CG Artist's Toolkit: Animation and Character - Showreel and Final Submission

Animation Showreel from Alexis on Vimeo.

Morph:

Morph Animation

2 Coins and Pendulum

Principles of Animation

Ball Bounces

Lottie Reiniger and Don Hertzfeldt Review

Character Ball Bounces

Halloween Bounce

Walk Cycle:

Walk Cycle

Run Cycle

Fun Walk Cycle

Jumping and Throwing

Christmas Animal Walk

Weight:

Lifting a Box - Drawings

Flour Sack

Animated Life Drawing

Maya Lip-sync - Jaw Bounce

Maya Lip-sync - Mouth Movements

CG Artist's Toolkit: Animation and Character - Lifting a Box Drawings

Lifting something light, something medium weight and something heavy.

CG Artist's Toolkit: Animation and Character - Flour Sack

CG Artist's Toolkit: Animation and Character - Maya Lip-Syncing

Maya Lip-Syncing from Alexis on Vimeo.

CG Artist's Toolkit: Animation and Character - Lip Syncing in maya - Jaw Only

Lip Sync Maya - Jaw Only from Alexis on Vimeo.

CG Artist's Toolkit: Animation and Character - Animating from Life Drawings

CG Artist's Toolkit: Animation and Character - Jump and Throw

Jump

Throw

CG Artist's Toolkit: Animation and Character - Animal Walking

Bunny running through Forest

CG Artist's Toolkit: Animation and Character - Walking from a reference

Version 1

Version 2

CG Artist's Toolkit: Animation and Character - Run Cycle

Run Cycle

CG Artsist's Toolkit: Animation and Character - Walk Cycle

Walk Cycle

CG Artists Toolkit - Animation and Character - Halloween

Halloween Gif

The Photoshop Image

I'm not sure what happened to make the image go pixelated when I saved it.

CG Artist's Toolkit: Animation and Character - Lesson 4

Eyes and Tail

Legs, Eyes and Tail

Ponytail and Eyes

CG Artist's Toolkit: Animation and Character - Lottie Reiniger and Don Hertzfeldt

Lottie Reiniger

Lottie Reiniger was a German film-maker born in 1899. She used silhouette puppetry to make shadow puppet productions. Lottie Reiniger created over 60 animated films between the 1910's and the 1970's with around 40 of them surviving until today. She often drew inspirations from European fairy tales such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. She also created 'The Adventures of Prince Achmed' which was her only feature-length work.



She fled Germany in the 1930's, settling in England with her husband, Carl Koch, they founded Primrose Productions and produced works for the BBC.

Don Hertzfeldt

Don Hertzfeldt is an Animator, he was born in 1976 and has created many animated films such as Rejected, World of Tomorrow and The meaning of Life. His animations mostly use stick figures drawn with traditional media and photographed to create the animation.

Billy's Balloon was one of four student films he created between 1995 and 1998 and tells the story of small children getting attacked by their balloons.

Toolkit: Animation and Character - Making a ball bounce

Bouncing Ball

Bowling Ball

Ping Pong Ball

Tennis Ball

I really like the way the first one, the bouncing ball, turned out since it looks exactly how I wanted it to.

Toolkit: Animation and Character - 12 Principles of Animation

The 12 principles of Animation are as follows:

1. Arcs
    - Used for things like a pendulum, an arrow and the human body.
    - A lot of things move on an arc, the human body using an arc most prominently as joints tend to follow an arc in their movements.

2. Anticipation
    - Used to create tension and make the audience anticipate the coming action.
    - Can be used for things like running, jumping and throwing.

3. Staging
    - Used to direct the attention of the viewer.
    - Helps to establish mood and create focus in a scene.

4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose
    - This technique needs to be planned out as it involves creating key frames and then filling in the area's in-between.
    - This can make the animation look more close to life and adds realism.

5. Squash and Stretch
    - Used when Animating things like a ball bouncing. The ball is stretched as it heads to and from the ground and is squashed when it hits the ground.
    - Used to show weight in the objects

6. Follow Through and Overlapping Action
    - Things stop at different times.
    - A character that's running will stop before the clothes will as the clothes with move with the movement of the character, fanning out in front of them before falling still.
    - Another example would be a character spinning in a skirt as when the character stills the skirt will twirl loosely for a few seconds after.

7. Slow In and Slow Out
    - This makes a more realistic movement as the object or person will slowly pick up speed and slowly decrease speed much like in life.

8. Timing (and Spacing)
  - Timing is the amount of time taken to get from A to Z. Timing is effected by how many frames are placed in the Animation.
  - Spacing is how it gets from A to Z. Spacing is effected by the way the frames are placing within the animation. Closer frames means slower action whereas more spaced out frames make the action faster.

9. Secondary Action
    - Secondary actions support the primary action without drawing attention away from them.
    - An example of this would be somebody running as the primary action and the secondary action would then be their arms moving forwards and backwards.

10. Appeal
      - A characters appeal can come from many different factors including the characters appearance and personality.
      - The way they move can also effect the appeal they have to the audience.

11. Solid Drawing
      - These are the principles of drawing that allow for things like tone and shade that will allow the 2D animation to feel and look more 3D.

12. Exaggeration
      - Exaggeration should fit the mood and tone of the scene it is in.
      - It can make a scene look more fluid and appealing as it may look stiff without the exaggeration.

Toolkit: Animation and Character - Timing and Spacing

Coin Excercise

The first exercise was to create an image of a 'coin' that moved from the left of the screen to the right. The first on (the top) was created with evenly spaced circles making it so the circle moved at one speed across the screen. The second (lower circle) was created by bunching the circles up at the start and end of the line, this made it slow down at the beginning and end while still reaching it's destination at the same time as the first. This is because while the spacing had changed the timing had not.

Pendulum 1 - The wrong way to do it

Pendulum 2 - Even Spacing

Pendulum 3 - Slow Start and End

The next exercise was to create 3 pendulums. The first is an example of an incorrect pendulum. This was done to show the wrong way of doing it so that there was a better understanding of why it was wrong. The first pendulum is incorrect as it does not move the way a pendulum should, instead moving on a line from side to side without dipping in the middle. The second pendulum was to show the correct shape the pendulum should make. It is made with even spacing and so moves at an even speed across the page. The third is done while bunching the circles at the start and end to create a slower effect making it look more realistic.

Toolkit: Animation and Character - Morphing a face

Morphing a face from Alexis on Vimeo.