I thought that as kind of a parting post, I would put up my final demo reel, just for the sake of memoriez
This has been a super fun class and I'm so glad to have learned everything that I did! I'm still no expert at 3d animation, but it's good to know I've got a steady foundation to come off of. :)
Wow I win the award for worst blogger ever. How hard is it to update a blog?
Very, I suppose, when you're obsessing over the Olympics.
But! Now that the Olympics are over and I've returned to a near-vegetative state before classes start back up, I can make up for my lost blog posts with one massive collection of animation thoughts.
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I can't believe I haven't posted about this already, but one of my favorite examples of animation is Duck Amuck, featuring Daffy Duck
I'm a sucker for the breaking of the fourth wall, and this animation completely obliterates the fourth wall. It's a real testament to the animator's talents, because it makes you feel like you're actually interacting with the subject, rather than watch shenanigans fold out on screen. I loved that about Looney Tunes in general; it felt like you were hiding behind the camera the whole time, and that every now and then the characters would look at you and talk to you and include you in their antics. That's really hard to find these days, because people would rather sit back and be entertained rather than feel like they're a part of something.
One of my other favorite parts is that while Daffy is obviously the main subject, the animators don't skimp on having him interact with the environment. A lot of cartoons lately just have the background as a space holder; the subjects could be on a blank space (like Daffy occasionally is in this cartoon) and nothing would change, because they hardly interact with the background.
Not to mention the animation itself is classic and perfect.
Looney Tunes really knew how to create a good cartoon, man. They had it in the bag.
That's not to say that cartoons nowadays are failing; there are a lot out there that are absolutely fantastic, they've just had to morph with the times into a different kind of entertainment. A kind of entertainment where the characters won't interact with you as much (discounting Dora the explorer), and where animation is often times sacrificed for the sake of budget or character focus.
It's not a bad thing, it's just different. Unless if it's Problem Solverz. That was bad.
Let's counter that with some good examples of modern cartoon
Flapjack is, in my opinion, one of the best cartoons in the last decade. Its dark comedy and disturbing designs made it a standout amongst the other cartoons that were running on Cartoon Network, much like Courage the Cowardly Dog was back in the day. It makes you wonder what sort of audience it was really meant for; I've seen the entire series and I still don't know if it was meant for kids, teenagers, or that stage of tweenism where you try to find a cartoon that's weird enough to describe your awkward state of being.
The same kind of goes for Adventure Time, although they've managed to decrease the amount of dark comedy in favor of quirky humor; not wacky, but quirky. There's a difference.
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Did anyone else watch the Olympics? And if so, did anyone else nerd out like me and start mentally referencing the athlete's bodies for future animation/drawing endeavors?
I didn't realize I would be watching the athletes so closely, but it was interesting to see the way the body worked, and how I could apply that to projects in the future.
My favorite events this year were gymnastics, diving, and handball, because I loved watching the movements and extreme actions taken by each individual. To me they showed some of the most interesting forms of the body; gymnastics showed not only the strength of the human body but the gracefulness that can be achieved at that level of strength, and diving showed the nimbleness and contortion of the body (I mean Jesus how else can you do 3 somersaults and 2 full-body twists in only 2 seconds of fall time), and handball... well, that's kind of a stretch because I mostly watched it for the sake of watching a bunch of people brutally bowl each other over (like hockey!), but it did show an extreme amount of interaction with multiple persons. Most sports you try to keep away from the other opponents, but when I was watching the men's handball tourney at the gym, I kept noticing players dive into a crowd just for the chance to make a shot, which you don't see a lot of in most other sports (other than rugby or something).
If you were a total prude and didn't watch any of the Olympics, I implore you to at least go through some clips, because it's fascinating to watch the physics and mechanics of the human body.
For the record, I have no idea why I title posts the way I do, or why they always have to do with some sort of food. I suppose it's so that they're easier to differentiate? Ish.
Animation relation news! This week I saw Brave for the second time, watching this time from the perspective of an animator-in-training instead of a drooling Pixar fan. I tried my best to analyse the most complex animations, thinking of how I might break that down and replicate it for myself, I caught the tiniest and most careful of movements that most viewers wouldn't care to notice, and I still found myself gawking at the amount of care and detail the animators put into every single movement; from the way fingers curled to the way horses galloped to the way Merida's curls bounced, they thought of absolutely everything (which, of course, is the least you can expect from Pixar).
People criticize Brave for its plot and "unlikeable main character" and whatnot (I, for one, would fist fight to the death defending every aspect of this movie, but that's beside the point), but one thing they certainly cannot criticize is the perfection of the animation. Although the characters are extremely stylized, they move so believably that it's like watching real people interact, and although their interactions are somewhat exaggerated and silly at times, it only adds to the believability (is that a word?) and likability of it all.
And can you seriously believe Pixar took over a year to build a program just for Merida's hair? How's that for dedication to animation (animadication?)
look at that
it's like its own character
jesus christ almighty how
nope
No but then this gif is what really gets me
if you look carefully you can see the way her fingers slightly curl and how the necklace slides ever-so-slightly like it's on actual satin and then it quickly bounces and then while you're looking at her torso you realize you can see her breathinglike who even animates breathing in such a simple scene no
I just
ugh
I have a lot of feelings about Brave. Surprisingly, a lot of them have to do with the impeccable animation
But there are still those feelings that have absolutely nothing to do with animation...... I'll keep those shelved for the time being lest I risk turning this post into a keyboard smashed monstrosity.
