at different times which helps make it looks more real. I think to improve this I would think about the timing of the tail in relation to the tail more, as I don't think it syncs up very well.
I was learning constraints with this piece, which I did, but I still don't fully understand how Maya works so the animation here is quite limited.
In this piece I tried using principles I've been learning through previous tasks, such as staggering movement and squash and stretch, if I were to do it again I think I would use more varied movements and try to push myself more.

Smear frames in 2d

I did this to experiment using smear frames, it's very rough and I think it has a lot of issues with the volume of the character but I like the movement of pulling the sword out and grabbing it, I think it's quite convincing. I think in order to improve this I need to go over it and make sure I retain consistent art, and I would also redo some of the head movements, since I think that's what let's it down. I would also push the acting more, I think I could do more with the body to sell the action.

Coming back to the head turn

I decided to come back to a task I did near the start of the semester to see if I could do it better, and I think this piece of animation is better paced and timed than the old piece, especially since for this piece I decided to go back over it once I've animated once to fix errors that I noticed in the first pass. I also asked peers what they thought was wrong with the first one, the general consensus was it didn't hold form, things like the eyes, hair and jawline shifted very noticeably. It's also important to note that this is the first piece of animation I filmed video reference for, so in my second pass I more closley studied the shape of my head in each position, and replicated that in key frames. Whilst still not perfect I think the second pass holds form far better, if I were to go over it again I'd fix the body and neck, and maybe even the hair, as they still shift a bit. I also added in the blink, which wasn't in the video reference, to try to give the animation more acting/appeal, making it feel real. The eyebrow raise is timed as the same as the video but I think it would've worked better if I started the movement during the turn, maybe the end of the blink, so that it would feel more natural.

1st pass

2nd pass

Personal Animations

This is a practise of more minimal animation, the character only has a boil affect and a blink so it doesn't feel too stationary, but the focus is on the light passing over the character, I think if I did this again I'd give a clearer light source and perhaps motion outside the window to make it feel more grounded but as a first attempt I like how the light wraps around the character.

 I tried implementing simple background elements for this animation, because I felt there was something lacking in my storytelling when I've animated character with no context. I think it adds a lot to even a simple gif, obviously the animation is very rough but I think it's timed quite nicely.

Whilst obviously unfinished this is my attempt at creating a looping animation, I went for a blacksmith hammering an anvil. I think if I were to do this again, or finish it, I would put more acting into it, as at the moment the only part of him that's moving is his arm, which doesn't necessarily say much about his character, I think I could incorporate more body movements to give it more appeal.

Water splash effect in 2d

It's hard for me to self critique this particular animation, I tried studying the movement of a splash of water but I didn't understand it, it seems erratic and formless. I think this means I am animating too literally, looking at the shapes I can see rather than thinking about the volume and properties of the animation subject, and animating how that reacts to the forces acting on it. I also think this would probably look better with a drawn background for context, and in full color. I think the next step to improving this area of my animation is to do it again, perhaps with a different sized object creating the splash, and going in at a different angle, and studying real life examples.

2d walk cycle

Keyframes - For the most part these are exactly the same as the 'angry animator' walk cycle reference I used, a good starting point to learn the key poses of a walk cycle but not very personal to me or creative, a very uniform walk. Next time I do a walk cycle I will base it off real life research I have done myself.





Inbetweens - Despite the rough lines I think at this point the movement reads well, one thing I need to work on improving is retaining volume, especially here in the legs and head.








Lines - I designed this character specifically for this walk cycle based off the body type I already used. The lack of consistent volume in the head is very prevalent in this version, this is something I need to work on. I tried adding follow through to the hair which I think was relatively successful, but again, the lack of consistent volume makes it lose believablity.




Concept - I did this model sheet after I did the inbetweens, the character is a deer child, perhaps a hunter of some sort, I quite like this character and I think I want to do more animation with him.

stop motion task - toe touch

This is my first attempt at making a stop motion puppet touch it's toes, I think the most jarring issue here is that the timing is basically entirely consistent throughout the whole movement, apart from one or two moments on the way back up where the puppet seems to jerk around, from this I learnt that timing was definitely the main issue I needed to work on with this task.


This was a half attempt, since I put timing into practice, but the movement was too fast, however I used this as a practice of timing so it was still valuable to me.


