Monster Rough Walk Cycle Test

Hey Folks

today i roughed out the monsters walk cycle, its looking pretty good but i feel that there is something not right about it I dont know what it is but maybe you can spot it out.

Sorry for the size of the clip it is a bit small but when I clean it up and colour it in I will make him bigger for all to see in glory.

Remember this is an experimental walk cycle that is quite unusual to the book he is meant to be dumb looking and acting dumb when he walks. It does say in the animators survival kit that you have to be inventive so this is a walk that I invented haha anyways let me know what you think folks.

Enjoy Muchly

"Rayman Origins" Question Answered With A UBI ART Video

Hey Folks

A comment was given to me in my robot man walk cycle about "Rayman Origins" and I never made a comment back but in the least yes i have played it and it is a fantastic game with very healthy lush backgrounds and quick exaggerated animation.

I wanted to know how they did the animation for this game and I found this video that is about UBI ART it must be the company that obviously made the animations for the game and it shows you in this video how they made the animations for the game.

It is kinda the same way i made my walk cycle using different parts and placing the vector points on the bit that you want rotated and then simply animate them. The difference is that these guys are drawing right onto the screen with their awesome graphic tablets lucky sods.

It is indeed a very easy way to animate things and i am too becoming more and more pointed into this direction because that walk cycle I made only took about an hour including having a generous tea break :D.

Enjoy Muchly

Monster Coloured In

Hey Folks

Today I coloured in my monster character to see what he could look like when walking. I decided to draw right into photoshop because i am obviously gonna need to learn to do it in flash, I feel that i am beginning to get the grips of this technique and seem to be getting it quite well. I have shown two images of the character one which has the construction lines done in photoshop to show how I built him up and the other is just to have a look at and see of he works.

I wanted his skin to be green for some reason but then I realised that the different parts on his head need to contrast. I had a look at the colour wheel and made his opposites oranges and purples I believe that he has turned out quite well.

I feel like a new style of colour and character is beginning to flow out of my designs now with contrasting colours and specific eyes and facial details. Which is quite nice but i think i might need to create some more designs what do you think?

Enjoy Muchly

Monster Walk Cycle Plan For Flash

Hey Folks

Sorry i have not been on here for a while i ahve been doing some overtime in work and i need the money. I have been paid though woohoo and I had enough money to buy me some nice sketchbooks plus "Plants VS Zombies"

So I have been reading more of the survivial kit and I feel that I want to make another walk cycle but a more crazier one. I have created this monster like creature and I want to give him a happy but dumb style to his walk with lots of squashiness. As you can see in the sketches here i have made the contact position the lowest point of the walk, the down has been replaced with an uprising position, the pass position is still the going up and the up is still the up, delay a few frames and them come right down into the contact again and start the process all over again.

I will test it out to see if this works, it should with the right inbetweening and movement it should be fine to not need to draw it again with the opposite legs. As you can see in the contact positions you cant see his legs which is the trick to this invented cycle, however I might re draw the positions again and show just slight differences so I can get a much more interesting walk cycle.

Enjoy Muchly

Some Aquarium Sketches

Hey Folks

I went to visit the St Andrews Aquarium today for something to do as it was a nice day and didn't want to be stuck in the house. I took my sketchbook and went in to do some drawing thankfully it was very quiet and I managed to sit and concentrate on a few of the animals.

There are a few hits and misses in these sketches but you cant always get things right first time can you, so we have some crawfish, meerkats, spiders, fish and a turtle who was actually half a foot away form me and just let me draw him he must have been honoured haha.

Anyhoo this has been a good day as I enjoyed the drawing I did, learned a thing or two about he animals and it is getting me back into the just of things again which I am glad to be in.

More sketches on the way folks!!!

Enjoy Muchly

Robot Man Walk Cycle

Hey Folks

Today I decided to create my Robot Man walk cycle, I wanted him to have a movement that made him look like although he is damaged he does not bother about it. He has a broken arm and I thought maybe we can put in a shadow and his lightbulb can shine too woohoo :D.

This was my first even walk cycle done in after effects no drawing was done which completely took me out of my comfort zone so i would like feedback on this one. 

I think it looks pretty cool although I tried to get this rigged with the "Rigit" plug in i had a few problems so i had to sit there and painstaikingly place all these parts together but by bit.

I parent the body parts to his torso and that was the base of the animation for the up and down movement.

But see what you think folks.

Enjoy Muchly

The Robot Man Coloured Up Ready To Go

Hey Folks

Today i finished colouring up my robot man character today in Photoshop and now he is ready to be placed into after effects to be rigged and made into a walk cycle.

I have seperated every bit of the character from his head to his toes so that i can create this walk cycle with some decent flow. I will be quite annoying and intense but as soon as i have it done then it will look pretty cool i think :D Now its time to get the character rigged up and ready to go :).

Enjoy Muchly

Robot Man joint and 3/4 turn for walk cycle

Hey Folks

Today I drew up the final design for my robot character, looks pretty cool don't he :D, Now the thing is that there is a plug in for after effects called Rigit which helps join the character together like a 3D rigged character model.

SP I have decided to create a 3/4 view of the character and just simply make him walk in A.E.

So the next stage is to colour him in and on separate parts too.

Enjoy Muchly

Robot Man

Hey Folks

Here is a quick design of a robot character that i wish to make in a walk cycle in after effects. I will separate each part into sections for the body and then connect them all up so I can then create joints and make a much less staggered walk cycle and more fluid for the character to perform.

Easy design I don't particularly want to make him too complicated just enough to perform the walk cycle.

