Sad Walking

Using the same armatured flash figure as before, I attempted to creat a sad walk.



I feel it's not too bad for a first attempt and no reference material to work with.

Background Project

Ah, what a hellish week last week was. Certainly the busiest on the course so far! I had both the background project and my essay to finish. Thankfully I managed to both, though I will admit I was feeling pretty damn stressed about the whole thing, you know you need to take a break from essay writing when you can't even form coherent sentences anymore!

So, here are my 3 finished backgrounds:
1. Exterior Sea background (click for full view please):


2. Interior (this was the last one I completed, and I would've given it more detail, added things on top of the tables etc, but didn't have time with the essay as well!):

I'm particularly pleased with how the lighting worked out and how the light looks yellow-y on the bed :)

3. My favourite, another exterior (it's a bit shadowy on the bottom left hand corner because of how it scanned in, I had to do it in two parts and join them together in photoshop):


As I'd finished my essay & background project according to schedule, I had all of monday off to myself so decided I'd mess around in Flash, I tried to do a lip-sync to a voiceclip I'd found on my computer, but for some reason Flash didn't really want to play ball and let me create a "classic motion guide" layer, I'm not really sure what that was about, but it kind of scuppered my plans. However, I decided I'd give it a go for practisng the old faithfull walk cycle, and I think it came out pretty well, no real signs of a limp, which is pretty good considering it didn't take too long or had too much effort behind it.



I'm thinking that I might upload my Essay, because it seems to be the growing trend among the other first-years. Hmm. Wether or not anyone would read it is another matter. I also went to go and see "The Princess and The Frog" today with Olly and one of my flatmates, in all honesty, it's a good watch, as long as you don't mind a large number of songs. The animation itself is pretty shit hot, the bit that stood out for me most was a scene with hundreds of fireflies slighting up the whole swamp. It must've been done using particle effects. It was pretty damn awesome.

Walk This Way... [sorry]

Once again, the reason for lack of updates is down to the epic FAIL of the internet connection at Glasney View. I wrote this update on the 3rd of December and have only just been able to upload it!

We had to take the walk cycle a step further, by having to animate our own walks! We got filmed walking along: a normal walk and a silly one and were told we had to animate one (or both of them) in 2D and 3D. I chose to do my normal walk (my silly walk wasn’t silly at all, it was supposed to be a sad walk, but i’m a terrible actress – I did drama in Year 12 for one of my AS-levels but was cringe worthy awful when it came to the physical acting side of it!).



I actually found this task easier to do on Maya (SHOCK) than I did drawing it – but I think this is because I tried to get my figure looking as life-like (or at least as human-like and in proportion) as I could. I originally started with the head just being a bald circle but it looked very strange, especially when I decided to draw my trousers and shoes a bit of detail, so I added the hair and profile which were a bit of a nightmare trying to get looking right.



I did two versions of my 2D walk, but I prefer the rough version in blue pencil to the one with clean lines, the blue figure looks like it has more weight and character to it, so this was the one I submitted for marking. If you spot a face appear on the right hand side you’re not going mad! As it was only meant to be a rough version I practised drawing my profile on frame 5, so a face appears for the briefest second (well, one 24th of a second to factually correct, haha). I would’ve scrubbed it off but I quite liked it and didn’t get a chance to scan it before I shot it all on the line tester. I still need to shoot the other one!



We also had life drawing this week, and after a few weeks off from it I was quite rusty. This wasn’t helped by the fact we had a new model, so it was the first time I’d drawn a woman as well. I couldn’t get the proportions right for quite a while, I kept giving Jane a really small torso compared to her really long legs and large upper body, but I was quite pleased with the final drawing I did- I was even brave enough to attempt to draw her facial features! I’ll upload a post with lots of life drawing pictures at some point in the (hopefully) not too distant future!

Burt (but sadly no Ernie)

Burt and Ernie used to be my favourite characters on Sesame Street.

This Burt isn't quite the same, but he's still pretty cool.

Our task for 3D this week was to animate him walking along. To be honest I'm not too pleased with how it's come out, but I got really annoyed while trying to animate him because I kept clicking on one foot to animate it and it kept moving both of them. This went on for about half an hour and I've no idea what I did to make it do that. But I figured it out eventually and here's the result:

Walk Cycles

Just a quick little update, I’m going to write some more about Bradford but wanted to put this little video up first. Our tasks this week are to do a 2D walk cycle and make a 3D character (Mr. Cubey has been upgraded to a sphere with bending legs called “Burt”) walk forwards. I haven’t had a go at messing about with Burt yet, but like to think that my 2D has come out pretty well for my first attempt. It probably helps that I nerded up the night before and drew up a plan for each frame.

As you can see from above I spent more time on getting the leg movement correct and only roughly mapping out the arms. I’m pretty pleased with the legs and the head, but the shoulder bobs around a bit too drastically for my liking. Video is shot at 12fps, and is 12 frames long anyway.