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.