Enjoy Muchly

Mickey Mania - Level 3 - Moose Hunters Richard Williams Reference

Hey Folks

Here is Mickeys Wild Adventure to prove to you all that mickeys walk cycle was referenced from this book.

Enjoy Muchly

Richard Williams Walky Stuff

Hey Folks 

I think that it would be good to get back into animating again and what better way to do it than making some walk cycles :D. I have an animators survuval kit at home and i thought that it would be the best thing to get me started on making some cycles with different personalities and such in the like.

So this first image shows off how to plan a walk and what the specific positions are, Mediant, Going down, Going up, Up, Mediant and Going down again to start the whole thing on the next foot. In other terms for these positions are. Contact, Down, Pass Position, Up and then Contact which in case re-starts the cycle again.

So what do we have anyways folks well...We have 5 different drawings here but if we look most of them are the same we have 2 mediants, 2 going downs and one going up and then an up again. So its like a roller coaster before the big fall you start medium, then you a bit down to get the gravity, then start to go up and up and then as soon as you are right up there, your on your way down again to start all over :D

Heres the thing that people find hard to do in walk cycles how do you get it to look natural and what is the main position within the sequences of the walk and how can you make different walks made easy.

In my theory I personally think that it is...

The PASS POSITION!!!

 The Pass Position can be used to indicate the weight of the character and how he/she controls their walk, remember a walk is a controlled fall and we also have weight to carry and if we don't control out movement then we fall to the floor. Because of Gravity we have to pull our weight to get around and we usually go up or down.

However the pass position does not necessarily need to go up, it could also go down which gives us a completely different walk cycle. This is maybe different but it is still giving a sense of weight because now we have switched some positions for specific qualities of control. The contacts are now considered the up position and the pass is now the low.

The pass position can be used to place the character in many different positions and give off some characteristics too, look at the bottom of this picture we simply keep these as keys and inbetween them from the contact to the pass and we get a whole new walk for our character.

Now that we know how to get the walks right its all about how fast of slow do we make this character, well Mr Williams kindly gave us a set beat chart to show how we can achieve this effect. I think the average animators do is around 8-12 FPS thats what I usually make mine but if we want to achieve different personalities and walks then we might need to set different beats.

Usually the best way to get the right tempo is to set some music to get the character to move with the beat. This is a great technique and if you watch people with their i-pods and all sorts you can tell what type of music they are listening to by counting the steps per second because they are walking to the tempo.

I scanned this drawing in to show you how a good personality can be inflicted into a walk and matched to a tempo also heres a task for you guys to do too. Get a PS1 or even in fact a PSP and play "Mickeys Wild Adventure" you will see lots on similarities to mickeys walk cycle compared to this characters example walk.

Walks can be done with this method that i have explained but so can run cycles the easier thing with runs is that it is much quicker to animate because of less frames and inbetweens :D

The Pass Position gives off the same effect as you can see in this particular scan of the very exaggerated run cycle.

Enjoy Muchly

character design type 1 (manny)

Hey Folks

So today I decided to start some designs for this little octopi like character which I call Manny. Shes a very calm type of character who is happy to go with the flow. I decided to give her a red tone of skin with yellow dots and blue underskin. I also have some expressions here along with a basic model sheet of what she would look like all around.

Theres not much but She will be defined soon just now its just designing some of the monsters and then once happy it will be some test animations in flash and After Effects.

Enjoy Muchly

Another Concept Idea

Hey Folks

So heres an idea of what the little characters can do, I want to have the characters 2D and on top of live action and I was thinking just to be smart that one of them could fly past a CD and have his reflection showing on the bottom and another can be hiding behind a hoody.

One of them could climb onto a set of keys but then fall off and their wig comes off flying upwards, i would like the first test to be them all opening the door and thins would help me to gain an idea of all sorts of things. 1 animating in flash, learning motion tracking, placing 2D on top of live action, making shadows on top of the live action, moving objects in ways that i can make it look natural, taking unwanted elements out of the shot and then reflecting animation on shiny things.

now that i have a few ideas of what i want to do I will need to get some footage and then define the characters and make them look pretty, Then have a test motion track, tests for getting shadows in the right places and things, then onto animating, clean, colour and compositing.

Long way to go but it will be worth it in the end :D

Enjoy muchly

Little Monsters Sketches

Hey Folks

So today I drew some monsters to come up with some ideas of what they should look like for this little animation thing I am away to do.

Its crazy but I haven't sketched in quite a while from my previous maters project that involved a lot of computer work near the end of the project. So trying to get back in is a bit fiddly but i am getting there, anyways here are some sketches I will attend some more and then start coming up with concepts for the idea of this little shot I am making.

Enjoy Muchly

Hand-Drawn Animation in Adobe Flash

Hey Folks

So I have been looking at adobe flash and just getting to grips and see if i can jump into something completely out of my comfort zone. Animation on paper to animation on the screen :O sounds pretty o_0 yeah but I suppose I gotta learn sometime don't I :)

So this is a small tutorial (well 19 minutes long to be exact) showing how an animator from Base 14 with an animator from the company showing how he sketches into the screen,

This shows exactly what you would do on paper so for examples using keyframes, breakdowns, inbetweening, layers and cleanups :) quite a nice animation and teaches you some onion skinning too which is pretty cool :D. Different use of how to draw into flash with the paintbrush tool and the pencil tool. The only problem is that if you use a graphics tablet the pressure sensor does not work for opacity settings so watch your sketching because it will get messy if you draw too much so be fluid.

but yeah enjoy muchly and hopefully I will have some animations up here using flash too woohoo :D.

Enjoy Muchly