Animation Training - Part 3

Hello again, so as usual I had my weekly review of my work from my tutor and just like every review, he gave me the good and bad of my work and tells me how to improve my work. Everytime this happens I do get quite annoyed with myself because I wish I had seen the faults before, but I guess that's part of the learning process.

I don't have anything to show at the moment, as I have not yet improved the personality walk cycles yet. Instead, I just wanted to express some of the things in my mind which has, really triggered me to think of the way I'm animating at the moment.

 It's fair to say that I'm happy with some of the work which I have produced so far, from these last coming weeks, as I have learnt a lot. However, when I compare myself to other people's finished work to mine, I feel as though they are on a much different level. It feels as though I have not given myself enough time to think about the work first and consider other factors to make the animation more appealing. Instead, it feels at the moment I'm just diving into the deep end, and rushing it; which animation is not about.

So as I find other student works like from "Animation Mentor" for example, and see their progression level, it does make me think, " can I get to that level, can I push the poses to the limit like these?" and so on. Plus, the competition to get into this industry is getting more fierce, as more people have access to tutorials.

So with this in mind, I will from now on, push forward and take each assignment as though I was working on a film, tv or game company, so I can show the full potential that I have, to become a better character animator.

Animation Training - Part 2

Hello once again, I'm glad to say that I had figured out, how to resolve my walk cycle problems from last week. As mentioned from the previous post, when I put my character into "Pre- Infinity" and etc, the whole poses would slowly collapse and some of the legs, feet or main body would lag behind. This was something my tutor could not figure out what the problem was. The main problem which I have later found out was that some of my poses were different from one another, even by a small cm on the grid, it can affect the overall animation.

The spacing from the right foot and the left foot

Even by a small margin could affect the whole walk cycle

So, this week assignment was similar to what I have done last week. It was to create a new walk cycle with personality. My tutor wanted me to however to focus on the animation being on stepped mode. By doing this throughout my work, I've noticed the smaller details and this will therefore make sure that, I won't have as much faults when I start working on spline, and re-fining the animation. 

In the meantime, I have completed two types of walk cycles. One of them is a heavy walk, as I wanted to show as much weight for this character as much as possible. 

I was a-bit worried to how my animation was turning, out, as I felt that some of the work looked incorrect. I did look over my filmed references of myself over and over again and tried to draw the key poses, that will be used in my animation. 

The videos below is the other type of walk cycle I have been working on, a tip -toe. I'm still not happy with the overall timing as it needs to be slower to build the anticipation more. 

I have previewed these two walk cycles on what they looked liked on spline and so far, they seem to be working well. Just have to work on the timings a bit more for the "Tip toe" cycle. Other than that, I will post later on to the progress of these walks.

Animation Training - Part 1

Hello all, once again. As mentioned from the previous blog post, I had started to learn from an Animator, Michael Morgan, who will be teaching my over the duration of 12 Weeks. What this then allows me, is to review the basics principles of animation again, where I was evidently lacking from my course at Uni, where hopefully this will give me a better chance of improving my showreel.

This week coming, it would be the fourth week and I was asked to animate a walk cycle. This was something which I had always needed in my showreel, as it would show the basic understanding of applying other basic principles together, i.e "squash and stretch". 

My tutor then sent me a few resources to help me, for this week assignment.

Richard Williams- Animation Survival Kit

Tutor - Resources

After many trial and errors and persistence of improving the walk cycle over and over again, going into the graph editor to make sure that all of the values looked correct, I was able to produce the walk cycle.

The only problem which I still encounter, is the "Pre infinity and Post Infinity cycle" as, yes it had made my character walk from A to B forever, but the tranlastion for the Z axis would for some reason slow down and therefore the poses would be lost, as it further progress on the timeline.

I had tried my best to amending this issue, where I had to re-do the poses, where I animated the character on one spot, rather than it having moving forward. This seemed to have solved most of the problem, but not all of it. (Some values must have not match up / mirrored to the opposite pose)

This was unfortunate and I'm still baffled as to why and how this is happening. It was early morning by the time I had pushed the limit of my knowledge and searched all over the internet as to why this was happening and any hope of fixing it.  So, hopefully when I ask my tutor on review day on Sunday, he will have a solution to this problem.  I'll see you next time guys.

Graduation- The next step

Hey there, it's been a while since I last blogged, and I'm going to try and ease my way back into doing this weekly. 

I had finished Uni for quite some time now, about a month ago or so where I had achieved a 2:1 for my course. I was happy with the results but to be honest, I feel as though grades aren't important within the industry which I'm trying to get in, however it does help for example, working in another country.

Results day and last day at uni

So, now that I had finished university, I knew that I had to try and and apply to jobs that could help me get into where I want to be in the future, a CG character animator. I had tried applying before, but was unfortunate to have had any replies. I had then, sent and applied to various of VFX companies in London, but again, unlucky to hear from anything.

It was tough the first few weeks, as I felt like I'm not getting anywhere. The news that I watched everyday didn't seem to help, as they mentioned about the unemployment figures and how graduates this year, are finding it much more difficult and competitive to get to where they want.

