Sketches

Squirrel Animation

Finally finished the first draft of my squirrel animation!



Squirrel Animation from James Saunders on Vimeo.


Overall i'm pretty happy with how it looks.

One of the hardest parts was trying to get the tail overlap looking believable with the jumps. It would very quickly turn unappealing and stiff. By dealing with the root of the tail first and then animating outwards I could get quite a nice effect quite quickly.

I highly recommend using the Squirrels Rig. It's free and super fun to use.

On to the next one!

Back to Basics - Squirrel Animation

I was halfway through another shot using the JACK rig from Animsquad when I felt like I was getting swamped with the technicalities of Maya and losing sight of the principles of animation.

So I've put that animation on hold for now and started work on a new project using the Squirrels rig from animation mentor:

Before I decided what to do I looked at some progress reels from Animation Mentor students. I wanted to see what type of animations they were doing to get the basics down. There were loads of really nice walk cycles, a few pantomime shots and a couple of bouncing ball exercises. I noticed how energetic and cartoony the animation was and thought it would be interesting to try and go for the same style. It would also be a nice change from the slightly more restrained animation I was doing with JACK. 

The 'ball with a tail' exercise felt like a good one to do as it encompassed most of the qualities I wanted to get better at such as fun timing, rhythm, squash and stretch and personality.

The idea I came up with was to have an acorn fall out of a tree and then have the squirrel chase after it. It's not quite finished yet but below are the progress of my arcs and timing of the animation:

 Rough sketch of the overall idea and arcs I wanted.

I then filmed video reference and animated some initial arcs. The reference was valuable to help get a sense of timing and rhythm to the squirrel jumping around the tree  (I pretended my fingers were the squirrel!).

 Refined arcs and timing. I removed some the of the jumps as it all felt a bit too frenetic.

Final arcs and timing of the shot. Quite a bit of difference from when I started.

Should be a few more days until the first draft of the animation is done :)

In the meantime here is some animation of Scrat from Ice Age that I took inspiration from: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etKCHLgW_o0

Quick Life Drawing Sketches

Just a couple quick life drawing done over 5 - 10 minutes. Trying to keep up the practice!

Film Sketching - E.T.

I saw a blog post this morning on cartoonbrew about the value in sketching out a film sequence or even an entire film. (Check here for the original post: http://storyshots.tumblr.com)

It totally makes sense to do this as it forces you to notice all the different elements of visual storytelling. Below are some examples I sketched out the opening scene for E.T. and I've already learnt a ton. I didn't focus so much on detail as they are more like notes to myself than presentable drawings. I'm definitely going to do more of this when I have a spare moment.

Breaking Down the Breakdown

Recently I felt like I was struggling with some of my animation. Specifically, the best way to approach the breakdown pose. So, I took a step back from what I was doing and went to study the basics of timing charts and breakdowns.

My Breakdown Workflow

First of all it's helpful to define what a 'Breakdown' actually is. The simplest definition that I can give is:

"A Breakdown is an initial position between two keys. It defines how a character moves from one pose to another"

Eric Goldberg:

"Key poses are what the character is doing, then the breakdowns are how the character does it"

Keep in mind the performance

I think the most important thing is to keep in mind is what you want the final action to look like. By doing this it helps inform all the other variables that are decided in the breakdown. 

Where does the breakdown go?

Refer to the timing and spacing on your chart for the action (if you used one) for a rough guide on what eases in and out for the action.

Does the action snap out of the initial pose? Does it ease in the final position?

For example, if you want the action to snap out of the first pose and ease into the second, the breakdown will probably be placed nearer to the second pose. 

However, The breakdown pose is not always a dead in the middle inbetween!

By adjusting the breakdown pose we can create automatic overlap, drag and arcs. And most importantly for a character we can add personality to the movement. You can actually achieve two entirely different performances from the same key poses and timing by making the breakdowns different. 

See the example below taken from Eric Goldberg's book "Character Animation Crash Course":

In the examples we have a dog looking in one direction and then turning his head to look in another direction. (Note how the timing chart indicates the ease in and out between the key poses. The ease in to the second pose is slightly longer.)

This example above shows a very stiff, mechanical breakdown. Something we often see the computer give us in CG animation.

In this example we have adjusted the breakdown to give us much looser and livelier movement between the two poses. Also note how the breakdown favours the first key.

In this last example the action is really polished up by adjusting inbetween 9 also. It follows the flow of the breakdown at 7.

To Recap:

1. Keep in mind the performance you want to give.

 2. Decide what eases in/ eases out during the action.

    3. Decide what frame the breakdown should occur on.

    4. Adjust the breakdown pose to create, drag, overlap and interest in general

5. Play and adjust! It will hardly ever be right first go so play about a bit and adjust accordingly. However, it is easy to get confused because of all the variables in a breakdown so try and understand what you want to do before changing it.

Have a look at Eric Goldberg's book "Character Animation Crash Course" for more info. Highly recommended.

Round 3 - Waiting for the Bus

After a round of critiques on 3dhit.co.uk I have hopefully corrected some of the problems that were in my animation.

One of the main points from Liam Reynolds (website: http://www.liamreynolds.co.uk/) was that it looked very pose to pose, there wasn't much secondary action between them. He's right and looking back at it you can see where the whole thing goes kind of dead between poses. To fix this I've put in some torso movements and some more accurate weight shifts.

Tom Barber (website: http://www.tom-barber-3d.co.uk/) also suggested that I have a look over my spline editor to check out what my curves were doing. And yep, the some of the splines had some weird hitches and bumps in them which i smoothed out to create some clearer anticipations and overlap.

Big thanks to those two for the help :)

I feel ready to move on to a new shot now as it's been a few weeks on this one. I'd like to do another pantomime shot to try and nail down the process and workflow. (One thing for sure is to add some more detail during the blocking stage so I don't get as lost when I go into spline mode.)



Waiting at Bus Stop - Spline part two from James Saunders on Vimeo.