My final attempt in which I took into account my previous errors, I used timing effectively and I staggered body movement to try to create realistic movement, I think whilst obviously not a perfect attempt, far from it, I learnt a lot from this task about the timing and staggering of body movement.

Head turn

I think the movement in this piece of animation is too fast, and the character doesn't move like a real person because I tried to exaggerate the arc but it isn't quite subtle enough, and the blink isn't that smoothly integrated into the movement either. I think I need to use more holds, and perhaps focus the slowdown on when the character moves into the blink, rather than slowing down when his head is in the lowest position in order to blink, which feels unnatural.

Stop motion task - canon ball drop & balloon drop [tbc]

mechanical pendulum

This is my first attempt at creating a more mechanical motion, I tried using equal spacing to create a feeling that the motion is created by a machine, but this just made the motion weightless and uncanny, it didn't work. Especially at the ends of the motion where it just snapped back, I think this contribute to the lack of weight, from this I've learnt that even mechanical movement requires some sort of easing because even machines abide by the laws of physics and gravity, which seems obvious to say but I didn't really take those rules into account when animating this, so it was valuable to me to make those mistakes. 

Whilst I don't think this is entirely convincing, it is better than my first attempt, I made the fairings closer together as the coin moved back up from being in the lowest position, I think this makes the movement feel more realistic, but if I'm being honest I don't think this really looks like a clock pendulum, this task was quite challenging, but I did learn a lot about spacing and mechanical movement.  

2d exercise ball bouncing in 3d space

This is my first attempt at animating a ball bouncing in a 3d space using TV paint. As it is my first attempt it is very flawed, I don't think the timing is very good as it doesn't feel like it moves realistically in a 3d space. This may also be due to the fact that the movement was not thoroughly planned out when I drew the room so the bounces are quite uncanny. From this I learnt that the background space is equally important in creating the illusion of realistic movement. 

This is my second attempt at this task, instead of just drawing a room I decided to draw a ramp to give myself something to work off of. This also works in terms of anticipation because as soon as the viewer sees a ramp and a bouncy ball on the screen they make the connection in their brain and so the following action reads well. I also tried exaggerating the change in size and perspective in the animation to try to push myself more, In order to do this more reliably I decided that instead of drawing a line of action to draw on like I did before I made it 3 dimensional, I did this because before when I drew on the line I found it difficult to calculate how the size of the ball should change through the motion, by creating a 3d line of action I could do this easily.

Stop motion string pendulum

This is my first attempt at doing the pendulum exercise, it lacks a sense of weight, which I determined was because the spacing was too equal. The coin moved at a regular pace both ways without a sense of real life forces acting on it, such as gravity. One issue in particular was that the coin stopped very abruptly at the end/start of the motion, giving the animation the effect that a sudden force was making the coin move in the other direction, which for this exercise I didn't want, I wanted a more natural motion. However I did note the affect the spacing had on the motion as I felt it could be used in the second stop motion pendulum exercise.

This is my second attempt after doing a few practice takes, taking into account what I learnt from my first attempt. I made the spacing more varied in an attempt to portray a sense of weight in the animation, with the coin slowing down at the end of the movement and speeding up at the start. This is more succesful than my first attempt but the movement is still quite uncanny and doesn't really look real. This is because I have still have regular spacing, just with one fairing in the middle of the movement further away from the end/start movements. This made it look like the coin was travelling through some kind of thick liquid, even moving by its own accord, rather than in response to gravity. 

After a few more practice takes I produced what is currently my most recent attempt. From my last attempt I think I gained an understanding of the importance of having spacing which indicates reaction to realistic forces, so I came up with a more formulaic way of doing the spacing. I would have the first frame being the peak of the motion, so the coin would be in an only slightly different position, then I had the start of the motion where I moved the coin about 3 times the distance as the tiny distance in the first frame. I then moved the coin so on onion skin half of it was still in the ghost coin. In the next frame I had the coin so the edge was touching the last frame using onion skin. Then I would move it a considerable distance before reaching the frame on the bottom of the curve, after that point I would repeat the process going back up. This is a method I used after several takes to try to get a more consistent movement, I also think the spacing is more effective as the motion is quite smooth and it doesn't look uncanny.