I then woke up one morning, with the news facts fresh on my mind and the fact that I wouldn't get anywhere. It was hard to take in. I had other plans, where I would continue working at my part time job and try and polish up my animation skills here and now and find networking events, to build up my presence in the industry. I then got an email.

I then received an email from an Animator I had met, as he had turned up to my university to present his work and how to get into the industry. His name is Michael Morgan. He had asked me to whether or not if I wanted to be part of a animation mentoring program which he was holding, over the duration of 12 weeks. I then without hesitation, replied back that I would like to be part of this.

This was a really good opportunity as even though I could've taught myself on how to animate, I knew that I would not achieve the quality which many of the companies are looking out for from a showreel. I would receive weekly feedbacks from Mike and I could therefore learn from my mistakes that he'll point out and I can work at my own pace, but I will always be pushed, due to the weekly deadlines.

So far, I'm a third in of my training and that's quite scary as I've only just realised that. Not good for me...Reason being is that, this was my cushion, something which I can kind of relax my mind on, before panicking again on finding a job suited to my work. I found that Blue Zoo animations are hiring people, but without enough quality of work on my showreel, the likelehood of me being likely candidate, is getting slim. Hopefully this week I will have something worthwhile to add into my showreel. I just have to remain focus and stay with the assignment set for this week.

I'll see you next week

Specialist Study 2- Part 11 Animation and Final Thoughts

Below is the animation which I was able to complete within the few days I had left before my deadline. When I was starting to animate I had planned to animate half of it, but the fact that I wanted to produce something and hand something in for my deadline, I focused on the quality of it. In then end this animation lasts around 11 seconds, which is kind of weird now that I think about it, as it was something that I had completed in two days, whereas before when I was doing the 11 second competition, it took me forever. That's not to say that this animation below is perfect.

Death of Julius Caesar from Andy mo on Vimeo.

I will reveal the video in a few days after i handed my work in, so check back in the next following days.

I am happy with what I had accomplished in just the handful of days I had left, though I wish I could improve it especially the eye and tightening of the voice.

I have come to the conclusion however, that everyone has a different workflow and that there is no right or wrong way of approaching the animation. The only thing is that whether or not if you applied yourself to the work and push the movements and if you added the animation principles.

I will however just polish the other animation to the best of my ability but I shall not re-do from the beginning to the end. I just have to take in from what I learn and move on. So I hope you enjoyed reading the process of this work. I look forward to one day becoming an animator.

Specialist Study 2- Part 10 Painful Decision

So with the lighting and Ncloth all put together I then began polishing up my animation. With most of it done I had time to spare to render the work so far. The reason being was because Michael Morgan, an animator was going to give a talk to us. This would be a great chance to get feedback on my work.

Feedback time

As much as I got some constructive criticism back from Mike, I felt that the feedback he given me was true and that I had to think more about the way I animate. Some of the things he said was that a lot of the performance of my character was cliche and that it didn't give or have the principles that should've been there. 

My tutor however and my classmates so the much improvement in my work, but I felt that though they were being supportive and believed what they said, it didn't matter as much as I got feedback from an experienced animator perspective.

I then had to choose whether to continue with finishing up my animation and make the best I can or....to start again but do a smaller portion of the monologue. My teacher was quite persuasive and convinced me to do a small portion of it.

I then began re-acting the scene and took the advice Mike gave me.

Re-acting the scen

Different workflow 

More focused on the impulsive actions

I then remembered of a video on youtube which I had watched a year ago or so and looked on how another animator worked on a project. This was really useful and I found this to be an eye opener, and told myself to try and use this.

So with Mike's feedback and watching the above video, I then began re- animating the animation

I have mixed feelings when I was animating again as it meant throwing away hours of work away, but when I strived on, I noticed a big difference to how the character moved and the quality of work I was making. 

Re-animating 

Specialist Study 2- Part 9 Lighting and Ncloth

With the animation close to be completed, I then needed help on lighting my scene. I then asked the lower years L5s to help me on this. I asked them to experiment as much as possible on the lighting and the colour of the background and to use three point lighting.

The results which they showed me was quite interesting and I really liked the fact that one of the L5s was focused on the variables of the lighting i.e making the light more softer and the background colours.

L5 - Tony's work

 The other L5s was then experimenting more on the colours of the lights where it was more experimental and went to cover a broad range. This was useful, as I was then able to see what worked or not.

L5 Brad's Work

After seeing the result of the lighting work which they produced, I was then keen on them lighting up the scene and I could then save it as the masterfile. We got some really good results and I was really happy with how it looked so far. The bonus was that the lighting below, had a very theatre vibe towards it therefore solving the colour scheme problem which I had been dreading to figure out from the previous weeks.

Final Light render

Now that I had animated more or less all of the character so far, I thought that it would be best to finally approach the Ncloth. I was in for a long painful process. The ncloth simply wouldn't work. I had to then figure out as to why it wasn't working, why that the previous month I had worked on the Ncloth it worked and that it wasn't working now. I then reviewed many of the tutorials again and looked through my notes again and again. 

It works!

I was more or less going to break down as to why it wasn't working. Never the less, I continued pushing myself forward and think of a solution to make the Ncloth work. I then finally had a breakthrough after the two days I was working on. This however meant that I had to reduce some of the timing of the animation which was kind of bad news, but it worked.