Yikes, I actually forgot to update this blog during the week of the fourth! I was too busy celebrating freedom, I suppose. That's not a valid excuse at all, but it's pretty much all I've got. :') I'll make up for my missing post by making an extra-long post right now!
This week I fell behind on homework/updating because I've spent the last week in California, where my two best friends and I went to Disneyland and attended San Diego Comic-Con!
I have to admit, at both places, noticing animation-related things was not my top priority, but whenever I saw something I could relate to this class, I took note! The prime example was the Sorcerer's Workshop at Disney California Adventure, aka this place:
We didn't take any of the classes offered there, but we spent a few hours wandering around the exhibits and seeing how the animation worked. The top photo was the main area of the facility, which contained a bunch of 30-foot-tall screens full of concept art from various Disney movies (this photo specifically shows Ratatouille). As an aspiring concept artist, this was probably my favorite part of the facility.
In the middle photo was a really fascinating exhibit in one of the alcoves branched out from the main area: this was a collection of figures from Toy Story, which when spun at high rates and displayed under a strobe light, came to life in animated movement! It's hard to explain, but it was absolutely amazing to see in person: Woody and Bullseye were prouncing around in a circle, Jessie swung her lasso in the air, the green army men parachuted from the top, etc, etc, etc.
In the lowest photo, that was the room where you could create your own animations on slips of paper, spin them in a reel, and watch them in action! I was tempted to use what knowledge I gained in this class to create my own simple animation, but alas, we didn't have the time to spare.
That was the main animation-related highlight of the trip. At Comic-Con, I tried to notice anything that would relate to this class, but I got so distracted by lines and costumes and panels and everything to notice. You can't blame me though: it's hard to keep priorities straight when you're meeting the cast of Doctor Who. :'')
I'm not sure what to blog about this week; the assignments were pretty straightforward, and I had a lot of fun doing them!
I love studying line of action poses on my own, so being able to create them with the morpheus rig was very enjoyable.
Creating the obstacle course for the ball to barrel through was intimidating at first thought, but as I started to get deeper and deeper into the assignment I found out that it wasn't that hard (although my animation is still pretty elementary), and it was fun to make my own little arena!
Aannnddd.... that's about all I have to report relevant to assignments.
On a more interesting note, has anyone seen the cartoon Motorcity? Basically everything about it is awesome, especially the character design and the animation.
Titmouse, the animation company, apparently uses Adobe Flash for the work, but they have a special rig that makes the 2D animation look and handle like 3D animation! It's crazy how far 2D animation has come in the last few decades.
Thinking of blog post titles is hard. I suppose I could stick to a formula, but where's the fun in that?
This week for the third assignment - two balls of different weights - I had a lot of trouble; as someone who can barely even walk downstairs while talking at the same time, multitasking has never been my strong suit. Working one object realistically into its environment was hard enough, but having two objects that needed to believably interact with the environment and each other? That threw me into a bit of a tizzy.
I managed to bust out a product where the balls fly across the screen while narrowly escaping physical contact with one another, but I can't say it's my best work thus far. I tried to attempt a scenario where they bounced off one another (rather, the "golf ball" bounced off the "bowling ball"), but the thinking involved with that rustled my jimmies way past the point of tolerable frustration, so I stopped and opted for something a little more my speed.
Hopefully I'll be able to think more complexly in upcoming assignments, but for now.....
After working on the assignments for this week, I feel like I'm finally starting to get the gist of Maya! Although the most I can do at this point is make a ball haphazardly bounce around a prearranged box, I think that I've come pretty far from knowing absolutely zero.
It's funny, because at first when I was doing assignment 1 (ball bounce w/o squash and stretch), I was manually making keyframes at thecrest, trough, and midpoints of every bounce the ball made. All in all my midweek took me 5-6 hours of fiddling and failure. I thought that there must be an easier way to work, so I looked up any reference video I could find until I came upon the graph editor.
Then, like a brick to the face, I had an epiphany that I only had to make keyframes at the ball-to-ground contact points, and that the graph editor would make my life a million times easier. It was the greatest feeling in the world to finally know what I was doing instead of floundering around like a fish on deck!
Thanks to the graph editor, Assignment 1 ended up taking me about 5 more hours to perfect for pass 2, adding up to a grand total of 10-11 hours of work.
Even better, I discovered hot keys this week, thus clipping off half of the work I would have had to do physically switching from the move tool, to the camera zoom tool, to the rotate tool, to the camera rotate tool, etc, etc, etc.
I know I haven't unlocked the super cool chamber of secrets I know is within Maya, these two little things ended up helping me a lot for Assignment 2.
Assignment 2 ended up taking me a grand total of 7-8 hours of work. Speaking from experience in creating digital art, 3 hours isn't a huge difference in work time. But for a beginner like me, it's progress! And I love progress.
And because solid text posts are super boring, a cool video to spice stuff up:
I've estimated that with my current capabilities, creating an animation like that would take at least 4,050 years. Because of this, I've resigned myself to simply appreciating it. :)
This blog, made for ATEC 4337 is dedicated to Taylor's super cool adventures into the world of animation!
Although our class was cut short due to the thunderstorms, I feel like I'm all ready to faceplant into this class. I've never done much animating of my own (other than the occasional flip-book when I was younger), but I've always appreciated the art and wished to seriously try it for myself. I'm so excited to finally be able to learn how to animate and how to use the software!
Just for grins, here are some examples of some of my favorite animated sequences:
