for my Visual Elements of Story class we were asked to develop a story of our choosing (one of three). I chose Zorro with an Asian-themed twist. What you see here are my first attempts at photoshop :\ Lot to learn, but considering I didn't even know photoshop could be used for anything but editing photos before this class, I'd say I'm pretty happy with what I got out of it.
Since the walk cycle we've been focusing entirely on our final animations, which included developing a story that could be told in 30-60 seconds, storyboards, character development and the actual animation hand-drawn.
Here are the rough storyboards for mine from oh so long ago:
Practice sketches:
The final product came out to be only 33 seconds. I know it's not impressive, but keep in mind that even a short animation usually takes animators months and months with multiple people working on production and lots 'o little animation bitches doing your in-between drawings for you (assuming it's even traditional animation). I made the mistake of leaving the end until the very end, like the day before it was due. Maybe someday I'll go back and finish it...but not likely.
Anyway, here it is.
I've fallen behind on my updates! I've been too busy to post anything this semester but now that I'm done (X-D)... I can finally show you what I've been doing.
This is the walk cycle that I did way way back in like, February. It was our assignment after the flour sacks. I didn't wanna do a person so I decided to try for a rat on it's hind legs. Studied youtube videos of people training their actual pet rats to walk to get it right :P
Apologies for the crap quality. I can only get it to play on a loop on quicktime, not as a uploaded video, so I just recorded it on my comp screen. As good as I can do for a non-tech saavy person :x
I forgot to post the results of my haircut from Martha Stewart's stylist...
here it is:
My friend recorded this at South by Southwest this year as a thank you gift for me. I mentioned to him earlier I had no idea what the original pronunciation of my name was... so here it is, straight from the Norweigen's mouth:
In my figure drawing class we've been getting assignments such as, "for the sketchbook, 20 arms, 20 legs and 20 hands, and for your newsprint pad, 3 detailed drawings of the torso two hours each." Which actually means "this is the bare minimum to pass with a C-. Draw about 3x that amount and make it hellah good, and I might consider giving you a B." Needless to say I am improving. Draw anything 20 times a week for four weeks and you don't really have a choice but to get better. Check out my arms, pretty hot ;)
The 15 minute break came at the end of our six-hour long animation class today and I was desperately in need of a cup of coffee. Normally I would run to starbucks across the street, but today with only a dollar in my pocket I went to the little falafel place down the street for my fix. Whist adding creme to my coffee, a man in the corner eating a gyro was watching me intently. Finally he asks in a heavy unidentifiable accent, "Who is your hair stylist?"
me: "Uh, Great Clips?"
man: *laughs* "I'm a hair stylist from New York. I have a shop down the street and I'll style your hair for free."
me: "...huh?" (articulate as always)
man: "Your hair type is what I'm looking for. Would you like to see my portfolio? I used to style for Martha Stewart in New York."
me: "Oh...um, I have to get back to class."
man: "Ok, well come to my shop tomorrow. Here's my card. I will do a nice cut for you, it will be very nice. I can dye it too if you like. No charge."
me: "uhhh, ok."
So looks like I'm getting a free cut tomorrow after work. Yes, I realize it seems a tad creepy. But he did have pictures of himself with Martha Stewart. As long as he doesn't make me LOOK like Martha. Damn, should have waited instead of dropping 35 bucks to get it trimmed in January :\
So, like the million of animation students before me, I start with "the jump." The assignment: "animate a flour sack jumping on a box."
I decided to take liberties with a few things, all of which ended up being self-defeating.
1- I made it a stool instead of a box. Oh wait, I have to animate the stool 36 times? huh. Now, if I had known better at the time, I could've drawn the damn thing ONCE and edited into a background layer on flipbook. Or even if it was on the classic lunchbox, I could've put it as the under drawing and shown light through it. But this being my first animation, I unwittingly made my life a whole lot harder. And I just had to add shading...ugh.
2-I made my little guy do a flip off the stool. That was hard. My instructor loved it though.
3-I added a 2nd flour sack that applauds at the end. It ended up translating really poorly. Why is there a second flour sack? where did he come from? and how does one make a flour sack applaud? fail.
So what you see above I did on flipbook earlier today...before I had it on VHS on the the lunchbox, where it looked sooo much better. I tried to take a video of the TV showing it but it looks all crappy. Maybe I'll post that too when my internet connection isn't on the verge of crashing.
Again, not being adept at the flipbook software yet the timing's all off compared to the original I made for VHS :S This one took much less time to animate since I learned from my mistakes and drew only the one trampoline...
After the flour sack we graduated onto the walk cycle, which I will post next when I get time...
I'm now on my 3rd week as a first-semester graduate student in Animation and Visual Effects at the Academy of Arts University in San Francisco.
Here are my classes for the Spring '09 semester:
610 Figurative Concepts (intensive study of human figure)
611 Visual Development (visually developing characters and story)
612 Principles and Pipelines (animating basics)
Not having any formal art background I'm in all the basic foundation classes. Which is fine with me. My instructors are amazing and I'm loving it so far despite the six-and-a-half hour class periods and resulting sore back and hand cramps :\.
In the first two weeks of class I've animated a hand-drawn ball bouncing (week 1) and a
personified flour sack jumping on a stool and doing a flip off, created
thumbnails for my own asian-based female Zorro, and drawn a whole shit
load of arms and legs. Not much exciting yet...
My animations so far have been recorded on a "lunchbox" which means
they're on VHS. Not sure yet how to go about transferring that online.
Maybe could take a video camera...
I'll be posting some of my assignments in a separate blog from now on.
I like the idea of recording my progress through school, however given my shoddy blog record and work/class schedule I can't guarantee consistency.
I thought it might be interesting to keep a record of my progress through art school by posting some of my work from classes periodically.
I'm now on my 3rd week as a first-semester graduate student in Animation and Visual Effects at the Academy of Arts University in San Francisco.
Here are my classes for the Spring '09 semester:
610 Figurative Concepts (intensive study of human figure)
611 Visual Development (visually developing characters and story)
612 Principles and Pipelines (animating basics)
Not having any formal art background I'm in all the basic foundation classes. Which is fine with me. My instructors are amazing and I'm loving it so far, despite the six-and-a-half hour class periods and resulting sore back and hand cramps :\.
So far I've animated a hand-drawn ball bouncing (week 1) and a personified flour sack jumping on a stool and doing a flip off, created thumbnails for my own asian-based female Zorro, and drawn a whole shit load of arms and legs. Not much exciting yet...
My animations so far have been recorded on a "lunchbox" which means they're on VHS. Not sure yet how to go about transferring that online. Maybe could take a video on my camera...
Will post things up when (if?) I get time.
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